Ted Healy and His Three Stooges

The stooges are introduced as "Ted Healy and his Stooges" if not in Dancing Lady, but in the special feature/short on the DVD "Plain Nuts" [with some of the best sparkly dancing costumes ever] Note the short "Roast Beef and Movies" has Curly. In Plain Nuts references are made to their vaudeville act, with long forgotten Healy was the leader/straight man, but their "act" in the short is very tame, really looking like a rehash of their vaudeville act and they had Bonnie Bonnell with them. The film's titles billed Ted Healy and underneath him as "Howard, Fine and Howard, and Bonny."

Thanks to talkies, vaudeville was all but dying out, still some of the more famous acts, like Burns and Allen, made it to film, and there was still some interest in 1933 of those acts many people had heard of but, either perhaps had never seen, or liked to see again even though most of the vaudeville houses had closed down. Look up Ted Healy on imdb for more.

It was interesting to note that both burlesque and striptease are talked about as something new in Dancing Lady, and to see the ramps going off the main stage for the girls to bump and grind close to the audience.

Since there is lots of interest in the Stooges I mention their connection to Healy, but for my money, Laurel and Hardy were much funnier, not needing to be any where near as gross, but more developed in their humor and classier in general, if being piano movers can be considered classy [in the Depression, it was one of the few jobs to be had... They won the academy award in 1932 for this short, "The Music Box."