Hoi Polloi

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

Two rich men make a bet on turning three lower class men into gentlemen. Larry, Curley, and Moe are bumbling garbage men and the rich guys have the subject of their bet. This is a classic Three Stooges premise that the boys would return to again and again. They are simply perfect for the concept. There are elements which would get reworked over and over again. The spring gag is great fun. This is classic Stooges material.

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).

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.'

"Hoi Polloi" was excellently done, the party scene is hilarious, and so is the rest of the episode. I love the part when the stooges read and Curly and Larry pretty much goof up the story.

Overall: A

Note: This was later remade as "Half-Wits Holiday"(1947) which would be Curly's last time he would ever be a stooge.