Stooge Stuff

I said recently in a Tweet, "Betcha the budget for movie with fake Stooges is 10 times the budget for all the movies ever made with the real guys." Film historian Randy Skretvedt responded by noting…

The budget for a Stooges two-reeler in 1934 was around $18,000, and it got smaller and smaller as the years went by. (The Stooges' salaries, by the way, stayed the same–they never got a raise!) Even if we keep the budget at $18,000 per film, for 190 shorts that would be $3,420,000. I'm sure the new Farrelly travesty cost many times that amount.

Press reports say the budget on the new film was $40,000,000 so I guess it's so. And to be fair, that's not uncommon and not just because of inflation. I was on the set the last day of shooting of that recent Land of the Lost movie — the one with Will Ferrell, the one you didn't see and I didn't, either. Marty Krofft, its Exec Producer and one of the guys behind the original 1974-1976 TV series on which it was based was telling folks that that last day of filming cost more than the budget of the entire original 43 episodes.

I haven't, by the way, seen the new Stooges movie…and as is my tendency, I'm pretty much staying away from reviews. I do note though that a lot of my friends have been and apparently there are two completely different versions of this movie being exhibited. One is riotously funny and the other is one of the worst movies ever made. Sure hope I get the good one when I go.

Hey, the picture above reminds me. I'm supposed to be a bit of a Stooges authority but I don't know this. What's with the "e" in Curly? Everywhere I've ever seen his name written, it's been Curly but on the title cards, it was Curley. Did he change it or was that a longtime typo or what? I can imagine he started off being Curley and at some point, so many people and press reports were spelling it Curly that he gave up and went with Curly…or maybe he, Jerome Howard, always spelled it Curly and everyone else changed it. Not that this is of great importance but I'm wondering it anyone has any info on this. Maybe he sold the letter to Wile Coyote or something.

From the E-Mailbag…

Jamie Stroud writes…

I couldn't agree more with your comments on the new Stooges movie. As a long time fan, my attitude is "it could be fun, but it won't be them." Hollywood has not learned by now and probably never will that you can't replace creativity with gimmicks. Exhibits A through D: The Little Rascals, Flintstones, Rocky and Bullwinkle, The Honeymooners and the list goes on. The people that put these shows and films together originally, whether it was voice work, animation, writing, acting, or sound, were talented and gifted artists. You can't destroy the Mona Lisa with a hundred copies. You just wind up with a hundred copies.

I plan on taking my daughter who is as crazy for The Stooges as I am (I was so proud the first time she poked me in the eyes. Then I showed her how it's done so I wouldn't go blind). I wouldn't be at all surprised if she asks me to put on a Curly or Shemp DVD when we get back home. What I hope they do in the new movie is have Shemp AND Curly in the same scene. That is something I have always wanted and only Hollywood can do.

Well, as you may know, it did happen once. Curly's last co-starring short was Half-Wits Holiday, which was made in 1947. Shemp took over with the next film…then in Shemp's third one, Hold That Lion, Curly made a cameo appearance — his last time on film and the only time that all three Howard boys appeared together. (And I guess it was the only time Curly was ever on film without his distinctive haircut. When he got sick, he let it grow in.)

Reportedly, the cameo was a spontaneous addition to the short. Curly was visiting the set and someone thought it would cheer him up — or maybe give him some hope he could still return to performing — to put him in. When he left the act, his family apparently presumed it was forever but officially, Shemp was to be a temporary replacement until Curly was well enough to return. That never happened and Shemp wound up appearing in 79 more shorts and one feature over the next ten years. But Curly still hoped to resume working at the time he appeared in Hold That Lion and since he's quite recognizable even with longer hair, it had to have baffled some audiences back then. They'd just seen Curly disappear from the films and probably assumed that guy had died or something. Now, here he was back in a bit part…huh?

Two years later, Curly filmed another cameo — for the Stooge short, Malice in the Palace — but it was not used. The above still is said to show him playing a mad chef but I don't guarantee that's him. The whole photo seems a little odd to me…like what's the deal with Shemp's proportions? Someone in Columbia's publicity department liked to take heads from one photo and paste them over heads in other photos so maybe that's what happened here. There are even stills where they took a shot of Moe, Larry and Curly and pasted Shemp's head over Curly's. Anyway, you can decide about this one. Curly apparently did shoot an unused scene for that film, which could have led to something particularly ghoulish…

After Shemp died in '55, the Stooges still had four shorts to deliver on their then-current contract. By then, most of their films were composed of old footage with some new scenes added and the last four films had been budgeted accordingly. It wasn't feasible to recruit a new Third Stooge for what could have been just four more films and they didn't have the money to film four more films without employing old footage. So they made four more films with Shemp using old scenes with him and with a gent named Joe Palma standing in for the new scenes, mainly with his back to camera. That was creepy enough but one of the films "remade" this way was Malice in the Palace. If Curly had been in it, they would have had two deceased Stooges in a new film.

Anyway, the Hold That Lion scene was reused in the later short, Booty and the Beast, which came out in 1953, a little more than a year after Jerome "Curly" Howard had died. Here it is…

P.S.

Yes, I am aware that the forthcoming complete DVD set of the Three Stooges is one of those deals we all hate. They put the stuff out in individual volumes and the eagerest of fans snatched them all up…and now wish they'd waited because the complete set has more material and is a lot cheaper. Yes, we know that someone is hoping that by doing it this way, some folks out there will wind up buying the same material twice…and some will, even though I hear the new material will be made available in some manner. Anyway, yes, it's an annoyance but by now, we should all know how this works.

Knuckleheads on Parade

In the last few weeks, I've had pretty much the same conversation with at least three separate friends…not the guys in the above photo but about them. There's a new movie coming out in which current actors portray the Three Stooges and these Stooge fans are worried it will sully the good name of Stooge. My attitude in response is like, "Really? You're concerned about the dignity of the Three Stooges?" I submit that if you think the Three Stooges ever had any dignity to lose, you don't "get" the Three Stooges.

Did the Three Stooges ever turn down a script? Did Moe ever say to their director, "My character wouldn't say that"? More to the point, did Larry ever say, "No, Moe wouldn't hit me with one of those"?

I knew Larry a bit. I briefly met Moe Howard, Joe Besser and "Curly" Joe DeRita but I spent a few hours of quality time with Larry Fine when he was living in the Motion Picture Country Home. If you mentioned one of their films to him by name, he'd display no recognition of the title but he might wonder aloud, "Is that the one where Moe hit me with the tire iron?" Oddly enough, I hear Dame Judith Dench asks the same thing if you quiz her about anything by Shakespeare.

I've told this before here but one of the saddest/strangest things I ever saw on a TV news show occurred the day Larry died. The local CBS crew rushed cameras over to Moe's house and interviewed him on his front lawn. Moe was crying and his lower lip was trembling so much, his mouth was literally out of sync with his own voice. He was sobbing and saying, "He was my best friend…he was like a brother to me…I loved him so." And as he was saying this, they began rolling footage of Moe smashing pottery over Larry's head, running a saw across his skull and ripping out handfuls of Larry's hair.

I loved the Three Stooges. I still love the Three Stooges. I will always love the Three Stooges and there's no movie anyone can make that will change that.

And one of the things I love about them is that they had absolutely no standards.  They would do anything, anything.  You know how freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose?  Well, those guys were as free as a human being in show business could be.  They had no standards to live up to or even down to.  Someone would say to Moe, "Hey, how about in the next scene, you drop your pants, then stick your brother's nose in a light socket and electrocute him?" and Moe would just ask, "Okay, which side should I be on?"

One friend of mine was concerned this new movie might bomb and lessen the name and glory of the real Stooges.  Naah.  I don't think that kind of hurt happens very often to something people really love.  I always cite the anecdote about the author whose great book was made into a crappy movie.  That happens.  And when it happened in his case, people said to him, "Oh, they ruined your book" and he'd reply, "No, my book is right over there on that shelf, unchanged."

Here's the thing to remember…

Let's imagine it's forty-some-odd years ago and you're a devout fan of the Three Stooges.  You worship at the altar of Ted Healy, yearn to be married by Emil Sitka and whenever you're in a hospital, you listen to the P.A. system, hoping to hear a call for "Dr. Howard, Dr. Fine, Dr. Howard."  You decide that what you would most like in the world would be to actually own and have in your own home, the complete works of your favorite comedy team.

Well, you couldn't do it.

Not in that world possible.  Not then, anyway.  In the pre-Betamax era, that meant buying bootleg 16mm prints.  I had friends who had a few and they were expensive and hard to find…and when you did find one, it was usually a scratchy TV print full of splices and with scenes missing.  You could have spent thousands of bucks and not amassed even half the body of work of Shemp.

Today, you can go to someplace like Amazon and order non-bootleg, complete, restored copies of all the Stooges shorts (with special features included) for about what you once would have paid then for one of the lesser Bessers.  They've been issuing them in volumes and the complete collection comes out in June.  Ninety bucks and it's all yours.

I don't think anything can besmirch the rep of the Three Stooges.  At worst, the new movie will be a mess of bad impersonations…and from the trailers I've seen, it actually looks pretty decent.  But even if it sucks, so what?  The actual Three Stooges are available in all their glory on DVD…and that author's book is still over there on that shelf, unchanged.

I have friends who squirm and moan and speak of heresy when one of their childhood favorites is updated in some new version.  I will admit that some of those resurrections have been pretty awful and that they frequently miss the whole point of what they're adapting.  But at worst, all that results is a bad movie or TV show which will soon be forgotten.  So long as the original is available, it speaks for itself.

Sorry but I just plain do not believe it's possible to "ruin" the Three Stooges.  Look at some of the later movies they made.  If they couldn't destroy their own reputations with that stuff, nothing anyone does today will do any damage.

And besides, folks…this is the Three Stooges we're talking about. For God's sake.

Today's Video Link

Not long ago, someone unearthed a color home movie of the Three Stooges. It was shot at the Steel Pier in Atlantic City on July 1, 1938 by a gent named George Mann who was half of a comedy dance team called Barto and Mann. Mr. Mann and his wife Barbara Bradford also appeared in the film.

Someone with a sense of fun and creativity recently added titles, music and sounds from the Stooges shorts for Columbia. Here's the result…

Today's Video Link

Larry Fine of The Three Stooges suffered a stroke in 1970 and spent the rest of his life (about five years) in the Motion Picture and Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, here in California. He loved having visitors and I went twice, though in neither visit was he as alert and informative as he is in a video made by someone in '73. When I was there, he seemed to have a repertoire of about twelve stories, most of them about being injured on the set…and no matter what I asked him, I got one of the twelve stories.

The '73 conversation was posted to YouTube and I embedded it last night in this posting…but now the person who put it up on YouTube has disabled embedding so if you want to see it, you'll have to go over to YouTube. Here's a link to Part One of three. They all total a little less than a half-hour.