DUTIFUL BUT DUMB (1941)
A PLUMBING WE WILL GO (1940)
HOW HIGH IS UP? (1940)

7 February 2009

The Old Dark Arthouse is scheduled to screen the entire run of The Three Stooges shorts chronologically, but R.T. had not seen any of the remastered DVDs and wanted to watch DUTIFUL BUT DUMB, ("the one where Curley fights a clam in his chowder") so we skipped ahead to the third volume of the collection.

I'd previously mistaken PUNCH DRUNKS as a later effort, and now I find I've been mistaking DUTIFUL BUT DUMB as earlier than it actually was. 1941 is more than midway in Curley's run, but he's on top of his form. He gets the majority of the closeups and is the focus of most of the comedy. More Curley is never a bad thing. However, DUTIFUL BUT DUMB is evidence of something I've suspected and expect to have confirmed as the screenings proceed, which is that as the series went on, Larry got fewer closeups and fewer moments as the focus of the comedy. Which is a shame, since Larry could be devastatingly funny with just a look.

(RIGHT)
Curley's command of facial expressions is
as deft as Larry's in WOMAN HATERS.

After DUTIFUL BUT DUMB, we skipped around on the disk and settled on A-PLUMBING WE WILL GO. Nearly as classic, with a few really choice Larry lines. And, of course Niagra Falls. Notably, the Niagra Falls gag portrays an experimental TV broadcast, which would have been the norm for 1940. TV was something radio stations would experiment with, TV ownership was essentially for hobbyists, the way the earliest home computers were.

"Hey! It's full of wires!"

I was not sure at first that I'd ever seen HOW HIGH IS UP? However, this archetypally Stoogian image reminded me.

There have got to be Stooges shorts I've never seen. I'm looking forward to finding out which.