Pop Goes the Easel

Infobox Film
name = Pop Goes the Easel


caption =
director = Del Lord
writer = Felix Adler
starring = Moe Howard
Larry Fine
Curly Howard
Bobby Burns
Phyllis Crane
Joan Howard Maurer
Phyllis Fine
William Irving
cinematography = Henry Freulich |
editing = James Sweeney
producer = Jules White
distributor = Columbia Pictures
released = flagicon|US start date|1935|03|29
runtime = 18' 17"
country = USA
language = English
amg_id = 1:233631
imdb_id = 0026878
preceded_by = "Restless Knights"
followed_by = "Uncivil Warriors"

"Pop Goes the Easel" is the seventh short subject starring American slapstick comedy team the Three Stooges. The trio made a total of 190 shorts for Columbia Pictures between 1934 and 1959.

Plot

The onset of the Great Depression has forced the Stooges to look for jobs. However, they are mistaken as thieves and soon find themselves on the run from the police. With a cop chasing them, they flee into an art school where they are mistaken for students. They take their first art lessons while hiding from the police.

Notes

*This is the first Three Stooges short directed by silent comedy veteran Del Lord.
*The title of the film "Pop Goes the Easel" is a parody of the nursery rhyme "Pop Goes the Weasel," which is used for the one and only time as the opening theme. [Solomon, Jon. (2002) "The Complete Three Stooges: The Official Filmography and Three Stooges Companion", p. 61; Comedy III Productions, Inc., ISBN 0971186804] The film also ends with the tune, as with the ending of "Punch Drunks".
*The two girls playing hopscotch on the sidewalk Moe Howard's daughter, Joan Howard Maurer and Larry Fine's daughter, Phyllis Fine.
*This is the first of several Stooge shorts in which Moe holds out his hand to Curly and asks him to "pick out two" fingers. Curly does, and Moe pokes him in the eyes with them. This would be a recurring joke.
*This short is the first to contain a clay throwing fight, a precursor to the classic pie fights which would become a staple of the Stooge films. The first genuine pie fight would appear the following year in "Slippery Silks".
*This is the first of several Stooge shorts in which Moe holds out his fist to Curly and says, "See that?" When Curly replies, "Yeah," Moe swings his fist in a circle behind his body, over his head, and bops Curly on the head with it.
*This is the first short in which Curly dresses in drag. Curly would somehow wind up in drag in several later Stooge shorts, such as "Uncivil Warriors", "Movie Maniacs", "Matri-Phony", "Micro-Phonies" and "Uncivil War Birds".
*A colorized version of this film was released in 2006. It was part of the DVD collection entitled " [http://www.amazon.com/dp/B000H5TH1G/ Stooges on the Run] ."

References

Further reading

*"Moe Howard and the Three Stooges"; by Moe Howard [http://www.amazon.com/dp/0806507233] , (Citadel Press, 1977).
*"The Three Stooges Scrapbook"; by Jeff Lenburg, Joan Howard Maurer, Greg Lenburg [http://www.amazon.com/dp/0806509465] (Citadel Press, 1994).
*"The Three Stooges: An Illustrated History, From Amalgamated Morons to American Icons"; by Michael Fleming [http://www.amazon.com/dp/0767905563] (Broadway Publishing, 2002).
*"One Fine Stooge: A Frizzy Life in Pictures"; by Steve Cox and Jim Terry [http://www.amazon.com/dp/1581823630] , (Cumberland House Publishing, 2006).