For Crimin' Out Loud:
(Short # 170 in Nyuk Nyuk Nyuk: The Columbia Shorts of The Three Stooges)
This is it: the last new footage I’ll see of Shemp as a Stooge. What a career he had: he and his brother Moe worked w/ and w/o Ted Healy in vaudeville in the 20’s-Larry joined in ’28. He left the allegedly abusive Healy in ’32 and had a decent career solo in film until he and Moe’s brother Curly passed. Originally a temporary move, he stayed with them until he died via heart attack on November, 22, 1955 at the age of 60. What a trio those Horwitz brothers were in show business; all three are still beloved today. Shemp is entertaining in a different way than his brother Curly.
Crimin’ is a remake of 1949’s Who Done It? That is one of the best of the Shemp era. The first five minutes are all-new. “The Stooges do the 50’s version of forensics” is a phrase I never thought would be written but it’s true. The usual hijinks occur but it’s still nice to see the trio one last time; then, we get the rest of Who Done It?; it’s framed this time as Emil Sitka’s Mr. Goodrich is a councilman who was kidnapped by The Phantom Gang, including Christine McIntyre as the femme fatale and Duke York as Nikko, a scary-looking giant goon.
To copy and paste from the review of Who Done It?:
“The Stooges beat each other up even more than usual, there is an onslaught of puns, they spoof the trope of scary houses having false panels in walls and hiding behind paintings... there was what TV Tropes refers to as the “Poisoned Chalice Switcheroo.” McIntyre poisons a drink and offers it to Shemp; they distract each other and switch the drinks several times, w/ Christine faking a switch on one occasion. It’s a more common trope than I realized; it’s not just The Princess Bride that has played with the trope.
There is no shortage of great moments; not even Moe injuring his ankle stopped the shoot. It’s obvious in the final few minutes but I guess the short must go on.”
By remake standards, this was swell; Shemp will be missed. Next time, the start of the four Fake Shemp shorts-why it happened and why they all have a poor reputation.
Rumpus in the Harem:
(Short # 171 in Nyuk Nyuk Nyuk: The Columbia Shorts of The Three Stooges)
This is the first of the four Fake Shemp shorts the Stooges did before the brief Joe Besser era ended the long run they had at Columbia. They were required to fulfill a contract and provide four more efforts, nevermind Shemp having the temerity to unexpectedly drop dead via heart attack… that's the cold-hearted take Columbia must have had. I’ll explain the Fake Shemp term for those unaware at the end but for now, the short that remade Malice in the Palace, one of the four public domain Stooges out there & related to them in the Middle East.
They had a stand-in for Shemp—longtime supporting player Joe Palma. In the new scenes, it’s all Shemp not there, or it’s Fake Shemp’s back. Honestly, how insulting; it’s all so obvious. In Rumpus, there’s the new storyline that they need the Rootin-Tootin Diamond, else their girls will be sold into slavery to pay off a McGuffin debt not worth explaining here. This does have Malice’s most memorable (and morbidly funny) scene: everyone else thinking Larry slaughtered a cat & dog then served it as food.
Not that there aren’t some chuckles in the new scenes, but the old footage isn’t always used well to tell a cohesive tale (more than once, things suddenly happen & it'll be odd if you don’t remember or have seen Malice before) and there’s no need to see this instead of the original… unless you want to laugh at Palma as Fake Shemp attempting imitate Shemp yelling a line; it was far from convincing, to say the least. The fact that they obviously used lines from earlier shorts said by Shemp in an attempt to make it appear not so phony—I shouldn’t complain due to the example just listed by me.
As for the term Fake Shemp, of course
some will know it’s from Stooge fan Sam Raimi. He first used the term
for the stand-ins used during the long, arduous shoot of The Evil Dead.
Since then, the term has been used in a loving sense for either
stand-ins or bit players.
Fuelin' Around:
(Short # 172 in Nyuk Nyuk Nyuk: The Columbia Shorts of The Three Stooges)
To start off… I just realized now that I made an embarrassing mistake in my review for Fuelin’ Around, the short that Hot Stuff remade. While re-reading that, I realized that additional unneeded text was accidentally present. That’s now been taken out of that review; boy, do I feel like a Stooge now! 2025 has just been an odd, off-kilter year for me as I might elaborate upon sometime in the future.
I would have rated Hot Stuff higher—if not for the ghoulish nature of this being a Fake Shemp short. The new footage either shows Joe Palma as Shemp from the back or in the opening, wearing a fake beard as a disguise to match his cohorts. They found ways to separate him from Moe & Larry doing routines with each other. At least there’s only two more of these to go until the Joe Besser era begins.
This new scenario has the trio as spies working for the country of Urania (no kidding, they have a newspaper known as THE DAILY BLADDER; that did make me laugh) who are undercover as carpet layers-instead of them being solely carpet layers as they were in the original-in the house of a Dr. Sneed, as portrayed by Emil Sitka. Spies from Anemia confuse Larry for Sitka, the trio are kidnapped, and the usual hijinks occur.
The new footage is fine (Moe and Larry engage in sexual harassment by forcing themselves onto secretaries-before you cancel them, at least the women punish them for being such cads) but as I’ve said ad nauseum by this point, the original is preferable.
Scheming Schemers:
(Short # 173 in Nyuk Nyuk Nyuk: The Columbia Shorts of The Three Stooges)
A lot happens with this short. It is a remake of 1949’s Vagabond Loafers, the Shemp plumbing entry which itself used stock footage of the all-time classic A Plumbing We Will Go, one of the best that Curly ever did. In addition, there’s a random pie fight (which IMO doesn’t really fit with the rest of the short) which has some new material but also uses some bits from 1947’s Half-Wits Holiday, i.e. the last short Curly starred in. Mix in some dubbed lines to try and tie in all this footage, and a lot happens.
A shame that I didn’t like it better and not everything ties together in a logical fashion. As before, “plumbing” is the blue-collar job they have now. This time, they are called to retrieve a ring dropped down the drain. The new footage involving that did make me laugh, although it was obvious that Shemp wasn’t around. Incidentally, Fake Shemp wasn’t even seen except for a few moments. There’s still the subplot of an expensive painting being stolen during a soiree being held at the same time.
This is kind of a mess, which is a shame as there are chuckles throughout. Stooge fans believe this is the best of the four Fake Shemp shorts, which to be frank is like being the nicest person in prison! One moment late is one that some Stooge fans object to. Moe and Larry are together and they ask where Shemp is. He’s upstairs in a bathroom; the other two realize this so… they look up to the heavens. Yep, I can understand why some may feel that is insensitive at best. Who knows how they felt about that moment.
Commotion on the Ocean:
(Short # 174 in Nyuk Nyuk Nyuk: The Columbia Shorts of The Three Stooges)
The last Fake Shemp short, the last time Shemp was in any Columbia short, and there’s only 16 more of these until the long run the Stooges had at Columbia came to an end. The short Joe Besser era is not beloved by most Stooge fans but I’ll discuss that in a few days when I do another one of these.
This entry uses plenty of footage from 1949’s Dunked in the Deep; that has the trio as neighbors for a spy known as Borscht; to copy and paste from that review:
“He hides microfilm of “government documents” in… watermelons. The Stooges are his neighbor; as they were victims of circumstances, they ended up stowaways on the same aquatic vessel, a shipping frigate, to be exact. Believe it or not, the watermelons conceit was a relevant reference. Those familiar w/ Alger Hiss (who worked for the American government but was accused of being a Soviet spy… the validity of those charges have never been proven or disproven), it’d take way too long to explain here but rolls of 35mm film were found in a hollowed-out pumpkin on his farm, purportedly to send to the Soviet Union.”
In Commotion, the trio are janitors who work at a newspaper office. They receive a call about the microfilm; that footage is taken from 1948’s Crime on Their Hands… the way Joe Palma as Fake Shemp OBVIOUSLY hid his face was so goofy that at least made me laugh. The other new moments, Shemp’s absence was obvious. The big new moment involved Moe, Larry and Borscht eating a taxidermized fish via contrivances & it was a lesser version of gags they used before.
The editing to tie all those moments together wasn’t bad; thus, I can’t get too mad at Commotion. At the same time, for all the faults that the Besser era has, at least except for a few moments, those shorts will be all-new. More than one will be bad but at least the stock footage is a thing of the past and I will have more to discuss.
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