Topic: Disorder in the Court (1936)

[IchabodSlipp]

I wonder if Rich Finegan can help me out with this one. What is the jazz tune that Moe, Larry and Curly perform? The tune is also used at the end of Radio Dough (1934) with George Sidney and Charlie Murray.

[ThumpTheShoes]

I wonder if Rich Finegan can help me out with this one. What is the jazz tune that Moe, Larry and Curly perform? The tune is also used at the end of Radio Dough (1934) with George Sidney and Charlie Murray.

"Push 'Em up" composed by Howard Jackson. Wasn't that in Reefer Madness, too?

[IchabodSlipp]

"Push 'Em up" composed by Howard Jackson. Wasn't that in Reefer Madness, too?

Yes! I remember it, I wish I could find a full recording of the tune. Thank you very much, ThumpTheSoles!

[Paul Pain]

The greatest stooge short ever.

[Allen Champion]

The swearing in of Curly/Take Off Your Hat scene is lifted almost verbatim from the Buster Keaton feature SIDEWALKS OF NEW YORK, directed by Jules White!

(N'yah!  That info was already included in the filmography section!  That's what I get for being a wiseguy!)  

[vomit]

Probably the finest Curly short.  When Larry gets up and yowls, and Moe says: "You're in a courtroom not Clancy's poolroom!" I Laugh every time.

9.2/10

[BeatleShemp]

It can be safe to say that this is probably the first Curly short everyone has seen just because of the public domain factor.  It was definitely mine.  And I share Metaldams' assessment.  This short holds a special place in my heart because I was 4 years old, and it was my introduction to the Three Stooges.  My life was forever changed.  And what a classic.  Everything is great in this short.  So many great moments in this short, and I have to say my favorite bit after all these years, my favorite bit has to be in that bit with the toupee where Moe grabs the bailiff's gun and unloads the whole gun into the toupee.  The letter press bit and Larry's Tarzan yell are the other two favorites in this short.

[metaldams]

Watch this video, compares Curly and Keaton doing the same gag.

Also, for discussion on the Keaton film this is from, SIDEWALKS OF NEW YORK, click the link below.

http://moronika.com/forums/index.php/topic,5927.0.html

[Big Chief Apumtagribonitz]

Curly

[Umbrella Sam]

Really no contest. This material was way better suited for Curly.

I also want to add that, because of this short’s public domain status, this might be the most known Three Stooges routine among younger fans. The few Stooge fans I know usually tend to quote this routine.

[Shemp_Diesel]

Might be obvious to say something obvious in favor of Curly, since I only find Keaton funny when he's posing in a picture with Karloff for celebrity baseball. Beyond that, I'll pipe down & whistle something...

[Freddie Sanborn]

However, if you want to compare trying-on-a-new-hat scenes, the honors go to Keaton.

3 Dumb Clucks: https://youtu.be/7bqkZiLVRDs
Steamboat Bill, Jr.: https://youtu.be/QpBpJKtOhRY

[metaldams]

However, if you want to compare trying-on-a-new-hat scenes, the honors go to Keaton.

3 Dumb Clucks: https://youtu.be/7bqkZiLVRDs
Steamboat Bill, Jr.: https://youtu.be/QpBpJKtOhRY

If you go to the actual YouTube page and read the comments section, I made the same observation.  Agree 100%.

[Dr. Mabuse]

The quintessential Stooge two-reeler, "Disorder in the Court" has everything going for it. Moe, Larry and Curly shine in equal measure, with the Columbia stock company in splendid form. Jack White's best directorial effort and the only Curly short that unfolds in real time (no dissolves or wipes necessary). After years of variable public domain dupes, the print quality on the Sony DVD is truly outstanding. My personal favorite.

10/10

[cartoonrenewalstudios]

I remastered it, upscaled to 1080 HD and COLORIZED

[Paul Pain]

Just here to say that I watched this one again last week... because I can and because it had been too long since I had last seen it.

[I. Cheatam]

I seem to be out of tune with the chorus of praise sung for this short, as I would place it only in the middle of the pack of Curly shorts.

This is a rare instance—rare at least among the shorts with Curly—of a Stooge short that does not conform to the profound observation of the great Stooge commentator Homer Simpson: "Moe is their leader!" It seems to me that Moe is much less of a leader in this short than in most others and that he does not set the direction of the action as much as Curly does. Moe takes the lead when he grabs the court officer's revolver and shoots the court clerk's toupee, and again later when, despite not having been sworn in as a witness, he takes over from Curly the job of narrating and re-enacting events, putting Curly's "coconut" into the letter press and compressing it.

But it is Curly who first takes the most prominent role as witness and then shows uncharacteristic initiative by proposing to re-enact the events about which he has been called to testify. Most of the bits that seem to me funniest center on him: the attempt of the clerk (James Morton, soon to reappear in A Pain in the Pullman in one of his most memorable Stooge roles as "Paul Payne, heartthrob of millions") and the judge to swear him in, the attempts of the defense attorney and the judge to get him to "address this court as 'your honor,'" his turn in the printing press (particularly his needing a conk on the head from Moe to get his jaw closed again), his disastrous handling of the supposedly unloaded revolver, which fires repeatedly, removing again the toupee of the luckless court clerk, and his attempt to subdue the escaped parrot, first with a hammer, which he applies to each of the heads of the jurors in turn, and then with a fire hose.

Moe has a funny turn as a human barrel organ and Larry has his moment of triumph in which he yells like Tarzan, which, as several people have remarked, is noteworthy enough just for how bizarre and out-of-character it is. But Curly is both the center of comic energy and the generator of most of the action in this short.

I don't expect much in the way of plot in a Stooge short, but for some reason the implausibilities in this particular one have always seemed to me grave enough to spoil much of it. A parrot has been brought into the courtroom for no good reason that I can see, but simply as a setup for a contrived plot device in which the parrot squawks "Find the letter!" and then, after some hijinks, the Stooges find a note attached to its leg in which a certain Buck Wing confesses to the murder. Are we supposed to believe that the murderer, after killing Kirk Robin (the name is a play on an old nursery rhyme, "Who killed Cock Robin?"), took the time to train the parrot to repeat the phrase, or that the parrot just formed the words spontaneously? Even more bothersome is the supposition that a murderer would have written a confession in the first place. Why would he do that? And having done it, why would he attach the confession to the parrot's leg? I don't find these arrangements credible even in the way in which I find, say, bullets that bounce off people's posteriors credible as parts of the Stooge universe. They are not funny but merely lame.

One of the attractions of a courtroom as the setting for a movie or a play, whether comical or serious, is that it imposes rigorous forms and procedures within which the action must unfold. In the case of the Stooges, the very nature of courtroom procedure is the antithesis of everything that they stand for: disrespect for authority and for hierarchy of every kind, lack of seriousness, and an incapacity for self-restraint. Thus, the title of the short nicely encapsulates its comic program: the Stooges in a court of law cannot fail to produce the very opposite of the conventionally commanded "order in the court," namely disorder in the court. This program seems to me well carried out in the initial business with getting Curly on the stand and taking his testimony, and later when the shooting starts and the parrot gets loose. But the business of the dance act, however diverting at may have been to audiences in 1936, is tedious to me and in any case is certainly superfluous to the comic action, which concerns the Stooges and their unlucky victims alone.

One feature of this short that lingers in my impression of it as a curiosity is the performance of Edward LeSaint as the judge. I had to look up the page for the movie to learn his name, and I was abashed to discover that he is the same actor who appeared in Half Shot Shooters as Major Smith, the officer who tries to question the Stooges after they have been deafened. It has always seemed to me that as the judge in this short he is in a certain sense too life-like: not in the good sense of being a convincing actor but in the bad sense of coming across as if he were a real judge trying his hand at movie acting. All the other courtroom players--those playing the clerk, the two attorneys (Stooge worthies Harry Semels and Bud Jamison), the court officer, even the members of the jury--seem to "get it" as far as playing broad comedy is concerned; but LeSaint, it seems to me, does not. To me, the judge, rather than appearing as a foil for the anarchic comedy of the Stooges (as does Vernon Dent later on), seems simply to belong in a different movie.

I'm sorry that I've written at such length, as I fear that people won't want to read such long comments. But once I get started with an idea about a Stooge short, I feel the need to work it out as clearly as I can! 

I think the judge character was handled wrong, he just seems too patient throughout the short, but you can tell he starts to get short-tempered near the end as he gets fed up with their antics.

[mikesointly21]

I found this old movie on YouTube from 1935 called “Rip Roaring Riley”, and I believe the opening title sequence uses the same song that the Stooges play in the courtroom. Based on this discussion, I see that the song is called "Push 'Em Up" by Howard Jackson. If anyone else is able to watch this movie, maybe they confirm if it’s the same song. It has slight variations, but it sounds very close to Push Em Up.

[Count Jerome “Curley” von Gehrol]

As someone who has background in paralegal studies, this short is a favorite of mine. It kind of makes me think of a prototype for My Cousin Vinny (which to a degree can be written as how to not act as a lawyer). The first time I saw it was on a dvd called The Three Stooges in Color. You could practically use this as an example of how not to act in a courtroom. I truly wish they had done a short where the Stooges worked as attorneys (Dewey, Cheatem and Howe). Funny enough, I have a necktie that has that exact publicity picture printed on it complete with the sign that says Dewey, Cheatem and Howe in the background.

[Big Chief Apumtagribonitz]

As I've written before, the Three Stooges were never lawyers named Dewey, Cheatem and Howe, nor was such a law firm ever mentioned in a Stooges picture.  AFAIK, the first mention of DC&H was by Click and Clack the Tappet Brothers on NPR's Car Talk, although I wouldn't be surprised to hear that the name went back farther than that.  DC&H also doesn't fit the Stooges, since that name would position them as the aggressors, like G Y Prince & R O Broad, and not as their usual role as the victims, the patsies.  This name has been misplaced on the Three Stooges for a long time now, so of course this post will get no traction and have no effect at all.

[NoahYoung]

Wasn't CAR TALK the show that had Peekop Andropov, the cab driver?
 

DISORDER has the "distinction" of being one of the 4 Stooges shorts in the PD that every video company known to man issued on budget releases with titles like "The Best of the 3 Stooges." There are also countless VHS tapes and DVDs that have documentaries and overviews of the Stooges careers, showing endless clips from those 4 shorts.

I always found this to be a somewhat atypical Stooges short. It has never been one of my favorites, though I don't think it is a bad short by any means. I'm curious what I'd think about it if it wasn't so ubiquitous back in the 80s on TV and in the video stores.