What If You Drank A Gallon Of Bubbles?

I've been watching the Three Stooges, the latest volume, which takes us up into 1952.

There's a couple episodes, maybe not on the latest volume, but certainly there's one episode there, in which the Stooges ingest some soap. Shemp thinks a box of soap is soup, because in the episode he can't read well.

The soup is served and it tastes a lot like soap. And one other thing gives evidence that it's soap. The Stooges have some very unnatural closeups and shots from the side belching out soap bubbles. Sometimes they come out one at a time, but on the side shots especially they come out as though there was a bubble machine on the side of their heads away from the camera and their mouths are simply open.

You can buy bubble mix for very cheap. I don't know if you could use it for washing dishes, but if you could you could save some money, because it's so cheap.

I wonder if any kid has ever drank a whole bunch of it. And what happens? It'd probably kill you if you drank a whole bottle, one of the big bottles.

Christine McIntyre

I never really paid any attention to Christine McIntyre, of Three Stooges fame. I guess I've seen her before numerous times, especially in "Micro-Phonies," the Stooges film with her in it that I've seen the most.

The thing is I haven't dwelt on the Shemp years that much, since I never had the films from then and didn't see them on TV in any systematic way. But now that I have the DVDs of the full series (so far), I started seeing Christine McIntyre in several episodes in a row and decided to look her up.

Plus, and what really spurred me on, there was a celebrity question in the newspaper supplement, like "What can you tell me about Christine McIntyre from the Three Stooges?" (Whenever I see these newspaper supplement questions, I always think, Don't they have the internet where these people live? And assuming they do, how is it they're smart enough to write a letter, stamp it, and get it to the newspaper guy?)

But in this case it was a helpful question, because I looked her up and was glad to see she has her own Wikipedia page. That filled in some of the details. Also I saw her tombstone at the Find A Grave site. So that's cool.

Christine died in 1984. She retired from show biz in the mid '50s, after her contract ran out. She was hired by Columbia to star in their short films, and ended up in quite a few Stooges' films.

She's not just there either, she's funny and does a great job, and they had her working, all kinds of crazy physical comedy with Moe, Larry, and Shemp. (Her Curly films I'm thinking were few.)

DVDs

I see the new Three Stooges volume (number 6) comes out in the middle of June. Always looking forward to that. Which means I'll be in for a couple weeks of watching the Three Stooges a little each morning and evening till I make it through. Of course it's all Shemp at this point, which is OK. He did a great job as a hilarious Stooge.

I've been watching the "Iron King" DVDs I got a little over a week ago. It's kind of beloved by me, not terribly beloved though. In case you're not familiar with this, it's a Japanese TV show from 1972, which features one robot monster after another. And back then they made robot monsters really really big, like portable phones. The two heroes -- Gentaro and Goro -- are both human size, and that's the way Gentaro stays. But Goro can become a giant himself, making him "Iron King."

Iron King has 26 episodes. I'm up to 13. So I ought to have those well done by the time the Three Stooges volume comes out.

One other thing to note. I'm not going to get a screen shot to show this. But one or two of the Phantom Militia look very close in appearance to Barack Obama. There's no big point to make in that, except where was he around 1972? (I know, he was a kid ... but there's something suspicious going on.) The Phantom Militia in the series is the second underground, rebel group trying to take over Japan. But thanks to Gentaro and Iron King, they've been 100% thwarted so far.

Gentaro and Goro in this series have an extremely difficult time trying to convey the dangerousness of these terror groups to potential and likely victims. There's a Professor Flasher from the U.S. who's in Japan. The Phantom Militia wants to kill him or whatever, and he's oblivious to the danger. Goro is guarding him in his room in one scene, and the next thing you know Goro is tied up and the Professor is out on the golf course playing a round. Of course the terrorists come over the hill and capture him ... until thwarted by Gentaro. Also Goro shows up as Iron King to help save the day.

Beer Barrel Polecats

I got the new volume, Vol. 5, of the Three Stooges collected episodes yesterday. This will be the last one with Curly, since he retired after "Half-Wits' Holiday," except for a brief appearance in "Hold That Lion."

According to a book I've got, "The Three Stooges Scrapbook," Curly wasn't feeling up to the full film shooting schedule. His health was failing. So with the first episode on this set, "Beer Barrel Polecats," they made extensive use of footage from previous films. That's annoying.

One of the sections was from the episode "So Long, Mr. Chumps," in which they have to find a guy and they find him in prison. His name is Pomeroy. The footage makes perfect sense in the context of "Chumps," but it's quite incongruous in "Beer Barrel Polecats." Finding Pomeroy is just a weird, odd, inexplicable juxtaposed bit of nonsense in "Polecats." So Curly must have been feeling terrible!

Another way of looking at it is they weren't really making these films for us, for posterity, to be watched at home over and over. That's my guess. They were just showing them before the main feature and nobody really cared. So we ought to be glad they're as good as they are.

There's another section from an earlier film as well, as involving being in prison. That section ends with big rocks being broken over Curly's head. But he objects to the final rock, because it's a real rock. The earlier film had the theme music come in there and that was the hilarious conclusion. They definitely fade it out quicker than most cuts, making the earlier film's conclusion just a conclusion to a scene later. Very weird.

Sexy Three Stooges

I was watching a Three Stooges film today, Matri-Phony. It's set back in the days of the Roman Empire. The emperor's name is Octopus Grabus, played by Stooge regular Vernon Dent.

Octopus has very bad eyesight. He has really thick, Coke bottle glasses. His love interest is a young lady named Diana, who, for reasons I can't think of right now, doesn't want to be with him. So Curly masquerades as Diana.

Curly is in women's clothes, and it's about time for Octopus to come in and romance him. Moe tells Curly to get "sexy." That seems pretty risque for the days of the Three Stooges. But there's a lot of boys kissing boys and dancing with each other in the Stooges' films. And of course the Stooges are frequently enamored with women of the opposite sex as well.

Octopus's glasses get broken and of course he doesn't recognize Curly as a big fat man instead of his curvaceous, beloved Diana.

The Great Movie Shorts

The other book I got today at the library, off the discard table, is called The Great Movie Shorts -- Those Wonderful One- and Two-Reelers of the Thirties and Forties by Leonard Maltin.

It was published in 1972, Bonanza Books, hardback, 236 pages.

This was before videos were available, just TV, and some of the episodes -- maybe most of them -- were seen there whenever they happened to come on.

I remember on one of our channels at the time, Sunday mornings I believe it was, they featured Laurel and Hardy films, the shorts, which were very enjoyable. We made a point of watching it.

The biggies for me that are in this book are The Little Rascals and The Three Stooges. The Rascals were on TV once in a while, and it seems like they had a dedicated time for them too, but I don't remember seeing them in an orderly way, like, "Hey, let's watch the Rascals." I remember later on there was a time they were on and I saw them occasionally. The Three Stooges are the real biggies. And still are. At my grandpa's place we had two basic shows to watch, the news and the Stooges. Now I have an assortment of Stooges from over the years, videos taped off TV, a few videos purchased, and more recently, the collected, in-order sets that present the shorts in remastered form. These are fantastic. Vol. 2 just came out in the last month, and I finished watching them (the first time through) this morning.

But back to the book. The book tells of the various studios making short films. Then it gets into the various actors and acts, in a section called "The Series." These include, and my list is not exhaustive by far, Charley Chase, W.C. Fields, Buster Keaton, and others. W.C. Fields, I was surprised to see, only had five short films, talkies that is.

A real good thing about the book is that it gives a little synopses of each film from the actors and acts. The episodes are numbered, etc. Also there's lots of good black and white photos, and a good index.

Franklin D. Roosevelt and The Three Stooges

I've been watching the episodes on the new Three Stooges collection, Volume 2 of their Columbia shorts. I've seen a lot of the Three Stooges films, but I've never seen them all, and I've never seen them presented in such a good way -- consecutive, digitally-remastered, all that.

Since I've never seen them all, today I saw one I hadn't seen before -- you know, not that I remember. We used to sit around watching them with Grandpa ages ago, but as far as keeping track at the time, I wasn't.

This episode, then, was a fresh one to me, one that ends up with the Three Stooges in President Roosevelt's office!

It was Number 25 on their list of Columbia shorts, called "Cash and Carry." Getting some info here from The Three Stooges Scrapbook. Released Sept. 3, 1937. Getting very specific there. A guy named Al Richardson played FDR, seen only from the back.

This was a cool looking episode coming on. The Stooges are junkmen and they have a shack in the city dump. I love the setting, the scene. Because, to tell you the truth, I'm a sucker for old time city dumps, love them! They arrive at their house and some kid is there, a boy. He figured no one lived there, so he's going to live there. Jimmy. They nearly throw him out, but they're softhearted, especially when they see he has a brace on his leg.

Then they're out at their heap of cans and they find some money in a can. It turns out this was put there for safe keeping by their mother, who is trying to save money to get Jimmy an operation. It's $62 and they need $500. The Stooges take the money to the bank, but they're swindled out of it by some con men, who give them a worthless treasure map relating to an old house, supposedly where Captain Kidd put his treasure.

They're digging for the treasure and, as luck has it, the U.S. Treasury has an office right next door, vaults. A little more effort and they're in one of the vaults, with all the gold and money sacks. But they get caught and are charged.

This leads us to FDR's office, in which they tell him the whole story, who sees to it that Jimmy gets his operation and the Stooges receive clemency, they salute the president, and that's it.

When I saw the boy with the leg brace, I thought, "ohhh no," I don't want any "touching" Three Stooges episodes. I want nyuks, slaps, shovels to the face, all that, no do-gooding. So, leaving all that out of my consideration, the episode doesn't focus too much on Jimmy. The Stooges are as hilarious as ever when they're digging, when they're in the mansion.

The part with FDR was a complete surprise to me, but a nice surprise.