Sunday, April 23, 2000

ABC goes all out with tribute to Stooges

Nyuk, nyuk! Who’s there? The Three Stooges, that’s who. Except there weren’t three, there were six: Larry, Curly, Moe, Shemp, Joe Besser (briefly) and "Curly Joe" DeRita.
  That’s just one of the factoids you’ll pick up from the first-rate new TV bio-pic, "The Three Stooges," airing at 7 p.m. Monday on ABC. The two-hour family-friendly flick gets serious (but not too) about the lives of Hollywood’s lovable knuckleheads, who worked their way up from vaudeville side-act to two-reel shorts and into perpetual reruns on television and video.
  There’s plenty to learn and to love about these under-appreciated show biz legends and the movie does it with great attention to detail and some terrific performances. Michael Chiklis (of NBC’s "Daddio") gets every woop-woop right as Jerome "Curly" Howard (changed from Horwitz), youngest brother of Moe and Shemp (played with ferocious authenticity by Paul Ben-Victor and John Kassir). Evan Handler handles the role of Larry Fine (shortened from Feinberg) with perfect timing and surprising (h)air of dignity.
  Dignity? Stooges?
  Absolutely. And that may be the greatest service this movie provides to the legions of Stooge fans, for in the tale of these silly comics is a touching story of sweet, dignified men who loved and took care of each other and their families through some tremendous hardships and only began to be recognized as comedy greats at the end of their lives.
  Based on Michael Fleming’s biography titled "From Amalgamated Morons to American Icons: The Three Stooges," the TV-movie was produced by mega-Stooge maniac Mel Gibson and shot in Sydney, Australia (on locations that look like ‘30s-era Southern California).
  The story is told in flashback from Moe’s point of view.
  We see the vaudeville days of the 1920s, when Larry, Moe and Shemp play the circuit with mean-spirited headliner Ted Healy, who treats them like performing monkeys and pays them peanuts. Healy’s act lands them in Hollywood in the ‘30s, where they are wooed by the studios and end up starring in nearly 200 comedy shorts with titles like "Men in Black" and "Ants in the Pantry" for Columbia Pictures.
  They’re bitter about never being allowed to make the leap to feature-length movies, like the Marx Brothers, the Ritz Brothers or Abbott and Costello, and by the early 1950s, the Stooges’ careers at Columbia have ended. Moe, who’d always been the lead negotiator for the act, is reduced to working as a gofer on the Columbia lot, getting the execs’ cars washed and shlepping them lunch. The remaining Stooges, Larry Fine and Joe DeRita, retire. Curly had died earlier of a stroke in his mid-40s. Shemp shortly after.
  But a new generation was to discover the Stooges. In the late ‘50s, Columbia sold off all the Stooge films to television, where they were packaged as children’s shows played in morning and afternoon slots on local stations nationwide.
  It should have made the Stooges millionaires. But in those early days of the medium, rerun residuals were almost unheard of. Columbia reaped the rewards of the TV airings. The Stooges themselves got, as they would say, "bupkiss."
  The TV-movie plays out their disappointment, but offers an upbeat ending. Not only did Baby Boomer kids love to see the boys bopping each other’s heads on TV, they wanted to see them in person, too. The remaining Stooges went back on the road for personal appearances in the 1960s that earned them more dough than their 20 years in pictures ever did.
  How much did I love this movie? I watched it twice. I cried at the end both times. Never much of a Stooge fan - all that hitting, all that yelling - I completely changed my opinion of these guys after seeing how utterly genteel and humble they were in their real lives. And those routines didn’t come easily. They perfected every poke, whack and squeal, choreographing the slapstick like a dance.
  The most impressive moments in the film are the recreations, in black and white, of some of the Stooges’ classic routines. My fave? Curly and the clam chowder.
  There’s just something so funny about soup and three big nuts.
  
  

 
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