Violent Is the Word for Curly

Infobox Film
name = Violent Is the Word for Curly


caption =
director = Charley Chase
writers = Al Giebler
Elwood Ullman
starring = Moe Howard
Larry Fine
Curly Howard
Bud Jamison
Gladys Gale
Dick Curtis
Marjorie Deanne
Pat Gleason
Al Thompson
cinematography = Lucien Ballard
editing = Art Seid
producer = Charley Chase
Hugh McCollum
distributor = Columbia Pictures
released = flagicon|US July 2, 1938
runtime = 17' 37"
country = USA
language = English
amg_id = 1:143173
imdb_id = 0030942
preceded_by = "Healthy, Wealthy and Dumb"
followed_by = "Three Missing Links"

"Violent Is the Word for Curly" is the 32nd 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

Administrators at an Mildew College, an all-girl school, is begging the school's largest benefactor, Mrs. Catsby (Gladys Gale), to provide an athletic fund for the school. She does not approve of girls playing sports, and informs the administrators that the money will be used for the salaries of the three new European professors that are arriving that day.

Meanwhile, the Stooges have just started a new job as servicemen at a service station. The motto is "Super Service." When they get a customer (three older German men driven by a chauffeur), they proceed to provide their own inept slapstick brand of "super service", angering the men. The mayhem ends when Curly accidentally puts gasoline in the radiator and Moe checks it with a match. The resulting explosion prompts the Stooges to flee in a nearby ice cream truck that they had coincidentally thrown the German men's suitcases into. Curly climbs in the back while Moe and Larry are in the front.

The Stooges finally stop when they run out of gas. Moe and Larry realize that Curly is still in the back of the truck and is now frozen solid. They thaw him out by tying him to a tree branch over an open fire (Moe: "Twenty minutes to a pound...we'll be here a month!") This works fine until Curly wakes up on fire and jumps into a nearby lake. When Moe and Larry try to help him out, he pulls them in with him. Now soaked, the boys decide to see if there are any dry clothes in the suitcases they had thrown into the truck.

It turns out that the men in the car were the three European professors. As the Stooges hitch hike, the car that passes by is driven by Mrs. Catsby. She mistakes them for the professors and invites them back to Mildew College.

During the introductions of the "new professors," Larry (as "Professor Feinstein") asks the class if they have any questions; one of the girls responds: "Is it true that time and space are calculated by the direct ratio of interplanetary magnetism to solar radiation?" The Stooges' response (after Moe asks her "What do "you" think?") is to teach the class mental coordination by performing a rendition of "Swinging the Alphabet."

During the buffet lunch, the three professors show up, blowing the Stooges' cover and vowing to return to "Hamburg on the Clipper!" When Mrs. Catsby angrily confronts the Stooges, they tell her that the college needs athletics, not the foreign professors. They offer to demonstrate and the class follows. Meanwhile, the professors mix an explosive into a basketball.

The boys demonstrate football plays, using the basketball, and force Mrs. Catsby to join in. After being tackled "on her own five yard line," she agrees to provide an athletic fund if the boys would get the professors back. As the boys are about to agree, Curly throws an errant basket, going over the fence and exploding in front of the professors, who are blown back into the Stooges clutches. The boys vow to clean them up and give a little "super service."

Curly gets cooked

During one scene, Curly is tied to a revolving spit that is placed over an open fire. He is then "roasted" in order to thaw him out after having slept in an ice cream truck. Future Stooge director Edward Bernds was present during the filming and noticed that Curly's weight was causing a problem. "Curly was so heavy Moe and Larry couldn't turn the crank," Bernds said. "The straps holding him slipped and he was hanging directly over the fire. Before they could get him off, he was pretty well seared. Curly was hollering his head off, and I don't blame him. Being roasted alive belongs to the Inquisition, not making two-reel comedies." [Forrester, Jeff (2002). "Three Stooges: The Triumphs and Tragedies of the Most Popular Comedy Team of All Time", p. 80. Donaldson Books, ISBN: 0971580103 ]

Notes

*The title "Violent Is the Word for Curly" is a parody of the film "Valiant Is the Word for Carrie". [Solomon, Jon. (2002) "The Complete Three Stooges: The Official Filmography and Three Stooges Companion", p. 133; Comedy III Productions, Inc., ISBN 0971186804]
* A colorized version of this film was released in 2004. It was part of the DVD collection entitled " [http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0002A2WG8/ Stooged & Confoosed] ."

ee also

"Swinging the Alphabet"

References

External links

Further reading

*"Moe Howard and the Three Stooges"; by Moe Howard (Citadel Press, 1977).
*"The Complete Three Stooges: The Official Filmography and Three Stooges Companion"; by Jon Solomon (Comedy III Productions, Inc., 2002).
*"The Three Stooges Scrapbook"; by Jeff Lenburg, Joan Howard Maurer, Greg Lenburg (Citadel Press, 1994).
*"The Three Stooges: An Illustrated History, From Amalgamated Morons to American Icons"; by Michael Fleming (Broadway Publishing, 2002).
*"One Fine Stooge: A Frizzy Life in Pictures"; by Steve Cox and Jim Terry (Cumberland House Publishing, 2006).