Running Time: 19 minutes. Release Date: September 12, 1934. Shooting Dates: 8/29/34 - 9/1/34. Production Number: 152. Director: Raymond McCarey. Writer: Felix Alder. Photography: Benjamin Kline. Editor: James Sweeny. Cast: The Three Stooges (Moe, Larry, Curly), Dell Henderson, Jeanie Roberts, Ruth Hiatt, Billy Gilbert, Little Billy, Bud Jamison, Hank Mann, Bobby Callahan, Phyllis Crane, Arthur West, Joe Mills, Irene Coleman, Carmen Andre, Helen Splane, Kay Hughes, Eve Reynolds, Eve Kimberly, Lucille Watson, Billie Stockton, Betty Andre, Arthur Rankin, Neal Burns, Joe Fine, Charles Dorety, Charles King.
Hello again lamebrains and knuckleheads, it is time to look at one of the earliest Stooge shorts for Columbia and the only one nominated for an Oscar. Despite the title, Men in Black, this film has nothing to do with Johnny Cash or aliens. Instead the title is a parody of a recent film called Men in White (1934). That film, which stared Clark Gable and Myrna Loy was a drama about doctors.
Ray McCarey was not one of the typical Stooge directors, having only directed this and Three Little Pigskins (1934) for the team. However he did direct Shemp (without any other stooges) in a short entitled Salt Water Daffy (1933). Comedy fans might know McCarey best for directing the Laurel and Hardy feature, Pack Up Your Troubles (1932). He also directed an excellent Our Gang short, Free Eats (1932). He would go on to direct such feature films as You Can't Fool Your Wife (1940), Torchy Runs for Mayor (1939), It Happened in Flatbush (1942) and The Falcon's Albi (1946). Ray McCarey was the younger brother of one of my favorite directors, Leo McCarey.
To advertise the film publicity stills were shot with the Stooges and Jeanie Roberts (who played the nurse in the short). These were adlibbed by the Stooges during a break from filming. They can be seen below.
Because they have been in the senior class too many years, the Stooges are now doctors as long as they devote their work to duty and humanity. This short ends up not having too much of a storyline as the rest is pretty much little skits involving them as a doctors.
This is an excellent and very funny short. I love the running gag of the boys entering and coming out of a door with a different mode of transportation including a horse and mini-racing cars. I love the scene with the Stooges in the room with a mentally unstable man. That is especially great as the Stooges get to work with Billy Gilbert one of the greatest character actors of the era (probably best remembered today as the professor in Laurel and Hardy's The Music Box (1932), Joe Pettibone in His Girl Friday (1940), Herring in Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator (1940) and the voice of Sneezy in Disney's Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (1937). He would also later appear in the Stooges short, Pardon My Scotch (1935).) Another highlight is the hilarious surgery scene. The great ending doesn't hurt either.
The building used in the film's opening was The Cedars of Lebanon Hospital. Joan Howard Mauer (Moe's daughter) gave birth to her two sons there. It is now a Church of Scientology.
A lot changed from script to screen in this movie. One of the strangest was a switching of Moe and Larry's lines in one scene. In the original script, Larry asks a patient what her name is, she responds "Anna Conda." Moe would have said to this "Anna Conda - 95th and 1/8th." In the actual film, Moe asks the patient for her name and both Larry and Moe get the punch line. The Stooges themselves adlibbed a scene in this film. In this scene Moe tells Larry "Move that cart." Larry responds "I'll move it when I'm ready." Moe says in a tough voice "Are you ready?" Larry says "Yeah! I'm Ready!" This routine later became one which would be associated with the team. They would preform it again in Three Dumb Clucks (1937), We Want Our Mummy (1937), I Can Hardly Wait (1943), Who Done it? (1949) and The Three Stooges in Orbit (1962). Also cut out was a joke involving Curly vaccinating a woman. Curly would have asked if she wanted it on the arm or the leg. She would have responded "Where it won't show." Curly would have asked "What business are you in?" She would have responded "I'm a fan dancer." Curly would say "Stick out your tongue." A running joke in this film is that the Stooges would always run through a glass door in break it. There was one joke involving this that did not make the final cut. Here is how the script describes that joke, "The three stooges dash madly towards the door, but as they open it the laborer, in the corridor, had evidentially been picking something up in front of the door and the impact of his body against the door breaks the glass again, spreading it all over the floor." Joan Howard Maurer believed that the gag was probably cut out because it was too violent and also wasn't funny. Another scene cut involved the stooges working on a man whose knee hurts. He would have said "Oh my knee - oh my knee" to which Moe would responded "What's the matter? You being singing mammy songs?" Latter Larry would have said "I'll take his reflex." Curly would have responded "I'll take his watch." They would have later been in raincoats with beer spigots and mallets to test his reflexes. This film would have also had a completely different ending. Beautiful triplets would have told the stooges they would marry our heroes, "providing you do the most wonderful thing in the world for humanity." They would have got out an axe and said "We're going to subdivide you." Yes that ending deserved to wind up on the cutting room floor. It is interesting to note the Curly is not called Curly in the script but rather "Dr. Jerry."
This is of course the film one of the lines most associated with the Stooges comes from. This line is of course "Calling Dr. Howard, Dr. Fine, Dr. Howard." This phrase can be heard in countless movies and TV shows to reference the Stooges.
The following are exhibitors reviews from the Motion Picture Herald.
March 9, 1935"Men in Black: Three Stooges - Maybe you call this a comedy but my patrons did not. Who told the stooges they could act? This is poor comedy and entirely too silly to be funny. Let's have better shorts and less of this kind of entertainment. Running time 19 minutes. -J.J. Medford, Orpheum Theatre, Oxford, N.C. general patronage."
March 27, 1937"Men in Black: Three Stooges - Very good. Played it twice so you know what we think of it. - Harlan Rankin, Plaza Theatre, Tilbury, Ontario, Canada."
-Michael J. Ruhland
Resources Used The Three Stooges: Book of Scripts by Joan Howard Maurer.
The Three Stooges Scrapbook by Joan Howard Maurer, Jeff Lenburg, Greg Lenburg.
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