WHAT DO WE REALLY KNOW ABOUT JOE DE RITA?
In the wake of the Farrely Brothers new Three Stooges movie opening this Friday, I thought a little Stooge-ology might be in order. I've posted about the Stooges quite often over the years, discussing my favorite shots featuring Curly Howard, my friendship with Stooge writer-director Edward Bernds, the appearence of "Fake Shemps" in later Shemp movies (a double deployed when Shemp was either ailing or dead). But I've never gone into the declining years--the post-Shemp Joe Besser/Joe De Rita years--since it's just too, well, depressing. The truth is the Stooges should have hung it up when Shemp turned up his toes in 1955. But they didn't. A handful of awful shorts finished out their Columbia years, using comedian Joe Besser as the third Stooge. Besser felt about as comfortable with Moe and Larry as a pork chop might feel in a kennel of rabid dogs. He wasn't a physical comedian and his petulance and lack of pleasure at being there are impossible to ignor...