I was lucky enough to have TWO introductions to the Stooges: [circa] 1970 and again in 1978. Let me explain.....
My earliest memories of the Stooges were seeing them at age 5-6 on Pittsburgh's WTAE. I looked forward to watching them every morning before heading off to Kindergarten and first grade [the Stooges were already such an influence that for my Kindergarten class pic, I quickly combed my hair down towards my eyes so I could look like Moe!]. As everyone here knows, WTAE and Paul Shannon played a big role in the Stooges' "comeback" in the late '50's by being one of the first stations to play the Columbia Shorts. I'm assuming that they played them continuously through the '60's, but by 1971 their run on WTAE was about to come to an end, and in fact the Stooges wouldn't appear on a Pittsburgh TV station again until the end of the decade. Before that dry spell, however, I was lucky enough to get a decent amount of exposure to the shorts. Although most of my memories would eventually fade over time, even at such a young age, I was able to permanently retain certain scenes throughout the rest of my childhood. Some of the things I remember from back then:
I distinctly remember running from the room in terror when IDLE ROOMERS would come on, because I was scared to death of the Wolfman character. Obviously I couldn't read then, and didn't know the title of the film, but I knew when I saw the film with the elevator and its "pointy arrow dial", that meant the wolfman was coming on soon and it was time to leave the room!
I also remember my favorite scene from back then: I would absolutely squeal in delight when I'd hear "Give me dat fillum!", and would laugh hysterically. I can also remember wondering why sometime the scene would be real long [with Shemp's "Nyah-Nyah's" and lots of running between the crates], and sometimes the scene would be short, which was always a letdown [I obviously had no awareness of the "remakes" back then].
I have no recollection of Joe Besser, but I must have seen some of his shorts because I can remember certain films where Moe had his hair combed back. It boggles my mind now to think that when I was originally watching these most recent films [the Besser ones], they were just over ten years old!
And then one day, without warning, the Stooges were gone from the local airwaves, and for the rest of the '70's, all I had were my memories. During this period, I can remember my dad giving me some "history" on them, such as that there were "two Curlys" and the first one was dead, and that Larry had died just a few years back [actually, when he told me this "fact", Larry and Moe were both still alive, unbeknownst to me at the time]. A few years later, the Saturday morning ROBONIC STOOGES cartoon premiered, and as proof of how starved I was for the Stooges at this point, just let me say that I actually was entertained by this show! Seven years had passed since I had seen the Stooges "in the flesh", however, and while seven years is a blink of an eye now, when you're thirteen, seven years was an eternity. I was beginning to wonder if I'd ever see the "real" Stooges ever again.....
Then came the magical year 1978: A local UHF channel, WPTT, went on the air, and it was through Channel 22 that I was to discover, for the first time, I LOVE LUCY [unbelievably, I Love Lucy was something else that was missing from Pittsburgh TV for the whole decade], PERRY MASON, OZZIE AND HARRIET, DENNIS THE MENACE, the Max Fleischer [and later Famous Studios] Popeye cartoons, THE DEFENDERS, THE OUTER LIMITS, THE KING AND ODIE, THE MOTHERS-IN-LAW...... and also to re-discover the Stooges! At this point, WPTT wasn't carried on our cable system, so I had to go down to my basement and watch on a tiny rabbit-eared black and white set. Also, as Mar-Jean already pointed out, WPTT was prone to "technical difficulties" [I remember one morning watching Gilligan's Island where the image was upside-down and the film and audio were running backwards!!!]. Nevertheless, this ultra-high-frequency, ultra-low-budget station was responsible for forging some of my lifelong passions, with the Stooges leading the way...
I watched the shorts every chance I got and upon reading the barely-visible copyright dates, was astonished to discover that the earliest "Curly's" went as far back as the mid-1930's and the "Joe's" were still going in the late '50's- unbelievable. In 9th grade, my buddy would come down to my homeroom before school started for the day and we's discuss that morning's Stooges flick. We'd also ponder what happened to Curly on mornings when they'd show one of those mysterious films where "his voice had changed" and he wasn't as funny.
A year later, my cable company started carrying Cleveland's WUAB, and to my amazement, I got to see a few dozen MORE Stooges shorts that hadn't been shown on WPTT. To this day when I watch such shorts as RESTLESS KNIGHTS, MOVIE MANIACS, and BLUNDER BOYS, it reminds me of Saturdays at Noon watching "Superhost" AKA Marty Sullivan on channel 43.
The Stooges were back in my life, and this time there would be no disappearance. The floodgates opened in the 1980's, and the following three decades would include the purchase of Moe Howard's book [and all the ones that followed], Stooge fests [including one at the Holiday House in 1983 which featured a return appearance of the retired Paul Shannon] the $10 purchase of a Moe cancelled check at one of the fests, the purchase of a VCR and the recording of almost all the shorts from TBS, the discovery of the Healy MGM shorts and features, the Fan Club, the amazing DVD sets, and this message board. The Stoogeum is next!
Sorry for the length of this, but I think I wrote it as much for myself as for everyone else!
