Posts Tagged ‘Three Stooges’
“A Dictator? Why, he makes love to beautiful women, drinks champagne, enjoys life and never works. He makes speeches to the people promising them plenty, gives them nothing and takes everything. *That’s* a Dictator.”*…
Hollywood’s relationship to the Third Reich before Pearl Harbor was a complex one. Film producers – particularly Jewish ones – had ample reason to dislike Nazis, but the US was not yet at war with them, and it wasn’t necessarily good for business to lampoon the government of a large foreign market. So, with some exceptions, Hollywood tended to tread carefully in the late 1930s.
Charles Chaplin famously lampooned the Third Reich leader in The Great Dictator, which was released in October 1940. The Three Stooges got the jump on Chaplin by nine months, however, releasing their own quickie Third Reich parody in January that year, although Chaplin’s film had started production first.
In January 1940, the Stooges released a two-reel short called You Nazty Spy! in which they play dimwitted wallpaper hangers who are installed as dictators of the country of Moronica; the businessmen who elevate them think they are stupid enough to be easily controlled.
Moe plays the Hitler-like leader, while Curly plays Field Marshal Gallstone (a mashup of Goering and Mussolini), and Larry is Propaganda Minister Pebble (a spoof of Goebbels). Various comic hijinks ensue, culminating in the dictatorial trio getting deposed and eaten by lions. In 1941, a sequel came out called I’ll Never Heil Again…
The first Hollywood film to spoof Hitler: a Three Stooges two-reeler called You Nazty Spy!
See You Nazty Spy! here. More on Chaplin’s rather better-known The Great Dictator here.
* “Mr. Ixnay” (Richard Fiske) in You Nazty Spy!
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As we ridicule the ridiculous, we might recall that it was on this date in 1976 that Sesame Street aired episode #847, featuring Margaret Hamilton reprising her role as the Wicked Witch of the West from the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz. It scared children so badly that the episode has never been re-aired. (This, after she had appeared as herself in three episodes of Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, between 1975 and 1976– because Fred Rogers wanted his young viewers to recognize the Wicked Witch was just a character and not something to fear.)
“Nyuk Nyuk Nyuk!”…
* Curly Howard
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As we celebrate the silly, we might recall that it was on this date in 1948 that Columbia Pictures released “Hot Scots,” the 108th short film featuring The Three Stooges. The Stooges try to get jobs with Scotland Yard after graduating from a correspondence detective school. They end up as “Yard Men” picking up trash and pruning the hedges. They inadvertently get their chance to crack a case when– dressed in kilts and talking in phony Scottish accents– the Stooges (as McMoe, McLarry, and McShemp) are given the task of guarding the prized possessions of The Earl of Glenheather Castle. The castle staff ransack the castle while the boys sleep there, though of course they eventually arrest the thieves.
The comedians released 190 short films for Columbia between 1934 and 1959.
“If commas are open to interpretation, hyphens are downright Delphic”*…
The tilde is 3,000 years old, but is there any grapheme that’s more ~of the times~? The little traveling worm, originally designed to convey approximation (and used in Spanish and Portuguese to denote certain sounds), expresses so much more: strangeness, emotional and physical distance — but perhaps most importantly, sarcasm…
The twisted mark’s twisted story in its entirety at “The Internet Tilde Perfectly Conveys Something We Don’t Have the Words to Explain.”
– Mary Norris (the New Yorker‘s “Comma Queen”)
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As we move our fingers to the upper left of our keyboards, we might send rib-tickling birthday greetings to Moses Harry Horwitz; he was born on this date in 1897. Better known by his stage name, “Moe Howard,” he was the de facto leader of The Three Stooges, both on stage and off.
Moe, flanked by Curly and Larry, in The Three Stooge’s classic “Disorder in the Court“
Lines?!? We don’t need no stinking lines!!!…
From the good folks at COLOURlovers, “A Big List Of Coloring Books For Adults,” including (but not limited to) such gems as:
Crayolas aren’t just for kids!
As we clean our palettes, we might recall that it was on this date in 1940 that the Three Stooges’ 44th film, You Nazty Spy, was released– the first Hollywood film openly to satirize Nazi Germany and Hitler, anticipating Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator by nine months. Moe (Moses Howard) played the Fuhrer-like dictator of a fictional European country, “Moronica.”
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