Stooge Friday!!!

First, a bit of horn-blowing: this month's Three Stooges Journal features my article on Healy "stoogette" Marion "Bonnie" Bonnell accompanied by a couple of photos of Ted and Bonnie that I don't recall ever having seen before. Used to seeing my work online where page-count is an abstraction, I was shocked to discover how long the Bonnell article really is on paper. Very strange. This issue of TSJ also contains an insightful article by Bobby Winslow entitled Lady Godiva, Eh?: Curly and Gendered Laughter that covers some of the same ground as the previously mentioned Boxwell piece about Wheeler and Woolsey, but is written by someone who has an appreciation for the material and understands context. TSJ's narrow focus demonstrates that, no matter how well-known the subjects may be, there is a near inexhaustible wealth of information yet to be revealed about classic comedy. And I must admit that I'm very predisposed towards any magazine that devotes its cover to a big photo of Vernon Dent (and publishes my work). At $9 a year, it's a steal. Contact editor Gary Lassin at garystooge@aol.com for more info.

And the classic comedy vinyl just keeps on coming. Courtesy of Way Out Junk comes 1959's The Three Stooges: Madcap Musical Nonsense at Your House. Riding the crest of their big TV comeback, the Stooges released a number of kiddie albums, and this is a pretty decent one. The first (seemingly improvised) track, "We're Coming to Your House", interestingly turns the notion that adults don't like the Stooges into a selling point for their act:

All: Though Mommy won't like us
and neither will Dad,
We're coming to your house..
Larry: To break up the joint!

I don't think I've seen the generation gap angle used elsewhere in regards to the Three Stooges, but it has long since become the cynical standard practice for advertising to kids. This track gave me the false hope that they'd follow it with a dramatized skit in which the Stooges visit one of their youthful fans and devastate his/her house in an hilarious orgy of whimsical violence. Track six, the final track on side A, ends with a nice bit of conceptual humor as the Stooges cope with the problems inherent in being "in" a record being played. Curly Joe ends up trapped in a groove and tells the kids that they can release him by flipping the record over. Larry closes out the bit with a nice bit of deadpan delivery.

Larry: Careful! That's it.. Don't hurt him with the needle...