Today we pay tribute to comedy icon and key Stooge Jerome Lester Horwitz, a.k.a. Curly Howard, born on October 22, 1903.
We'll kick this off with a certain scene that always gets me ROFL - and the Jump 'n the Saddle Band's 1983 hit record "The Curly Shuffle."
Yes, we indeed have binge-watched Three Stooges comedies on YouTube, Daily Motion and DVD on many occasions.
One of the numerous Daily Motion channels, "Film Gorillaz," among dozens of 1930's movies, posted the following compilation of Moe, Larry & Curly classics. It includes such famous Three Stooges extravaganzas as A-Plumbing We Will Go and Micro-Phonies, but also several of the earliest Columbia 2-reelers, made in 1934.
These first season entries - Woman Haters, Punch Drunks, Men In Black and Three Little Pigskins - feature some of the funniest, wildest, most energetic and incendiary performances of the then-youthful Curly. Co-stars include comedy royalty from Lucille Ball to Dorothy Granger to Marjorie White to Arthur Housman and, as always, the ubiquitous Bud Jamison.
We shall raise that Stooge compendium with season 2 gems directed by Del Lord, Pardon My Scotch and Three Little Beers.
Noting how Curly successfully brought 1920's style slapstick into talkies, we single out Ants In The Pantry, one of several hilarious Stooge vehicles directed in 1936-1937 by Jack "Preston Black" White, the architect of excellent 1920's silent 2-reelers starring sad sack comic Lloyd Hamilton at Educational Pictures (a.k.a. "The Spice Of The Program").
Of the Three Stooges series' many dessert-throwing epics, especially like the cream puff war that closes Slippery Silks (1936), also directed by "Preston Black."
And, speaking of Del Lord of Mack Sennett Productions and Columbia Shorts Department fame, here's Dizzy Doctors, one of the funniest of Del's numerous Stooge comedies.
Violent Is The Word For Curly and Tassels In The Air were directed by the talented Hal Roach Studios stalwart and all-time comedy great Charley Chase.
Jules White's greatest achievement of many in Stoogedom over three decades?
Arguably that would be the comedy team enthusiastically delivering an eye-poke to Adolph Hitler and his henchman in You Nazty Spy! and I'll Never Heil Again. Still love the Howard boys' Shicklegruber sendups!
Wonder if the Howard brothers knew Charlie Chaplin, who was working on The Great Dictator when the Stooges made You Nazty Spy!
Dutiful But Dumb includes a personal favorite Curly sequence, the battle with the oyster soup, as well as a cameo by the very funny Keystone and Charlie Chaplin comedies supporting player Chester Conklin. This is fitting, as a previous appearance of "the oyster stew bit" was in a Mack Sennett silent classic, Ice Cold Cocos, starring Billy Bevan and directed by Stooge auteur Del Lord.
In this writer's opinion, Curly and the Stooges were at their very best in 1934-1941. After that, Curly's health setbacks began to be obvious onscreen. Unfortunately, Harry Cohn said no to putting the series on hiatus or giving Curly time off, as Three Stooges comedies were by far the most popular productions of the Columbia Shorts Department.
After a massive stroke felled Curly in May 1946, The Three Stooges regrouped and subsequently made a comeback with Shemp Howard back in the team as the third Stooge, former Columbia Pictures soundman Edward Bernds directing and Vernon Dent, Christine McIntyre, Emil Sitka and perennial bad guy Kenneth McDonald contributing their customary stellar supporting work.
Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog toasts Curly Howard, The Three Stooges and the both invaluable and funny supporting players Bud Jamison, Vernon Dent and Symona Boniface.
In closing, we raise our tumblers not just to Curly, Moe, Larry and Shemp, but the many other comedy greats who ended up, either briefly or for a lengthy stretch, starring in Columbia 2-reelers.
These include prolific silent movie comedians Harry Langdon, Buster Keaton, Charley Chase and Andy Clyde.
These outstanding comedians repeatedly made audiences laugh out loud way back when - and still do in 2022!
4 comments:
I love the Stooges. In many ways they are the perfect comedies, even though Laurel and Hardy are probably the best.
You oughta add this to the post: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kum2jugZrXI
Done! It's a tough call between that sequence and Laurel & Hardy's laughing fit scenes in a bunch of their movies. Watch 'em all, I say!
Were the Stooges part of my childhood viewing? Soitenly! Of course, it was early on when money was being spent on the Columbia shorts and they could afford elaborate gags, in contrast to the later ones that used stock footage from the earlier shorts. "Men in Black" is a fave, and I even saw it in a theater ("For Duty and Humanity!"). "Violent is the Word For Curly" (well, it could be the word for all the Stooges, save perhaps for Joe Besser) - the title spoofed the film "Valiant is the Word for Carrie" - featured their "Alphabet Song," and I love the middle bit where the girls in the class do a bit of Boswell Sisters-style harmony.
I recall Lou Costello also doing battle with an oyster (Castle Films' 8mm excerpt with this bit was called "Oysters and Muscles").
Yes, frequent airings of The Three Stooges, The Marx Brothers and Laurel & Hardy on TV inspired many to collect 8mm and 16mm from Castle Films and Blackhawk Films! Maybe Clyde Bruckman, who worked with both the 3 Stooges and A&C, was responsible for Lou Costello doing the oyster soup bit. I read, IIRC in one of Steve Massa's books, that bit also turns up in a Christie Comedy starring Billy Dooley in which his "Goofy Gob" battles with oyster soup.
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