General Thoughts on The Three Stooges

Besides posting the completed list here of all 190 shorts, here is what I ultimately wrote in the description accompanying the list: 

Now that I’ve seen all 190 of their shorts at Columbia within the same calendar year, I’ll offer some thoughts in the description. Of course, their slapstick humor isn’t for all tastes; if you view two of their four public domain shorts (Curly’s Disorder in the Court & Shemp’s Brideless Groom) and don’t like either, then the Stooges just aren’t for your tastes.

There were many talented performers who worked on these short movies, whether in front or behind the camera. Moe, Larry, and Shemp worked in vaudeville for years; Shemp left the act due to the alleged abuse from their leader, Ted Healy. Moe and Shemp’s brother Curly replaced him and was a natural talent without any formal training. They then broke away from Ted and stayed at Columbia for almost a quarter-century.

The Curly era has the highest batting average for sure-everyone was younger, there’s almost 100 shorts and many that are at least very good. Sadly, Columbia didn’t give Curly enough time to recover once he started having health issues. That impacted Curly for at least the last two years of shorts released during his time as the third man. The Shemp era was hampered by Columbia pinching pennies and the proliferation of remakes with typically too much stock footage… even so, there are a few classics and plenty of worthwhile entries involving him. The whole Fake Shemp thing-what an insult to the Stooges, especially the late Shemp.

Joe Besser wasn’t the first choice as a replacement to close out the era before the entire shorts department shut down at the studio. Arguably, Joe not being the best fit wasn’t as bad as the studio becoming even cheaper and creating goofier stories, along with Moe and Larry having to deal with becoming old men.

As a kid, I naturally dug the Stooges being themselves and others up. As an adult, I also appreciate the large variety of different settings they were in, how they were often in blue-collar jobs and always portrayed the dopey versions of the common man, happy to skewer such targets as the rich and those positions of authority. No wonder they were popular in the past. They also had many hilarious routines and bits-plenty were brought back but modified so they did not feel hackneyed. There were peaks and valleys during this long odyssey-many I was happy to visit or revisit. C3 Entertainment (who owned the intellectual property) have a presence on social media & YouTube; the Stooges still have some popularity and at least in America, all 190 shorts are easy to track down.

After Columbia, of course they added Curly Joe because Joe left to care for his ailing wife. She survived and both lived until the late 1980’s. They did live-action segments for The New Three Stooges cartoon show and some live-action movies they starred in (both I also saw as a little kid) along with live appearances everywhere. Old age/strokes suffered by Moe and Larry derailed the act in 1970 after almost 50 years. I’ll talk about that more sometime in the future but that likely won’t be anytime soon.