Cash and Carry

Cash And Carry was one of the best Three Stooges short subjects in their careers. It was also one of the few that touched on what was going on in the real world of 1937.

Moe, Larry, and Curly are back from the country looking for work, riding in their old jalopy which still has a crank starter in the front. They've blown their last tire just as they arrive in their residence which is a shack in the city dump. But when they get there they find that Sonny Bupp and his big sister Harley Wood have taken up residence thinking it was abandoned.

They stay and Sonny is lame and wearing a brace and they're trying to raise money for an operation. The boys offer to help, but remember this is the Three Stooges.

They take the money raised and some crooks chisel them out of it by selling them an abandoned house where supposedly 'treasure' was hid. So the boys go digging and you can imagine the possibility of gags with them using picks and shovels.

As for the rest of the film think of the Abbott&Costello classic, Coming Round The Mountain and you know how this comes out.

Except in the end they get a White House audience with a crippled president who needed a few laughs. FDR grants them executive clemency and they need it and offers to pay for Sonny Bupp's operation.

Cash And Carry has a bit more sentimentality than most Three Stooges shorts. But in focusing on the real problems of homelessness and the Great Depression the film is a cut above the usual slapstick comedy the boys normally do.

I agree. If you're not particularly a fan of the Three Stooges, watch this episode. It may change your mind. Certainly something different, cooked up by Clyde Bruckman, who wrote some of the best material for the team. Both poignant (which is rare) and funny, a terrific episode for the whole family to watch.

Shades of the Great Depression, Moe, Larry and Curly discover a lame boy (played by child actor Sonny Bupp) and his sister (Harlene Wood) living in a shack, trying to make ends meet. The guys really feel sorry for them and want to help pay for Jimmie's leg operation. As Stooge luck would have it, they're conned into buying a fake buried treasure map and start DIGGING!

They dig and dig -- leading to the US Treasury and a bunch of gold bars??? Outrageous as can be, loaded with a ton of poetic license, including being pardoned by President Roosevelt! But in the end, yes, the President agrees to help Jimmie. And they all live happily ever after.

What a Stooge story, if not fairy tale, and again, one that should please everybody. For movie buffs, Sonny Bupp gained fame in a few years, chosen by Orson Welles to play Charles Kane III in CITIZEN KANE. Stone-face Lestor Dorr plays the president's secretary and a great part for Cy Schindell as the vault guard. Cy was both an actor and boxer and looked the part.

25th film in the series, directed to the max by Del Lord.

Always remastered on dvd via Columbia, generally by decades, 30s, 40s and 50s episodes. Also some theme box sets.

Thanks always to METV for running these oldies Saturday nights.

This one ranks right up there with 3 LITTLE PIRATES, as an excellent episode, a rather touching story, if you will, with our 3 boys doing what they can to help the little boy (Sonny Bupp). What makes it unique is that even though they hit each other with blunt objects, there's only a small handful of slaps and pokes, and no slapstick at all in any scene with the boy. Thoughfully arranged and worked out. A keeper in my book. Anyone unfamiliar with the Stooges, or who doesn't like them at all, should watch this one to see they could be relatively decent actors as well as comedians, in the way they interact with the boy and his sister. And accepting a pardon from FDR himself puts this one in the right historical context of the depression.

Moe, Larry and Curly find a cripled boy and his sister living in there home at the dump yard and they need five hundred dollors to fix the little boys leg so the stooges meet these guys who trick them into getting lots of money, I won't say anything else cuz I will give it away so go watch it......NOW

Cash and Carry (1937)

*** (out of 4)

The Three Stooges find a crippled boy and his sister living in their junk yard so they go to deposit their money in the bank so that nothing happens to it. The boys end up trading the money away for a "buried treasure", which two con men tell them is in a house, which they soon destroy trying to look for the goods. This here is a pretty good short for the boys, which features a similar plot to the one that would be used in LARCENY, INC. (and later SMALL TIME CROOKS). The movie features plenty of nice laughs from start to finish even though there aren't any real loud ones. My favorite sequence is towards the end when all three men are down in this giant hole they dug when they realize they don't have any place to throw the new dirt so they decide to dig another hole just to put the new dirt in. Moe ends up getting beat up pretty bad by the other two who keep swinging their shovels. The opening stuff dealing with the junk car and its bad tires is pretty funny as well but the ending is where the film really works.