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Nothing beats an introspective review of the Three Stooges by a good critic - here is one by Richard von Busack that tickled my fancy. He makes a nice comparison of the Stooges to their comedy contemporaries, and points out how popular they remain in comparison to the highbrow artists of their day.
That's what a lot of their appeal is - they were roll-up-your-sleeve, blue collar heroes. They were also underrated comic minimalists who practiced a particular brand of mahem and sadism - especially to their critics.
From the article:
THE THREE STOOGES' best era, roughly 1932 to 1950, coincides with some of the most troubled years in American history. During the 1950s, the Stooges were prosperous, well-fed suburbanites, and it was a coasting decade for Moe and his partners. But they were at their finest impersonating near-homeless tramps, dealing with the terrible Depression.
Don Morlan, a professor in communications at the University of Dayton, describes himself as "a lifelong Stooges fan" and a member of the Popular Culture Association, which holds annual conventions at which Morlan and other fellow academics, discuss aspects of the Stooges' work. Morlan is no stranger to the media. A college professor who defends the Stooges is a novelty, and he tells me that any time he presents a paper on the trio, his phone begins to ring.
Morlan delivered a paper at the Conference on Popular Culture titled "A Pie in the Face: The Three Stooges' Anti-Aristocracy Theme in Depression Era Film" mentioning "the ideological statements about economic class differences" in the Stooges' work.
"In seven or eight shorts during the Depression era," Morlan says, "their subject was bringing the aristocracy down to their own level, as in other piefight comedies of the era."
Is it possible that watching the Stooges, who suffer crazy injuries and survive, is akin to acting out the same part humanity plays when we go to worship?
The Stooges were not just pie fighters -- they used that particular gag in only about 10 of their comedies. Morlan counts 34 out of 190 Stooges shorts as being about class conflict. In his paper "A Pie in Face" he writes, "Feature-length films in the 1930s which addressed Depression or financial class issues tended to ridicule the values of the rich rather than the people themselves. The Stooges did both." Frank Capra's You Can't Take It With You joshed the wealthy, eccentric Sycamores. But the hungrier, angrier Stooges wanted to wreck their own party, as in 1936's short "Ants in the Pantry," in which they play exterminator-provocateurs. The trio attack a mansion, salting the place with moths and mice to drum up business for their pest control service. We see a close-up of a tea-party cake being peppered with live ants. Could Luis Bunuel have improved on it?
The Stooges' shorts are often about work, always a touchy subject in the movies. Typically, Moe leads the troupe into a situation in which they're highly unqualified. By the end, the machinery is in wreckage and the Stooges have fled the scene. The usual setup finds them as door-to-door salesmen, mechanics or plumbers (as in their symphony of disaster, the 1940 short "A Plumbing We Will Go").
"The theme in these shorts of the Stooges against the rich," says Morlan, "is bringing the rich down to their level and shaking their heads." Morlan is referring to the Stooges' fine short "Hoi Polloi," in which three bearded professors try -- hopelessly -- to give Moe, Larry and Curly the Eliza Doolittle treatment.
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