The Official " OLD Three Stooges" thread

[fozzieisfunny]

I know about the 2012 Farrelly Brothers' Three Stooges movie, and I'm really not happy about it.... But, I do absolutely love the OLD Three Stooges, which are a whole different story. If you're a fan too, you might want to post on this thread. We can talk about every time period of The Three Stooges' lives ( even their childhood!). Well, what are you waiting for? Start typing! Or else, there might be a slap from a certain Stooge in your future..

 

[mr3urious]

The Three Stooges are still the kings of slapstick comedy. My favorite short has to be "A Plumbing We Will Go", which featured the infamous scene of the three tangled up in a mess of pipes.

Those last few shorts they were forced to make after Shemp died (with "Fake Shemp" Joe Palma) were really awkward and pathetic. It's bad enough Moe lost his other brother; couldn't Columbia just let him and Larry grieve in peace?

And as for the 2012 movie, well... at least the Farrellys looked like they did a fair bit of research with that one, and they have some experience with slapstick, what with directing Dumb & Dumber and all.

 

[Drtooth]

I feel Shemp is very underrated, and this is coming from a big Curly fan. I'm sure it has something to do with licensing and likeness rights (I don't know how much of the made for TV biopic was true in that aspect), but you never see Shemp stuff. No T-shirts, bobblheads... stuff like that. I like seeing the Shemps mixed in with Curlys when they're in some sort of marathon or something.

Now, I really know this is the common fan thing to say, but I just don't like the Joe Bessers. He's funny in his own right when he's on his own, but you can tell no one was happy on those shorts. Joe was often left to his own devices, and Moe and Larry were the ones to duke it out. Curly Joe, however, I respect. Sure, he's not as funny as Shemp or Curly... he has his own style, and he had very good chemistry with the original two. I'd say the live action bits of those cartoon shows were actually quite funny and well done in their own right. Which brings me to the cartoon.

I have a love/dislike relationship with these. Some have some real genuine Three Stooges style verbal humor (yeah, we all remember the eye pokes, but they had some great dialogue), some are just generic, at the time style kiddy cartoons. It's certainly a step up from Cambria's ...achem...other project... the infamous Clutch Cargo (even use the same music sometimes). Safari So Good is quite lousy, dropping their humor for a weak Looney Tunes wanna be (though I do like Tarzan as a Beatnik... too bad Beany and Cecil did better with that concept). But Get that Snack Shack off the Tracks has some great Stooge humor. And true to Stooge form, most of the endings are them running away. Stock animation, even.

 

[mr3urious]

Now, I really know this is the common fan thing to say, but I just don't like the Joe Bessers. He's funny in his own right when he's on his own, but you can tell no one was happy on those shorts. Joe was often left to his own devices, and Moe and Larry were the ones to duke it out. Curly Joe, however, I respect. Sure, he's not as funny as Shemp or Curly... he has his own style, and he had very good chemistry with the original two. I'd say the live action bits of those cartoon shows were actually quite funny and well done in their own right. Which brings me to the cartoon.

Supposedly Moe wasn't allowed to abuse him, which may explain why.

I have a love/dislike relationship with these. Some have some real genuine Three Stooges style verbal humor (yeah, we all remember the eye pokes, but they had some great dialogue), some are just generic, at the time style kiddy cartoons. It's certainly a step up from Cambria's ...achem...other project... the infamous Clutch Cargo (even use the same music sometimes). Safari So Good is quite lousy, dropping their humor for a weak Looney Tunes wanna be (though I do like Tarzan as a Beatnik... too bad Beany and Cecil did better with that concept). But Get that Snack Shack off the Tracks has some great Stooge humor. And true to Stooge form, most of the endings are them running away. Stock animation, even.

Have you ever seen The Robonic Stooges that followed? It feels really morbid (and not in the good way) in that apparently the Stooges' corpses were reanimated and rebuilt with bionics a la The Bionic Man, or more appropriately, Inspector Gadget. But hey, at least it isn't a Scooby-Doo knockoff like so many other HB shows at the time.

 

[fozzieisfunny]

I feel Shemp is very underrated, and this is coming from a big Curly fan. I'm sure it has something to do with licensing and likeness rights (I don't know how much of the made for TV biopic was true in that aspect), but you never see Shemp stuff. No T-shirts, bobblheads... stuff like that. I like seeing the Shemps mixed in with Curlys when they're in some sort of marathon or something.

Now, I really know this is the common fan thing to say, but I just don't like the Joe Bessers. He's funny in his own right when he's on his own, but you can tell no one was happy on those shorts. Joe was often left to his own devices, and Moe and Larry were the ones to duke it out. Curly Joe, however, I respect. Sure, he's not as funny as Shemp or Curly... he has his own style, and he had very good chemistry with the original two. I'd say the live action bits of those cartoon shows were actually quite funny and well done in their own right. Which brings me to the cartoon.

I have a love/dislike relationship with these. Some have some real genuine Three Stooges style verbal humor (yeah, we all remember the eye pokes, but they had some great dialogue), some are just generic, at the time style kiddy cartoons. It's certainly a step up from Cambria's ...achem...other project... the infamous Clutch Cargo (even use the same music sometimes). Safari So Good is quite lousy, dropping their humor for a weak Looney Tunes wanna be (though I do like Tarzan as a Beatnik... too bad Beany and Cecil did better with that concept). But Get that Snack Shack off the Tracks has some great Stooge humor. And true to Stooge form, most of the endings are them running away. Stock animation, even.

My Thoughts on all The Replacements for Curly:
Yeah, I like Shemp better than Curly, and feel he is TOTALLY underrated.
As for Joe, he sucks.
As for Curly-Joe, he's decent but at times sucks.

 

[fozzieisfunny]

Those last few shorts they were forced to make after Shemp died (with "Fake Shemp" Joe Palma) were really awkward and pathetic. It's bad enough Moe lost his other brother; couldn't Columbia just let him and Larry grieve in peace?

Yeah.. It's quite sad, in fact. Larry and Moe were so sad that they lost yet another one of their fellow Stooges, so Moe finally figured out a plan: They make the Two Stooges, since the third one always ends up dying, much to Columbia's dismay. Sure, Columbia let The Three Stooges at the company until the day he died, but sometimes I felt they could've given the Stooges a bit more peace..

 

[charlietheowl]

I haven't seen any of their shorts in a long time, but at their best they combined the funniest quips and puns with amazing physical comedy and timing. My favorite one was the one where they work as riveters on the top floor of a new skyscraper (can't remember the title). I seem to remember it ended with them parachuting off the building and then driving their car with the parachute covering it.

 

[minor muppetz]

I'm not exactly big on The Three Stooges, but I do like them well enough. I liked them a lot more when I was in middle school, but even then didn't watch much of their shorts. I had one VHS release, Simply Hilarious, which had four shorts, and I mainly only remember the first two (Disorder in the Court and Brideless Groom) as well as some coming attractions at the end of the tape. For my 15th birthday, I got a VHS boxed set of Three Stooges videos (including a rerelease of the Simply Hilarious video), and have only watched a handful of videos in that box set (including one with a lot of rare Three Stooges stuff, like the pilot for an unproduced series).

I used to think that all of the shorts were in the public domain. I think it was Yesterdayland that mistakenly gave me that info. But then I learned that only four of their shorts (the four included in Simply Hilarious) are in the public domain.

I watched the 2012 movie (not in theaters), and I don't think it's terrible, more-or-less "so okay it's average". There's so many times when we're tricked into thinking it'll go in one direction before it goes in another, which isn't exactly a bad thing, but I feel I was able to predict some of that before it happen. For example, in the opening scene where a father has to choose between adopting the Stooges and Teddy, we think he's going to adopt Teddy before he decides on Moe, only for Moe to be sent back in exchange for Teddy (and not because Moe caused trouble, but because he wanted the father to adopt Larry and Curly as well). And then at the end, when after saving his life the Stooges ask Teddy to give them the money needed to save the orphanage, only for Teddy to refuse because they let him be adopted by the man who just tried to kill him.... But then the orphanage not only ends up being saved but Teddy decides to adopt a kid from there.

Wait, so this is an official thread for the "old" Three Stooges... Is there a thread for the 2012 movie?

A few years ago, I read that the actors didn't realize how successful their shorts were until after they were canceled, as the studio convinced them that although they were selling well live-action shorts were on the verge of becoming unprofitable (I remember in the made-for-TV biopic a scene where an executive tells them that as long as he's in charge they'll always be employed... although I taped the biopic I only watched it once, I wonder if that line was in response to convincing them that shorts weren't selling too well), so that they wouldn't ask for raises or better contracts, while in actuality, the shorts were in such demand that Columbia threatened theaters that they would not send the shorts unless the theaters agreed to also show the studios B-movies. Considering that, were the actors playing them really as stupid as their characters? Considering they made shorts for nearly two full decades, I would have thought they'd figure out how successful they were much sooner.

 

[fuzzygobo]

Charlie Sheen in "2 1/2 Stooges".

Actually Shemp was part of the act before Curly, who was brought in when Shemp was offered a better-paying contract with the " Joe Palooka" series. The Stooges had an underlying tension with their comic partner/straight man Ted Healey who always got top billing and ridiculously higher pay, which bothered Moe to no end.

It was nice to see all three Howard brothers ( Moe, Curly, and Shemp)
in 1947's "Hold That Lion". Too bad Curly's poor health didn't allow him appear more often.

Nothing will ever beat " Disorder in the Court".

Thank you gents, for all the belly laughs and eye pokes.

 

[Drtooth]

Have you ever seen The Robonic Stooges that followed? It feels really morbid (and not in the good way) in that apparently the Stooges' corpses were reanimated and rebuilt with bionics a la The Bionic Man, or more appropriately, Inspector Gadget. But hey, at least it isn't a Scooby-Doo knockoff like so many other HB shows at the time.

Yeah. I have to admit, out of the other 70's shows this one had potential, but somehow, it went unused. It was like trying to make the Stooges into the Super Globetrotters, and ending up being a strange mix that wasn't so much bad as strange in a not that good way. Not a bad show, but just weird and it never really managed to make anything of itself.

Of course, there was almost another cartoon series. Muppet Babies writer and Moe Grandson Jeff Scott actually pitched a cartoon called "The Wee Stooges" (take a wild guess what that would have been). He even wrote some scripts, but all that's been released are titles listed in his filmography in his "How to write for Animation" book. One episode was titled (get this) "The Last of the Moe Haircuts."