Tassels in the Air

The chairs are the janitors in the office building. Wrong names are stenciled in all the offices, which is why the rich lady blames Moe for "Omay," the famous decorator (the real Omay gets "Housewives, Beware" painted on his door.) She hires boys to redecorate her house, which they continue to demolish. More trouble arises when the real Omay appears. Adding to the chaos is the fact that Curly goes crazy whenever he sees fringes.

Maggie pushes her husband to redecorate their already decorated mansion with their newfound wealth. She makes an appointment with a famous French decorator but mistakes the Stooges janitors for the fancy pants after they paint on the wrong stencils for the doors. Curly goes crazy whenever he sees tassels.

The biggest laugh for me is the cuckoo clock. It has a nice and simple little setup. It's all really silly and standard Stooges. I don't love Larry's stupidity. It's off somehow. I figured that tassels would be closing this out. Mostly, this is a pedestrian Stooges.

What to say, the trio at some of their best ever, as typically happens, they get mistaken for someone else, and they just go with it. Only in Hollywood could you get away with such stuff. Here they are janitors painting a building and after a series of errors, they are mistaken for interior decorators, and a high class one at that. Two interesting notes for me were Bud Jameson acting like a 4th Stooge in this short and not a direct foil of the trio, plus the director Charly Chase and his take on the Stooges created some their best work

This is one of the better Stooge shorts--not as good as the fabulous "Micro-Phonies," but close--and a good example of the boys in their prime. Curly is absolutely hilarious as a janitor-turned-artist who calls himself, in Pig Latin, "Umday" and is driven to a frenzy by the sight of tassels. Comedian Charley Chase directed this and several other Stooge shorts, and he did a first-rate job here. It's very well-paced, unlike some of the Stooge shorts of that period, which tended to be a little ragged--slow spots interrupted by the boys' slapstick bursts. This one starts out well, and progresses nicely to the typical frenetic Stooge ending. Stooge fans will be thoroughly satisfied.

One of the reasons fans feel every film of The Three Stooges is pure genius is because the comedy team drew upon many skits of others in previous movies, from silent to early talkies. In April 1938's "Tassels in the Air," Charley Chase's first Stooges movie he directed, the veteran film comic reshaped a few of the more memorable acts from his earlier films he had written for the movie.

One example in "Tassels in the Air" has the Stooges painting a Louise XVI antique table. Moe earlier had been mistaken for a top-notch interior decorator and brought his two sidekicks to perform a total home makeover who was hired by Mrs. Smirch (Bess Flowers-"The Queen of Hollywood Extras who appeared in over 350 feature films. She holds the record for appearances in Oscar nominated Best Pictures at 23.). In the process of painting the table, Larry unintentionally paints the top Curly's head while Moe drinks a can of paint thinking it's the cup of coffee next to it. Later, Larry unknowingly uses the sandwich Curly was eating as a paint brush while Curly eats Larry's paint brush. Chase had adapted the scene from his 1933 'Luncheon At Twelve." The Stooges also had a habit of titling a number of their short films after popular phrases past and present. "Tassels in the Air" was gleaned from the old expression "Building castles in the air," which means essentially dreaming about doing the impossible. Tassels in this case was the object that sets off Curly into a frenetic fit, similar to his spastic movements seen in 1934's "Punch Drunk," 1935's "Horses' Collars" and 1937's "Grips, Grunts and Groans." Curly is first triggered when Mrs. Smirch enters what she thinks is the office of interior decorator Omay (Jean De Briac). But the maintenance workers, The Three Stooges, mixed up placing the new temporary office signs on the doors, mislabeling each office on the floor. Curly, seeing Mrs. Smirch's tassels hanging from her hat, goes nuts, only to be relieved by Moe's application of a brush to his chin. Later, after causing utter mayhem at Mrs. Smirch's house during her bridge party, the Stooges get kicked out and proceed to set up a trap of paint cans onto boards outside, a trick that backfires on them. The Smirches' exterior of their house in the Columbia Pictures' lot was used in 1936's "Mr. Deeds Goes To Town," showing Deeds' distinctive concrete pillars and gate at the driveway entrance.