Topic: Remakes, Reworking and Recyclings

[AxelGripp]

I’ve sort of been killing myself trying to figure out exactly which shorts are the “recycled shorts”. I’m also going back and forth with myself on weather remakes with little no stock footage count among these.

Like, I know shorts like Musty Musketeers, Fling in the Ring and Rusty Romeos fit into this category, but what about shorts like Vagabond Loafers, Half-Wits Holiday or Up in Daisy’s Penthouse?

Also, there are a few shorts that I’m not sure how much the stock footage takes up, like Loose Loot, or Fifi Blows her top.

Also, I keep wondering if there’s a real difference between reworking and remakes

It’s just that I’ve started watching them again after quite a long time, and I kind of need to get this straight in my head before I proceed further

I’ve been watching through custom YouTube playlists I’ve put together from Three Stooges+ where I put multiple copies of certain categories of videos in to manipulate the probability. For example, Curly shorts are multiplied by a certain amount, Shemp shorts are multiplied by a slightly smaller amount, and Joe shorts are multiplied by a very small amount. As for the remakes, I only have one each of them.

So when I shuffle, there’s a 2/3 probability I’ll get a Curly short, 3/10 chance of a Shemp Short, 3/100 chance of a Joe short. Including remakes.

Previously, I’ve been going on the assumption that there are 155 original shorts and 35 recycled shorts.

Curly:96
Shemp: 50
Joe: 9
Remakes: 35

Now I’m considering there might be 162 “real” shorts and 28 recycled shorts.

Curly: 97
Shemp: 55
Joe: 10
Remakes: 28

[Dunrobin]

Check out the Stooges Remakes page.  It lists the 33 original shorts that had one or more remakes later on.  Here are the footnotes from that page, explaining the breakdown:

Notes:

    2-4: Original is with Curly, Remake is with Shemp
    6-25: Original and Remake are both with Shemp
    8: HOLD THAT LION! had two separate partial remakes
    29-30: Original is with Shemp, Remake is with Joe
    31-33: Original is with Curly, Remake is with Joe

[QuinceHead]

As I was watching the shorts make their way onto the Official Three Stooges YouTube Channel, it really blew my mind that only ONE Shemp short was not remade/recycled!!

[AxelGripp]

Check out the Stooges Remakes page.  It lists the 33 original shorts that had one or more remakes later on.  Here are the footnotes from that page, explaining the breakdown:

That was actually a point of reference for me when I came up with the 35 remakes, as well as Moe Howard’s book “I Stooges to Conquer” where on the official filmography, those same shorts are labeled as remakes.

Would this mean I was right all along?

These is the list of remake shorts I originally came up with

Half-Wits Holiday (reworking) (Three Little Pirates is a better short for Curly to officially end on)
Vagabond Loafers (remake)
Merry Mavericks (reworking)
Pest Man Wins (remake)
A Missed Fortune (remake)
Up in Daisy’s Penthouse (remake)
Booty and the Beast (stock-job)
Loose Loot (stock-job)
Rip, Sew and Stitch (stock-job)
Bubble Trouble (stock-job)
Musty Musketeers (stock-job)
Pals and Gals (stock-job)
Knutzy Knights (stock-job)
Scotched in Scotland (stock-job)
Fling in the Ring (stock-job)
Of Cash and Hash (stock job)
Bedlam in Paradise (stock-job)
Stone Age Romeos (stock-job)
Wham-Bam-Slam! (stock-job)
Hot Ice (stock job)
Husbands Beware (stock job)
Creeps (stock job)
Flagpole Jitters (stock job)
For Crimin’ Out Loud (stock job)
Rumpus in the Harem (Fake Shemp stock job)
Hot Stuff (Fake Shemp stock job)
Scheming Schemers (Fake Shemp stock job)
Commotion in the Ocean (Fake Shemp stock job)
Guns a Poppin! (Stock job?)
Rusty Romeos (stock job)
Fifi Blows Her Top (stock job?)
Pies and Guys (stock job)
Oil’s Well That Ends Well (reworking?)
Triple Crossed (stock job)
Sappy Bull Fighters (stock job)

This would make Blunder Boys the final “real” Shemp short, which would be appropriate since it’s the last one to be released in 1955 and the last one Shemp filmed and was released in his lifetime.

It would also make Space Ship Sappy the last “real” Joe short, which would be appropriate since it’s the last short they filmed at Columbia.

[AxelGripp]

As I was watching the shorts make their way onto the Official Three Stooges YouTube Channel, it really blew my mind that only ONE Shemp short was not remade/recycled!!

Mummy’s Dummy’s is the only 40’s Shemp short to not be remade.

This has given me the impression in the past that the 40’s Shemp shorts are the ones that have a place among the Curly classics, whereas everything 50’s onward is, for lack of a better word, past the prime. The issue with this is that the shorts released during the 50’s were filmed DURING the 50’s.

I’ve also considered 1952 Shorts Department downsizing, as well as Curly’s death, as another cut-off point. I can’t find EXACTLY when the downsizing happened, but my best estimate guess is after Gents in a Jam, and the last one they filmed before Curly’s death is He Cooked His Goose, which was the short released before GiaJ.

One more potential cut off was Up in Daisy’s Penthouse, being the short released before Booty and the Beast, the first stock job. The issue with this though is that Three Dark Horses, released the previous year, was filmed well after the new footage for BatB, as well as many of the other ‘53 shorts.

After going over these possibilities, I decided to label those 35 remake shorts as more “supplemental” to the 155 original shorts.

I’ll be honest, the reason I’ve even thought about any of this is because it would give Curly 10% more of a majority in a count of 155 shorts, as opposed to only slightly more than half of 190 shorts. I just hate the idea of Curly being a “novelty” in an act he is synonymous with along with Moe and Larry.