I Stooged to Conquer Page 9

  The Stooges’ Oscar-nominated short Men in Black (1934), with Ruth Hiatt as the nurse and Charles King as the anesthesiologist.

  In the film Men in Black, a takeoff on Clark Gable’s hit Men in White, we were cut by flying glass when we slammed a glass door in one of the hospital scenes.

  Three Little Pigskins, our first football film, was a humdinger of bangs and bruises. The young Lucille Ball was excellent in this one in the role of a gun moll. In one scene Curly is running along the sideline for a touchdown while Larry and I are blocking for him. (I must mention that all the football players, except us, were from Loyola University. They knew how to tackle and they tackled hard.) During the touchdown run, the four (actor) news photographers on the sidelines try to get us to stop for a picture, whereupon Curly, Larry, and I are pounced on by the entire Loyola team. The boys and I reviewed this scene and we could see nothing but trouble with these two-hundred-pounders landing on top of us. Larry called over director Raymond McCarey and said, “Look, we can’t do this scene. We’re not stuntmen, and if one of these gorillas falls on us, we’ll never be able to finish the picture. We’ve never used doubles before, but we certainly need them now.”

  Moe in a heart-to-heart talk with his “son” in Three Little Pigskins (1934).

  The boys get stiff-armed in this publicity photo, circa 1935.

  The cast of The Captain Hates the Sea (1934). The Stooges are at the captain’s table with Alison Skipworth, “Captain” Walter Connolly, Wynne Gibson, Emily Fitzroy, and Donald Meek. Standing: John Wray, G. Pat Collins, Arthur Treacher, Leon Errol, John Gilbert, director Lewis Milestone, author Wallace Smith, Victor McLaglen, Akim Tamiroff, Walter Catlett, and Claude Gillingwater.

  The finish of a barroom brawl, Three Stooges style, in Horses’ Collars (1935).

  The Stooges demonstrate their gunslinging techniques to Old West saloon gals in Horses’ Collars.

  Curly, Larry, and Moe try on their sleuthing outfits in Horses’ Collars.

  McCarey told us, “Listen, fellows, you know how to take falls. You’ve done enough of them. It’ll take hours to find doubles for you. Besides, we can’t afford them. Don’t worry, you won’t get hurt.” I agreed: “You’re darn right we won’t get hurt. We’re not doing the scene.”

  Forty-five minutes later McCarey had the three doubles on the field, and ten minutes after that they were in uniform, wearing wigs which the prop man located. With cameras rolling, Curly ran along the sidelines, and Larry and I were blocking. Then the football players charged toward us, the four news cameramen yelled, “Hold it for a picture,” and we stopped to pose. The camera cut and moved into a long shot as our doubles came in. All of the players, including the doubles, landed in a heap on top of the newsmen. When they came up for air, two of the doubles had broken legs, all four newsmen had broken arms or legs, and all wound up in the hospital—except for the double who stood for Curly. He was padded all over to resemble Curly, and the padding broke the blows.

  McCarey was speechless and sat in his director’s chair with his head in his hands.

  The boys—and friend—in a familiar Three Stooges pose.

  Curly gets up out of turn and is bopped on the head by Moe and Larry in Restless Knights (1935).

  At least one of the boys seems to be out of uniform in Restless Knights.

  The boys run amok in an artists’ studio in Pop Goes the Easel (1935).

  The clay-slinging climax begins in Pop Goes the Easel.

  In Ants in the Pantry in 1936, we played exterminators who turn up at a swanky party. There was a scene where we were having trouble selling our services, so we complain to our boss, who tells us, “If they don’t have any bugs, give them some!” We got the idea and went from house to house throwing moths in with minks, mice on the floor, and ants in the pantry. During the shooting, I hadn’t noticed that a small container of red ants had broken apart in my pocket, and the little devils were crawling down my back, in my hair, and into my pants. It was insane. All through the scene I was scratching and squirming and slapping myself on my neck and face and on the seat of my pants. Elated, director Preston Black shouted, “Great, Moe. Keep up that squirming!” It was very funny—to everyone but me.

  In Uncivil Warriors (1935), Curly, Moe, and Larry confound officer James C. Morton.

  Larry, Moe, and Curly as the McSnort brothers restrain Pauline High in Pardon My Scotch (1935).

  In one of my favorite comedies, A Pain in the Pullman, also made in 1936, we played the parts of actors working as vaudevillians. The film took place aboard a train, and in one sequence, all three of us wound up in the same upper berth. Later, we found ourselves a drawing room, not knowing it was assigned to the star of the show. There was a lovely table set in the room with all kinds of delicacies.

  At one point Curly picked up a hard-shell Dungeness crab. We, of course, were not supposed to know what it was. Curly thought it was a tarantula, Larry figured it to be an octopus, and I concluded that it must be something to eat or it wouldn’t be on the table with crackers and sauce.

  As the scene progressed, Curly tried to open the crab shell and bent the tines of his fork. I took the fork from Curly, tossed a napkin on the floor, and asked him to pick it up. When Curly bent over, I hit him on the head with the crab, breaking the shell into a million pieces. Then Curly scooped out some of the meat, tasted it, and made a face. He threw the meat away and proceeded to eat the shell.

  I have to tell you, if there’s one thing to which I have an aversion, it’s shellfish, and I couldn’t bring myself—even for a film—to put that claw in my mouth. Preston Black, the director, asked me to just lick the claw, but I couldn’t. He finally had the prop man duplicate the claw out of sugar and food coloring and had me nibble on it as though I was enjoying it. I was still very wary during the scene. I was afraid they had coated the real shell with sugar and that that awful claw was underneath. I chewed that claw during the scene, but if you’ll notice, I did it very gingerly.

  In the meantime Curly was still chewing on the shell, which was cutting the inside of his mouth. Finally our star comes back to his room and kicks us out, and we three climb into our upper berth to go to sleep. During the scene Larry started snoring loud enough to be heard through the train. I yelled, “Hey, Larry, wake up and go to sleep.”

  My childhood accuracy with peashooters, spitballs, and penny-pitching became helpful in the years when we were making two-reel comedies at Columbia Pictures. I was called on countless times by the producer or director whenever there was an object to be thrown either on screen or from off camera. Our producer one day figured that I had saved the studio thousands of dollars in time and film by my accurate aim with pies, cakes, cream puffs, and assorted gunk that bombarded my fellow actors.

  I remember the fantastic gooey mayhem during the making of Hoi Polloi in 1935. I stood off camera with a cream puff in each hand. Our leading lady, Grace Goodall, was at the end of a long dining room table in a very elegant dining room. The scene called for her to laugh loudly with her mouth wide open. Director Del Lord, who did many of our films in those days, asked me to throw one cream puff directly into her face while she was laughing. The butler would stand behind her, say the word disgusting, and turn around, and I was to hit him square on the back of the neck with the other cream puff.

  Del shouted “Action,” and the scene proceeded normally. On cue, I let fly with the first cream puff and hit Grace squarely in the mouth. The butler said his line and I let fly with the other, scoring a bull’s-eye right in the back of his neck. When Del called “Cut,” we found our leading lady with the cream puff lodged so deeply in her throat that she was gasping for breath. Some of the cream had gone down her windpipe. We did have a moment of concern until we brought her around.

  Kitty McHugh appears strangely at ease among the Stooges in Hoi Polloi (1935).

  The boys mix rubbish with high society in Hoi Polloi.

  A society party in Hoi Polloi ends in true Three Stooges fashion.


  The boys try a new tactic—to scare a salary increase from boss Harry Cohn at Columbia.

  An annoyed Moe sets up Larry and Curly for a little head-bopping in Ants in the Pantry (1936).

  I happened to catch Slippery Silks on TV recently, and I distinctly remember that in this sixteen-minute comedy more than 150 pies were thrown. I had a sore throwing arm for almost two weeks and a pretty sore face. The ones I didn’t toss were thrown at me.

  A real emergency arose during the course of shooting. We ran out of pies! The property man rushed in and swept up all the whipped cream he could collect from the floor. In the dirty cream were dust, nails, and splinters. He added a little marshmallow sauce and, with some leftover crusts, whipped up a batch of new pies. When these gooey missiles hit us in the face with nails inside, the results were almost disastrous. Sometimes the old saying that “The show must go on” can be carried a bit too far.

  Their popularity commands special marquee billing for the Three Stooges in their theater appearances. Here, they play the RKO Palace in Seattle in 1936.

  Being on the receiving end of tossed pies was fraught with problems. Sometimes it was impossible to wipe the mess out of your eyes so that you could get back your vision and continue the scene. As rough a character as I seemed to be in pictures, and as tough as I came across, I was hurt in our films more often than either Larry or Curly or any other member of the cast.

  In the comedy Beer and Pretzels, we played carpenters. I was on top of a table measuring shelves and shouting the dimensions down to Curly. He bent over and placed a board on the table I was standing on, and proceeded to cut it to the proper dimensions with a circular saw until he cut right through the table. As I turned around to get the board from him, the table broke in half and I fell. I knew how to break my fall, but there was no avoiding the fallen table. The side of my body landed on the upright legs. I had five words to speak, which I did, and then passed out. Hours later at the hospital, I learned I had three broken ribs.

  I remember once when the prop man concocted a smorgasbord of gook: chocolate, whipped cream, asbestos chips, linseed oil, ketchup, and other unknown goodies. I was supposed to fall facedown in a vat of something or other with Curly dropping right on top of me. As luck would have it, I forgot to close my eyes. Curly had me buried under that goo for about eight seconds. When I came up, nostrils and eyes full of that brutal concoction, they needed the studio doctor and a nurse to bring me back to normal … something I haven’t been for years.

  The boys—out of costume and makeup, circa 1936.

  Shemp as Knobby Walsh in one of his Joe Palooka shorts for Vitaphone, Here’s Howe (1936). Blond Robert Norton is Palooka and Beverly Phalon is his girl.

  Several starlets charm Moe into giving them screen work in Movie Maniacs (1936).

  Moviemaking á la the Stooges in Movie Maniacs.

  Firemen Moe and Curly “rescue” Joan, age nine, on the set of False Alarms (1936).

  Moe convinces Larry to take the next alarm that is rung in False Alarms.

  Oily to Bed, Oily to Rise was—what else?—an oil-well picture. The plot had us in one scene trying to repair a water pump. After many attempts, I took a screwdriver, knelt down, peered into the mouth of the pump, and jiggled the screwdriver inside of it. Gazing up the opening, I jiggled again and then looked up a third time. Suddenly a blob of assorted gunk got me right in the eye again. And again it took hours to clean me up for the next scene.

  In another film we were playing the parts of women. I was wearing the usual high-heeled shoes, and in skipping out of the room, one heel turned under me. I slid to one side, and not wanting to fall in the scene and ruin the shot, I dove out into the next room, hit my head on the leg of a bed, and was knocked cold. The next day I was on crutches with a fractured ankle.

  Curly also had his share of injuries. I remember a short where Curly was playing both himself and his father. There was one sequence where he was to be pushed down an elevator shaft, which was really just a hole dug in the floor deep enough for Curly to drop completely out of sight. They padded the floor of the hole with mattresses but neglected to cover a nearby two-by-four. When Curly was pushed into the opening, his head hit the edge of the two-by-four, cutting his scalp wide open. We pulled him out and made him comfortable until the studio doctor arrived. He looked at the wound, washed it off, put some collodion on it, then clipped the hair from around the wound. I stood by watching in amazement as the doctor glued fresh hair into the bald spot and Curly continued with the scene.

  The boys test the equipment in Half Shot Shooters (1936).

  The boys return to a less complicated time, in the company of Beatrice Blinn and Elaine Waters, in Whoops, I’m an Indian! (1936).

  Curly, Moe, and Larry drool over their next meal in Slippery Silks (1936).

  The Stooges’ Slippery Silks nemesis is, as usual, Vernon Dent.

  In 1937’s Goofs and Saddles, Curly is Wild Bill Hiccup and Moe plays Just Plain Bill.

  Frontiersmen Howard, Howard, and Fine in Back to the Woods (1937).

  Then there was the time Larry got it. We were dentists in a scene where some plaster was being thrown around. The property men got a little too enthusiastic, and they cracked Larry in the eye with a good-sized chunk of plaster. In another short, he had a tooth knocked out, and once he got stabbed in the forehead with a quill pen.

  But we were Stooges, and that was what we were getting paid for: getting what little brains we had knocked out. Hi-diddle-dee-dee … an actor’s life for me!

  11

  OFF THE MOVIE SET FOR A WHILE AND ON TO BROADWAY

  It was 1935 and my daughter Joan was nearly eight years old. Bookings for personal appearances between shorts were constant, and when school was out, Joan always traveled with us. She enjoyed going to the zoos in the various cities. However, Helen and I came to the decision that it wasn’t fair to Joan to be an only child, and although she was the love of my life, I often dreamed about having a son—someone to take fishing and play ball with—so we planned for another child and Helen became pregnant. As the end of her term drew near, I was on the road. In order not to be too far away, Helen and Joan took the train from California to New York, where Helen could be near me and her sisters. I was appearing in Boston at the time. She went to Doctors Hospital for the delivery, and I remember phoning her there: “Honey, if it’s a boy, they’ll have to drag me out of the gutter, I’ll be so drunk.”

  Moe, Larry, and Curly take time out in 1937 to menace Moe’s daughter, Joan.

  Fellow Columbia actors Melvyn Douglas, Virginia Bruce, and Margaret Lindsay demonstrate Three Stooges hand puppets in 1937.

  Larry, Curly, and Moe stumble upon the cache in Cash and Carry (1937).

  The boys always are available for a bit of tutoring, and in Cash and Carry, young Sonny Bupp is the recipient of their expertise.

  Curly gives himself a manicure with Larry and Moe in Cash and Carry.

  Larry and Moe discover the secret of getting Curly to smile in The Sitter Downers (1937).

  Larry and Moe prepare to serve Curly in Three Dumb Clucks (1937).

  The next day, I received a wire. It read, “It’s a boy, keep out of the gutter.” My wildest dream had come true.

  Curly, Larry, and I had been booked into the RKO Boston Theater and were at Grand Central Station in New York preparing to leave for Boston. I had promised to phone Rube Jackter, head of the sales department of Columbia, to let him know about doing a benefit performance in Boston for the Children’s Hospital. I called to okay the performance, and before we finished talking, he said, “Moe, the night editor of the New York Times would like to speak with you.” I joked and said, “I hope it’s not another benefit in Boston.” A few seconds later, the Times man was on the phone, and without any greeting, aside from “Is that you, Moe?” he asked. “Would you like to make a statement on the death of Ted Healy?”

  I will never be able to describe the terrible feeling in the pit of my stomach. Stunned, I droppe
d the receiver. I don’t know how long I stayed in that phone booth, only that thirty years flashed into my mind along with the memories of my entire association with Ted. I did not know that the tears came to my eyes as I rested my head on my folded arms. Curly and Larry suddenly pushed the phone booth open and dragged me to the train.

  I followed the boys, sobbing all the way, and I heard Larry telling Curly, “Your brother is nuts; he’s actually crying.” I didn’t say anything to the boys until I got into our hotel suite in Boston—I just couldn’t talk about it. I finally gave them the news that Ted was dead and that beyond that I knew nothing.

  When we got back from Boston, I got the story. It seems that Ted was at the Trocadero, the famous nightclub on the Sunset Strip in Hollywood, drinking up a storm, when he got into an argument with three patrons. Ted called them every vile name in the book and then offered to go outside and take care of them, one at a time. The four men went outside, and before Ted had a chance to raise his fists, they jumped him, knocked him to the ground, and kicked him in the ribs and stomach. Ted’s friend, Joe Frisco, a well-known comic, picked him up from the sidewalk and took him to his apartment. Ted passed away a few days later of a brain concussion. At the time of his death, his salary in the theater was $8,500 a week. There was no vaudeville star who earned more. He was also under contract to MGM at a very high salary. With all this, it’s hard to believe that his friends had to give a benefit to pay for his burial. Bryan Foy (of the Seven Little Foys) footed a great part of the funeral bill and helped pay off other debts Ted had incurred. What a sad ending! When sober, Ted was the essence of refinement; while under the influence, he became a foul-mouthed, vicious character. Liquor had killed his father and uncle and had destroyed his sister’s life. When Ted was young, I remember that he made a pledge never to touch liquor after having seen the consequences of its effects on his family. The strain of his life in show business got him started, and once he started drinking he was never able to stop.