Topic: How Did You Get Into the Stooges?

[knucklehead2005]

I got into the Stooges because where I live, the Three Stooges were on TV on Sunday morining at I think it was 10 AM. I was only 4 at the time, but I thought that they were funny.

So, how did you get into the Stooges?

[Pilsner Panther]

I got into the Stooges because where I live, the Three Stooges were on TV on Sunday morining at I think it was 10 AM. I was only 4 at the time, but I thought that they were funny.

So, how did you get into the Stooges?

I didn't get into the Stooges, the Stooges got into me!

 

[al fadola]

In my bit of England we were pretty much Stoogeless until the 1980s, though we had that pitiful cartoon series 'The Robonic Stooges' in the 70s, which none of us kids understood because we'd never heard of the real Stooges. Then there was 'It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World' which seemed to be screened on every public holiday for about five years from the mid-70s.

Then suddenly in the mid-late 80s our Channel 4 started showing Curly & Shemp shorts in the middle of the afternoons when most people were at work and people like me should have been at college - but were instead at home gaping with astonishment at the antics of the Stooges.

They vanished as mysteriously as they came, and I'm pretty sure there have been no Stooges of any description on UK screens for ten years or more. Woe, alas!

[Lola-Lou]

 I " got into" The Three Stooges when i was little because I would go over to my gramma's house and she would be watching the Stooges on TBS. She saw that I liked then so she started taping them for me. I still have the tapes. So I guess you could say I sort of grew up with the Stooges..........WOW!  That sounds kind of pathetic!

[Pilsner Panther]

In my bit of England we were pretty much Stoogeless until the 1980s, though we had that pitiful cartoon series 'The Robonic Stooges' in the 70s, which none of us kids understood because we'd never heard of the real Stooges. Then there was 'It's A Mad Mad Mad Mad World' which seemed to be screened on every public holiday for about five years from the mid-70s.

Then suddenly in the mid-late 80s our Channel 4 started showing Curly & Shemp shorts in the middle of the afternoons when most people were at work and people like me should have been at college - but were instead at home gaping with astonishment at the antics of the Stooges.

They vanished as mysteriously as they came, and I'm pretty sure there have been no Stooges of any description on UK screens for ten years or more. Woe, alas!

I've been wondering what kind of following the Stooges have in the U.K., because we do have a few British members here. I've also wondered if their humor would travel well, because their rough-house physical comedy and Brooklynese wisecracking seems so American.

It might be sort of like expecting Americans to "get" the Goon Show; I've tried playing some of those for my friends, and the usual reaction I get is "Huh? What's all that about?"

Of course, you have to listen to a few of them and get to know who the characters are; you can't expect anyone to understand it on one hearing, although I think that Neddie, Eccles, Bluebottle, and company are hilarious.
 
British comedy usually does go over well here, though. Monty Python has always been very popular; there's even a Python musical running on Broadway right now, co-written by Eric Idle. "Fawlty Towers" (which just came up in another thread) has what I'd call a cult following. There certainly are American fans, but it just wasn't on TV long enough to develop a big audience. It ran for about a year on our local public television station here in San Francisco, and then it was gone for good; but then, there aren't that many original episodes— about two dozen, I think.

One British comedy series that had a long, long run in the States was "Are You Being Served?" That same local PBS station ran it for five or six years in the 80's and 90's, but it's not on any more.

[Bruckman]

Pils brings up an interesting point here re the translation of British comedies into American audience numbers. Python has always been something of an exception to the rule: it was popular amongst a certain set the way Star Trek was, though seldom to the same set. In Canada it's more universally popular than here. The "simperingly lewd" Benny Hill (to quote the Canadian writer John Metcalf) was also popular back then.

PBS here occasionally runs Fawlty Towers. They did a marathon of all the episodes on New Year's Eve and I tried to stay awake for all of them but dozed off around 3 a.m. and missed "Basil the Rat", one of the best of the latter episodes. My mother always enjoyed "Are You Being Served" and amassed a sizeable collection of eps on tape. She's also a fan of "Keeping Up Appearances", a pretty fair comedy too built on a single simple premise (I aspire to the condition of life held by the slob of a brother-in-law who sits in front of the telly swilling beer).

My impression's always been that the Three Stooges, Abbott and Costello, and the Marx Bros. appealed less to European sensibilities than the pantomime-based work (hence more traditional, in that it was influenced less by the dialogue-knockabout interplay of American vaudeville than the more visual style of the British and continental music hall and the Italian commedia dell'arte) of Laurel and Hardy, Chaplin, or Keaton. (Keaton's something of an exception here; despite his background in vaudeville, his cinematic style is intensely visual and he was acclaimed in Europe far sooner than here). Yet the Stooges did do a tour of the UK in 1939 and might have done more if the war and then ill health hadn't prevented more visits; L&H and Danny Kaye both did extended tours of the UK postwar and drew huge crowds.

Reminds me of how, when Fred Karno brought his troupe over here in around 1912, audiences were at first perplexed by the format; not until Karno revamped his presentation into "A Night in an English Music Hall" did audiences begin to respond better. Chaplin seems to have baffled US audiences onstage who expected something more like the crosstalk "dutch" or dialect comics most popular in the era.

[Dunrobin]

..."Keeping Up Appearances", a pretty fair comedy too built on a single simple premise (I aspire to the condition of life held by the slob of a brother-in-law who sits in front of the telly swilling beer).

Onslow's my role model!   

I love "Keeping Up Appearances,"  but if I were married to Hyacinth she probably would have been dead before our first anniversary.  Daisy and Rose are okay, though.   

I remember enjoying another British series years ago, but I've forgotten what the name of it was.  The basic plot was a young couple living in a middle-class suburb who decided to drop out of the rat race and live simply, raising crops on their small lot, etc.  The lady who played the snotty next door neighbor was hysterical; I've forgotten her name too, but I know I've seen her in several other programs as well.

Ok, now back to topic:  I'm an old-timer who was introduced to the Stooges when they first came on the television in the late 50's/early 60's.  It was one of the few shows that my mother would actually sit down and watch with us (another was the Bugs Bunny show.)

[Baggie]

 Ha ha 'Keeping up Appearances' is well funny. You can still see that and 'Are You Being Served' everyday on UK Gold. UK Gold is a great channel for comedy.
 I got into the Stooges because my dad had a couple of tapes, which had six shorts on:

- An Ache In Every Stake
- Three Missing Links
- Micro-Phonies
- Uncivil Warriors
- Calling All Curs
- Pop Goes The Easel

 Me and my sister used to watch em' and laugh our heads off, at what I dunno, because we didn't really understand what was going on. A few months back I picked up the tapes and thought I'd stick them on. I loved them even more than when I was a kid, and started collecting any Stooge stuff I could find, which at first was not a lot. How and why my dad aquired the tapes, I don't know. Since then I've also gotten really into the Marx Brothers, and love them just as much as the Stooges.

 Dunrobin, the other programme you refer to is 'The Good Life.' Penelope Keith played the snotty neighbour.

[Bruckman]

Forgot to answer the original question (too busy guzzling beer):

The Three Stooges were an afternoon staple on channel 38, WSBK in Boston, from time immemorial. A couple of my friends who were certifiable Stoogenuts convinced me to watch them one day. I would've been around 8 at the time. Moe and Larry were still around, because I recall reading their obits a few years later (I would've been 10 when they died). Larry's death remains a little vague in my memory though I recall reading the obit; but Moe's stands out clearly. It's as clear as if it were yesterday even though I realize (geez!) I'm talking history now - this was 30 years ago! - I'm walking down the hallway into language class and I tell my friend Mark "Moe died last night" and he says, "I know, I heard about it too." It was like a cornerstone of my goofball childhood world had vanished. As one of my friends said at the time, "Funny people aren't supposed to die."

[Dunrobin]

Dunrobin, the other programme you refer to is 'The Good Life.' Penelope Keith played the snotty neighbour.

That's it!  Thanks, Baggie - I thought you'd know the answer.   

The show was known as "Good Neighbors" here in the U.S.  Penelope Keith was great as the stuffy Margo, who could never really understand why her friends wanted out of the rat race, and was horrified at their "self-sufficient" lifestyle.. 

[metaldams]

They were simply on Sundays back in the 1980's and my Dad introduced them to me.  Simple as that, really.  I lost touch as a teenager, though I remember occasionally thinking I'd like to see them again.  At age 21, I broke up with a long time girlfriend and needed something to cheer me up.  I thought about The Three Stooges, bought some cheap 5 VHS Goodtimes set, and watched the public domain shorts non-stop.  Breaking up with her was the best thing that ever happened to me. 

Moe and Larry died three years before I was born.  Derita, on the other hand, I remember when he died.  I know I told this story before, but to the new people. I was 14 years old, and out to lunch with my father, brother, and uncle in Gettysburg, PA.  We were talking about The Three Stooges and wondering if any of them were still alive.  We came to the conclusion none were.  When we got home that night, we found out Joe Derita died that day.  Talk about a strange coincidence!

[Genius In the Lamp]

Even as a child, I've always been a fan of classic comedy, so getting into the Stooges came pretty easy for me.  My first exposure was originally on WGN-TV in the early 70s.  Then they were off the air for a few years until they resurfaced on WFLD-TV (Channel 32, now a Fox affiliate  ) after school.  That's when I really got interested in them.

Staying on a parallel course, I've also always been a fan of Britcoms.  I remember watching Monty Python, Fawlty Towers, The Two Ronnies, and/or Dave Allen At Large on Channel 11 every Sunday night at 10:00 p.m., followed by Dr. Who at 11:00 (and for one brief stretch, The Prisoner).  I also used to watch Benny Hill quite a bit after the 10:00 news on Channel 32.  One show I haven't seen in decades is The Goodies.  With the possible exception of The Young Ones, that was the strangest shows I have ever seen, which I why I'd like to see them again on TV.

[Waldo Twitchell]

It must be genetic, as my father and uncle were into the Stooges for as long as I can remember.

One of my earliest memories of television was seeing Larry in 'A-Plumbing We Will Go' poke his head up through the yard and say, "I'll find this thing or else!"

I grew up in Atlanta and watched them constantly on WTBS along with Tom and Jerry and Bugs Bunny. I also remember seeing shorts by Our Gang, and even Edgar Kennedy and Leon Errol during this time. There was also a great low-budget Japanese live-action monster show called 'Space Giants' that TBS  aired in the afternoons after school. That I would love to see again.

I started taping the shorts on Beta in the early 80s when I moved to Las Vegas, Nevada. I don't think I ever got all 190 of them, but I came close.  Most of those tapes have not aged well, and I've only recently begun acquiring them from AMC and putting them on VCD format. 

[al fadola]

I've been wondering what kind of following the Stooges have in the U.K., because we do have a few British members here. I've also wondered if their humor would travel well, because their rough-house physical comedy and Brooklynese wisecracking seems so American.

Leaving topic behind me for a moment ... The Goons and Spike Milligan are pretty much an acquired taste over here too. I love 'em, but a lot of people just give you a quizzical look if you play any of the stuff. Same as US, I imagine; here the Goons, Tony Hancock, Round the Horne and all the old Brit OTR series have their diehard fans but don't make much of an impact on the mainstream any more, other than by the way they influence new generations of comics. And of course they all partly took their inspiration from the Marx bros, Stooges &c anyway.
The success of Python is very odd too, they became more like a pop group than a comic act, everyone chanted along with the lines at live shows. Still, in the US you can buy a complete DVD set of the Python television episodes, something we can't do over here, where it was made! Python took their inspiration from Milligan, who'd got it from the Marxs / Stooges ...
Odd that things like Are You Being Served and Benny Hill are so big Stateside - they are really reviled over here (unjustly, I think, in the case of Hill, whose real value has been rather overlooked at the expense of his later rather tired act).
It was a given that US comedy "didn't travel" until Taxi and Happy Days appeared - since then the floodgates have opened. UK is as Friends mad as anywhere else (though I can't see the appeal myself). Before Taxi there was only really the tremendous Bilko (though I don't think we ever had the series set in a factory), Bewitched, The Monkees, Dick Van Dyke and The Munsters (though I remember seeing The Odd Couple in the early 70s).
I always preferred the Hanna Barbera / Looney Tunes cartoons. They had that kind of knockabout slapstick that kids of my generation went for. The nearest to home-grown Stooges we had were The Goodies, three guys who got up to all kinds of surrealistic adventures, like fighting giant kittens and living earth-movers, or travelling up a Beanstalk to meet a "giant" who was in fact really short ... Their slapstick could be very Stooge like, they were obviously an inspiration. They were on TV right through the 70s, and were old university pals of the Pythons. There's an excellent DVD out there if anyone feels like checking it out.

[goofontheroof]

i was very young - probably 4 or 5 years old. my dad introduced me to them (probably to give me something to watch to keep out of trouble!). at the time (1982-3), down here in australia, they used to be on tv at 6am. he used to tape them for me and i couldnt wait to wake up and watch the latest episode. the good thing is, alot of the shorts which are considered "rare" today were on tv back then, including Joe ones. i didnt really understand what they were saying a lot (cause i come from a non-english background).. however it was funny watching them hit eachother. i still have the 7 or 8 VHS tapes of them, inlcuding the commercials of time which are just as good.
then they re-appeared on tv in 1989, and that was it - never again on tv since. i taped a few more episodes in 89. then in the early 90s, there was the "growing up" stage when i left them behind. then only about 3 years ago, i decided to pull out these old tapes and watch them again. i then relaised what i missing all that time. now, a grown person i can appreciate the dialogues which in a lot of cases, are over the head of a 4 or 5 year old. some of the dialogues are only for adults to understand. so, recently i started buying the dvds that are available in australia and watch parts of them every couple of days.
goof on the roof has always been my favourite episode ever since i first got introduced to them in 1982. that's about it!

[garystooge]

     As a kid I used to watch them every day after school on Sally Starr's show here in Philly.  Pretty much forgot about them as a teenager, then in my 20's I married Larry Fine's niece. That's basically when I went off the deep end.

[Pilsner Panther]

     As a kid I used to watch them every day after school on Sally Starr's show here in Philly.  Pretty much forgot about them as a teenager, then in my 20's I married Larry Fine's niece. That's basically when I went off the deep end.

Well, that would do it! Was Larry still alive at the time?

[garystooge]

Well, that would do it! Was Larry still alive at the time?   

Unfortunately, no. My wife & I started dating in 1978 and he had died in 1975. In fact, acccording to my research, Larry's last trip to visit the Feinberg family on the East Coast was in December, 1968. About a year later he suffered his major stroke and never left Calif. after that.

But I got to know my wife's grandfather (Moe Feinberg), who was Larry's brother,  quite well and that gave me a good feel for what Larry must have been like. Moe's voice sounded much like Larry's, he told jokes with a Yiddish accent, did some soft-shoe dance steps, was left-handed like Larry, was quite a ham, and of course there was a family resemblance.

[kinderscenen]

Unfortunately, no. My wife & I started dating in 1978 and he had died in 1975. In fact, acccording to my research, Larry's last trip to visit the Feinberg family on the East Coast was in December, 1968. About a year later he suffered his major stroke and never left Calif. after that.

But I got to know my wife's grandfather (Moe Feinberg), who was Larry's brother,  quite well and that gave me a good feel for what Larry must have been like. Moe's voice sounded much like Larry's, he told jokes with a Yiddish accent, did some soft-shoe dance steps, was left-handed like Larry, was quite a ham, and of course there was a family resemblance.

Neat! I'd always wondered about Larry's siblings--I seem to recall that he was a bit older than Moe and Lyla. That's interesting that he didn't visit the East Coast after his stroke--I think that Moe mentioned in his book (Larry, the Stooge in the Middle) that he was afraid to fly, but visited him after his stroke.

All right, to the subject at hand:  I've always watched the Stooges, in fact, I can't think of a time in which I DIDN'T watch them.  My parents, my mother in particular, are fans--whenever Moe or Larry made an appearance on TV (this was in the 70s), she made sure to watch it. Too bad they didn't have VCRs that didn't cost an arm and a leg then!

I guess you could say my being a fan is inherited!

Sunday

[BeAStooge]

Watching the Stooges on Sally Starr's "Popeye Theater," WFIL-TV 6 Philadelphia, in the early '60s.  The Stooges were a big thing with us 1963 kindergarten-ers!  (Luckily, this was the age before grammar school psychologists... we wouldn't have stood a chance ten years later.)

Vague memories of seeing ORBIT, HERCULES and DAZE on their original theatrical releases too.  At age 6, OUTLAWS' theatrical opening was a huge event in my hometown!  Some of the later Shemp and Besser shorts were reguarly added to my hometown theater's matinee schedules thru the mid 1960s.  I also remember a double-feature matinee of the Stooge compilations LAFF HOUR (1956) and FUN-O-RAMA (1959) sometime in the mid-60s.

Sally Starr's TV show was canceled in the early 1970s, and it wasn't until 1974 that my town got cable TV, so I went about two years without the Stooges.  But cable finally gave us UHF TV access from Philadelphia (Channel 29), and I was able to see the Stooges again.

Briefly lost the Stooges in '76, when I left for VA and college.  But by my sophomore year, a Richmond station had them on every afternoon.  Big doings in the campus bar & grill and/or the frat house!

Touch and go, but with the advent of home video, by 1983 I had every Stooge short in my home library; and I've acquired close to everything else existing since then.  So I've been set with a Stooge fix for over 20 years, on demand, at my own discretion.

[Senorita Rita]

I've shared my story before, and here it is again:

It was the summer of 1996. I was preparing to enter high school, and most girls my age were getting wrapped up in the new "boy band" craze. But while most teeagers were swooning over the likes of the Backstreet Boys, I was about to discover a group of guys that were 1000 times more interesting...
 
 My eldest sister had just come home from college (permanently.) One night, I was watching TV with her, when she told me to turn to the Family Channel because "her show" was about to come on. It was, of course, "Stooge TV." Up until that point, the only thing I knew about the Three Stooges (what I had learned from television) was that they apparently said "soitanly" a lot, and that as a female, I was supposed to find them unfunny, if not totally repulsive. I didn't really know what to expect, but I knew that if my sister liked them, they couldn't be all that bad.

I was hooked almost immediately. Why hadn't I known about these guys earlier?!And why should I have found them unfunny ? My immediate family is made up of mostly women, and they were all fans...Finally, the seemingly "inside" refedrences that my mom and other relatives teded to make, and which I had previously dismissed as crazy, old-folks talk, made sense to me.  It took me a while to realize that one of the VHS cartoon collections that I watched and enjoyed as a small child was actually a collection of Three Stooges cartoons from the 60's. Overall, being a Stooge fan has had a pretty positive influence on me. They got me through some tough times, especially over the past 3 years, and my interest in learning everything about the history of the team gave  me new enthusiasm about all aspects  of Classic Hollywood.

My younger sisters also became fans, as has my young nephew (whose mother introduced us all to the Stooges back in 96  )

[wakkyjaky]

I first saw the Stooges when I was 5 or 6 in 1958 or 1959. My parents went to the drive-in to see them in a movie. I can't remember the name but it was the one where one of them got caught in a kitchen sink drain.

Then when I was about 10 or 11, in 1965 or 1966 there was a kids show in the afternoon in Los Angeles called Billy Barty and The Three Stooges. That's when I really got to see them in action. Also, in the 1970's on channel 52 that used to show a whole hour of Three Stooges in the afternoon. They showed butchered versions of the shorts. Not until I saw them on cable that I saw the untampered versions.

[siouxfan]

 I grew up watching the Three Stooges on TV everyday after school. And I still love watching the
Three Stooges, the Best of the Best!!

[rvoyttbots]

We got our first TV in 1957. I don`t know when we discovered the Stooges. The local ABC/CBS affiliate showed them at 4:30 every weekday. (We only had 2 TV stations. One NBC & the other as described).  1 & a half shorts. the other half would be shown first thing the next afternoon. I remember they were still being shown when I was in sixth grade. I think they were dropped that year. I guess they were on from 1958 to 1966 where I grew up.

[Christine McIntyre]

I grew up watching the Stooges on TV after school in the early 60s, and they also made personal appearances here in St. Louis in those days. 

Then one day I was chasing my little sister around the house shouting, "I'll murder you!"  My mother was horrified (though I didn't know what "murder" meant), and she never encouraged me to watch the Stooges after that, but I continued undaunted.