Have you got any favorites among the women who appear in the Three Stooges' shorts, or among the scenes with women?
Christine McIntyre, of course, was a great sport, who could engage in the rough-and-tumble as well as sing and do foreign accents. I think my favorite scene with her is her violent confrontation with the boys in
Hugs and Mugs, in which she and Shemp take turns tearing up each other's suits, and then she and Larry take turns tearing out each other's hair.
I've always been partial to
Dorothy Appleby (thanks to the resources of this site for allowing me to discover her name), the rather testy little brunette whom Curly sometimes addresses as "Shorty."
I've always fancied the tall and handsome
Jean Willes on account of her looks, but I particularly admire her performance as a heartless golddigger in
Gypped in the Penthouse, who gets her comeuppance at the end of the short when Shemp and Larry make cake mix on her head from the groceries that she is carrying. This is also notable as the short in which Shemp gets himself slammed clean through the works of a baby grand piano and in which Larry clobbers Moe.
Special mentions:
I think the most seductive woman in all the shorts is
Barbara Slater, the preposterously gorgeous redhead with the silky voice who appeared for the first time as Curly's dancing partner in
Three Smart Saps but most memorably as Lulu in
Half-Wits' Holiday. I couldn't find a good photo of her on the Web so I've attached a still from the short. (Edited to add: Well, I tried to do so, and there is a link for it, but the link doesn't work, at least on my computer.)
Finally, I have a special place in my heart for the tall, stately-looking woman in
Half-Wits' Holiday who scolds Moe and Larry as "You disgraceful vagabonds!" and then, after getting pieces of pie in the face from both of them in return, immediately goes into Stooge mode herself, exclaiming
"So! You want to play ROUGH, do you? Well. . . !" as she goes for a pie to clobber them with—one of my favorite lines spoken by someone other than the Stooges.
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