This is what I like about the lower budget Shemp stuff, just the boys in a room being themselves.
Stooges gonna stooge.
There are two main genres of opening in the Stooge shorts: one starts out with the boys a-stooging; the other starts out with some non-Stooges talking about something or other, in the course of doing which one of them mentions "three new men" or "three saps downstairs" or something of the sort. This short, of course, takes the second route. I have to say that I prefer it, as it elevates expectations by delaying the gratification seeing the Stooges at work and sets them into relief against the background of normal human life.
And off they go, applying hammers to each other's or their own heads (it has always been disappointing to me that Shemp demonstrates how Moe hit him by hitting himself rather than Moe), doing the old magic hand-wave (Larry on Moe) and "See dat?" ritual (Moe on Larry), and, mysteriously, when mimicking a fish, expelling huge quantities of water from their mouths (Shemp). Does anyone notice that when Moe returns from the kitchen to pick Shemp up off the floor, he has a fishing rod, in addition to the boat hook? He throws the rod down immediately, so it doesn't get used for anything. You have to wonder why it is there at all. It is possible that the original plan was that Moe would use the rod and line to "catch" Shemp, and then pull him up with the hook, but if this was abandoned as impracticable, it is strange that the rod was not simply left out of the action altogether.
Watching the boys shave each other more or less blindly with straight razors causes me a lot of uneasiness. Of course the actors can't be using real razors, but isn't that blood that is showing on Shemp's upper left cheek by the time they're done? The big puzzler for me, though, is how Shemp gets steaming hot towels out of the refrigerator.
After a bungled do-si-do that is resolved by Moe giving Shemp and Larry a two-in-one slap, it's time to make breakfast. The boys now have an apartment with a kitchen, but they cook breakfast on top of a dresser, in which they keep the lard and the "cackle food" (Shemp) or "hen fruit" (Moe), which Moe prepares in the coffee grinder (ugh!).
I believe that some footage was edited out of the beginning of the next scene. The film dissolves from Moe cooking eggs on the dresser to the three boys standing before Mary in her apartment, but if you look at Larry at that point, you can see him grimace and touch his brow as if he has just received a slap or a conk from Moe. Alas, a bit of Stooge violence is lost to us forever!
The encounter with Vernon Dent (looking more cubical than ever in a double-breasted suit) may be Shemp's finest moment in this short, his stumbling on his first line notwithstanding. Dent seems to know exactly how to deal with Stooges almost from the get-go: though impassive in the face of Shemp's first attack, he responds to Larry's by driving him off with a poke in the eyes. Of course, Moe is the prudent one here, drawing the impetuous attackers off the man who is in a position to give Mary her money, but he must initially be mesmerized (heh heh) by Shemp's foot- and hand-work in his second assault ("I'll just—shoot one that way!"), as he lets it continue until Dent brings the business to an end by crushing Shemp's foot under his.
(More later.)
