Topic: I like joe B

[samz]

Does anybody like Joe Besser alot??? This may sound very out of the ordinary, but I thought that he was the funniest stooge.  I liked the episode  "oils well that ends well" I think that was the short. I thought the scene where Larry and Moe were trying to get him in the top bunk of the bunk beds was great!!! I understand that he was alot younger than Moe and Larry.

[shemps#1]

Are you serious?

[xraffle]

Someone I know said to me that he likes Joe Besser because he was the only stooge to stick up to Moe. How anyone can be a Joe Besser fan, I'll never know.

[Dunrobin]

Joe Besser was not a bad guy or even a bad actor, he was just a bad Stooge; his persona didn't mesh well with the Stooges.  The production quality had seriously dropped by the time he was added to the team, and between poor scripts, lousy sets, and a badly matched team, the 16 Besser shorts rank among the worst things the Stooges made.  A few are tolerable, but for the most part you're better off skipping them.

Besser was in the unenviable position of following Curly and Shemp; you'd have to have been damned good to pull that off, and Besser's style wasn't up to the challenge.   He was much better paired off with comedians like Abbott and Costello. 

[rvoyttbots]

Sure he stood up to Moe. He had it in his contract that Moe & Larry couldn`t touch him.

[metaldams]

Joe Besser was not a bad guy or even a bad actor, he was just a bad Stooge; his persona didn't mesh well with the Stooges.  The production quality had seriously dropped by the time he was added to the team, and between poor scripts, lousy sets, and a badly matched team, the 16 Besser shorts rank among the worst things the Stooges made.  A few are tolerable, but for the most part you're better off skipping them.

Besser was in the unenviable position of following Curly and Shemp; you'd have to have been damned good to pull that off, and Besser's style wasn't up to the challenge.   He was much better paired off with comedians like Abbott and Costello. 

Couldn't have said it better myself.

[xraffle]

Sure he stood up to Moe. He had it in his contract that Moe & Larry couldn`t touch him.

Impossible. I don't believe that this was in his contract. Have you seen "Flying Saucer Daffy" or "Oil's Well That Ends Well"? Joe gets picked on a lot by Moe on those shorts.

[Stooge]

Besser's contract said there had to be a limit to the amount of abuse he could take; it didn't say he couldn't take any abuse at all.

[Dunrobin]

Someone I know said to me that he likes Joe Besser because he was the only stooge to stick up to Moe. How anyone can be a Joe Besser fan, I'll never know.

The other Stooges stood up to Moe a lot; they just rarely got away with it.  One of my favorite episodes is The Sitter-Downers, where Larry dogs Moe repeatedly and he does get away with it.
 

[xraffle]

The other Stooges stood up to Moe a lot; they just rarely got away with it.  One of my favorite episodes is The Sitter-Downers, where Larry dogs Moe repeatedly and he does get away with it.
 

Exactly. Even Curly stood up to Moe and got away with it. For example, in "Three Sappy People", when Curly says to Moe that he likes to play trains, Moe tells Curly to get a toupee with some brains in it and hits Curly. Then, Curly hits Moe back and gets away with it.

[mrhoward]

Joe Brsser was funny as Stinky on The Abbott and Costello Show.   The Stooge shorts that he was in were funny because of Moe and Larry.

[wallawalla]

I'd like to be able to like Joe Besser because he was one of the Stooges. But I just can't work it up. Like Dunrobin said, JB just didn't mesh. He's like the odd man out. Same for Curly Joe DeRita.

[3Stooges]

I like the Besser stuff. I think the outer space ones are good and "A Merry Mixup" is a good short. I'd rather have the 16 Besser shorts than 16 more Shemp "Copy and Paste" remakes that they were doing at the end of Shemps tenure.

At least Besser gave some freshness to the team.

I would have also preferred Besser staring in the Stooge Feature films instead of Derita.

Detrita Sucked.

[Stoop]

I like the Besser stuff. I think the outer space ones are good and "A Merry Mixup" is a good short. I'd rather have the 16 Besser shorts than 16 more Shemp "Copy and Paste" remakes that they were doing at the end of Shemps tenure.

At least Besser gave some freshness to the team.

I would have also preferred Besser staring in the Stooge Feature films instead of Derita.

Detrita Sucked.

Well yeah between Besser and DeRita it would be Besser for me too. Although even that kind of’ makes my stomach hurt .   I say kind of because I did like one or two of his shorts, like A Merry Mixup, but that's about it really.

Different tastes for different people . . . I guess. 

[Baggie]

 I've only seen a bit of one Besser short. It was one of those two exciting horse ones.  I watched it for about 5 minutes before switching off...vomit inducing would be an understatement. I can't say that all the Besser shorts were bad, but frankly I'd rather watch paint dry than watch that piece of turd again. (I think it was 'Hoofs and Goofs,' where Besser thinks his dead sister is a horse, and as I recall, the horse talks.)     

[shemps#1]

Alright, let's put this puppy to bed once and for all.

The Besser shorts, as a whole, sucked some serious ass. There are no ifs, ands, or buts about that. No one can sit here with a straight face and say "The Besser shorts were well done" because they flat out weren't. They had pretty much the same budget as the earliest Stooges shorts, but in 1956 as opposed to 1934. Besser was not a horrible comedian, he just didn't mess with the Stooges. It was like oil and water. Sure he "gave some freshness" or whatever, but it didn't work out. You watch Sweet and Hot or either of the two horse shorts (the three worst Stooge shorts, IMO) and if you still say "I like the Besser stuff" I will call you a liar.

With that said, Besser was better than Derita. Sure Besser's persona didn't click with the Stooges, but at least he had one. Joe Derita was a fat fuck who kind of looked like Curly; that's the only reason why he even got the job. He just stood there and contributed nothing of worth to the group as a whole. The movies sucked, each and every one of them. A cardboard cutout would have done a better job than Derita did.

So in closing, I leave you with my list of Stooges from favorite to least favorite:

1. Shemp
2. Moe
3. Larry and Curly (tie)
4. The Back of Joe Palma's Head
5. Joe Besser
6. Fat Fuck Derita

[wallawalla]

4. The Back of Joe Palma's Head

BWAHAHAHA!! A darkhorse Joe beats out the two better-known ones!

Well, at least you didn't pick Joe Palma's pitiful vocal imitation of Shemp's Eeep-eeep-eeep-eeep.

[Pilsner Panther]

I've only seen a bit of one Besser short. It was one of those two exciting horse ones.  I watched it for about 5 minutes before switching off...vomit inducing would be an understatement. I can't say that all the Besser shorts were bad, but frankly I'd rather watch paint dry than watch that piece of turd again. (I think it was 'Hoofs and Goofs,' where Besser thinks his dead sister is a horse, and as I recall, the horse talks.)     

The Besser "horse" shorts are absolutely the worst crapola the  Stooges ever put on film, agreed. I do like "Outer Space Jitters," though (a guilty pleasure), because by then the budgets and the scripts were so shot to hell that nobody cared about the quality of the product any more, and that brought in a new devil-may-care kind of silliness— it's almost like Ed Wood was directing the Stooges. Besides, there's "Don" Blocker (his name is misspelled that way in the credits), the future Hoss Cartwright, as the Goon.

Check out the picture in the Filmography section, it's a hoot!

Joe B. was funniest as Stinky in the Abbott and Costello TV show. My favorite scene with him is in "Getting A Job," where Stinky tries to trick Lou into walking backwards into the street so he'll get run over by a car! When the car misses Lou by inches, Stinky says— in total Besser juvenile-type frustration— "Ooohh, ya missed him!"

 

Now, that is funny, and it's also pretty extreme, black humor for 1950's television. Lou and Joe played well off each other because they were both "grown-up little kids," in character.

Joe Derita didn't do much more than take up space, though. The best thing I can say about him is that he gave the Stooges a reason to go on working as a three-man team. An old friend of mine used to call him "the fake Curly," and that about sums it up.

 

[goofontheroof]

Living in Australia and seeing a different selection of shorts on Tv in the early 80s, i grew up with episodes that dont seem to get mentioned much and people consider as rarities.
A few of the Joe shorts were screened and i gre up with these over the last 20 years.

A Merry mix up, rusty romeos and flying saucer daffy have been some of my favourites of the whole series.

At time times, Joe's character and actions and lines can be lame but he adds a different dimention and is definately great in the episodes i've mentioned above.