Posted on 11/04/2023 4:13:22 PM PDT by DallasBiff
The Three Stooges are one of the most famous vaudeville comedy teams of all time. The best episodes of The Three Stooges often feature slapstick bits and hilarious jokes. Some good episodes of The Three Stooges use comedy to address social and political issues. Moe Howard and Larry Fine were cornerstones of the trio and Shemp Howard, Curly Howard, Joe Besser and “Curly” Joe DeRita all had runs as the third stooge.
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Except the ones with Joe.
Curley, to an attractive coed - “Say toots, meet me at the gymnasium next to the dumbbells. I’ll be the one with the hat on”
“Wake up and go to sleep!”
Yea, I guess you are right. I forgot about those.
"Hey, not so haard."
Curley’s dancing partner - “You’re a mighty fine dancer.”
Curley - “I come from a family of dancers. My father died dancing.”
Curley’s dancing parner - “Oh?”
Curley - “At the end of a rope!”
and later in the episode....
Curley’s dancing partner - “Do you rhumba?”
Curley - “Only when I take bicarbonate.”
Hoi Polloi is my favorite. Curly gets a spring from a couch stuck on his butt while dancing with a big woman. She bumps him he falls backwards and he bounces back. It was hilarious!!
Moe playing Hitler and panicking when his moustache comes off....”Mein Personality!”
Three stooges bookmark.
“Army of Darkness” has a bit of Stooges humor in it.
“Hey, the Stooges don’t bleed!”
"Take off your hat. Now raise your right hand. Now place your left hand here. (Judge) Will you please take off your hat!!"
"What's the matter with you? What's the matter? You're in a court, not in Clancy's pool room."
When they are taking the census...
Moe asks Curly - “Where were you born?”
Curley - “Lake Winnipesauke”
Moe - “How do you spell that?”
Curley - “W, O, O, woof, make it Lake Erie, I got an uncle that lives there.”
I enjoyed the Stooges from my earliest days watching TV.
When I was in HS, a few classmates and I would head to my parents’ house (short walking distance from school) during a free hour and watch Stooges shorts on the local UHF channel.
During my senior year in HS, the news broke that Larry Fine had passed away, and that left Moe as the surviving original Stooge. Somehow this inspired us to try and locate Moe, in order to speak with him.
This is prior to the World Wide Web, and everything we learned involved long-distance calls. My parents’ phone bill just exploded as we called NY and CA trying to find out how we could reach him. Finally, someone in NYC suggested a particular booking agency, and I called them and they were of no help. Then I realized I could call the Screen Actors Guild in LA and indicate I was calling from that booking agency looking for contact information on Moe. I did that expecting to get a phone number for his agent - and they gave me his home phone number (!)
We called and his wife answered - asking us to call back later after he finished his nap. We did and he got on the line and was very pleasant, had tremendous recall of having played vaudeville in Milwaukee (where we were calling from), spoke for 20 minutes, and at the end he very politely asked that we not call again. Which we did not do. It was like speaking to the President or the Queen, it was an incredibly special moment for us. He coughed a bit, but his voice was clear, and he was very sharp.
Less than 2 months later I was attending a concert in Milwaukee and the girl I was with turned to me during a break and asked if it was true that we had spoken to Moe Howard (word had made it around our school of our brush with celebrity greatness.) As I was confirming it to her, I felt a sudden sense of dread. I didn’t know it, but Moe died in LA at about that time, and it was reported in the next morning’s papers. I recall it as May 4, 1975, but I may be off a bit.
He had emphysema, was remarkably close to the end of his life, and 4 HS student fans from Wisconsin call him one Saturday afternoon at home and he takes the time and is courteous enough to reminisce with us for 20 minutes. Obviously, I did not know him well - but that tells me a lot.
I still enjoy their humor and often think of them as being the best example of creative talent that made mistakes in controlling the intellectual property of their creative work. All those shorts that were commissioned by Columbia, which will be in reruns forever, were things they did for some salary and no residuals, and they had absolutely no ownership. I have read that Moe sold real estate in his later years and overall, the group was paid modestly. So many laughs, so little compensation.
The first THREE were ridiculous; not to mention WRONG and written by a bunch of IMBECILES!
Wow, cool story, bro!
I once read a brilliant breakdown of the Three Stooges and how we view them over time.
When we’re kids we identify with Curly because he’s a big kid who just wanted to have fun.
When we’re in our teens we identify with Moe because he’s the boss and he just want everyone to fall in line.
When we’re older adults we identify with Larry because we all just want everyone to get along and be happy.
I wish I could find that blog because the author said it all so well and it sounded pretty accurate to me.
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