Fleming - The Three Stooges: amalgamated morons to American icons: an illustrated history

A hardcover edition of this book was originally published in 1999 by Doubleday, a division of Random House, Inc. It is here reprinted by arrangement with Doubleday.

THE THREE STOOGES . Copyright 1999 by C3 Entertainment, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information, address: Broadway Books, a division of Random House, Inc., 1540 Broadway, New York, NY 10036.

The Three Stooges is a trademark of C3 Entertainment, Inc.
The Three Stooges characters, names, and all related indicia are trademarks of C3 Entertainment, Inc.

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First Broadway Books trade paperback edition published 2002

Designed by Terry Karydes
Illustration (part three) by Christian Engel
Interior photographs courtesy of C3 Entertainment, Inc.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the Doubleday hardcover as follows:

Fleming, Michael, 1960
The Three Stooges: an illustrated history: Amalgamated Morons to American icons / by Michael Fleming. 1st ed.
p. cm.
1. Three Stooges (Comedy team) 2. ComediansUnited States Biography.
3. Motion picture actors and actressesUnited States Biography. I. Title.
PN1995.9.T5 F585 1999
791.43028092273dc21
[B] 99-31113

eISBN: 978-0-307-83204-7

v3.1

This book is dedicated to my children,
Stephanie, Ryan, and Jamie;
to my wife, Anna, who lights my way;
and to my mother, Mary, for convincing me early on
that nothing is impossible if you are willing to work hard enough to achieve it.

ACCORDING TO THE WRITER OF THIS BOOK, I SEEM TO HAVE BECOME AN UNWITTING TORCH CARRIER FOR THE MEMORY OF THE THREE STOOGES. IN TRUTH, AND LIKE THE MINDSET THE STOOGES DISPLAYED IN THEIR SHORTS, THERE WASNT A LOT OF THOUGHT PUT INTO THIS. ITS NOT LIKE I SET OUT TO TURN A FEW OF MY MOVIES INTO STOOGES HOMAGES. ITS JUST THAT SOME OF THE FILMS IVE MADE OVER THE YEARS, FROM THE MAD MAX TO THE LETHAL WEAPON SERIES, HAD WELL-ORCHESTRATED, OVER-THE-TOP SCENES WHERE THERE WAS HEAVY EQUIPMENT AND SOMEBODY GETTING BRAINED PRETTY GOOD.

I nevitably, they always made me think of the Three Stooges.

In Lethal Weapon, theres the scene in which my character, Martin Riggs, goes undercover, and, unarmed, has to appear insane in order to arrest three guys who are armed. Now, were about to shoot the scene and I see these three guys standing there and I think of Moe, Larry, and Curly. One of thems cute and chubby, like Curly; another guys kind of dumb, like Larry; and then theres the Moe character, who speaks to me and is a bit meaner.

I figure if my characters supposed to be crazy and anything goes, why not take them down with some eye poking and face slaps? I asked the director, Dick Donner, if I could do it. Donners a TV junkie who was also a Stooges fan, and he says yes. It was something we just worked out on the set on the spur of the moment. It worked, and the Stooges became part of the fabric of Riggs, this haunted insomniac whod certainly find the Stooges on some station in his all-night channel surfing. It became one of the things that stamped Riggs as fun-loving, though a bit combustible, out of his mind, and capable of Stoogelike mayhem. Riggs would love the Stooges.

I had the same instinct on the Mad Max films, which reminded me most of all of the Stooges. Thats because George Miller, who directed the trilogy, is a real specialist in setting up Rube Goldbergtype sequences that involve heavy equipment and have a domino effect that usually ends in tragedy. I was just commenting on what was there and telling him that these felt like Stooges routines. But George surprised me. He told me that as a little kid he had nightmares about Moe, that Moe represented everything he was afraid of. The thought of this director being haunted as a child by this Stooge who was barely five feet on his tip-toes was absolutely hilarious to me. But what I felt was actually frightening about the Stooges was the thought of the guys who actually wrote these shorts and motivated those three idiots. Those guys who sat around and came up with these cruel punishments, thinking they would be funny.

People have very different feelings about the Stooges. Women, well, its practically a gender distinction. Along with capable of bearing children, a general characterization of a woman is that she must hate the Stooges and be absolutely baffled why her husband laughs like an idiot while watching Curly strip the teeth off a tree saw when its run across his nubby cranium; or Larry wince as Moe tears chunks of the little hair he has left from Larrys head; or Moe crash through the table hes standing on until Curly saws it straight through.

For me, there has never been any mixed feeling about the Stooges. Ive always loved them. I first remember watching them when I was five or six years old in New York, before my dad moved us to Australia. There was this guy with the cops outfit, Joe Bolton, who introduced them, and I remember being completely fascinated by the whole thing. These guys bonking each other with a crowbar. My brothers and I laughed our asses off, and when wed hear that ridiculous theme song that sounded like birds chirping, wed run like it was the ice cream truck. I dont know quite why we liked it so much. Its your basic lowbrow humor, and yet I find it immensely pleasing in some primal way.

As a parent, Im careful to remind my kids not to try those moves at home. When I was a kid, my brother Donal, who was two years younger than I, wasnt as lucky. I actually did the Stooges things to him. Once, I said, Hey, look at me and dont close your eyes, no matter what I do. He does it, Donal standing there with that childlike trust and reverence for his older brother.

And I poked him right in the eyes. I mean, really a good one, fingers right in there, one that would make Moe proud. And hes just in shock, moaning Owww, owww, holding his eyes. By now, Im trying to quiet him, saying shut up, shut up, itll be okay. Soon, my mother picks up on what happened, and I get a nice whap under the jaw. It was one of those Pavlovian experiences where I learned that if you poke out your brothers eyes, you are going to experience immediate pain yourself. And also, naturally, you can hurt your brother.

The Stooges inspired many clever ways to dispense punishment, some of the best involving heavy, lethal-looking plumbing equipment. That was a disciplinary staple of the shorts that starred Curly, who was easily my favorite Stooge. To me, Curly was magnetic, having something that none of the others hadan instinctive ability to make you laugh on command. Maybe it was his innocent, childlike appearance, the way he looked and sounded.

Whatever it was, he was the most watchable and funny. My kids love the Curly shorts, and my son Milo, whos eight, just thinks theyre the greatest. We watch them all the time.