The Three Stooges have a fascinating history. Initially, they were part of a vaudeville act called "Ted Healy and His Stooges", in which Master Healy was the front-man, and the Stooges merely side-kicks (and I do mean kicks!). However, when their first film came out, the Stooges were so well received that within three years, after several disputes with Healy, the Stooges had a contract with MGM, sans Healy.
The rest is history. For the next thirty-plus years, the Stooges eye-poked, socked, smacked, pinched and booted their way into the slapstick canon. Moe Howard and Larry Fine were the mainstays. The inimitable Curly Howard, Moe's brother, rounded out the trio until 1947, when a debilitating stroke rendered him unfit for further antics. For the next twenty years, Moe and Larry carried on with a rotation of replacements.
Now what I wanted to tell you all about was what I saw, watching television one fine evening, about twenty years ago. When whichever show I was watching paused for a word from our sponsors, a commercial came on advertising the services of an attorney.
If you're familiar with the genre, you'll know that it began along the lines: "Need a lawyer? Been hurt on the job?" The commercial then cut to a clip from a Three Stooges film, in which Moe kicks Curly where the sun don't shine. Cute, nice touch, I thought.
The commercial continued: "Been involved in a domestic dispute?" followed by Larry on the receiving end of a smack from a lovely young wench. Funny! The commercial continued in this vein, with two or three more similar situations, each punctuated by a Three Stooges brouhaha. My initial enthusiasm gradually waned, and I began thinking: "Nice concept, guys, but I think you may have overdone it a bit."
Another clip or two, and I actually started to feel uneasy. As the commercial proffered yet more clips of various and sundry Three Stooges squabbles, I began to genuinely feel sorry for the attorney who had put together the commercial. "This kid is really out to lunch", I thought, as the commercial showed one more pratfall, one more bop on the head. I winced, and began to wonder how much the lawyer had paid to have this commercial made, and seriously began to worry that not only would this ad garner him no new clients, but that it would utterly destroy his credibility, and he would lose his existing clientele.
Just as my anxiety reach its crescendo, the commercial flashed some text along the following lines:
THREE STOOGES MARATHON FILM FESTIVAL. APRIL 23-25
My grave concern instantly turned into peels of laughter.
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