All the World's a Stooge

(Short # 55 in Nyuk Nyuk Nyuk: The Columbia Shorts of The Three Stooges)

Featuring both refugees and dentistry. The wife of the hilariously-named Ajax Bullion wishes to adopt a refugee from a war-torn country. From hearsay, the rich and famous liked to do this during the World War II years. “Window washers” is the blue-collar job they have this time. They’re right outside a dentist’s office when Ajax comes in with presumably an impacted tooth. He’s in so much agony, he demands that the trio extract the tooth. That was as disastrous as expected… yet they were still successful. The dentist’s name: I. Yankum. I’ll surmise his full name is Dr. Isaac Yankum…

From there, the audience has to accept that Ajax’s ruse of dressing the Stooges as child refugees is able to fool his wife and everyone else at the party they’re holding. Larry’s supposed to be a little girl! While the back half is patently absurd, laughs are still present. I don’t know what to make of them doing a spoof version of the Al Jolson song Mammy, for a variety of reasons. Fortunately, they weren’t in blackface. Unfortunately, in a little more than a month I’ll have to discuss a short where they DID don blackface for a scene.

Here, World’s ending is a funny visual image so I had a pretty good time. The presence of character actors Lelah Tyler and Emory Parnell (the former acted in the Judy Garland/Mickey Rooney film Babes in Arms soon before this short, the latter in the 50’s show The Life of Riley) is interesting trivia if nothing else.