Silly Lists: The Top Five Non-Stooge Performances by Members of the Three Stooges
Column
Silly Lists: The Top Five Non-Stooge Performances by Members of the Three Stooges
Column
BY
WILL SLOAN
Film history is a house with many rooms. In Silly Lists, Will Sloan explore some of its nooks and crannies. For the inaugural entry, a look at the Top Five non-Stooge performances by members of The Three Stooges.
#1
Ted Healy in:
Mad Love (1935)
This entry is a cheat: Ted Healy would be aghast to be described as a Stooge. In vaudeville, this Irish American wiseacre made a career of slapping around an evolving entourage of second-banana “stooges,” the most enduring of whom were named Moe, Larry, Shemp, and Curly. Debuting in the ’20s, Healy and his protégés tread the boards at burlesque houses under a variety of names (“Ted Healy and His Racketeers,” “Ted Healy and His Southern Gentlemen,” etc.), before arriving at Broadway and movie stardom in the early ’30s. Their act—which consisted of a smug bastard delivering one-liners and hitting his three underlings—can be sampled in a series of MGM short subjects from the early ’30s that may have you wondering what the big deal was.
Healy is remembered for the wrong reasons: underpaying the future Stooges, trying to sabotage their solo careers, and for the alcoholism that put him in an early grave. But in his day, he was a major star, and with era-defining comedians like Bob Hope and Milton Berle citing him as a direct influence, his residue can still be found on the comedy landscape. Though Healy and the Stooges parted acrimoniously in 1933, the split was inevitable, as Healy was primed to spread his wings as a solo. Stardom didn’t fully happen for him—for one thing, alcoholism cost him his looks—but he became a prolific and admired comic relief in movies before his untimely death in 1937. Karl Freund’s atmospheric Mad Love is Healy’s best-known title, and so is included here to represent his career. This horror story, about a crazed surgeon (Peter Lorre) and his obsession with a beautiful actress (Frances Drake), has all the mood and atmosphere one would expect from the visual stylist behind Dracula (1931)… punctured regularly by Healy as a fast-talking comedy-relief newspaper reporter, who brings to this film almost exactly what Robert Wuhl would one day give to Batman (1989).
#2
Shemp Howard in:
The Bank Dick (1940)
In 1942, newspapers reported that a panel of glamorous female movie stars (including Virginia Bruce, Priscilla Lane, Anne Gwynne, and Carol Bruce) visited the set of a Universal production called Butch Minds the Baby to observe its roster of gargoyle-faced supporting players and crown one of them “The Ugliest Man in Hollywood.” Though the candidates included ex-boxers who had weathered years of abuse, it was Shemp Howard who was declared the winner (“…on strictly natural points,” reported the Victoria Daily Times). In truth, the fix was in; biographical sources consistently say the publicity stunt was hatched by Shemp’s own manager. At any rate, “ugly” is not the right word, for the pockmarked, greasy-haired comedian was blessed with a powerful aura. As noted by Drew Friedman, an artist who has produced a gallery’s worth of Shemp portraits: “He looked real—maybe the drunken guy you’d see at large family gatherings (weddings, Seders, and bar mitzvahs).”
The elder brother of Moe and Jerome “Curly” Howard, Shemp was one of the founding members of the vaudeville team that would evolve into the Three Stooges. When his long and stormy professional relationship with Ted Healy ended in 1932, he was replaced by Curly, and it was the Curly/Larry/Moe configuration that would reign as the Columbia Shorts Department’s signature comedians from 1934 to 1946. After Curly suffered a career-ending stroke, Shemp rejoined the team from 1947, but in the interim years, he pursued a busy solo career, starring in his own short subjects while supporting star comedians like Olsen & Johnson and Abbott & Costello in features. Some filmmakers used his gifts as a physical comedian, but it took a genius on the level of W.C. Fields to hone exclusively in on his presence.
Direction of The Bank Dick is credited to veteran comedy traffic-cop Edward F. Cline, but the film is truly the vision of writer/star Fields, who, nearing the end of his career, had finally unshackled his art from commercial considerations. Where most studio comedies of the era were saddled with milquetoast romantic leads and cheerful musical numbers, The Bank Dick is a wry, gin-soaked shaggy-dog joke. Of the cast, only Fields plays anything resembling a rounded character, but Shemp radiates his unique charisma as Joe Guelpe, the proprietor of the Black Pussy Cat Café (any possible innuendo conjured by that name is strictly intentional). This bar is where the film’s rogues’ gallery of grotesques spend their days to escape from their families and jobs. As the still and unflappable figure at the centre of this bleak tableau, only “The Ugliest Man in Hollywood” could radiate the right kind of authority.
#3
Joe Besser in:
The Abbott & Costello Show (1952-54)
When Shemp Howard died of an unexpected heart attack in 1955, Columbia didn’t look far for a replacement. Already under employment at the Shorts Department, veteran comedian Joe Besser had the short, bald, and plump frame to be a logical successor for the much missed Curly. But there was a problem: Besser abhorred violent slapstick, and insisted in his contract that he wouldn’t have to be hit. Though Besser admirably tried to bring his own spin on the material—squealing his iconic catchphrase “Not so haaaard” whenever Moe raised a hand—his tenure as “Third Stooge” is remembered by fans as the team’s nadir. Besser left the group after the expiry of their contract in December 1957—supposedly because the demands of caring for his ailing wife prohibited him from touring, but anyone with eyes could see that he was simply not the man for the job.
Too bad, because Besser was an enormously talented comedian with a long career on both sides of his Stooge tenure (indeed, his 1984 memoir was ruefully titled Not Just a Stooge). Unquestionably his greatest role was as Stinky, the petulant child who terrorizes Abbott and Costello on their eponymously named TV show. Dressed in a Little Lord Fauntleroy outfit and perpetually wielding a lollipop, Besser’s whiny, ill-tempered brat was the definitive man-child (or more accurately, man-as-child) decades before Martin Short’s similarly uncanny performance in Clifford (1994). Where Besser’s prissy comic persona made him an awkward fit for the rough-and-tumble Stooges, Stinky was his ideal showcase: a character who could be as obnoxious, disruptive, and physically violent towards the star comedians as possible without ever being hit in retaliation.
#4
Moe Howard in:
Space Master X-7 (1958)
On December 20, 1957, Moe Howard finished his work on Flying Saucer Daffy, the final production of his final contract with Columbia Pictures, and left the studio lot that had been his professional home for nearly 24 years. “Sentimental and emotional by nature, Moe anticipated a farewell ceremony of sorts,” read a 1959 Parade magazine profile. “He expected an executive to appear on the sound stage and to make a speech expressing appreciation for the long and mutually profitable association.” Not only was there no farewell, but a few days later, when Moe dropped by the studio to say goodbye to some old colleagues, he was turned away at the gate. His security pass had expired.
While still trying to figure out ways to keep the Stooges going, Moe spent 1958 considering other career options. He hoped to find work as a character actor, but his only offer came from former Stooge director Edward Bernds, who had risen from the Columbia Shorts Department into a prolific career in low-budget features. In Bernds’s Space Master X-7, Moe plays a no-nonsense cab driver whose last fare may or may not have been exposed to a deadly fungus from outer space. It’s a small role, but he makes an impression—his barking line delivery and fine-tuned comic timing deployed effectively in a non-Stooge context. Both the film and Moe’s performance flew under the radar, but by 1959, the Stooges were experiencing a sudden resurgence in popularity after their old shorts were sold to television. Less than two years after being let go, the Stooges were welcomed back to the Columbia lot for a new series of feature-length films, beginning with Have Rocket, Will Travel (1959). Those films became children’s matinee hits, but the sixtysomething Moe was getting a little long in the tooth for violent slapstick. Space Master X-7 hints at a potentially glorious road not taken where the leader of the Stooges grew into a beloved, craggy-faced supporting-player.
#5
Curly-Joe DeRita in:
The Bravados (1958)
When their old films found new life on TV in the late ’50s, the Stooges were once again in high demand for movies, personal appearances, endorsement deals, and TV guest spots. But with both Curly and Shemp long gone, Moe and Larry needed a man to fill the “Third Stooge” slot. A man who could deal with the rigors of touring and slip comfortably into their well-honed routines. A man who would shave his head and not ask too many questions.
Enter Joe DeRita, a journeyman comic who had spent a lifetime on the stage. Though he occasionally caught a glimpse of stardom on the horizon—performing USO shows with Bing Crosby; making a few short comedies at Columbia with the same creative team who guided the Stooges—he never quite lifted himself out of the lowly burlesque circuit. His decision to join the Stooges was strictly business; in interviews, he claimed he never found the team funny. One thing everyone agrees on: he didn’t do much to make them funnier. Still, few of the boomer children who watched the Stooges on TV in the ’60s realized that the films were decades old, and from the cheap seats, many of them must have convinced themselves that this slow, gentle “Curly-Joe” was the real Curly.
DeRita’s annus mirabilis was certainly 1958. The same year he officially joined the Stooges, he also enjoyed his greatest acting triumph: a small but potent role in the 20th Century Fox Western The Bravados. Gregory Peck stars a rancher who rides into town to witness the execution of four men accused of killing his wife. In a few early scenes, DeRita plays Simms, the hangman who has been called to perform the execution. He moseys into the local saloon, noose in hand, invites himself to Peck’s table, and jovially says, “I’ve come to perform a little service for you folks.” He bids Peck adieu with, “I hope I see you again, sir—of course, not professionally.” But Simms has hidden motives: while supposedly examining the doomed men, he stabs the sheriff in the back, helping the accused break free before the wounded sheriff manages to kill him. The film makes productive use of DeRita’s modest screen presence: as in his later films with the Stooges, DeRita is soft-spoken and affectless—a presence that the director Henry King effectively torques into something sinister.
Will Sloan is a Toronto-based writer and podcast mogul. You can follow his adventures at willsloan.ca.
