Another Three Stooges short from 1937:
(Short # 22 in Nyuk Nyuk Nyuk: The Columbia Shorts of The Three Stooges)
Curly plays dual roles but it was a short I didn’t love. It started off absurd with the trio in the slammer together. After receiving a letter from their mom that their “Popsie-Wopsie” divorced her so he can marry a gold digger woman… who we find out later is in the scheme w/ two male villains. They easily break out of jail as comically, the trio have an entire set of tools under their mattress in their cell-including a jackhammer.
Afterwards-the law is never after them for some odd reason-they meet their dad, also played by Curly but this time sporting sideburns. His voice is more like how Jerome Horwitz spoke IRL. Too much time is spent at a haberdashery on a joke that wasn’t too funny (plus, Curly had what looked like hair covering up a scar that came from a stunt gone awry!) but at least “haberdashery” is a great word…
Popsie-Wopsie has his sideburns shaved off so the expected happens with them looking identical on the wedding day… isn’t it ironic? There’s amusing moments and it’s a nice bit where the villains are confused because they are unaware of Curly Squared but the short does redeem itself in the last minute or so with a big gag involving a flagpole on top of a skyscraper.
I’ll just shrug my shoulders and note that it is OK if director Del Lord (he mainly directed a few dozen shorts during the Curly years) and screenwriter Clyde Bruckman (wrote many different shorts, mainly during the Curly years) “only” created something that was good instead of better.
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