Refinished Antiques

The most startling comeback of many a show business season is being staged by a trio of Brillo-headed knockabouts called The Three Stooges. Historically, they belong to the era when the Marx Brothers crammed more humanity into a ship's stateroom than a dormitoryful of college students assaulting a telephone booth. Clutching the slapstick just as hard, over the course of 24 years the Stooges cranked out 194 pie-faced comedies for Columbia Pictures, most of them two-reelers designed to run as curtain raisers before the main feature.

Eventually, the change in comedy styles brought the curtain raiser down. Columbia refused to renew when The Three Stooges' contract ended on Jan. 1, 1958, has since sold its pre-1948 backlog of their films to television. The trio considered breaking up the act--until TV, that supposed wrecker of old-style comedians, turned out to be their salvation. The kiddy population roared at the antique routines. By last week the reruns were running ahead of such competition as Popeye and Mickey Mouse among the romper set, and the rejuvenated Three Stooges were swinging cross-country in a highly profitable nightclub and theater tour (last week Dearborn, Mich.; this week Chicago).

The Three Stooges were originally that--stooges to Vaudevillian Ted Healey, who formed the act in 1922. But by the time they began making movies in 1933, the wags were tailing the top dog. As a triple, the Stooges clowned their way through a seemingly endless series of quickie flickies--most of them on a par with the early Punchdrunk, which told of a waiter, a prizefighter at heart, who wrecked the joint every time he heard Pop Goes the Weasel.

In 1934 the trio consisted of mug-faced Moe Howard, his egg-bald brother Curly, and tuber-nosed Larry Fine. When Curly fell ill in 1946, he was replaced by brother Shemp, who, after his death in 1955, was in turn replaced by Old Vaudevillian Joe DeRita. Today the trio's comedy is still at eye level--Moe poking his fingers straight at the cornea. But the kids' enthusiasm has opened up the clubs to the Stooges, and the kids to the clubs. Most of the spots played by the Stooges have afternoon shows for children; one club offered the act at a junior charge of $1.50 (covering a sandwich and a bottle of pop), and in Philadelphia, marvels Moe, "people paid $3.75 for little kids' dinners so they could see us. Imagine nightclub matinees for kids!"

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