Shark Bytes

The "Classic Nuts" were great pre Joe Besser.Shemp gets underrated when compared with Curly,but I think Shemp was excellent.And of course Moe & Larry were great.I saw an interview with Moe on a Philadelphia tv station in the '70s.The host asked Moe how the punishment he dished out to the others was staged,in other words,he was trying to find out if the others were aware ahead of time that they would get slapped,poked in the eyes,a bonk on the head,or something else.Moe's reply:"I gave 'em what they deserved."

Curly's given name was Jerome but everyone in the family called him Babe because he was the youngest- and, incidently, Shemp's wife was also called Babe. Must have been some odd misunderstandings at family dinners (not to mention a few Freudian issues on Shemp's part)!

The lives of these men were very sad. Everybody wanted a piece of them. They had to change their names because of their Jewish heritage. Many of the women in their lives were little more than gold diggers. With Curly many of his woes were self inflicted. Few people know that Larry was a champion boxer and an accomplished violinist. The descendants of these men are still not on speaking terms and fighting over the royalties. I wish I could have met them. Could you imagine the wealth they would have amasses if they were alive today?

The only time the Stooges really jumped was with the addition of Joe Besser.

His personality really didn't fit with the slapstick of Larry and Moe very well.

Although, the later seasons with Curly also were subpar. He just didn't have the same comedic timing and he speech changed. I guess that was due to his health. However, he did manage to get some really good performance even then, they just didn't happen as often.

I've never understood the hatred toward Curly-joe, Joe besser yes I can understand. Curly-joe was very open to the slap-stick and like shemp was not afraid to stand up to Moe. You have to remember when curly-joe joined the act the boys were visibly getting on and not able to perform the same material they had in their early days. To see the stooges at their best during this period check out "the three stooges around the world in 80 days." comic gold!

I have a hard time listening to anyone say the Stooges ever JTS. I'll admit, the stock footage Shemp's in the mid-50's, and some of Besser's shorts don't hold up as well, but when you look at it on the whole they were great. They are part of the reason that the classic vaudeville comics will never die.

Some of you are bound to know this. In fact, someone has probably already posted it, but for everyone who puts down the Shemp era (both of them), he was one of the original Stooges.

The Three Stooges never truly jumped the shark until the God-awful 1970 color film they did called "Kook's Tour", in which production had to be halted because Larry suffered what would become a fatal stroke. Columbia Pictures, thankfully, was not involved in the production of this fiasco, which had the Stooges on unfunny adventures throughout the Pacific Northwest. It is currently on DVD thanks to Anchor Bay Distributing Company, but may have gone out of print and now available only through Internet retailers such as Amazon.com. On the same disc, there was a 1949 pilot for a proposed ABC-TV series starring the Stooges (with Shemp) which never jelled. Too bad ABC never saw potential in airing the 190 or so Stooge shorts that would be made, since at the time, ABC, along with DuMont, were the FOX Networks of their heyday, having to compete against giants CBS and NBC. In this era of 500 or so pay-TV channels, the Stooges still don't get respect, as only Viacom-owned Spike owns the rights to air the Stooges catalog. The shorts are probably being "warehoused" in mothballs inside a network vault even as this is being written.

Hey...give the stooges a break, OK? They made 190 shorts! When you have 190 there are bound to be some lame ones. Try naming any movie stars in which ALL there movies are hits?

Curley was the making of the Three Stooges; we can just remember him the way he was. Shemp was OK but not as good as Curley. Joe absolutely stank, and Curley Joe wasn't as good either.

I love the Stooges. The Curly episodes were classics (until the last four or five right before his stroke) and the Shemp episodes were somewhat good.

I actually think the Stooges began to decline a little bit toward the end of the Curly era, they weren't as funny.

By the way, a biography about Larry called "A Fine Stooge" is awesome. It tells things through Larry's perspective, what a great guy he was, based on his memoirs etc. It is the best thing I have ever read on the Stooges. I highly recommend it.

I have seen all 190 short subjects and I think the Three Stooges "jumped the shark" when Shemp suffered his minor stroke in 1952. It was not necessarily because of the stroke but it approximately coincided with the firing of producer Hugh McCollum and the resignation of director Ed Bernds. From there, the shorts declined in quality with remakes (1/3 new footage, 2/3 footage from the originals) of varying quality. Many of the originals during this time were somewhat experimental with controversial quality, a primary example is the notoriously bizarre and controversial "Cuckoo on a Choo-Choo" (1952). Then when Shemp died and Joe Besser entered the scene, most of the shorts were mediocre at best, and some were downright awful ("Sweet and Hot" and "Flying Saucer Daffy" come to mind).

Would someone tell me why, with several hundred cable channels, we can't have one of them showing the Stooges on a regular basis?

This is some of the funniest stuff that was ever done, although the Joe Bessor shorts were very weak. Joe didn't deserve to be a Stooge. The Curly Joe full length movies were also pretty bad, by this time the Stooges were really too old to be slapstick comedians, although they certainly can't be blamed for trying. The popularity of the shorts being released on tv finally gave them a shot to make some good moneywith the movies and live appearances, something they never received during all the years they made the shorts for Columbia, working on salary. The Stooges also never got a dime for the residual rights for those episodes being continually shown on tv.

The Stooges not only jumped the shark, they slapped him upside the head and kicked him the dorsal fin. Don't blame the boys for the lame writing they had to deal with now and then. Some plots were simply funnier than others. Anything with Emil Sitka ("Hold hands, you love-birds") was a treat. Curly and Shemp had different styles, the "little kid" and the "wise-guy", that Joes Besser and DeRita tried, with varying degrees of success, tap into. Besser: "Not so haaaaard!" DeRita (answering Moe's request to "Remind me to kill you later"): "I'll make a note of it!"

Don't knock stock footage. It's fun to spot things like Shemp's picture appearing in a Besser short, or Palma pretending to be Shemp, or Curly's stunt double riding an oil geyser, then a closeup of Besser yelling "Oils well that ends well!"

One of the funniest end bits to a short: after a blacked out fight scene, Shemp manages to turn on the lights and realizes that he bashed not only the bad guys but his buddies as well. Turning the coal shovel (his weapon of choice) on himself, he yells, "Moe! Larry! Wait for me!" (bam bam bam!)

Never Jumped;ever. Well, maybe when Joe Besser and Curley Joe joined the boys. But I remember their movies in the early 60s when I was just a kid and I liked them a lot. Also, they were making personal apprarances and still drew large crowds (because of the TV reruns of their three realers). Unfortunately, their popularity peaked after their deaths, which is not unlike may famous artists. They will be fondly remembered by many generations, and I think that's all they really cared about.