Someone set up a website devoted exclusively to Shemp Howard. This is a very noble deed and it calls to mind the one time I was foolish enough to attend a Three Stooges Film Festival. (I like the Stooges' shorts but eight in a row? By about the fifth, I was ready to poke my own eyes out.) All the films featured Curly and halfway through — during the intermission — I casually wondered aloud if perhaps the second batch would include one or two featuring Shemp, who preceded and later replaced his brother Curly in the act. "Might we be getting a little Shemp?" I innocently inquired. This is what you call your basic Wrong Thing To Say.
All around me, Stooge buffs gasped and expressed shock that anyone with an I.Q. greater than, say, Larry's would want to sit through — yechh! — a Stooge short with Shemp in it. Boo, hiss. It all sounded a lot like the way others talk about Three Stooges shorts in general, and I never quite knew why. Samuel "Shemp" Howard was the most accomplished comedian of the troupe and even if Curly's infantile mutterings struck some as more amusing, didn't the Shemp films have at least a lot of the same appeal? Apparently, for die-hard Stooge lovers, no. I can understand preferring one over the other but not the outright hostility. It was almost as if Shemp was somehow to blame for his brother having a stroke and having to retire.
Anyway, it's nice that someone likes Shemp enough to put up a site in his honor. I don't think it'll ever lead to true respectability — we're talking Stooges here — but it's nice to see a little bit of justice in the world. Can due esteem for Joe Besser be that far off?