A Bird in the Head

Curly Howard's habit of long evenings partying was burning both ends of his candle, causing the comedian to suffer his first minor stroke. As a divorcee for five years, Curly took up Moe's suggestion to settle down. He went on a date with the glamorous Marion Buxbaum his brother had arranged in October 1945. After two weeks of seeing each other, Curly married Buxbaum, becoming his third wife. By the time the release of February 1946's "A Bird in the Hand," the newlyweds were filing for divorce, sending Curly to depression.

"A Bird in the Hand" was filmed in the Columbia Pictures studio in April, 1945, almost a year before its release, but three months after Curly was released from the hospital from his first stroke. The Three Stooges' newly-promoted Edward Bernds wrote and directed his first comedy with the team-and was he in for a surprise. As the long-time sound man for the studio, he knew the brilliance of Curly while personally seeing him perform. But the deterioration of Curly's health shocked Bernds on his first day on the set. "It was the wallpaper scene that we shot first, and during the first two hours of filming, I became aware that we had a problem with Curly," recalled Bernds. "The wallpaper scene was agony to direct because of the physical movements required to roll up the wallpaper and to react when it curled up in him. It just didn't work. As a fledgling director, my plans were based on doing everything in one nice neat shot. But when I saw the scenes were not playing, I had to improvise and use other angles to make it play." Bernds was unhappy with the final edit of "A Bird in the Head," no matter how much Bernds rewrote his script to emphasize the mad doctor Professor Panzer (Vernon Dent) and his gorilla Igor (Art Miles), shifting the focus away from Curly. After directing a few more Stooges films, he convinced his producer Hugh McCollum to hold back "A Bird in the Head" because of Curly's troubles during the shoot. He felt Curly exhibited more of his comedic brilliance in "Micro-Phones," and wanted to release that movie first, hoping to press upon the head of Columbia's short film unit, Jules White, he was capable of directing the Stooges. McCollum did, releasing "Micro-Phones" in November 1945, four months before "A Bird in the Head." White was so impressed by Bernds' initial film the rookie director remained with the Stooges for the next seven years.

A Bird in the Head (1946)

** 1/2 (out of 4)

Moe, Larry and Curly are working for a man hanging some wallpaper. This leads to a disaster but soon the three find themselves being hired by a nutty professor (Vernon Dent). What the boys don't realize is that the doctor plans to put Curly's brain into the skull of a gorilla.

A BIRD IN THE HEAD isn't the greatest Stooges' short that you're going to see but there are enough funny moments to make it worth sitting through. The highlight for me were some funny skits with the gorilla where it's standing behind the boys and they don't realize it. We've seen this type of scene in various shorts from the boys as well as others but I thought the comic timing was quite good. The entire first portion with the wallpaper is pretty flat in terms of laughs.

Larry, Curley, and Moe are incompetent workmen hanging wallpaper for Mr. Beedle. Next door, mad scientist Professor Panzer plans to put a human brain in a gorilla named Igor but he's looking for a really small brain. Somehow, there may be a solution nearby. This has the Stooges with a guy in a gorilla suit. It doesn't get any easier than that for the boys. I do reject the machine gun ending. Despite the silliness, a machine gun is not the funniest of props.

An average stooge short, somewhat ruined by Curly's performance due to a stroke that he recently suffered and it clearly shows on this short.

The stooges start off as wallpaper hangers, the stooges boss Mr. Beetle tells the boys to do a good job and he walks into Professor Panzer's office, Panzer wants to find a human brain small enough to fit inside the skull of a gorilla, then there's a funny scene when Larry accidentally gets Moe's head stuck between a ladder and the steps break and when Curly and Larry grab some wallpaper and they cover Moe's face inside and after Mr. Beetle shows up, he gets angry after the boys doing an awful job and he decides to not only fire them, he decides to tear them limb to limb.

Then the boys enter inside Panzer's office and Panzer decides to do an experiment on Curly's head and he tells the boys that they'll be living the life of luxury as long as they live and the boys find the gorilla and they start running for their lives and there's a memorable scene when Panzer does a screen test on Curly's head and it's a bird coming out of the clock going cookoo then the boys decide to run from the professor.

This short was also the debut of former stooge soundman Edward Bernds as a director even though his next short Micro-Phonies was released before this one, on Micro-Phonies, Curly was in much better health compared to this short and the short was one of the stooge's greatest performances.

A true stooge aficionado will crack up every time he or she hears that term--it's one of the key points in this drama. Dr. Panzer, played to sinister perfection by Vernon Dent, is looking for a brain small enough to transplant into the skull of his pet gorilla. When he hears Moe call Curly this familiar epithet, it takes on an entirely new meaning!

Dent virtually steals the show with his performance. He looks truly eerie, and when he starts to laugh as the boys realize what he's up to, it's something that might stay with you for a long time.

One odd thing about the short is when the gorilla starts firing the gun, he hits the boys in their posteriors (naturally); but he also clearly fatally wounds Panzer in the back. Maybe the only obvious death in the stooge film library? (Well, we never see him actually die.) The film is marred, as many stooge films are, by the lack of a concise ending. Otherwise, it's enjoyable to watch the boys misadventures, ranging from a classic botched wallpaper job to how they evade Dent and his furry friend. And it has one of my favorite exchanges of all time, as Moe and Larry observe the doctor studying Curly's skull:

Larry: That guy must be a headhunter!

Moe: If he's a headhunter, he's huntin' small game.