Short answer: 1961. For some reason, the station in Boston that ran the stooges almost from the beginning ( WNAC, I think, channel 7 ) ran the good Shemps for at least a year, maybe two, before the remakes and the clip-fests started showing up. The good Shemps were as funny as the Curlys, so, though we kids wondered where the Hell he came from, and what the Hell his name was ( Shep? In 1961, TV was so primitive that their names were cut off at the bottom of the opening credits - it took us a while as well to figure out that his name was Curly and not Puddinhead, or Chowderhead, or whatever ), we didn't have a problem with him, and my father, a middlin' stooge fan, told us that Shemp was Curly's replacement, so we weren't in the dark for long. It was somewhat later that the garbage started showing up, so my Shemp experience is probably the opposite of most: liked him fine to begin with, then things got worse and worse. Then came the Bessers, at which point we all said, My God, they've stopped even trying, the same reaction you all had except thirty years earlier. ( It's hard to believe the Bessers were only five or six years old when I first saw them. ) Mind you, this whole drama happened before I hit junior high. We also learned that the good Shemps have "The Three Stooges" written in script in the opening credits, and the bad ones have printing. The theme music changes too, but I think that's a little later. If you saw the printing, it was time to go do some homework.