A recent biopic of the equally loved and loathed head slapping threesome, which, as the film will no doubt explain, was actually a six some all told, due to multiple illnesses and replacements regarding the two that weren’t Moe. Our mum confesses to really hating and fearing the Stooges in her youth, and we can see why – whereas, say, L&H or Harold Lloyd were essentially likeable buffoons amidst their chaos, the Stooges are frequently quite sinister, really maliciously beating each other and crying out in intense pain. Curly in particular often goes completely psychotic, kicking the crap out of anyone and anything in the vicinity, which just isn’t funny. So hopefully we’ll get an examination of that sinister side here, along with the various staple Stooge routines – the “whoop whoop whoop” spinning on the floor, the “telling the time with three watches that all run slow/fast” gag, the collapsing three-way bunk bed bit, and the oddest one of all, the bit in the (many) films where they play dictators of a made-up country, and look at a map of hilarious made-up other countries (Great Mitten, Jerkola, Atisket, Atasket, that sort of thing) which involves a long, slow pan of the camera around the map, so the audience has time to read the side-splitting names, thus killing the slapstick pacing stone dead, and looking very weird indeed. But we bet they won’t explain why one of the latter Shemp replacements, Joe Besser, inspired the name of Fred Asparagus’s fat, absconding drummer off of This is Spinal Tap. And we do like to know these things.
Lee James Turnock
September 14, 2011 at 4:11 pm
” But we bet they won’t explain why one of the latter Shemp replacements, Joe Besser, inspired the name of Fred Asparagus’s fat, absconding drummer off of This is Spinal Tap.” Doesn’t it speak for itself? The Three Stooges went through several replacements. Spinal Tap went through several replacement drummers.
Richardpd
October 3, 2023 at 10:41 pm
Thanks to the Second World War The 3 Stooges didn’t become as popular this side of the pond, & conversely Laurel & Hardy stayed popular as their films kept being screened by cinemas starved on new material.
Abbott & Costello was another comedy act stymied by the war, & seemed to stay fairly niche even to British film buffs while most Americans of a certain age know of their classic “Who’s On First” routine.
Both the Stooges & A&C had their films rerun for decades on American TV, the latter made a syndicated TV show that was repeated for many years.