UPDATE: I’m a lifelong Stooges fan so I MUST trumpet the news: the new Three Stooges movie is out. Not only am I a stooges fan, but when I was a reporter on the San Diego Union I covered the Three Stooges getting a belated star on Hollywood Boulevard. I met the late Joe Besser, who was the only Stooge able to show up (the others passed away and Joe DeRita was too ill). I also interviewed Moe’s and Larry’s daughters. So this is being reposted with a slight headline change from two weeks ago. I’ll be on the road — but intend to see it this week.
Double good news for fans of The Three Stooges, the vaudeville comedy team that hit the movies in 1934 and performed in various incarnations until the 1970s.
1. The new Three Stooges movie painstakingly cast and loving crafted by the Farrelly brothers is soon to be released. By most accounts it tries to recreate the look and feel of the originals and is NOT a parody or take off
2. The movie is likely to spark new interest in the huge backlog of original Three Stooges material. My contention is that the Stooges were loved by many generations (mostly by males: it’s a cliche that to many the Stooges were “a man thing”) but despite the best, professional efforts of the Stooge families to keep the franchise alive began to fizzle once Jackass became popular. The reason (according to me) while the Stooges did edgy comedy slapstick, seeing people REALLY get hurt and poked became popular.
Here’s a trailer for the new movie:
And this one notes what I’ve long said about Jackass:
Michael Chikilis (Mackey from The Shield) was a SUPERB Curley in a 2002 TV bio about the team. Here’s a recreation of some of the scenes from Stooges movies with the cast from that movie:
The Stooges were most famous for their pie fights. One of my favorites from 1941’s “In The Sweet Pie And Pie”:
My favorite is from 1948’s “Half Wit’s Holiday: Curley was extremely ill. In fact, he suffered a stroke during the filming so he didn’t appear in my favorite part of this short: the final pie fight. This is the second part of the short with the pie fight (you’ll see the change in Curley).
Here’s part of a colorized short “Pop Goes the Easel” from the 30s — that has a great clay fight at the end:
And here is a CLASSIC and a RARITY: Moe on the Mike Douglas Show…shortly before his death, doing one last glorious pie fight. GO HERE.
You can buy many DVDs of the Three Stooges shorts and feature films on Amazon.
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.