Let's not forget the 1962 feature film, The Three Stooges in Orbit. Emil Sitka plays a professor who has created a special machine which is three-parts submarine, helicopter and tank. There's a scene in the film in which he's trying to decide on a name for the contraption. As he begins spouting out various word combinations, his final one is "The What-in-the-Hella. . ." As he says it, he catches himself and appears slightly embarrassed. By the 1960s, the word 'hell' didn't have quite the sting that it did back in the 1930s and '40s. That said, the films produced during the DeRita era were aimed at children, with much of the trio's cartoon violence dumbed-down. So, it does put a bit of the sting back in this piece of dialogue.
