The Three Stooges

The Three Stooges were an American vaudeville and comedy troupe active from 1922 until 1970, best remembered for their 190 short-subject films by Columbia Pictures. Their hallmark styles were physical, farce, and slapstick comedy. Six Stooges appeared over the act's run, with only three working at any given time. The two constants were:

Moe Howard (born Moses Horwitz), 1922–1970, and
Larry Fine (born Louis Feinberg), 1925–1970

The "third stooge" was played in turn by:

Shemp Howard (born Samuel Horwitz), 1923–1932 and 1946–1955
Curly Howard (born Jerome Horwitz), 1932–1946
Joe Besser (born Jessel Besser), 1956–1958
"Curly Joe" DeRita (born Joseph Wardell), 1958–1970

The act began in 1922 as part of a vaudeville comedy act consisting originally of Ted Healy and Moe Howard. Over time, they were joined by Moe's brother, Shemp Howard, and then Larry Fine. The troupe became known as "Ted Healy and His Stooges" ("stooges" being a show-business term for on-stage assistants). The foursome appeared in one feature film, Soup to Nuts, before Shemp left to pursue a solo career. He was replaced by his and Moe's younger brother, Jerome "Curly" Howard, in 1932. Two years later, after appearing in several movies, the trio left Healy and signed on to appear in their own short-subject comedies for Columbia Pictures, now billed as "The Three Stooges". From 1934 to 1946, Moe, Larry, and Curly starred in more than 90 short comedies for Columbia.

Curly suffered a debilitating stroke in May 1946. Shemp returned, reconstituting the original lineup, until his death of a heart attack on November 22, 1955, three years and ten months after Curly's death of a cerebral hemorrhage. Film actor Joe Palma stood in (shot from behind to obscure his face) to complete four Shemp-era shorts under contract. The procedure of disguising one actor as another outside of stunt shots became known as the "fake Shemp". Columbia contract player Joe Besser joined as the third Stooge for two years (1956–1958), departing in 1958 to nurse his ill wife after Columbia terminated its shorts division. The studio then released all the shorts via Screen Gems, Columbia's television studio and distribution unit. Screen Gems then syndicated the shorts to television, whereupon the Stooges became one of the most popular comedy acts of the early 1960s.

Comic actor Joe DeRita became "Curly Joe" in 1958, replacing Besser for a new series of full-length theatrical films. With intense television exposure in the United States, the act regained momentum throughout the 1960s as popular kids' fare, until Larry's paralyzing stroke in the midst of filming a pilot for a Three Stooges TV series in January 1970. He died in January 1975 after a further series of strokes. Attempts were made in 1970 and 1975 to revive the act with longtime supporting actor Emil Sitka in Fine's role, but they were each cut short—the first by a movie deal falling through and Moe's wife persuading him to retire, the second by Moe's death.

History

Ted Healy and His Stooges (1922–1934)

The Three Stooges began in 1922 as part of a raucous vaudeville act called "Ted Healy and His Stooges". The act was also known as "Ted Healy and His Southern Gentlemen" and "Ted Healy and His Racketeers". Moe Howard joined Healy's act in 1922, and his brother Shemp Howard came aboard a few months later. After several shifts and changes in the Stooges membership, violinist-comedian Larry Fine also joined the group sometime between 1925 and 1928. In the act, lead comedian Healy would attempt to sing or tell jokes while his noisy assistants would keep interrupting him, causing Healy to retaliate with verbal and physical abuse.

In 1930, Ted Healy and His Stooges (plus comedian Fred Sanborn) appeared in Soup to Nuts, their first Hollywood feature film, released by Fox Film Corporation. The film was not a critical success, but the Stooges' performances were singled out as memorable, leading Fox to offer the trio a contract, minus Healy. The act quickly took off with a tour of the theater circuit. Healy reached a new agreement with his former Stooges in 1932, with Moe now acting as business manager, and they were booked in a production of Jacob J. Shubert's The Passing Show of 1932. the split was precipitated by Healy's alcoholism and abrasiveness. Their final film with Healy was MGM's Hollywood Party (1934). Healy and the Stooges went on to separate successes, with Healy dying under mysterious circumstances in 1937. Yet, these efforts indulged in a deliberately formless, non-sequitur style of verbal humor that was not the Stooges' forte, according to Okuda and Watz.

Other wartime entries have their moments, such as They Stooge to Conga (considered the most violent Stooge short), Higher Than a Kite, Back from the Front (all 1943), Gents Without Cents (1944) and the anti-Japanese The Yoke's on Me (also 1944). However, taken in bulk, the wartime films are considered less funny than what preceded them.

Film critics have cited Curly as the most popular member of the team. Curly's wild lifestyle and constant drinking eventually caught up with him in 1945, and his performances suffered.

During a five-month hiatus from August 1945 through January 1946, the trio committed themselves to making a feature film at Monogram, followed by two months of live appearances in New York City, with performances seven days a week. Curly also entered a disastrous third marriage in October 1945, leading to a separation in January 1946 and divorce in July 1946, at great cost to his already fragile health. Upon the Stooges' return to Los Angeles in late November 1945, Curly was a shell of his former self. They had two months to rest before reporting back to Columbia in late January 1946, but Curly's condition was irreversible. They had only 24 days of work over the next three months, but eight weeks of time off could not help the situation. In those last six shorts, ranging from Monkey Businessmen (1946) through Half-Wits Holiday (1947), Curly was seriously ill, struggling to get through even the most basic scenes. Larry played the role of the cook in the final print. He realized, however, that not rejoining the Stooges would mean the end of Moe and Larry's film careers. Shemp wanted assurances that rejoining them would be only temporary and that he could leave the Stooges once Curly recovered. However, Curly's health continued to deteriorate, and it became clear that he could not return. As a result, Shemp resumed being a Stooge full-time for nearly a decade. Curly remained ill until his death of a cerebral hemorrhage from additional strokes on January 18, 1952. The Stooges lost some of their charm and inherent appeal to children after Curly retired—Curly, Larry, and Moe behaved like three cartoon characters, while Shemp, Larry, and Moe behaved like three vaudevillians—but some excellent films were produced with Shemp, an accomplished solo comedian who often performed best when allowed to improvise on his own.

The Three Stooges made their first appearance on television (in person, not their old films) in 1948. They were guest stars on Milton Berle's popular Texaco Star Theater and Morey Amsterdam's The Morey Amsterdam Show. By 1949, the team filmed a pilot for ABC-TV for their own weekly television series, titled Jerks of All Trades. Columbia Pictures blocked the series from going into production, but allowed the Stooges to make television guest appearances. The team went on to appear on Camel Comedy Caravan (also known as The Ed Wynn Show), The Kate Smith Hour, The Colgate Comedy Hour, The Frank Sinatra Show, and The Eddie Cantor Comedy Theatre, among others. Production was also significantly faster, with the former four-day filming schedules now tightened to two or three days. In another cost-cutting measure, White created a "new" Stooge short by borrowing footage from old ones, setting it in a slightly different storyline and filming a few new scenes, often with the same actors in the same costumes. White was initially very subtle when recycling older footage; he would reuse only a single sequence of old film, re-edited so cleverly that it was not easy to detect. The later shorts were cheaper and the recycling more obvious, with as much as 75% of the running time consisting of old footage. White came to rely so much on older material that he could film the "new" shorts in a single day. New footage filmed to link older material suffered from White's heavy-handed directing style and penchant for telling his actors how to act. Shemp, in particular, disliked working with White after 1952, when White was the Stooges' only director.

In 1956, after other studios had abandoned short-subject production, Jules White and Columbia had the field to themselves. However, by this time most theaters and drive-ins were using a double-feature or even triple-feature policy, leaving no room for two-reel comedies. White acknowledged the trend by winding down his activities. He made only 14 new comedies for the 1955–56 season: eight with the Three Stooges, two with Andy Clyde, two with Wally Vernon and Eddie Quillan, and two with Joe Besser, all low-budget remakes of older comedies. White explained to historian David Bruskin, "I saw what was happening around me and realized what we were doing was repeating ourselves and, for the most part, using big chunks of previous films." White planned to shut down the entire department after the 1956 quota had been completed.

Hastening White's decision was the sudden death of Shemp Howard. On November 22, 1955, Shemp went out with friends to a boxing match at the Hollywood Legion Stadium. While returning home in a taxi that evening, Shemp died of a massive cerebral hemorrhage (as confirmed by Shemp's daughter-in-law; not a heart attack, as has been reported) at the age of 60. Moe was stunned and contemplated disbanding the Stooges, but Columbia had promised exhibitors eight Stooge shorts for the year and only four had been completed, forcing producer Jules White to manufacture four more shorts "with Shemp". Old footage of Shemp was combined with new footage of Columbia supporting player Joe Palma doubling for him (see Fake Shemp). These last four films were Rumpus in the Harem, Hot Stuff, Scheming Schemers, and Commotion on the Ocean (all released in 1956). White canceled all of his comedy-shorts series in 1956, but Harry Cohn insisted on keeping the Stooge comedies coming. In his own way, Cohn was sentimental about the team; Larry Fine recalled that Cohn once told the Stooges, "As long as I'm president, you've got a job at Columbia."

Moe Howard and Larry Fine had been carrying the short-subject series as a two-man team, with Shemp Howard seen entirely in older footage. Larry suggested that he and Moe could continue working as "The Two Stooges." Columbia flatly refused, having promoted the team as "The Three Stooges" for decades, and Moe was forced to recruit a third Stooge. Several comedians were considered, including burlesque comic and former Ted Healy stooge Paul "Mousie" Garner, and noted African-American comedian Mantan Moreland, but Columbia insisted on a comedian already under contract to the studio. so he had a clause in his contract specifically prohibiting him from being hit beyond an infrequent tap, though this restriction was later lifted. "I usually played the kind of character who would hit others back," Besser recalled.

The Besser Stooge shorts were of inconsistent quality, alternating between fresh, original material and tired rehashes. Fully half of these shorts contained all-new scripts, experimenting with science-fiction, fantasy, and musical-comedy formats. The other eight scripts were remakes, based on earlier Stooge comedies. Budgets were lower than ever, and Moe and Larry's advanced ages prohibited them from performing much of their trademark physical comedy. By the year's end, the Three Stooges were fired from Columbia Pictures after 24 years of employment.

No formal goodbyes or congratulatory celebrations occurred in recognition of their work and of the money that their comedies had earned for the studio. Moe visited Columbia several weeks after the dismissal to say goodbye to several executives, but was refused entry without the current year's studio pass. He later stated that it was a crushing blow to his pride. However, the success of television revivals for such names as Laurel and Hardy, Woody Woodpecker, Popeye, Tom and Jerry, and the Our Gang series in the late 1950s led Columbia to cash in again on the Stooges. In September 1958, Columbia's television subsidiary Screen Gems offered a package consisting of 78 Stooge shorts (primarily from the Curly era), which were well received.

An additional 40 shorts hit the market in April 1959. By September 1959, all 190 Stooge shorts were airing regularly. With so many films available for broadcast, daily television airings provided heavy exposure aimed squarely at children. Parents who had grown up seeing the same films in the theaters began to watch alongside their children.

After the Curly-era shorts were found to be the most popular, Moe suggested that DeRita shave his head to accentuate his slight resemblance to Curly Howard.

The Stooges were hired by Twentieth Century-Fox to co-star in a Technicolor feature with Olympic skater Carol Heiss; Snow White and the Three Stooges (1961), co-written by Noel Langley of The Wizard of Oz, fell short of box office expectations, ultimately losing $2,300,000 when the domestic and international returns were tallied. The Stooges resumed making their new kiddie-matinée features, which were now produced independently by Moe's son-in-law Norman Maurer and released through Columbia: The Three Stooges Meet Hercules (1962), The Three Stooges in Orbit (1962), The Three Stooges Go Around the World in a Daze (1963), and The Outlaws is Coming! (1965).

The team had an extremely brief cameo in the film It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), appearing as firemen. They appeared in a larger capacity in 1963 in 4 for Texas starring Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. Throughout the early 1960s, the Stooges were one of the most popular and highest-paid live acts in America. In 1968, they toured Hawaii where they starred in the International 3-Ring Circus at the Honolulu International Center.

The Stooges also tried their hand at another weekly television series in 1960 titled The Three Stooges Scrapbook, filmed in color and with a laugh track. The first episode, "Home Cooking", featured the boys rehearsing for a new television show. Like Jerks of All Trades in 1949, the pilot did not sell, though Norman Maurer was able to reuse the footage (reprocessed in black and white) for the first 10 minutes of The Three Stooges in Orbit. Off to See the Wizard, and Truth or Consequences.

Final years (1970–1975)

In late 1969, Howard, Fine, and DeRita began production on another half-hour pilot, this time for a syndicated 39-episode TV series titled Kook's Tour, a combination travelogue-sitcom that had the "retired" Stooges traveling to various parts of the world with the episodes filmed on location. On January 9, 1970, during production of the pilot, Larry suffered a paralyzing stroke, ending his acting career along with plans for the television series. The pilot was unfinished and several key shots were missing, but producer Norman Maurer edited the available footage and made the pilot a 52-minute special that was released to the home-movie and Cartrivision videocassette home-video markets in 1973.

Also in 1970, Joe DeRita recruited vaudeville veterans Frank Mitchell and Mousie Garner to tour as The New Three Stooges. Garner had worked with Ted Healy as one of his "replacement stooges" decades earlier and was briefly considered as Joe Besser's replacement in 1958. Mitchell had appeared in two of the Stooges' short subjects in 1953, and had been part of the knockabout team of Mitchell and Durant. The act fared poorly, with minimal bookings. In 1973, DeRita performed as the comic in a burlesque revivial show in Las Vegas. By this time, Moe's wife had prevailed on him to retire from performing slapstick due to his age. For the next several years, Moe appeared regularly on talk shows and did speaking engagements at colleges and universities, while DeRita quietly retired.

Larry suffered another stroke in mid-December 1974, and another one in January 1975, even more severe. After slipping into a coma, he died a week later from a cerebral hemorrhage on January 24, 1975.

As for the remaining original replacement stooges, Joe Besser died of heart failure on March 1, 1988, followed by Joe DeRita's death of pneumonia on July 3, 1993. Emil Sitka was announced as a Stooge, but never performed as such beyond posing for a few publicity photographs in character; he died on January 16, 1998, six months after being disabled by a stroke. As for the new three stooges, Frank Mitchell died of cardiac arrest on January 24, 1991, followed by Mousie Garner's death of a heart attack on August 8, 2004.

Legacy and perspective

Over 60 years since their last short film was released, the Three Stooges remain popular. Their films have never left American television since first appearing in 1958. Authors Ted Okuda and Edward Watz assess the Stooges as hard-working comedians who were never critics' favorites, a durable act that endured several personnel changes in careers that would have permanently sidelined a less persistent act.

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Although the Three Stooges' slapstick comedy was primarily arranged around basic plots dealing with mundane issues of daily life, a number of their shorts featured social commentary or satire. They were often antiheroical commentators on class divisions and economic hardships of the Great Depression in the United States. They were usually under- or unemployed and sometimes homeless or living in shanty towns.

The language used by the Three Stooges was more slang-laden than that of typical feature films of the period and deliberately affected a lower-class status with use of crude terms, ethnic mannerisms, and inside jokes.

An example is the use of the initials A.K. for big shots and pretentious people. A.K. was an inside joke which stood for Alte Kocker (an elderly person who is defecating), a Yiddish idiom that means an old man or woman of diminished capacity who can no longer do things they used to do.

Much of the seeming "gibberish" that the Stooges sometimes spoke was actually the Yiddish language of their Jewish ancestry. The most famous example occurs 15 minutes into the 1938 short Mutts to You. Moe and Larry were impersonating Chinese laundrymen in an attempt to fool the local cop. While being questioned, Larry says "Ech bin a China Boychic from Slobatkya-Gebernya hak mir nisht Ken Tshaynik and I don't mean Efsher". This translates as "I'm a China boy from Slobatkya Gebernya [a made-up area in eastern Russia], so stop annoying me and I don't mean maybe."

A third "in-Yiddish" joke is in the episode Pardon My Scotch, when the liquor supplier prepares to consume the Stooges' volatile concoction, and they wish him well in a triad pattern saying "Over the river," "Skip the gutter," and concluding with "Ver geharget," a Yiddish expression meaning "get killed" or "drop dead".

One important area of political commentary was in the area of the rise of totalitarianism in Europe, notably in the directly satirical You Nazty Spy! and I'll Never Heil Again, both released before United States' entry into World War II, despite an industry Production Code that advocated avoiding social and political issues and the negative portrayal of foreign countries.

Lineups on film

{| class="wikitable"

! Years

! Moe

! Larry

! Shemp

! Curly

! Joe

! Curly Joe

| 1930–1932

| style="text-align:center;"|

| 1932–1946

| style="text-align:center;"|

| 1946–1955

| style="text-align:center;"|

| 1956–1958

| style="text-align:center;"|

| 1958–1970

| style="text-align:center;"|

Timeline

Filmography

The Three Stooges appeared in 220 films through their career. Of those, 190 short films were made for Columbia Pictures, for which the trio are best known today. Their first Columbia film, Woman Haters, premiered on May 5, 1934. Their contract was extended each year until the final one expired on December 31, 1957. Columbia continued to release the Stooge shorts filmed in 1957; the final release, Sappy Bull Fighters, premiered on June 4, 1959.

Three feature-length Columbia releases were actually packages of older Columbia shorts. Columbia Laff Hour (introduced in 1956) was a random assortment that included the Stooges among other Columbia comedians like Andy Clyde, Hugh Herbert, and Vera Vague; the content and length varied from one theater to the next. Three Stooges Fun-O-Rama (introduced in 1959) was an all-Stooges show capitalizing on their TV fame, again with shorts chosen at random for individual theaters. The Three Stooges Follies (1974) was similar to Laff Hour, with a trio of Stooge comedies augmented by Buster Keaton and Vera Vague shorts, a Batman serial chapter, and a Kate Smith musical.

C3 Entertainment, Inc.

In 1959, Comedy III Productions (later, C3 Entertainment) was formed by Moe, Larry, and Joe DeRita to manage all business and merchandise transactions. Now controlled by DeRita's heirs, it has diversified into a brand-management company licensing personality rights to various nostalgia acts, including the Stooges.

Television

thumb|left|Larry, Moe, and Curly Joe appeared in a 1962 TV ad promoting their earlier short subjects, though DeRita never appeared in any.

A handful of Three Stooges shorts first aired on television in 1949, on the ABC network. By 1958, Screen Gems packaged 78 shorts for national syndication; the package was gradually enlarged to encompass the entire library of 190 shorts. In 1959, KTTV in Los Angeles purchased the Three Stooges films for air, but by the early 1970s, rival station KTLA began airing the Stooges films, keeping them in the schedule until early 1994. The Family Channel ran the shorts as part of their Stooge TV block from February 19, 1996, to January 2, 1998. In the late 1990s, AMC had held the rights to the Three Stooges shorts, originally airing them under a programming block called "Stooges Playhouse". In 1999, it was replaced with a program called N.Y.UK (New Yuk University of Knuckleheads), which starred actor/comedian Leslie Nielsen. The program would show three random Stooge shorts. Nielsen hosts the program as a college instructor, known as the Professor of Stoogelogy, who teaches to the students lectures on the Three Stooges before the Stooges' shorts air. The block aired several shorts often grouped by a theme, such as similar schtick used in different films. Although the block was discontinued after AMC revamped their format in 2002, the network still ran Stooges shorts occasionally. The AMC run ended when Spike TV (now Paramount Network) picked them up in 2004, airing them in their Stooges Slap-Happy Hour every Saturday and Sunday mornings. On June 6, 2005, the network began running the Stooges Slap-Happy as a one-hour summer comedy block, which ended on September 2, 2005. By 2007, the network had discontinued the block. Although Spike did air Stooges shorts for a brief time after the block was canceled, as of late April 2008, the Stooges had disappeared from the network's schedule entirely. The Three Stooges returned on December 31, 2009, on AMC, starting with the "Countdown with the Stooges" New Year's Eve marathon. AMC planned to put several episodes on their website in 2010. As of 2009 AMC still airs The Three Stooges every weekday midnights and mornings. Also as of 2022 AMC's other sister channel BBC America also airs The Three Stooges on midnights each weekday. The "Stooges" shorts were best known in Chicago as a part of a half-hour, late-afternoon show on WGN-TV hosted by Bob Bell as "Andy Starr" in the 1960s. In the 1990s, Stooges films were aired as part of The Koz Zone movie segment on Chicago television.

Since the 2000s, Columbia and its television division's successor, Sony Pictures Television, has preferred to license the Stooges shorts to cable networks, which left the films off local broadcast TV for several years until they were licensed to nationally broadcast classic TV networks. The last time the Stooges were offered in traditional broadcast syndication was in 1999, when Columbia TriStar Television Distribution put together a new package of 130 half-hour episodes compiling the shorts into themed installments, with new interstitial material created by Evolution Media and voiced by Jeff Bennett (in a similar fashion to the Screen Gems Network, a syndicated block of classic television series also offered around the same time by CTTD with Evolution's involvement).

Two stations in Chicago and Boston, however, signed long-term syndication contracts with Columbia years ago and had declined to terminate them. WMEU-CD in Chicago aired all 190 Three Stooges shorts on Saturday afternoons and Sunday evenings until 2014. WSBK-TV in Boston aired Stooges shorts and feature films, including an annual New Year's Eve marathon until their contract expired in September 2022; WSBK wanted to renew the contract, but Sony was unwilling to do so. KTLA in Los Angeles dropped the shorts in 1994, but brought them back in 2007 as part of a special retro-marathon commemorating the station's 60th anniversary. Since that time, the station's original 16 mm Stooges film prints have aired occasionally as part of minimarathons on holidays. Antenna TV, a network broadcasting on the digital subchannels of local broadcast stations (owned by Tribune Broadcasting, which also owns KTLA), began airing the Stooges shorts upon the network's January 1, 2011, launch, which ran in multi-hour blocks on weekends through December 29, 2012; most of the Three Stooges feature films are also broadcast on the network, through Antenna TV's distribution agreement with Sony Pictures Entertainment (whose Columbia Pictures subsidiary released most of the films). While the network stopped airing Stooges shorts regularly from 2013 to 2015, they were occasionally shown as filler if a movie ran short, as well as in holiday marathons. The shorts returned to Antenna TV's regular lineup on January 10, 2015. In 2019, the Three Stooges were picked up by MeTV as part of their lineup.

Columbia's library of 190 Stooge shorts has been modified for television distribution. Sony no longer offers the shorts on motion-picture film, and now includes only 100 titles in the television package. All 190 shorts, however, have been released to home video.

Some films have been colorized by two separate companies. The first colorized DVD releases, distributed by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, were prepared by West Wing Studios in 2004, using actual costumes and props for reference. The following year, Legend Films colorized the public-domain shorts Malice in the Palace, Sing a Song of Six Pants, Disorder in the Court, and Brideless Groom. Disorder in the Court and Brideless Groom also appear on two of West Wing's colorized releases. In any event, the Columbia-produced shorts (aside from the public domain films) are handled by Sony Pictures Entertainment, while the MGM Stooges shorts are owned by Warner Bros. via their Turner Entertainment division. Sony previously offered 21 of the shorts on their streaming platform Crackle, along with 11 minisodes. Meanwhile, the rights to the Stooges' feature films rest with the studios that originally produced them (Columbia/Sony for the Columbia films, and The Walt Disney Company for the Fox Film/20th Century Fox films). In January 2024, C3 Entertainment announced that it licensed all 190 Columbia shorts from Sony Pictures Television to establish a new streaming channel, the Three Stooges+ Channel, which would also offer other Three Stooges content.

AMC at one time would air what became known as mini-episodes: five-minute chunks from the Columbia shorts, broadcast with their original theatrical titles.

Series overview

Home media

Between 1980 and 1985, Columbia Pictures Home Entertainment and RCA/Columbia Pictures Home Video released 13 Three Stooges volumes in various formats. The original 13 volume titles were later reissued on VHS by its successor, Columbia TriStar Home Video, between 1993 and 1996, with a DVD reissue between 2000 and 2004.

The Three Stooges Collection

On October 30, 2007, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment released a two-disc DVD set titled The Three Stooges Collection, Volume One: 1934–1936. The set contains shorts from the first three years the Stooges worked at Columbia Pictures, marking the first time that all 19 shorts were released in their original theatrical order to DVD. Additionally, every short was remastered in high definition, a first for the Stooge films. Previous DVD releases were based on themes (wartime, history, work, etc.), and sold poorly.

The chronological series proved successful, and Sony wasted little time preparing the next set for release. Volume Two: 1937–1939 was released on May 27, 2008, followed by Volume Three: 1940–1942 three months later on August 26, 2008. Demand exceeded supply, proving to Sony that they had a hit on their hands. In response, Volume Four: 1943–1945 was released on October 7, 2008, a mere two months after its predecessor. Volume Four, and Volume Five: 1946–1948 was belatedly released on March 17, 2009, after delays during the Great Recession. Volume Five is the first in the series to feature Shemp Howard with the Stooges and the final volume to feature Curly Howard. Volume Six: 1949–1951 was released June 16, 2009, and Volume Seven: 1952–1954 was released on November 10, 2009. Volume Seven included 3-D glasses for the two shorts: Spooks! and Pardon My Backfire. As of 2013, the three-dimensional versions of the two shorts in this volume have been removed. Volume Eight: 1955–1959 was released on June 1, 2010. This was the final volume of the Stooges collection, bringing the series to a close. Volume Eight comprised three discs, and was the only volume to feature Joe Besser and the final volume to feature Shemp Howard. With the release of the eighth volume, for the first time in history, all 190 Three Stooges short subjects had become available to the public, uncut and unedited.

Two years later, on June 5, 2012, these discs were reissued in a DVD boxed set entitled The Three Stooges: The Ultimate Collection—now with a ninth volume (three discs) entitled Rare Treasures from the Columbia Picture Vault. This volume is not available separately, and comprises two feature films and three cartoons featuring all three Stooges, and also some of their solo work (14 shorts featuring Shemp Howard, 10 shorts featuring Joe Besser, and four shorts featuring Joe DeRita). The 2012 Ultimate Collection consists of all 8 individual original boxsets as they sold before, plus the 3 bonus discs, housed in a thin cardboard box with embossed artwork. On October 18, 2016, The Three Stooges: The Complete DVD Collection was released. It had all the DVDs from volumes 1 through 8 but it did not include the "Rare Treasures from the Columbia Picture Vault" discs. The packaging is much smaller as all 17 of the original discs are stacked on a spindle. All eight volumes are also available on iTunes. On June 15, 2020, iTunes released The Three Stooges: The Complete Series, which features all 190 shorts in an entire collection.

On July 23, 2024, 100 of the shorts were released on Blu-ray for the 100th anniversary (this boxset omits 90 shorts which are still only available on DVD at present time).

Music

thumb|right|300px|Lobby card for full-length film [[Swing Parade of 1946 with Gale Storm and Phil Regan]]

Several instrumental tunes were played over the opening credits of the short features. The most commonly used were:
The verse portion of the Civil War–era song "Listen to the Mockingbird", played in a comical way, complete with sounds of birds and such. It was first used in Pardon My Scotch, their ninth short film, in 1935. (Prior to this, the opening theme varied and was typically connected to the storyline in some way.)
"Three Blind Mice", beginning in 1939, was a slow but straightforward presentation (dubbed the "sliding strings" version), often breaking into a "jazzy" style before ending. In mid-1942, a faster version was used, featuring accordion.
The Columbia short Woman Haters was done completely in rhyme, mostly recited (not sung), in rhythm with a Jazz-age underscore running throughout the film, but with some key lines sung. It was sixth in a Musical Novelties short-subject series, and appropriated its musical score from the first five films. The memorable "My Life, My Love, My All", was originally "At Last!" from the film Um-Pa.
"Swinging the Alphabet" from Violent Is the Word for Curly is perhaps the best-known song performed by the Stooges on film.
The Stooges broke into a three-part harmonized version of "Tears" ("You'll Never Know Just What Tears Are") in Horses' Collars, A Ducking They Did Go (where the melody was sung by Bud Jamison), and Half Shot Shooters. The song, written by Moe, Larry, Shemp, and one-time Ted Healy Stooge Fred Sanborn, first appeared in the 1930 feature film Soup to Nuts.
The "Lucia Sextet" (Chi mi frena in tal momento?), from the opera Lucia di Lammermoor by Gaetano Donizetti (announced by Larry as "the Sextet from Lucy") is played on a record player and lip-synched by the Stooges in Micro-Phonies. The same melody reappears in Squareheads of the Round Table as the tune of "Oh, Elaine, Can You Come Out Tonight?". Micro-Phonies also includes the Johann Strauss II waltz "Voices of Spring" ("Frühlingsstimmen") Op. 410. Another Strauss waltz, "The Blue Danube", is featured in Ants in the Pantry and Punch Drunks.
The original song "Frederick March" (named for actor Fredric March, but misspelled) was composed by staff musicians at the insistence of studio chief Harry Cohn. Weary of paying royalties for existing marches, Cohn wanted an original march that Columbia could own outright. "Frederick March" became a favorite of director Jules White; it appears in at least seven different Columbia shorts:
Termites of 1938 – The Stooges "play" this song on a violin, flute, and string bass at a dinner party in an attempt to attract mice.
Dutiful But Dumb – Curly is hidden inside a floor-standing radio, and plays the song on a modified harmonica.
Three Little Twirps – Heard as background music at the circus while Moe and Curly sell tickets.
Idle Roomers – Curly plays the song on a trombone to calm a wolf man—who goes berserk when he hears music.
Gents Without Cents – Three girls perform acrobatics on stage while this song is playing.
Gents in a Jam – Shemp and Moe have a problem with a radio that will not stop playing this song.
Pardon My Backfire – The song plays on a car radio.
The Moe/Larry/Curly Joe lineup of the Stooges recorded several musical record albums in the early 1960s. Most of their songs were adaptations of nursery rhymes. Among their more popular recordings were "Making a Record" (a surreal trip to a recording studio built around the song "Go Tell Aunt Mary"), "Three Little Fishes", "All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth", "Wreck the Halls with Boughs of Holly", "Mairzy Doats" and "I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas".
In 1983, a group called the Jump 'n the Saddle Band recorded a track called "The Curly Shuffle", which featured the narrator singing about his love of the Stooges mixed with a chorus of many of Curly's catchphrases and sound effects. In the mid-1980s, the song became a popular mid-game hit for New York Mets fans in the Shea Stadium bleachers, who danced in small groups when the song was played between innings. The music video, which featured clips of the classic Stooges shorts, was also included as a bonus feature on one of the RCA/Columbia VHS releases.

Museum

Gary Lassin, grandnephew-in-law of Larry Fine, opened the Stoogeum in 2004 in Spring House, Pennsylvania, north of Philadelphia. It features three floors of exhibits and an 85-seat theater. Peter Seely, editor of the book Stoogeology: Essays on the Three Stooges, said that the Stoogeum has "more stuff than I even imagined existed." Some 2,500 people visit it yearly, many during the annual Three Stooges Fan Club gathering in April.

In other media

Comic books

thumb|[[Larry Fine|Larry and Curly Joe put Moe through his paces on the cover of The Three Stooges (Dell Comics, May 1961).]]

Over the years, several Three Stooges comics were produced.

St. John Publications published the first Three Stooges comics in 1949 with two issues, then again in 1953–54 with seven issues. Shemp Howard is the Third Stooge in these issues.
Dell Comics published a Three Stooges series first as one-shots in their Four Color Comics line for five issues, then gave them a numbered series for four more issues (#6–9). With #10, the title would be published by Gold Key Comics. Under Gold Key, the series lasted through issue #55 in 1972.
Gold Key Comics then published a series called The Little Stooges (seven issues, 1972–74) with story and art by Norman Maurer, Moe's son-in-law. This series featured the adventures of three fictional sons of the Three Stooges, as sort of modern-day teen-age versions of the characters.
Eclipse Comics published the Three-D Three Stooges series (three issues, 1986–1987), which reprinted stories from the St. John Publications series.
Malibu Comics did two one-shot comics, reprinting stories from the Gold Key Comics in 1989 and 1991.
Eternity Comics published a one-shot comic book called The Three Stooges in 3-D in 1991, reprinting four stories from the Gold Key series.
Bluewater Comics issued a biographical comic in 2011, which followed the lives and careers of the group.
American Mythology Production publishes comics in 2017 which shows the Three Stooges in the modern times. In 2021, American Mythology announced it was launching two new books: The Three Stooges Thru The Ages and The Robonic Stooges. Both new series are written by S.A. Check and Jordan Gershowitz.

Phonograph records

Beginning in 1959, the Three Stooges began appearing in a series of novelty records. Their first recording was a 45 rpm single of the title song from Have Rocket, Will Travel. The trio released additional singles and LPs on the Golden, Peter Pan, and Coral labels, mixing comedy adventure albums and off-beat renditions of children's songs and stories. Their final recording was the 1966 Yogi Bear and the Three Stooges Meet the Mad, Mad, Mad Dr. No-No, which incorporated the Three Stooges into the cast of the Yogi Bear cartoons.

Other appearances

In the October 13, 1967, "Who's Afraid of Mother Goose?" episode of ABC's World-of-Disney-like anthology series Off to See the Wizard, the Three Stooges made a short appearance as "the three men in a tub".

Two episodes of Hanna-Barbera's The New Scooby-Doo Movies aired on CBS featuring animated Stooges as guest stars: the premiere, "Ghastly Ghost Town" (September 9, 1972) and "The Ghost of the Red Baron" (November 18, 1972).

In a 1980 episode of M*A*S*H, Charles Winchester shows disrespect for three Korean doctors by calling them "Moe, Larry, and Curly", and says that they are "highly respected individuals in the States". After Winchester throws out his back and is unable to relieve the pain through conventional methods, Colonel Potter has the Korean doctors try acupuncture (much to Winchester's dismay), which cures Winchester. After the treatment, one of the doctors tells Winchester "Not bad for Three Stooges, huh?", having caught on to his mistreatment of them.

In the episode "Beware the Creeper" of The New Batman Adventures, the Joker retreats to his hideout after a quick fight with Batman. He yells out for his three henchmen "Moe? Larr? Cur?", only to find that they are not there. Shortly after that, Batman comes across these three goons in a pool hall; they have distinctive accents and hairstyles similar to those of Moe, Larry, and Curly. These henchmen are briefly seen throughout the rest of the season.

Television film (2000)

In 2000, long-time Stooge fan Mel Gibson executive-produced a TV film (The Three Stooges) about the lives and careers of the comedians. Playing Moe was Paul Ben-Victor, Evan Handler was Larry, John Kassir was Shemp, and Michael Chiklis was Curly. It was filmed in Australia and was produced for and broadcast on ABC. It was based on Michael Fleming's authorized biography of the Stooges, The Three Stooges: From Amalgamated Morons to American Icons. Its unflattering portrayal of Ted Healy led Healy's son to give media interviews calling the film inaccurate. Additional errors of fact included the portrayal that Moe Howard was down on his luck after Columbia canceled their contract and worked as a gofer at the studio, where his brothers, Larry, and he had formerly worked as actors. In reality, Moe was the most careful with his money, which he invested well. His wife Helen and he owned a comfortable house in Toluca Lake, in which they raised their children.

Film

It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963)

The Three Stooges (in their Curly Joe period) made a brief cameo appearance as airport firemen in the 1963 film It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. An epic comedy with an all-star cast, this film contains many cameo appearances by famous comedians.

The Three Stooges (2012)

A film featuring the Three Stooges, titled The Three Stooges, started production on March 14, 2011, with 20th Century Fox and was directed by the Farrelly brothers. The film had been in what one critic has dubbed "development hell". The Farrellys, who wanted to make the film since 1996, said that they were not going to do a biopic or remake, but instead new Three Stooges episodes set in the present day. The film is broken up into three continuous episodes that revolves around the Stooges characters.

Casting the title characters proved difficult for the studio. Originally slated were Sean Penn to play Larry, Benicio del Toro to play Moe, and Jim Carrey to play Curly. Both Penn and del Toro left the project, but returned while no official confirmation had been made about Jim Carrey. When del Toro was interviewed on MTV News for The Wolfman, he spoke about playing Moe. He was later asked who was going to play Larry and Curly in the film and commented that he still thought that Sean Penn and Jim Carrey were going to play them, though he added, "Nothing is for sure yet."

A story in The Hollywood Reporter stated that Will Sasso would play Curly in the upcoming comedy and that Hank Azaria was the frontrunner to play Moe. Sasso was ultimately cast as Curly; Sean Hayes of Will & Grace was cast as Larry Fine, while Chris Diamantopoulos was cast as Moe. Jane Lynch later joined the cast, playing a nun. The film was released on April 13, 2012, and grossed over $54 million worldwide. The film received mixed reviews, but Diamantopoulos, Hayes, and Sasso were praised for their performances as Moe, Larry, and Curly.

Sequel

On May 7, 2015, a sequel was announced, with Sean Hayes, Chris Diamantopoulos, and Will Sasso all reprising their roles. Cameron Fay has been hired to write the script. Production was scheduled to begin in 2018.

The Three Little Stooges

On February 3, 2016, C3 announced a new comedy/adventure film titled The Three Little Stooges. It was to star Gordy De StJeor, Liam Dow, and Luke Clark as 12-year-old versions of Moe, Larry, and Curly. The first film, which set the foundation for future films and television spin-offs, was set to begin production in November 2017, and was expected to be released in 2018. The screenplay was written by Harris Goldberg, with Sean McNamara set to direct. The film's budget is $5.8 million. On July 19, 2017, C3 began seeking crowdfunding to pay for a portion of the budget. In August 2017, they exceeded their minimum goal of $50,000.

Video games

In 1984, Gottlieb released an arcade game featuring the Stooges trying to find three kidnapped brides.

Later in 1987, game developer Cinemaware released a successful Three Stooges computer game, available for Apple IIGS, Amiga, Commodore 64, MS-DOS, and Nintendo Entertainment System. Based on the Stooges earning money by doing odd jobs to prevent the foreclosure of an orphanage, it incorporated audio from the original films and was popular enough to be reissued for the Game Boy Advance in 2002, and for PlayStation in 2004.

The Three Stooges also have a slot-game adaptation created by Realtime Gaming.

VCR game

A VCR game was released by Pressman Toy Corporation in 1986, which used a number of classic Stooges clips.

In foreign languages

In most other languages, the Three Stooges are known by some corresponding variant of their English name. In Chinese, however, the trio is known idiomatically as Sānge Chòu Píjiàng (三個臭皮匠) or Huóbǎo Sānrénzǔ (活寶三人組). Sānge Chòu Píjiàng, literally "Three Smelly Shoemakers", which derives from a saying in the Romance of the Three Kingdoms: Sāngè chòu píjiàng shèngguò yīgè Zhūgě Liàng (三個臭皮匠, 勝過一個諸葛亮) or "Three smelly shoemakers (are enough to) overcome one Zhuge Liang [a hero of the story]", i.e. three inferior people can overpower a superior person when they combine their strength. Huóbǎo Sānrénzǔ translates as "Trio of Buffoons". Likewise in Japanese they are known as San Baka Taishō (三ばか大将) meaning "Three Idiot Generals" or "Three Baka Generals".

In Spanish, they are known as Los tres chiflados or, roughly, "The Three Crackpots". In French and German usage, the name of the trio is partially translated as Les Trois Stooges (though the French version of the movie adaptation used a fully translated name, "Les Trois Corniauds") and Die drei Stooges respectively. In Italy they are known as I tre marmittoni. In Thai, the trio is known as 3 สมุนจอมป่วน (, ) or 3 พี่น้องจอมยุ่ง (, ). In Portuguese, they are known as Os Três Patetas in Brazil, and Os Três Estarolas in Portugal, estarola being a direct translation of "stooge", while pateta being more related to "goofy". In Persian the trio are dubbed as "سه کله پوک". In Turkish, they are dubbed as Üç Ahbap Çavuş ("The Three Cronies").

Awards and nominations

Their Men in Black (1934 film) received the comedy nomination Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film.

thumb|right|The Three Stooges star on the [[Hollywood Walk of Fame.]]

In 1993, the Three Stooges won the MTV Lifetime Achievement Award.

They received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1560 Vine Street on August 30, 1983.

References

External links

Three Stooges Online Filmography
Three Stooges on the Internet Archive
Portrait (2009) of The Three Stooges (with Shemp) by noted illustrator Drew Friedman
Interview with Moe Howard on new success with the younger generation from the Ocala Star-Banner – February 22, 1959, accessed via Google News

The Three Stooges

History

Ted Healy and His Stooges (1922–1934)

Final years (1970–1975)

Legacy and perspective

Lineups on film

Timeline

Filmography

C3 Entertainment, Inc.

Television

Series overview

Home media

The Three Stooges Collection

Music

Museum

In other media

Comic books

Phonograph records

Other appearances

Television film (2000)

Film

It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963)

The Three Stooges (2012)

Sequel

The Three Little Stooges

Video games

VCR game

In foreign languages

Awards and nominations

See also

References

Further reading

External links

History

Ted Healy and His Stooges (1922–1934)

Final years (1970–1975)

Legacy and perspective

Social commentary, satire, and use of language

Lineups on film

Timeline

Filmography

C3 Entertainment, Inc.

Television

Series overview

Home media

The Three Stooges Collection

Music

Museum

In other media

Comic books

Phonograph records

Other appearances

Television film (2000)

Film

It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963)

The Three Stooges (2012)

Sequel

The Three Little Stooges

Video games

VCR game

In foreign languages

Awards and nominations

See also

References

Further reading

External links