Enduring yet today, The Three Stooges’ 20-minute slapstick films were famous for fingers in the eye, nose and ear.  From left: Brothers Moe and Curly Howard, and Cousin Larry Fine.

THE COMEDY TRIO OF BYGONE DAYS
SURVIVES IN A MODERN WORLD
OF POLITICAL CORRECTNESS
BY MOCKING THE FRAUDS
AND PHONIES OF TODAY

The antics of the three Howard Brothers
and goofy Cousin Larry seem tame
compared to new millennium
TV violence and poor taste
 
By David Maril
 
It’s galling to some and a mystery to others as to why Three Stooges movies survive on television in these sophisticated times.

It is easy to rationalize “Twilight Zone” marathons on science fiction networks and daily appearances on classic oldies stations as being reflective, examining our values.

But what social value is offered in Three Stooges movies? And why does the popularity of this slapstick group remain so high?

Much to my surprise, I turned on the IFC Network the other day and saw the morning lineup was crammed with the short movies of Larry, Moe and Curly. Was it that long ago that the former Independent Film Channel focused on new, innovative and out of the mainstream creative film productions?

This dedication to airing Three Stooges (1930-75) movies has been going on for decades.

When I lived in the Boston area, TV38 (WSBK) was not only home to the Red Sox and Bruins, it was also recognized as the flagship station for the Stooges. Every time TV38 would temporarily remove the Stooges from the regularly scheduled lineup, the station’s public affairs program, “Ask The Manager,” would be flooded with questions from callers demanding to know when the slapstick comedy team would return.

Personally, I prefer Laurel & Hardy, The Marx Brothers and W.C. Fields because the humor is more subtle and has greater depth. However, as time marches on, my respect for the Stooges has grown.

The original Three Stooges — Larry, Shemp and Moe — fall all over themselves, in typical misdirection, lambasting the hilarious incompetence they are known for.

Larry, Moe, and Shemp, followed by Curly — the originals in the group — who have been popular for over 85 years, are more durable than Cal Ripken. They are timeless; and nothing — including political correctness — can get them down.

There remain, however, plenty of stuffed shirts, as well as most women, who criticize this slapstick brand of humor. The Stooges are attacked for being too violent. We’ve all heard that their pie-in-the-face and frying-pan-slammed-on-the- head humor is a bad influence on children.

At one point, in the late 1970s and 80s, it became fashionable to treat The Three Stooges as if they were trash. Publicly, some people would denounce the Stooges’ films as lacking any redeeming qualities — all the while laughing their heads off when they’d watch the movies in the privacy of their homes.

There was a sizable group of “closet Stooges watchers” who would not admit they were devoted followers.

There have been behind-the-scenes campaigns to “purify” the airwaves and keep Stooges movies off regular TV. Yet through all the attacks, The Three Stooges have survived. There have even been movies made about the comedy team.

Today, the arguments against the content of their movies seem ridiculous when you look at where television has been heading. When compared to the narcissistic, shallow and senseless programming networks offer with all of the current reality show nonsense, the Stooges seem like a PBS production of “Masterpiece Theatre.”

And, with the low standards we have embraced from the Internet and video games, that old argument about the Stooges being a bad influence on children is laughable.

Still, it’s hard for some to understand the appeal of the Stooges.

The original trio was part of a Vaudeville act known as “Ted Healy and His Stooges.” Healy is at left.  The Stooges broke with Healy and began making films on their own in 1930.

Sure, a large part of it is escapism from headache-inducing arguments over healthcare reform, the economy, war in the Middle East, terrorism and global warming.

But what really hits home is the way the Stooges, and many other stars of comedy, lambaste the phoniness that seems to be a growing part of our corporate culture. We find the Stooges in all walks of  life.

In the double-talking and pompous world of government, a large percentage of our elected leaders behave as if they are working on a Three Stooges movie set.

It’s common when any of us deal with three people who are incompetent enough to screw up a one-car parade: we refer to them as Larry, Moe and Curly.

How many times when you hear the soundtrack from a Stooges movie with that “Three Blind Mice” music, and the boys making their absurd noises, will someone joke that it sounds like a management meeting at the place they work?

Most importantly, the Stooges provide all of us a chance to laugh, and to realize we often take ourselves too seriously.
 
davidmaril@voiceofbaltimore.org
 
“Inside Pitch” is a weekly opinion column written for Voice of Baltimore by David Maril.
 
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The name of an incompetent Three Stooges law firm in one of their films was “appropriated” many years later, without attribution, by the comic radio team of automobile mechan- ics “Click & Clack, the Tappet Brothers” for their popular, long-running “Car Talk” program on National Public Radio.

A rare photo of The Three Stooges without makeup — From left: Curly (real name, Jerome Horwitz), Larry Fine and Moe Howard (born Moses Harry Horwitz).  Shemp’s name at birth was Samuel Horwitz. The brothers changed the name to Howard. In later years, for television and feature-length movies, Moe and Larry teamed with Joe Besser, then Curly- Joe DeRita after the illness and deaths of Curly and Shemp.