Here's a Wacky Wednesday feature that's about as weird as they get!
It was a failed TV episode by The Three Stooges that was made in 1949!
Here's Moe!
Here's Shemp!
And here's Larry!
Jerks of all trades, you can see a couple things they specialize in are being "Skyhiatrists" and "Uptometrists," but for this episode they are "Inferior Designers!"
The show was basically a rehash of dozens of gags they've done time and time again, with plenty of bonking, smacking, and slapping involved!
A Mr. Pennyfeather comes in to get the boys to do some painting for him, and instead he gets painted, pissed off, and leaves! Mr. Pennyfeather was played by Emil (13 Frightened Girls) Sitka.
They use the old 'push in one file and another comes out and bonks you' gag along with many others!
The boys get a phone call from a lady who wants them to come over and paint her house quickly, because he her husband's boss is coming over for dinner, so they want the place looking perfect!
The lady turns out to be Mrs. Pennyfeather, and is played by Symona (Get Along Little Zombie) Boniface who was in many a short feature as women with names like Mrs. DePuyster, or Mrs. Hickenlooper.
Of course the Stooges proceed to destroy the place in record time!
My favorite bit was is when she tells them to be very careful with this picture of her daughter done by the famous painter Whisler!
Of course Moe starts peeling back layers immediately, and each one he pulls off the girl has less clothes on!
The next layer reveals that she's down to a bikini!
The boys start frantically tearing at the picture to see what's next!
But instead of a naked girl, it's a portrait of some witch, and then they get punched in the face!
Paint's flying everywhere, Moe even paints Larry's ass!
The destruction goes on for like what seems forever!
For a little break in the action and to kill a little time, they bring in Joseph Kearns as a door to door salesman with a bad memory, so every time Moe disrupts his sales pitch, he has to start over again from the beginning.
Joseph Kearns was the Voice of The Doorknob in Disney's "Alice In Wonderland," and was also Mr. Wilson on the "Dennis The Menace" TV show.
Joseph Kearns was the Voice of The Doorknob in Disney's "Alice In Wonderland," and was also Mr. Wilson on the "Dennis The Menace" TV show.
Mr. Pennyfeather comes home and can't believe his wife has hired the same morons he went to see.
More and more mayhem ensues, the cream pies come out, and Mrs. Pennyfeather lets her husband have it right in the kisser with one!
Shemp tries to hide disguised as a lamp!
The Stooges finally get their just rewards from the Pennyfeathers!
Pretty funny if you're a fan, but I guess the studio didn't see anything new happening, and probably decided that The Stooges couldn't keep up the momentum. After all, they pretty much played every card they had in just the one show!
If you'd like to check it out for yourself, you can at the Internet Archive!
There were definite limitations to live television entertainment (just watch some of the early sci-fi shows!), but as far as I'm concerned, you can't see any in this Stooges show! All three of them were fast on the draw and hilarious, and the "pressure cooker salesman" bit played by Joseph Kearns was amazing! But as good as this show is, I can't imagine coming up with something like this every week for live TV. Film is a better medium by far, judging by the complete Three Stooges DVD set that I have and have watched a few times (regardless of which Stooge was the third one)!
ReplyDeleteJust my opinion! If you disagree...PICK TWO! ;D
I couldn't agree more K. The regular Stooges shorts were almost half this long, and as you say, it was fun to watch them work it live, but I just don't think it was sustainable!
ReplyDeleteJoseph Kearns was a huge surprise in this! I mean, he looks like Mr. Wilson from Dennis the Menace, but he sounds more like Wally Cox! I don't think I've seen him in anything else besides Dennis the Menace, in which he is a real treat, so this is a terrific bonus to see! What a great seriocomic actor is the late great Mr. Kearns, in the same general league as Jonathan Harris of Lost in Space fame.
ReplyDeleteI swear, that picture of the girl slowly losing her attire is priceless, just when all us perverts are dying to see the next drawing, and there's only one place this could be going, she's gonna be NUDE!! Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy!
ReplyDeleteWhat a freaking shock!!.. That's basically how sex worked back in the fifties! And, that drawing of the Witch is terrific, her expression really sez... Why, you filthy little creeps!
I read ya, TABONGA... same thing crossed my mind as well.
ReplyDeleteI have to confess that I'm not only a Shemp fan, but I also enjoy Joe Besser! Maybe that comes from a year or so of watching reruns of the Joey Bishop show, where Besser plays the apartment building's silly-ass handyman. Yes, Joe Besser in COLOR in some of the later Joey Bishop episodes! But Joe DeRita in the Stooges feature films is downright unfunny, unsilly, out-of-place even.
Joe De Rita, I should add, did some comedy shorts of his own in the 1940s, and THOSE were actually funny as heck (IMHO)! I think I found a few of them on the Internet Archive as well.