falconridge
03-18-2008, 02:20 AM
http://www.wallofshemp.com/images/shempbio.gifHail the original Third Stooge, born on this day in 1895 (I know I’m a bit late, especially for you right-coasters, but the whole day’s been a colossal screwup. Had I remembered earlier that it was March 17, I’d have worn my orange necktie :p ). That’s right: Shemp actually preceded Curly by some years, having played opposite Moses Horowitz (Moe) and Louis Feinberg (Larry) when the greatest comedy team in history was still known as Ted Healy and his Southern Gentlemen. When Healy, stupefyingly overestimating his own negligible talent, discarded his meal ticket, Shemp left the group to make it on his own. It was only then (ca. 1931) that his little brother Moe called on the youngest Horowitz, Jerome (or “Babe,” as Shemp and Moe called The Man Who Would Be Curly), to fill out the trio.
“In Jewish culture,” writes Robert Kurson in The Official Three Stooges Encycopedia, “a boy becomes a man when he turns thirteen. In Stooge culture, it happens when he learns to love Shemp.” So it was with me, who, by the time I’d memorized enough catechism to receive of the sacrament of Confirmation, recognized that what Samuel Horowitz pulled off in such one-reel Columbia gems as Fright Night, Brideless Groom, and Dopey Dicks was sheer comic genius.
Who can forget Shemp’s role as Joe the barkeep in The Bank Dick, with The Great Fields at the top of his game? At the end of the following clip, Shemp contributes in no small way to one of the funniest scenes in the history of filmdom: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vM4Lak_11eQ&feature=related
Egbert Sousé ([“that’s soo-ZAY—accent grave over the ‘e’”] Fields): Was I in here last night, and did I spend a twenty-dollar bill?”
Joe (Shemp Howard): Yeah!
Sousé: What a load that is off my mind! I thought I’d lost it.
('Fess up, fellow horseplayers. Haven’t you, at the end of a rough day and finding your roll’s even shorter than you’d figured, done a mental inventory of the day’s transactions and found some relief in remembering that you did indeed paste a double-sawbuck on that underlaid Damon Pollard-trained, Tommy Burkes-“ridden” stiff in the feature at San Mateo? I know I have.)
More from Kurson:
A Stooge fan’s first instinct is to compare Shemp with Curly. It was, after all, Shemp who replaced his younger brother after Curly fell ill and retired from the group in 1947. To some Curly lovers, this already made Shemp a bit of a badguy; no one, they claimed, could replace their hero. …
To his credit, Shemp never tried. Instead, he relied on skills that already had established him as a great slapstick actor: an uncanny sense of timing, a savvy demeanor, and the apparent ability to move in 100 different directions at once. To watch Shemp shadow-box is to witness a mini-ballet in which an unfathomable whirlwind of bobs and weaves and double-slaps culminates, inevitably, in Shemp's own demise. …
Shemp [brought] a newfound worldliness to the Stooges. He carried the air of a man who'd been around, a fellow who could toast gorgeous dames with gilded pickup lines such as "A couple of pip-pips, a little barbecue, and what have you!"
Begorrah! Time for one last pie fight; gotta go. Eep, eep, eep ... !
Shempiphiliacally,
f.r.
“In Jewish culture,” writes Robert Kurson in The Official Three Stooges Encycopedia, “a boy becomes a man when he turns thirteen. In Stooge culture, it happens when he learns to love Shemp.” So it was with me, who, by the time I’d memorized enough catechism to receive of the sacrament of Confirmation, recognized that what Samuel Horowitz pulled off in such one-reel Columbia gems as Fright Night, Brideless Groom, and Dopey Dicks was sheer comic genius.
Who can forget Shemp’s role as Joe the barkeep in The Bank Dick, with The Great Fields at the top of his game? At the end of the following clip, Shemp contributes in no small way to one of the funniest scenes in the history of filmdom: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vM4Lak_11eQ&feature=related
Egbert Sousé ([“that’s soo-ZAY—accent grave over the ‘e’”] Fields): Was I in here last night, and did I spend a twenty-dollar bill?”
Joe (Shemp Howard): Yeah!
Sousé: What a load that is off my mind! I thought I’d lost it.
('Fess up, fellow horseplayers. Haven’t you, at the end of a rough day and finding your roll’s even shorter than you’d figured, done a mental inventory of the day’s transactions and found some relief in remembering that you did indeed paste a double-sawbuck on that underlaid Damon Pollard-trained, Tommy Burkes-“ridden” stiff in the feature at San Mateo? I know I have.)
More from Kurson:
A Stooge fan’s first instinct is to compare Shemp with Curly. It was, after all, Shemp who replaced his younger brother after Curly fell ill and retired from the group in 1947. To some Curly lovers, this already made Shemp a bit of a badguy; no one, they claimed, could replace their hero. …
To his credit, Shemp never tried. Instead, he relied on skills that already had established him as a great slapstick actor: an uncanny sense of timing, a savvy demeanor, and the apparent ability to move in 100 different directions at once. To watch Shemp shadow-box is to witness a mini-ballet in which an unfathomable whirlwind of bobs and weaves and double-slaps culminates, inevitably, in Shemp's own demise. …
Shemp [brought] a newfound worldliness to the Stooges. He carried the air of a man who'd been around, a fellow who could toast gorgeous dames with gilded pickup lines such as "A couple of pip-pips, a little barbecue, and what have you!"
Begorrah! Time for one last pie fight; gotta go. Eep, eep, eep ... !
Shempiphiliacally,
f.r.