Movies Til Dawn

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...

The first in a series of podcasts exploring behind the scenes footage of "Booker's Place: A Mississippi Story" with yours truly. In this episode, I delve into who Booker Wright was, and how he ended up in a position to anger an entire town with his interview on NBC in 1966. Subscribe in a reader