It feels like I’m reviewing a Three Stooges short again. While about five or six minutes longer than the average short and filmed in front of a live audience in one day (10/12/1949), material wise and in spirit, this is as close as we’re getting to a short without actually being one. JERKS OF ALL TRADES is an excellent and highly entertaining TV Pilot that never got off the ground because sadly, Columbia deemed it competition to the two reelers and threatened legal action. Between watching this and some of those Edward Bernds directed Bowery Boys films, I am convinced now more than ever The Three Stooges should have left Columbia in either the late forties or early fifties on an artistic level. I can’t speak financially, but artistically, it is clear the boys had other avenues where they could have performed and probably to more satisfying results.
A lot of this material feels very much like it belongs in a Columbia short. We have the boys as wall paper hangers and painters providing services to snobby people, we have the old warhorse of file cabinet routine, we have the Texas gag, we have Larry trying to escape in his “black banana” outfit similar to the filmed before but released after THREE HAMS ON RYE. We also get a few gags that do not show up in Columbia shorts. The gag where they do a striptease of the painting on the wall of the young girl, peeling off the layers of the painting, revealing less clothing each time until when you think she’s going to be naked a witches faces and boxing gloves pop out is quite funny and a bit risqué for the Columbia shorts. Maybe that gag would have fit in in the early sixties Derita features, where the occasional dirty old man gag shows up. Then there’s the great salesman bit where the poor guy, obviously bound by a sales script, has to start over from scratch because The Three Stooges keep interrupting him. A gag that works very well, is milked brilliantly and has a nice twist ending. Pretty much everything here is funny stuff.
As far as the performances, everybody does well here. This is live in front of an audience and as far as I can tell, I do not detect a line flub of any kind, showing how well rehearsed and professional The Three Stooges and the rest of the cast are. There is a different kind of energy involved hearing live audience laughter. As far as the slaps go, there are no sound effects so there is a tad more realism involved. I notice Emil Sitka’s slaps seem just a tad harder than when Moe slaps the other Stooges, but all in all, there is a good balance overall between making it look real and protecting who is being slapped, kind of like professional wrestling in that sense.
Oh yes, there’s the supporting cast. Speaks well of The Three Stooges relationship with Emil Sitka and Symona Boniface that they would join the boys for a production outside of Columbia. Both are excellent here, Sitka in ill tempered mode and Symona as the snooty housewife - SURELY you know who Whistler is! A pleasure watching both and this is definitely Symona’s last Stooge performance and almost last ever. She did appear in one Columbia serial released shortly after her death which I have no idea what the production dates are, but JERKS OF ALL TRADES was filmed eleven months before she passed, so a farewell to one of the greats of Stoogedom. Dink Trout, a man who never appeared with the boys at Columbia, plays the salesman and does a fine job here - he’d pass away from cancer a mere five months later.
So yes, JERKS OF ALL TRADES is a very entertaining piece of Stooge history that makes one wonder what might of been. If you look at the door at the end of the pilot, they had several different occupations listed so I imagine there were no shortage of ideas. Also, to show we’re in TV land, Shemp gets the sponsor’s name plastered on his backside.
