Meet The Baron was a feature-length comedy made by MGM in 1933 and was recently brought to us by my heroes at TCM. It's a laugh riot from beginning to end (with a couple of musical numbers from the "Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Girls" thrown in). The lead actor was Jack Pearl, who popularized a character named Baron Munchausen (kind of a German version of Jimmy Durante) on radio. As the movie opens, Pearl and Durante are servants to adventurer Baron Munchausen and they are lost in the african jungle. The Baron abandons his servants in a dispute over a dwindling water supply, a search party finds the servants the next day, Durante tells them that Pearl is the Baron, and we're off to hilarity. Pearl has great scenes with radio interviewer Ben Bard, school headmistress Edna May Oliver, and maid Zasu Pitts. The movie also features Ted Healy and his Stooges in the second of their six movies made for MGM from 1933-34. An interesting side note is that the youngest Howard brother is billed as Jerry in the opening credits but is addressed as Curly in the movie. Within three years Healy would be dead and the Stooges would be well into their near quarter century run at Columbia. When he heard the news of Healy's death, Moe Howard cried. The movie concludes on a happy note with Pitts agreeing to marry Pearl. Once again, TCM has hit a home run by bringing us this classic.
In an unrelated event, today I picked up an interesting bit of memorabilia when I found an autographed copy of Garson Kanin's book Hollywood at a used bookstore. The inscription reads "Garson Kanin Pasadena 1974." The book looks like it will be interesting reading as well.
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