Three Missing Links

(Short # 33 in Nyuk Nyuk Nyuk: The Columbia Shorts of The Three Stooges)

The Stooges go to Africa to work on a movie, w/ Curly in a gorilla suit. Sure, they started off in the blue collar job of janitors at a movie studio, but they muck it up and are about to be fired… until Curly does his “chicken with its head cut off” dance, i.e. spinning on his side on the ground and as a film’s producer doesn’t have anyone to play a gorilla in his new film… off to deepest darkest Africa for the trio.

The shoot itself goes as awry as expected; an actual gorilla arrives on set--the suit received an opening credit as “Naba”; the person in that costume was Ray “Crash” Corrigan, an actor in B-movies, a stuntman & someone who would appear as an ape in cinema for years. Of course there’s mistaken identity between the similar simian.

Laughs are present and there’s a quality bit with Curly struggling to nail spikes in the ground for more than 2 minutes. However, it wasn’t the strongest story so this was “only” fine. No shame there, although for a scene there is a Black witch doctor known as “Dr. Ba Loni Sulami” which is exactly as nuanced as you’d expect a 30’s Black witch doctor character in Africa to be. He’s only in that one scene. It was an excuse to introduce aphrodisiac “love candy” that Curly desires because he randomly loves leading lady Mirabel Mirabel… yeah, that’s her name. That subplot went nowhere although that candy is used at the end for a joke.

Finally, this is notable as longtime Stooge producer Jules White made his directorial debut here. He served in both roles all the way until their final Columbia short in 1959.