Here in Chicago today was the 9th anniversary of "Stooge-a-Palooza," a weekly two hour block of Three Stooges shorts on local TV hosted by Rich Koz. Rich had been local color here in Chicago for decades now. I grew up watching his morning kid's TV show screening cartoons and he's been a staple as local TV horror host Svengoolie, or more accurately Son of Svengoolie, since the late 70's.
Rich hosts the Stooges by giving some factoids and sometimes placed the films in proper context. Unfortunately I missed most of the first hour of this Saturday's block, coming halfway through the Shemp short Three Arabian Nuts (1951). As a Shemp fan I'd like to review it but having only seen half of the episode I will save a full review for another day.
The first full short I saw from the block today was the Curly entry 'Playing the Ponies' (1937). Financially inspired by the Marx Brother's success with 'A Day at the Races' released earlier in the year, this is still some of the Stooge's better moments. Curly even honks a horn for a gag very much as Harpo Marx would. Like much of their 1930's output there's a more down to earth tone to the routines and the film stock itself is grittier. A team of five writers hammered this one out for our boys, and as pointed out by the host Rich Koz this was the last hurrah for many of those writers. Who's really unsung from the Three Stooges' shorts are their foley artists. Even in the earliest shorts from the 1930's they produced top notch foley work even compared to today's standards and that really help emphasize the Stooge's performances. However there's a really odd moment here where Larry sits on a pitch fork and his cries of agony are dubbed by Curly. The dubbing itself is fairly obvious with a dramatic increase in the noise floor but for the most part Curly does a pretty good Larry Fine impression that could rival Billy West. There's some scenes that border on other restaurant routines the boys would later do but it's somewhat refreshing to see them going in another direction this early in their careers.
Next up on the block is the highly praised but just as regularly banned from TV short 'I'll Never Heil Again' (1941). Being Jewish themselves our boys relished the opportunity to lampoon Adolph Hitler and his cronies. Moe gives a spookily spot on imitation of Adolph's fiery German speeches that seems to reveal his own hatred of the Nazi's themselves. The film opens with the all too familiar to modern audience's legal declaration to being unrelated to anyone living but, "anyone resembling them is better off dead." One of the many politically incorrect statements that helped to ban this short from the air while also being the very reason why we love it so. Rich Koz noted that Hitler is said to have hated the Three Stooges which is somewhat interesting if not unsurprising as it is said he loved Charlie Chaplin's portrayal in The Great Dictator the year before. Speaking of which, the Stooges could not help themselves with taking their own turn at tossing the globe around as the tramp so eloquently did. But this time the boys get rough and tumble while tossing it around like a pig skin. A nice contrast of the Stooge's more every man sensibilities.
Mary Ainslee plays a bombshell princess of the dethroned King who really shows she knows how to rack'em up when she puts a bomb in the shell of a 13 pool ball.
There's also a very hot brunette french maid, which must have happened during the French Occupation, who so far seems to remain an unknown combatant even to the internet. The aforementioned pool ball has a surprisingly well executed scene with some stunning SFX's that are done in live action wide shoots. There's some other nice classical touches too like Curly and Larry Fine walking into a room backwards to show their ignorance and a vision of hell where the Stooges are roasting on a spit fire while red suited devils poke them with pitch forks. There's also the politically incorrect mix up of ethnicity with the Asian Indian speaking like a Native American who gives curly a portable "water pipe." You'd almost expect them to call it a peace pipe but they are Nazi's after all. Speaking of stereotypes the Japanese delegate is portrayed as being obsessed with taking photographs at inopportune times. I never would have imagined this image to be so ingrained in American culture as to be funny already by 1940. It just goes to show the more things change the more things seem to stay the same.
As part of the Stooge-a-palooza anniversary they showed an old clip of Rich Koz parodying a modern monster Osamba bin Laden and the propaganda videos he did for Al-Qaeda. This time they called back to the playing card decks the USA passed out with pictures of their most wanted; this time Bin Laden presents what is America's most violent members in the Three Stooges as Al-Qaeda's most wanted. Moe Howard would be proud me thinks. Before our final short Rich Koz also addressed a fan letter about the fact that the current owners of the Laurel and Hardy shorts are "not interested" in licensing out their films for broadcasting on local TV. This really is a shame as my parents raised me watching many a Laurel and Hardy routine. How corporations can sit on their properties and say "No" to more money really boggles my mind sometimes when all they truly do is for money! But I digress.
Our final short for the night was 'Loco Boy Makes Good' (1942). It's about the Stooges trying to build a case to file a lawsuit against a hotel. Ironically Harold Lloyd would later sue them for stealing some gags for this short from Movie Crazy (1932). One Take Rich made a flub saying "Local" instead of "Loco" in the introduction of the title but he recovered rather nicely so they let it slide. Rich also states that there's an edit in the film but no one knows why it was made. While watching the scene in question I couldn't even figure out what cut would be made but in a later scene is seems obvious that Curly pulled a few more things out of his Magician's jacket (which Moe is now holding) that were cut. Early on there's a real good gag with Moe talking to a double of Curly's that I even had to do a double take on because it fooled me too! There's also a surprisingly risque close up of a girl lifting her skirt to extensively show her nylon legs and garters. Curly also calls a gal "toots" which is a word I don't use nearly often enough. Already five years after 'Playing the Ponies' the finer grain prints and lack of depression era routines already seem to be watering down the Stooges. With World War II in full swing at this point people were coming to the theaters to forget their troubles and I don't think the Stooge's fully bounced back comically after that.
With two outta three shorts being ones I hadn't seen before (and the half a Shemp short being another) all and all this was a good night to learn that there's a lot more Stooges left for me to discover. And I don't mean the Farrelly Brother's. "Just Say Moe" indeed. Although Kate Upton as a bikini suited nun I have to given the credit for that one but apparently it was CUT so to hell with that.
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