Violent Is the Word for Curly

The Three Stooges are working at a gas station and their first customers are three famous professors from Europe. The stooges blow up their car and steal some of their clothes. When they are mistaken for the professors they end up at a women's college where they have to talk about their work.

Moe, Larry and Curly have made another fine short. I had a pretty good time and some of the violent jokes are quite good, especially one involving a woman near the end. Finally the word "violent" is in the title because you have to admit that the stooges are a little too violent sometimes. Still, this one is very nice.

The secret for the success of The Three Stooges was their hard work behind the scenes. The three would read the upcoming film's script and fine-tune the comedy bits until they wore out their directors from rehearsing. A good example finds the three posing as college professors in July 1938's "Violent is the Word for Curly."

While in front of a college class, the three proceed to teach the students how to remember the letters of the alphabet written on the blackboard. Comedian Charley Chase, director for "Violent is the Word for Curly," remembered as a boy his family's maid would sing the 1875 composer Septimus Winner song 'The Spelling Bee' to teach him the alphabet. He adapted her lessons to the Stooges film by renaming it 'The Alphabet Song.' Moe led off with a pointer singing each letter beginning with "B": "B-A-bay, B-E-bee, B-I-bicky-bi, B-O bo, bicky-bi bo, B-U bu, bicky bi bo bu." Curley belts out a couple of letters, intermixed with the singing students getting the hang of it by tackling a few. The sequence turned out to be one of the Stooges' more famous skits, credited because of all the rehearsing and fine-tuning The Three Stooges did to the song.

"Violence is the Word for Curly," whose title is a modification of RKO Pictures' 1936 film 'Valiant is the Word for Carrie,' follows the Stooges as they begin their first day on the job as gas station attendants. Their first customer is a car with three visiting college professors, whose luggage the Stooges throw into an ice cream truck parked next to them to clean the interior of their car. Things get so chaotic the three escape in the truck with Curly trapped in the back refrigerator. Running out of gas, Moe and Larry discover Curly frozen in the ice cream storage compartment. They put him on a rotating spit above a fire to thaw him out. During filming, future Stooge director Edward Bernds, assisting on the production, noticed Curly's weight prevented Larry and Moe from turning the crank. "The straps holding him slipped and he was hanging directly over the fire," Bernds remembered, when a sudden gust of wind kicked up the flames. "Before they could get him off, he was pretty well seared. Curly was hollering his head off, and I don't blame him. Being roasted alive belongs to the Inquisition, not making two-reel comedies." "Violent is the Word for Curly" is also known for being colorized from black-and-white much later. Trouble was the color made the female college students, dressed in athletic shear tops with nothing underneath them, transparent in the scenes they're playing basketball.

In The Three Stooges' earlier 31st entry, May 1938 "Healthy, Wealthy and Dumb," Curly won $50,000 in a radio contest. They decide to splurge in a fancy hotel stay, only to be unsuccessfully fleeced by three pretty gold diggers residing in the next room. The title was a parody on Ben Franklin's advice, "early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise." Actress Lucille Lund, 25, plays one of the ladies cozying up to the Stooges. She's best known for her role as the wife of the Boris Karloff character in 1934's horror classic "The Black Cat."

Working at a gas station, the 3 Stooges provide "super service" to three visiting European college professors. They accidentally blow up their car, and escape by borrowing a truck "Yukon Ice Cream Co., frozen dainties." Since Curly fell asleep in the back, he becomes a frozen dainty. Moe and Larry barbecue Curly to thaw him out, Moe quips, "20 minutes to a pound-- we'll be here a month." Donning the caps and gowns the professors had in their luggage, the 3 Stooges hitch a ride to Mildew College. Their academic lesson consists of leading the girls in singing along with the very catchy number, "Swingin' the Alphabet." B-A, Bay. B-E, bee. B-I, bickey-bye, (etc.) When the real college professors arrive, they announce they are going to leave the college, but the Stooges get them to come back-- with a bang.

This story was written by the incomparable Elwood Ullman. In the 1930s, he had written for the legendary magazine "Captain Billy's Whiz Bang," which in 1939 inspired "Whiz Comics" in which Billy Batson became Captain Marvel with the Bang of a magical thunderbolt. Elwood would write 37 "Three Stooges" shorts, 14 Bowery Boys movies, and capped his career by writing 2 "bikini" movies for AIP. This short was the debut for Marjorie Deanne (Miss Katsby), her first film in which she played a character with a name. In Marjorie's 6-year film career, she would be in 2 other Stooges shorts: "Dutiful But Dumb" (1941) and "Matri-Phony" (1942). Trivia: the title of this short is a spoof of the movie "Valiant Is the Word for Carrie" (1936).

Just saw this on Thad's Animation Blog (actually, rewatched would be the better word since I first viewed this in the late '70s on afternoon television). In this one, the boys are gas station attendants who are doing "super service" on three professors on their way to a college they've been hired for. But the Stooges' inept errands has the car they're working on blowing up, so Moe, Larry, and Curly end up running for their lives. They then disguise themselves as those men as a case of mistaken identity ensues...Quite hilarious from beginning to end with the highlight being the "Swinging the Alphabet" number. Especially loved Curly's contribution and the girls' admonition of "Curly's a dope!" afterwards! Directed with great fun by comedian Charley Chase.

Boy, have times changed, at least at gas stations in America.

In this film, we see the days in which you got a lot of personal service when you pulled up next to the pumps. It's exaggerated here.....big time! In this movie, the boys, who just got employed at the Acme Service Station, give you their version of "super service."

"Super service" with the Stooges means they not only will put gas in your automobile, but check the spark plugs, polish the car, oil and grease it, put water in the radiator, wash it, and give you a shave and haircut, press your pants and a lot more and three professors at the college find out when they pull into the station. They especially find out when the idiots put gas in the radiator and water in the gas tank!

That lunacy is just the start in this extremely wacky Stooges film. Soon, a frozen Curly is put on a spit and barbecued. Soon after that, the boys are mistaken for the professors - the ones the blew up at the gas station.

After that, well, I don't want to spoil everything. Suffice to say the boys - as professors' "Feinstein," "Frankfurter' and "von Stupid" - would be a little unorthodox in their teaching! It is a funny film and a good representation of the total craziness of Curly, Larry and Moe in the late '30s.

NOTES - Gladys Gale is a dead-ringer for Margaret Dumont, the foil in many of the Marx Brothers film. Gale plays "Mrs. Katsby," the head of a Mildew College, a women's college. In her snobbish tones, while watching gym class, she says things like, "In my day, we kept our noses in books and didn't around dressed like fan dancers!"

"Oh, mother," replies her very-hot daughter, played by Marjorie Deanne, who wears a revealing blouse. I am surprised that got by the censor.

The famous silent comedian, Charley Chase, directed this one. I think he did about a half dozen Three Stooges shorts in the late 1930s.