One of my favorite actions in the Stooge shorts happens when one of the subordinate Stooges retaliates against Moe physically. Of course, in every short, they inflict all sorts of violence and indignity on him by accident--dropping things on his foot, poking him in the eye with a broom handle, and so on. What I am talking about are the moments in which Curly or Shemp or Larry quite wittingly and intentionally gives Moe a good punch or slap in the face, kick in the pants, conk on the head, or other act of violence. (Waving a hand in the air in front of him and causing him to look sharply downward does not count--unless it is preparatory to a conk on the head or the like.)
I have been entertaining the idea of putting together a video collection of such moments, but before I embark on such a project, I would like to solicit items for inclusion from my learned fellow members of this forum.
Please name the short and give some specific information about the act of violence. To get us started, I provide a few items that I have thought of:
(1) In
Three Sappy People, in response to getting his nose tweaked by Moe, Curly raises Moe's bangs with one hand and gives him a resounding conk on the forehead with the other. For some reason, this is my favorite revenge-on-Moe moment! Perhaps because it is the only one that comes from Curly, so far as I can recall.
(2) Early in
Gypped in the Penthouse, Larry completely clobbers Moe (
farblonjets him, as he might have said
), with a stiff-armed conk in the forehead, a punch in the belly, a slap on the back of the head, a pulling of his coat over his head, and finally a prone kick in the backside with both feet. Near the end of the short, a fight breaks out among the three, in which bystander Emil Sitka gets the worst and Shemp the next worst, but ultimately Larry conks Moe on the head with a bottle and sends him reeling into a wall, where a fish bowl falls on his head.
(3) In
Cuckoo on a Choo-Choo, when Moe tries to give the old fist-to-chin, knee-to-elbow kick-in-the-sole-of-the-foot punishment (one of my favorite rituals of Stooge punishment!
) to Shemp a second time, Shemp preempts the final blow by kicking Moe's foot first.
(4) In
He Cooked His Goose, Larry uses physical demonstration to instruct Moe in what to do to the guy who is supposedly cheating with his wife when he catches him, slapping him, poking him in the eye, and kicking him in the behind. Later in the short, Shemp gives Moe a faceful of soot with a bellows (only borderline violence, but I thought it should be mentioned) and then a door in the face.
Others?