It's Andy Fish!

People are often surprised I like The Three Stooges and yet I can’t stand people like Will Ferrell and Jim Carrey who are clearly just carrying on their legacy.

Recently talking to a good friend he referred to Mssrs. Howard, Fine and Howard as “kid stuff” and he’s right and wrong.

The Stooges career lasted from the early 1930s up through to the mid 1960s– that’s a lot of ground, and a lot of stooges too. They formed and re-formed the group as they went along starting in Vaudeville with the brothers Moe and Shemp Howard and their good friend Larry Fine.

Soon they landed a contract at Columbia under the short film department but Shemp wanted to branch out on his own so Moe’s baby brother Jerry “Curly” Howard was brought in. Much to his objection, Curly was forced to shave his curly hair for the team and they made what I would consider the “classic” Stooge shorts from 1934-1944. Included in that period was the first time a comedian, specifically a Jewish comedian, did a parody of Germany’s Adolph Hitler as World War II came into being. Charlie Chaplin would follow suit and win accolades for his take in the film THE DICTATOR.

The truth was, even such high brow comedians as The Marx Brothers credited the Three Stooges for doing some brilliant comedy and if you look past the slap-stick elements, especially the actually hitting and slapping, you’ll find some really witty dialogue in there.

One of the most brilliant shorts is BUSY BUDDIES (1944) the boys are desperate for money and find out about a Cow Milking contest, certain they could win if they had some practice they find a lone cow behind a fence and send Curly in to milk it– but in actuality its a bull because the boys are too dumb to know the difference, and the humor comes off screen as Curly attempts to “milk” it (one can only imagine what he’s actually doing in there) as he’s constantly hurled over the fence by the bull.

In the mid-1940s the boys were starting to show their ages and sadly Curly suffered a series of strokes, he still filmed several shorts upon his recovery but his voice is slightly slurred and his actions are sluggish so its sad to see the decline of a great comedy trio.

Curly got too sick to work so Moe turned to older brother Shemp to come back to the act and he did in 1947– the infusion of Shemp injected some life back and he did at least 6-7 shorts in that period that were very good. Sadly this only lasted a few years before the scripts became more and more juvenile and lacked the wit of just a few years earlier.

The worst was yet to come, however, Shemp suffered a heart attack and died in 1955 leading to another replacement in the form of Joe Besser who had been a foil for Lou Costello on his TV show, Joe’s act consisted of him behaving like a big baby and the humor wears thin quickly.

Columbia soon cut the boys loose and they struggled making personal appearances to make ends meet. Executives took note of the crowds at these events and TV started to air the shorts giving the Stooges a new popularity. When a film contract was offered Moe brought in Curly Joe DeRita to replace Joe Besser and they made a series of films including THE OUTLAWS IS COMING with future Batman Adam West. I’ve never seen any of the films, I thought the boys were looking long in the tooth in the 50s and really didn’t want to see 60 year old men doing their routines in the feature films.

So if your opinion is The Stooges are unfunny, give BUSY BUDDIES or one of the other shorts from about 1938-1944 a shot and see if you agree that might be the Golden Age for the Three Stooges.