The coming of Shemp was handled much better than the advent of Joe Besser, most certainly. Columbia would have been perfectly happy to fart out new films with just Moe and Larry, plus cuts of Shemp interspersed with celluloid showcases of Joe Palma's skill at body-doubling...but Moe wouldn't have it. I suppose his own ego, combined with the ghost of Curly's medical bills and Larry always being strapped for cash, drove him to keep going...maybe he told himself, "Babe and Shemp would've wanted it this way." If Columbia had their way, here's my vision of what we'd have seen in our local theater, c. 1958:
The Three Stooges
"Dipshit Diplomats"
Open with thirty seconds of new footage of rich snobby people at a garden party. One talks to another about recently hiring a trio of paperhangers.
Stock footage of Curly and Larry wallpapering Moe into the wall from "A Bird in the Head" (Curly is replaced with judicious fake Shemping) and Shemp and Larry doing the same from "Jerks of All Trades". Then, stock footage of them bashing Moe headfirst through drywall from "Listen, Judge".
Snooty lady come in and sees the damage, then screams. Cut to the exterior of the house where the boys--played by body doubles seen from a distance--crash the garden party while hightailing it out of there. Inexplicably the rich snobs decide these three would be perfect for a diplomatic mission to Saudi Arabia no one in their right mind would take.
The diplomatic training begins with stock cuts of the dance training scene in "Hoi Polloi", with a fake Shemp replacing all Curly's scenes right up to the point where the instructor gets a fly down her cleavage and leaps out the window, Stooges following after.
Cut to the boys in Saudi Arabia, using all desert-themed stock footage: the taxi crossing the ocean scene from "We Want Our Mummy", the Santa Claus gag from "Wee Wee Monsieur", a few cuts from "Malice in the Palice and "Three Arabian Nuts", a new bridge, 20 to 30 seconds long with some goober--the Saudi dictator who's causing all the trouble (insert some bizarre Middle Eastern monicker here) and threatening the interests of those rich folks back home. He tires of the boys' foolishness and launches a missile at them. Place shot of Stooges riding missile from "Boobs In Arms" here. In the last scene the snooty rich folks, including their ex-employer, are lounging around the garden laughing at their cleverness...when three stuffed dummies (that missile's got a hell of a range, I'll tell you what, and damn precise too) crash down on them. END.
There, I just wrote a Stooges script that has not one new scene with the Stooges in it. Should I be proud or horrified with myself?