Husbands Beware

One of the last shorts to have original footage with Shemp---he was 60 years old and if you look close some shots show it.

Partial remake of BRIDELESS GROOM has a new opening scenes where Moe&Larry marry two 300 pound bulldozers named Maxine Gates and Lu Leonard. Ordered to prepare a wedding feast, Moe&Larry prepare a roast turkey smothered in turpentine. Shemp,in charge of baking muffins,some up with rock hard towers that defy eating----one breaks off a table edge.

Lu Leonard went on to a solid career as a character actress---you might remember her from a Blake Edwards comedy where Dudley Moore was a bigamist whose wives are giving birth at the same time in the same hospital. Leonard is an admitting nurse who adamently refuses to let him see either wife.

Cut from t he original is a scene where Moe&Larry pretty Shemp up before he tries to court Christine Mc Intyre.

Having low expectations going in, the opening new footage (clocked at over five minutes) of 'Husbands' came as a pleasant surprise. I won't say the new footage was grade A material, but it provided a very solid foundation for what "could have been" a good all-original film.

Unfortunately, this was put together in 1955, during a time of one day shooting schedules. After the new footage, Jules White decided to just thumbtack stock footage from 'Brideless Groom' into this short, making for a not-so-smooth story transition, which Jules and Felix Adler try to remedy with a quickie bit of new footage at the end, giving us the old, worn-out ending of the boys (Moe & Larry in this case) getting shot in the butt.

3/10

If you watched this short without prior knowledge of its having incorporated footage from an earlier short, you would still notice a distinct lack of flow after the first scene. They would have been better off without any earlier footage at all. Moe and Larry marry Shemp's "sisters," but as soon as the vows are exchanged, the brides immediately turn into monsters intent on brow-beating their poor husbands into submission. Soon after that, we cut to Shemp Howard, Professor of Voice. Now we see Moe back to his usual domineering, violent self, which seems utterly incongruous in the face of the henpecking he withstood in the opening scene. It's like seeing two completely different shorts mistakenly spliced together. The hasty "ending" doesn't help matters either. They should have just developed the first scene more---they could have had a decent film extolling the virtues of bachelorhood.

HUSBANDS BEWARE is a remake of the Shemp classic BRIDELESS GROOM. The film's new cooking scene at the beginning of the film is great. The stooges are always funny when they cook. However after the first few minutes of cooking footage, we cut to original footage of BRIDELESS GROOM. One thing I noticed about these 1953 to 1956 remakes are that they do fit with the new story. They do an insert shot if the old story line doesn't match.

HUSBANDS BEWARE does have a new ending, but I won't give it away to those who want to be surprised.

**** out of 4 stars.

This is a pretty good remake of "Brideless Groom", the new footage is excellent, but the problem is that most of it is in the first five minutes, and the new ending is only 20 seconds long. But the first five minutes of new footage is so good it could've been a good short all by itself.

Grade: B