Shark Bytes

Love the Three Stooges, especially Curly! Shemp was an underrated stooge. He wasn't as great as Curly but he had his moments. But the JTS moment came when Joe Besser replaced Shemp. What a wimp that guy was! Didn't knew Curly Joe existed as he didn't appear in the Columbia shorts. He probably wasn't much better. It also didn't help that Moe & Larry were well past their prime. In conclusion, Moe, Larry, Curly, & Shemp are comic geniuses. I'll always watch the Stooges as long as Joe Besser isn't in the shorts.

The Stooges undoubtedly changed the face of comedy for all time. The earliest years were some of the funniest moments ever on celluloid.

However, along the way, there were a few bad decsions that might have cost us some additonal classics.

The first came shortly after Curly's initial mini-stroke. Of course, the majority of the last 12 Curly shorts featured my favorite Stooge with slurred speech, lower energy (very few "woo-woo's" were left in him), and more difficulty with his lines. The notable excemptions were "Micro-Phonies" (How could you not laugh at Curly in drag, lip-synching?) and "Three Little Pirates". (Maja? A-HA!)

Instead of letting Curly recover sufficiently from these filmings and his strokes, Columbia insisited on sticking with their tight schedule, and not let him get any rest. As a result, Curly suffered a major storke during the filming of "Half-Wits Holiday", which excluded him from participating in the concluding pie fight, and prematurely ending his Stooge career. This also may've shortened his life.

Of couse, Curly should get some of the blame with his wild lifestyle.

Fortunately, Moe had an ace in the hole with his older brother Shemp. I won't bother comparing Shemp to Curly, but Shemp immediately fit in perfectly as the third Stooge. The first 33 Shemp shorts gave us more lowbrow masterpieces in comedy. Of course, Shemp had experience under Ted Healy.

Then came a power struggle between Columbia and producer Hugh McCollum. This led to the departure of McCollum and director Edward Bernds, leaving only Jules White in charge.

This, IMO, was the true JTS moment for the Stooges. Overall, the quality of the shorts declined rapidly (I still don't understand "Cuckoo on a Choo-Choo"). Even worse was an overreliance on remaking and retooling older Stooge stories. Then came most of the final 31 Shemp shorts which consisted mostly of footage of older Stooge shorts. Finally, the last 4 Shemp shorts, which came after Shemp died, used a fake Shemp under heavy makeup appearing in what little original footage remained.

All of this were cheap tactics by Columbia to make up for a lower budget, a rigid schedule, and, of course, no Shemp. None of this added any entertainment value, and were tasteless injustices to one of the orignal Stooges.

Then, of course, were the Joe Besser shorts. Besser just didn't fit in at all. Who wants to watch a Stooge that didn't want to get hit? An aging Moe and Larry didn't help either. I haven't seen the Curly Joe DeRita movies, but the Stooges had run their course by then.

So we did have a classic comedy troupe. But the studio heads at Columbia, whose main concern was the bottom line, may have cost us more classic comedy.

"Hello, Hello, Hello...Hello"

I thought the Stooges started going downhill a bit when Curly had his first minor stroke in 1945 (his stroke was first evident in the 1945 short "If a Body Meets a Body" but the Stooges did recover when Shemp rejoined the act the following year.

Overall I wouldn't say the Stooges started to jump until when Jules White started putting stock footage during the last few years of Shemp's run with the Three Stooges.

I personally believe the Stooges did slightly recover again when Joe Besser came aboard and took Shemp's place as a Stooge, I thought some of the Besser shorts were more enjoyable than most of the Shemp remakes from 1953-56, there were a few downright awful shorts during the Joe Besser years "Horsing Around, Sweet and Hot and Sappy Bullfighters".

can anyone with a half of a brain possibly compare curly to shemp. Like the famous line goes "remind me to murder you late" Incidently did anyone see the stooges bio film on A.B.C The guy who was on the Sheild played Curly.He ruled

I thought the Stooges shorts started to slightly fading during the last couple years featuring Curly cause you can see he was starting to become ill by that time and the comedic timing wasn't the same as it was during their earlier years but it managed to fully recover by the time Shemp came along, while I do slightly favor Curly over Shemp, Shemp did grow onto me as the years went by and I think it's unfair that people would compare Shemp to Curly, another thing what I liked about the Shemp shorts is that Larry started getting bigger sized roles and more dialogue (something he'd rarely gotten during the Curly era).

Overall I thought the Stooges really jumped the shark was when Edward Bernds and Hugh McCollum left the studio in 1952 which was around the time when most of the Stooge shorts were actually poorly done remakes and weak shorts, most of the original shorts from the late Shemp era were weak (with the exception of Pardon my Backfire, Goof on the Roof and Blunder Boys).

I actually thought the Besser shorts were an improvement over the Shemp shorts that had footage from their earlier years, they may had some really awful shorts from the Besser era but there were some Besser shorts I thought were watching.

I thought the Curly Joe movies were okay but nothing to write home about.

I thought the Stooges started jumping the shark in 1952 when Hugh McCollum and Edward Bernds left Columbia and that was around the time when Columbia went through some major cutbacks which many of the shorts had 2/3rd's amount of stock footage from their earlier shorts.

The Stooges did start to slightly go downhill during Curly's last couple years with the team due to his illness he was facing which hampered his performances on his last dozen or so shorts but they did manage to recover when Shemp rejoined the act (yes he was the original stooge.

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 *******. The shorts are probably being "warehoused" in mothballs inside a network vault even as this is being written.