Hoi Polloi

Although not the funniest, this remains a "classic" Three Stooges film, one you never forget. The story, used a number of times not only in Stooges films but in famous feature films like "My Fair Lady" is the idea of trying to totally transform someone. Here, it's Curly, Larry and Moe.

The three guys try to answer the question two rich guys debate: heredity or environment? Which has the most influence. They wind up betting $10,000 (a ton of money back then) on the outcome with the Stooges as the subject matter.

There are a lot of classic slapstick sight gags here in the last 10 minutes when the boys have to strut their stuff at a big hoi-polloi-type affair. I thought the best gag was the Curly trying to dance with a big, fat woman who kept knocking him down, only to have him spring back up. (Well.....you have to see it.)

Another great show with lines I've quoted since I was a kid. "Does the deer have a little doe?"...

The Three Stooges do "Pygmalion" when two elderly upper-class types make a bet that one of them can turn three tramps into society gentry; naturally, he picks up the comic trio (the local garbage collectors) off the streets and then has them take lessons from various teachers in an attempt to elevate their social standing.

As ever, there's a lot of mugging (especially from Curley) but the film does feature a couple of great moments: a dancing teacher is stung by a bee and starts doing somersaults in order to get rid of it – only The Stooges, unaware of what's going on, try to keep up with her...and they all end up falling out of a window into a fountain below; then there's the inspired final gag – where, after the boys make a shambles of the party in which the old men present them to their equals, the guests eventually start to mimic the antics of The Stooges rather than be shocked by their behavior (slapping each other around, uttering Moe's trademark "Spread Out!", etc).

This review is of the tenth short The Three Stooges made for Columbia Pictures. In this one, Moe, Larry, and Curley (as his name was still spelled at the time) are garbage men forced to agree to a couple of professors' proposal of becoming gentlemen in exchange for them not calling the cops on the boys for general nuisance concerning their jobs. It involves a wager of one of the profs of debating environment vs. hereditary. Will the former win out? With the Stooges, are you kidding? Anyway, this was a most hilarious short what with all the gags and punchlines especially when the boys do their dance "lesson". And wait till you see what happens at the end! So on that note, Hoi Polloi comes highly recommended.

Columbia Pictures released its tenth Three Stooges short film, August 1935's "Hoi Polloi." One scene shows actress Phyllis Crane dancing with Moe at a formal affair when Larry's shoe comes off. In desperation, Larry scrambles onto the floor to retrieve the shoe while the crowd of dancers unintentionally kick it away. As Phyllis was dancing, she accidentally stepped on the shoe and fell hard on the floor. As seen in the finished film, she slammed her head, sending little tweedy birds flying around her skull. Earlier in rehearsal actress Grace Goodall was one of many involved in a food fight scene. With her mouth open a piece of food flew into her open orifice and lodged in her windpipe. Gaging, she nearly chocked to death before someone extracted the culprit. The producers decided to forego the food fight scene after the near-fatal accident.

Moe's wife Helen wrote the treatment to "Hoi Polloi." In the movie, The Three Stooges are guinea pigs to an experiment by two college professors who bet on whether people's social environment is determinant in how they act. One professor is convinced he could take the most incorrigible misfits and mold them into sophisticated cultured gentlemen. As trash collectors, Moe, Larry and Curly are the first miscreants the professors see and pick them for their experiment. The premise, similar to George Bernard Shaw's 1913 play 'Pygmalion,' was Helen's idea, and the studio offered to pay her for her idea or give her a screen credit. She took the money. The plot was so good that it was reworked two more times by the Stooges.

A poll was taken for a Stooges' anniversary show that polled its fans to determine which scene was the best in all their films. The top prize went to the dancing lessons actress Geneva Mitchell gives them in "Hoi Polloi." She instructs them to follow her every dance move. A bee flies under the back of her dress, sending the instructor in a tizzy trying to extract the insect. The Stooges follow her every move, even performing several acrobatic tumbles, before Mitchell jumps out the window, with the three close behind.

"Hoi Polloi" is one of the more violent Three Stooges' films, with as astronomical 48 slaps and four eye pokes delivered-mostly by Moe. The slapstick is so contagious that during the film's finale, the party's high society guests break out in a frenzy by imitating the Stooges' patented punishments. Moe, Larry and Curly, witnessing such a spectacle, walk out of the room in disgust. Their departing words are one of the most ironic statements the comics have ever said: this is what they get for "associating with the hoi pilloi," a term meaning 'the rabble.'