Topic: What were the original films that played the Three Stooges shorts?

[Final Shemp]

I was on Wikipedia and I came across the articles for Spooks and Pardon My Backfire, which were paired up with the westerns Fort Ti and the Stranger Wore a Gun, respectively.

It sparked up an old curiosity of mine as to what films the Three Stooges originally had their first runs with.  I remember hearing that they were paired up with a lot of B-pictures to increase ticket sales on Columbia's lesser effort.  Any concrete info on which films ran with which short?

[archiezappa]

I've often wondered that, myself.  What originally played with The Three Stooges in their original theatrical presentation offers a lot of curiosity to me.  It would be good to know, so that we could, in theory, replicate the original theatrical presentation in our living rooms.  I also wondered if their shorts ran with some of the feature films they appeared in.  Like, if "Men In Black" played with "The Captain Hates The Sea," for instance.  I don't know if those two films played together, but it would make sense to me if they did.

[Blystone]

Once, somewhere, I saw a picture of a theater marquee taken in the 30's or 40's, where the Stooges got top billing over the Bette Davis feature! I wish I could find it again to post here, but I wouldn't know where to look. If Bette Davis had seen that, she probably would have had a heart attack.



Of course, back then there were a lot of people who'd buy a ticket just to see the comedy shorts, the cartoons, and the newsreels, and not stay for the feature. So the billing isn't that surprising.

[metaldams]

Once, somewhere, I saw a picture of a theater marquee taken in the 30's or 40's, where the Stooges got top billing over the Bette Davis feature!

A PLUMBING WE WILL GO is much funnier than NOW, VOYAGER.  There, I said it!

[Hammond Eggar]

This is a 1934 photo of the Spreckels Theater in San Diego.  The marquee proves that a Stooges short was, indeed, screened alongside a Stooge-related feature, in this case Captain Hates the Sea.  I wonder which short was screened?

[Dunrobin]

It might have been Men in Black, which was released less than a month before The Captain Hates the Sea.  That's just my guess, though.

[Blystone]

A PLUMBING WE WILL GO is much funnier than NOW, VOYAGER.  There, I said it!

True, but no Stooges short ever had one of those lush, sweeping musical scores by Max Steiner. Harry Cohn was too cheap to hire him, I guess...

[Hammond Eggar]

Here's what I'm wondering now.  Were the Stooges shorts only run alongside Columbia features, or were they paired up with films from other companies, too?

[archiezappa]

I don't think they were coupled with features from other studios.  Columbia relied on The Three Stooges being paired with their B-Movies.  And I read something about the whole "block booking" thing going on with theatres back then.  Not sure what all that entails.