All Gummed Up

Viewers gain a different perspective on one particular Three Stooges sequence once they find out what the prop was to blow bubbles in their last released movie of 1947, "All Gummed Up." The finale shows the three baking a Jumbo Cake for Cerina (Christine McIntyre) to celebrate her sudden transformation to young womanhood after drinking the Stooges' miraculous 'Fountain of Youth' formula. Moe accidentally mixes the marshmallows with bits of bubble gum to top off the cake. All four swallow the gum, resulting in an orgy of blowing bubbles, especially Shemp whose ears have bubbles emerging from their canals. The prop department used condoms, whose material the technicians found to be the best to blow bubbles.

The Stooges are owners of a drug store in "All Gummed Up," whose landlord, Amos Flint (Emil Sitka), is kicking them out for a higher paying renter. To stave off eviction, they mix several absolutely horribly-tasting drugs into a boot to come up with a cocktail mix to make people young again, using old Mrs. Flint (Florence Lake) as their guinea pig. Remarkably it works. Actress Lake, 52, who played Mrs. Flint, was the sister of Arthur Lake, famous for bringing Dagwood Bumstead to the screen in the "Blondie" movies. Florence, who made her film debut in 1929, played alongside comic Edgar Kennedy as his wife in his popular short films. As a well-known character actress, Lake appeared in more Lassie shows on TV, all ten years of the "farm seasons," than any other actor as telephone operator Jenny. She's well known for being the blind date for Lou Grant in a TV 'The Mary Tyler Show' episode titled 'Lou's First Date.' "All Gummed Up" is known for the excessive number of slaps dished out-an astronomical 73.

This is probably the calmest, most easy-going of all the Stooge shorts. It is not consistently hilarious, but there are a handful of good laughs, and somehow this is one of the easiest and most entertaining Stooge shorts to watch. Their human kindness is shown when they let an old lady who has been thrown out of her husband's house stay in a spare room in their store. The lady's old age caused her husband to throw her out and the Stooges most kindly go to work on a vitamin to make old people young. In what is one of their few successful projects, the Stooges turn the old lady into a young, gorgeous women (the goddess Christine McIntyre) and then they get revenge on her husband. This short is light-hearted fun, and the Stooges' reaction to McIntyre as she tears off the bottom of her skirt is hilarious. And Shemp's physical reaction when he gets a spoonful of jumping beans amazes me that a 53 year old man could be so physically active. Wow!

Larry, Moe, and Shemp run the Cut Throat Drug Store. They invent a youth formula for the pitiful wife of the elderly building owner Amos Flint. The guys turn her into a youthful beauty. Desperate to have the fountain of youth himself, Amos gives the guys the store. Only it goes too far.

This is a pretty good Shemp Stooges short. Most of it goes quite well. In fact, Shemp and even Mrs Flint seems to be doing a little bit of Curly impersonation. There is a bubble gum closing that isn't very connected to the main story. At first, I thought it would be a children's birthday party for Amos Flint. That would connect better. Overall, this is generally good low level fun.

This short was great, seeing the stooges having to eat their own horrible mixtures of stuff is hilarious! The only thing that prevents this short from becoming a classic is that the ending seemed tacked on and this was fixed in the remake "Bubble Trouble" which isn't nearly as good as this.

Grade: A-

Emil Sitka was always the glue to hold together a lot of middle-of-the-road Stooge comedies in the later years. The one thing that Sitka didn't like about Jules White was how he always wanted to play his characters in an exaggerated manner, but this was one of the very few times where White allowed Sitka to develop his old man character Amos Flint, the crotchety landlord of the drugstore the Stooges run. Though not given much screen time (save for the beginning and near end), he does add a lot of comedy to an otherwise plain Stooges outing.