Men in Black

I've just watched this, the third in the Three Stooges series of shorts for Columbia Pictures and the only one nominated for an Academy Award (it didn't win). In this one, Drs. Howard (Moe), Fine (Larry), and Howard (Curley as his name was spelled at the time) are running amok at the hospital as they dedicate themselves "for duty and humanity". God help us all if there's anyone like them in real life! Anyway, there's plenty of hilarious running gags and lines that the pace never stops for one minute and when it does, the whole thing is over just like that. Among highlights: a scatterbrained nurse (Jeanie Roberts) perplexing the Stooges-even Curley-who also provides some comic hiccups and a crazy patient (Billy Gilbert who I usually associate with Laurel & Hardy) who sees birds and rats. Add in regular stock player Bud Jamison and a "female" little person patient among others and you've got a good idea of what to expect from Men in Black. So on that note, I highly recommend this short.

While mostly routine for the Stooges, "Men in Black" still has some good moments. This time, the boys have somehow managed to graduate from medical school, and they are working in a hospital, where their performances as doctors are about what you would expect them to be. The humor in this one mostly mostly relies on a set of recurring gags, with the best one being the Stooges' frantic entrances and exits to and from the office of the hospital's superintendent. It doesn't have the sustained laughs of their better comedies, but there are some funny parts that make it worth a look.

The summary above is the battle cry that starts and ends this episode as the boys graduate from medical school are given diplomas only because they had been in school too long! (huh??)

They begin their internship at Los Arms Hospital. At various times in this ultra- silly short we see the three "doctors" going down the hospital hallway in a bicycle, a horse and in Soap Box Derby-type cars.

They meet a goofy nurse and several goofy patients and perform a memorable operation of the hospital boss. In all, it's good, but not great. However, it might be one of the most famous Stooges shorts ever, and one of the looniest. Who can forget the switchboard cry: "Dr. Howard, Dr. Fine, Dr. Howard!"?

A criticism that I've heard of the Three Stooges is that - unlike Charlie Chaplin, Laurel and Hardy, and the Marx Brothers, all of whom treated the underdog with dignity - they make it look as if the underdog deserves to be the underdog. As long as we understand that, it's easy to laugh at the gags that abound in "Men in Black", as the trio become doctors and cause a series of mishaps in the hospital (namely with the superintendent's door). This short received an Academy Award nomination for Best Short Subject - Comedy (now Best Live Action Short Film) but lost to "La Cucaracha".

Basically, it makes no pretense about what it is. A good time to be had.

This Oscar-nominated Three Stooges short was possibly a spoof on the Clark Gable hospital drama MEN IN WHITE (1934). The insane comedy style of the film is pretty much influenced by The Marx Bros. – but actually anticipates their own assault on the medical profession in A DAY AT THE RACES (1937)! The Stooges go to their designated operating rooms via horses, racing-cars and the like; the operation on their own boss sees them using an electric drill and then stitching him up with all the various instruments of the profession still inside! As ever, the comic trio fall back too often on slapping each other around (not to mention fooling around with some girl, in this case a dumb nurse); actually, the best gag revolves around the glass on the boss’ office door (which is smashed every time our heroes leave his company, since they’re constantly being called to explain their unethical behavior – seeing them coming one more time, the janitor who’s forever replacing the glass anticipates them by breaking it himself!). Incidentally, both director McCarey and screenwriter Felix Adler worked contemporaneously on the (more sympathetic but no less havoc-ridden) films of Laurel & Hardy.