Topic: "Do you smell rubbish burning?"

[Senorita Rita]

"Smells like somebody's frying oninons."

One of the funniest exchanges heard/seen in a stooges short, in my opinion. 

 I the only one here who absolutely loves, loves, LOVES "Three Little Sew and Sews?" Everything about the short is hilarious! And I never see it on TV. 


edit: this should probably be in the reviews section...but oh, well. 

[Pilsner Panther]

"Smells like somebody's frying oninons."

One of the funniest exchanges heard/seen in a stooges short, in my opinion. 

 I the only one here who absolutely loves, loves, LOVES "Three Little Sew and Sews?" Everything about the short is hilarious! And I never see it on TV. 


edit: this should probably be in the reviews section...but oh, well. 

"Soitenly," Curly was really on for this one! There are so many great moments in it: the "kicking an officer" routine, Curly's pantomime in front of the jail window, his battle with the cocktail table (which looks like it's fighting back, somehow), dodging the artillery shells... I could go on and on.

"Don't tailor sound like sailor?"

A question once came up on this board as to whether the Stooges would have been funny in silent comedies— I think Curly proves here that at least he would have; the cocktail table bit reminds me of Buster Keaton's struggles with those inanimate objects that always seem to have it in for him.

 

[Hammond Eggar]

You do have a great point about the Stooges, and especially Curly, being able to have been succesful in silent films.  I agree that they still would have been funny, even without sound.  Imagine a routine such as Curly's oyster/cracker battle in "Dutiful But Dumb."  I think that still would have been funny in a silent film.  There are other routines that also would work in the silent format.  The Stooges were physical comedians, and that type of humor usually translate well, with or without sound.

[Pilsner Panther]

Hammond, the "oyster stew" routine was in a silent comedy: "Wandering Willies," (1926), directed by— you'll never guess— Del Lord. The film stars Andy Clyde and Billy Bevan as a couple of hoboes trying to cadge a meal, by hook or by crook (ahem). They're sort of "Mutt and Jeff" characters: a tall scruffy guy and a short scruffy guy, and both of them up to no good.

 

Eventually, they find themselves in a fancy restaurant, where Billy Bevan gets into a battle with the oyster in his stew. This is probably the first-ever appearance of this gag, at least on film. Abbott & Costello performed it even later than the Stooges, but nobody made it as fall-down funny as Curly did: his crazy hat with the tassels, his spinning around on the restaurant counter stool, and his totally frustrated expressions. Finally, he pulls out his revolver and lets the oyster have it..!

 

It may have been Del's idea originally, or even an old stage bit from even before he was around, but there's no doubt that Curly owns it.

 

[wallawalla]

I've always wanted to have a hat like Curly wore when fighting that oyster stew. It's truly unique.

Now, I have no idea where I could wear such a thing, but I'll worry about that after I get one!

[Pilsner Panther]

I've always wanted to have a hat like Curly wore when fighting that oyster stew. It's truly unique.

Now, I have no idea where I could wear such a thing, but I'll worry about that after I get one!

Well of course, you wear it when you go to a seafood restaurant to have oyster stew. Do I have to explain everything around here?

 

And don't forget your six-shooter, either!

I just realized that almost no one under 35 or 40 will know who Mutt and Jeff were, so here's an illustration.





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[Baggie]

 The Mutt and Jeff pic looks really funny actually. (And I had never heard of em').
 
 I think Three Little Sew And Sews is great. It was one of the first shorts I owned when I started collecting, but I haven't watched it in ages so I might have to give it a look.

by hook or by crook

Haha, it's a little off topic but that reminds me of a Marx Brothers joke I heard recently...

GROUCHO: (To Chico) We have to get him in here by hook or by crook...since we don't have a hook around you'll have to get him in.

[Pilsner Panther]

The Mutt and Jeff pic looks really funny actually. (And I had never heard of em').
 

Aha! I was right! You know what (sad to say), I was talking about comedy to a 22-year-old woman that I work with, and she'd never heard of Laurel & Hardy! I directed her to:

www.laurelandhardycentral.com

And I'll complete her education by showing her "The Music Box," or maybe "Helpmates." 

Getting back to Mutt and Jeff, comic strips were huge in the early 20th century, before there was TV or even radio. Thousands of people eagerly followed the adventures of Mutt and Jeff, Barney Google, The Gumps, The Katzenjammer Kids, The Toonerville Folks, Popeye, and my personal favorite, Krazy Kat. There was such a rivalry between newspaper publishers Hearst and Pulitzer to get the top cartoonists that they hired them away from each another whenever they could (with major raises), and there were actually two Katzenjammer Kids strips running at once in the two competing newspaper chains. The copycat one was called "The Captain and the Kids," and it featured exactly the same characters as the original! That, of course, was before the U.S. copyright laws were tightened up.

You look at the comics page today, and for the most part, it's a sad sight. Not only are most of the strips not funny, but a lot of the "artists" can't draw worth a damn. The golden age of comic strips was a long, long time ago, and I don't think it's coming back.

 


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[FineBari3]

I've always wanted to have a hat like Curly wore when fighting that oyster stew. It's truly unique.

Now, I have no idea where I could wear such a thing, but I'll worry about that after I get one!

My mom had some throw pillows with tassels on them when I was a kid. I took one end and and folded it inside, and I had a hat like Curly's!!! 

That pillow also doubled as the hat the footmen wore in Charles and Di's wedding. (like a pirate captain's hat with tassels).

[kinderscenen]

Aha! I was right! You know what (sad to say), I was talking about comedy to a 22-year-old woman that I work with, and she'd never heard of Laurel & Hardy!

Until recently, I would've thought that something like that was impossible. While you might not know who they were by name, I thought that you'd recognize them by their clothes.  Then I ran into someone who heard the name "Lennon" (in context with Russia) and somehow thought we were talking about the Beatles, and another that
had no idea who Elvis was (even when shown a picture).

The first, I could (sort of) understand...nah, I can't. But the second? Even now there's usually a "Fat Elvis" joke at least semi-regularly on cartoons, or some other program. What's next? Someone sees those 3 famous hair cuts and wonders what's a Stooge?

Sunday

[goofontheroof]

The highlight of this short is the sound the spring makes when it wallops Curly in the arse 

[Jimmie Adams]

"You look at the comics page today, and for the most part, it's a sad sight. Not only are most of the strips not funny, but a lot of the "artists" can't draw worth a damn. The golden age of comic strips was a long, long time ago, and I don't think it's coming back."
-Pilsner Panther

Also the comic panels have been reduced to the size of postage stamps.  Oh the pain of being born a hundred years to late.

I was also interested in Pils' co-worker's observations about classic comedy.  BLASPHEMY ALERT!!!  I like Laurel & Hardy more than the Stooges.  Yet when I show an L&H print and a Stooge print at the same showing, the Stooges always get the most laughs.  The most consistent Stooges live audience laugh getter(in my experiences) is I"M A MONKEY'S UNCLE.  It's like the time when I was at the first Slapsticon and one segment showed a silent short by Keaton, Lloyd, Hamilton and Billy Dooley and Dooley got the most laughs.

An unrelated observation:

Last year I was showing the Stooge short OILY TO BED. OILY TO RISE to some vacation bible school classes.  These kids were no older than ten.  Then comes the scene when the Stooges are walking down the road at the begining.
Kid 1:  Why don't they use their cell phone to get someone to pick them up?
Kid 2:  Because they're STOOGES!

[Pilsner Panther]

It's okay to like Laurel & Hardy better than the Stooges, Jimmie... it's almost a toss-up for me between them, the Stooges, and Buster Keaton (with the Marx Brothers, W.C. Fields, and Harold Lloyd just half a notch below).

You're getting into a vague area here— comedy theory, or, what makes people laugh, anyway? It's extremely subjective, and has to do with one's basic world-view, I think. Me, I think of this life as being uncertain and hazardous in the extreme, so I like slapstick at its most extreme physically. "They Stooge To Conga" is near the top of my list of favorite Stooges shorts, along with "False Alarms" and "Goof on the Roof." I also like Keaton because he seems to have been borderline nuts, doing those literally death-defying stunts of his without using a stunt double. One of the reasons his career went downhill after 1929 is because when he signed with MGM, they wouldn't let him do his own stunts any more, for insurance reasons; obviously, that took a lot of the wind out of his sails.

Then there are the MGM Tex Avery cartoons, which I absolutely howl at (the best ones, anyway), but I don't suppose that something like "What's Buzzin' Buzzard?" is going to be to everybody's taste. Reportedly, Fred Quimby, MGM's cartoon producer, couldn't watch it without getting nauseous. I wouldn't recommend showing it to your vacation Bible school kids (or any of the "Red Hot Riding Hoods," either). But what is it about, really? "Nature red in tooth and claw;" animals need to eat, that's all. That's the whole premise of the cartoon.

All the way at the other end of the scale for me is "talky" comedy. When I was a kid back in the 70's and living at home, my mother's two favorite TV sitcoms were the Mary Tyler Moore and Bob Newhart shows. I couldn't stand either one of those shows; they were just a lot of yack-yack-yack to me, but of course today many people consider them to be classic television. Maybe if Mary had pied Rhoda once in a while, or squirted Mr. Grant with a bottle of seltzer when he gave her a hard time...

My mother didn't like it that I referred to them as "Bob Heartburn" and "Mary Tyler Bore," either.