Here’s a multiple layered treat. Click on the You Tube below and you’ll see a rare, late 1940s appearance of The Three Stooges on the Emmy Award winning Ed Wynn Show (before my time).
This will be of great interest to Three Stooges fans, and those interested in both early live television and vaudeville. Note:
–By the time this skit was performed Jerome “Curley” Howard was out of the act due to a stroke. He was replaced by his brother Samuel “Shemp” Howard, who was actually the original third stooge in vaudeville.
–Host Ed Wynn is known to Baby Boomers and kids today everywhere as the laughing man who floated to the ceiling in Walt Disney’s Mary Poppins (one of Wynn’s last roles before he died of cancer).
–The Stooges play intrusive CBS Executives in this skit.
–You can see why they were such a hit in vaudeville. The song they do is the kind of song that would be a smash for vaudeville audiences, sung in perfect harmony. Enjoy:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JjXFjyPCvN4You can buy Three Stooges DVDs here.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.