Three Little Beers

Infobox Film
name = Three Little Beers


caption =
director = Del Lord
writer = Clyde Bruckman
starring = Moe Howard
Larry Fine
Curly Howard
Bud Jamison
Jack 'Tiny' Lipson
Harry Semels
Stanley Blystone
Lew Davis
cinematography = Benjamin H. Kline |
editing = William A. Lyon
producer = Jules White
distributor = Columbia Pictures
released = flagicon|US November 28, 1935
runtime = 16' 16"
country = USA
language = English
amg_id = 1:307185
imdb_id = 0027097
preceded_by = "Hoi Polloi"
followed_by = "Ants in the Pantry"

"Three Little Beers" is the 11th 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 short begins with the Stooges at work at the Panther Pilsner Beer company delivery department. They have stacked several barrels on top of each other in the back of their delivery truck. The Stooges soon learn about a golf tournament which their company is sponsoring, but only Moe knows what golf is. In an attempt to teach Curly, Moe knocks Larry in the head with a broom, causing Larry to drop a barrel of beer onto the head of their boss, A. Panther (Bud Jamison). The Stooges drive wildly off to a golf course (Rancho Golf Club) and decide they should get in some practice if they want to win the grand prize. Once on the golf course, the Stooges disrupt everyone and everything — and steal some golfers' clothes. They split up to practice.

Curly gets his golf ball stuck in the tree and decides the only way to get it down is by chopping it down. Moe finds an open area to practice, but that only thing that he hits is the ground, chopping divots. Larry practices putting, but a pesky root gets in his way and he begins tugging on it until the putting green has a grassless line going through it where the root was. The groundskeepers see all this, and complain to management. Also, the golfers whose clothes were stolen join the management to give the Stooges a piece of their minds.

The scared trio run for it in their beer truck. But when they head uphill, two barrels suddenly fall off the truck and roll away. The truck is parked, and the Stooges give chase but to no avail. It gets worse when the parked truck's brake loosens up, moving it slightly, and the truck hits a street corner, so the rest of the barrels give way and head downhill too. The short ends when a few of the rolling barrels knock the Stooges onto a freshly-paved concrete sidewalk; and that they cannot get out of.

Notes

*This is the first of two shorts in which the Stooges use their "press, press, pull" routine. The other is "Even As IOU".
*This is the first short in which Moe angrily calls someone (in this case, Larry) a "wise guy".
*This is the second consecutive short in which something has fallen out of the Stooges' truck.
*The title card of "Three Little Beers" (see above) contains three drunken bears, an obvious reference to the Mother Goose fairy tale "The Three Bears". [Solomon, Jon. (2002) "The Complete Three Stooges: The Official Filmography and Three Stooges Companion", p. 73; Comedy III Productions, Inc., ISBN 0971186804]
* In the final scenes where the Stooges are driving their beer delivery truck uphill, they lose several kegs of beer and start chasing after them. It's obvious that stunt doubles were used for these scenes.

References

Further reading

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