Topic: What was the deal with all of the apartment episodes????

[3Stooges]

Lately I realised how many of the 2nd half of the series takes place in that same apartment with that same hallway. It's almost to the point where it's tough to tell the episodes apart. My girlfriend, who's not a fan, always catches me watching a Shemp/Besser episode and will say... "There's that apartment again."

Why do so many of the Shemp and Besser films take place in that apartment? I know the shorts has less and less of a budget during the Shemp/Besser years, but geez... They had the Columbia ranch. How much more expensive would it have been to films outside?

Was it a matter of money, or did they intentionally try to make the films look more like sitcoms on TV?

[Jimmie Adams]

The budgets for the Stooge shorts in the '30's was pretty much the same in the 50's.  Exterior shots were too costly at that time.  In BLUNDER BOYS the war scene was unconvincingly shot indoors.  IIRC the shots of Larry on the building ledge in BB was shot during WHAM BAM SLAM on that budget and then inserted in BB.  There are some exterior shots in the Joes.

Columbia was so budget conscious that they would not turn on the set lights until just when they started shooting and would shut them off immediately after the take.  Moe does a dig at this practice in one of the Steve Allen appearances.  You'll notice in the publicity stills after 1948 that studio lighting was not used to shoot the stills.  They were lit with a flash.  That is why the stills after around 1948 have dark backgrounds.

[shemps#1]

I'm going to move this over to the FAQ, as it has been covered many times in the past. Not recently mind you, and I'm not complaining, but just as an administrative precaution for the future I am moving this topic.

[falsealarms]

From the new "One Fine Stooge" book ... I'll sum up what it says.

It quotes Larry saying the stories of their shorts involved the sets Columbia had on hand. Larry went on to say that for "Woman Haters", it was made on a train because a movie by the name of "Twentieth Century" had just been completed, and it used a train. Another example Larry cites is the Sinatra movie "Pal Joey," which used apartment sets, so the Stooges did as well around that time. Larry also said the Stooges never had original sets.

[MR77100]

In Chicago, channel 32 would censor EVERYTHING related to WWII Japan, Natzi's, and or course African Americans. It's no wonder they saved episodes like these until the last 10 minutes of the hour, so they would have an excuse to chop them up! Episodes that were NEVER shown on Channel 32 in full were No Dough Boys, Back To The Woods, Uncivil Warbirds, Uncivil Warriors, All The World's a Stooge, and The Yoke's On Me. When Channel 50 started showing them in 1992, however, we got everything uncut!