Yes, We Have No Bonanza

The Stooges are in love -- but they gotta' work for it. Moe, Larry and Curly turn up as singing waiters(?) in a western saloon, feeling sorry for three pretty sisters who have to pay off a debt to no-account owner Maxey (played by Dick Curtis, naturally). It turns out Maxey is one bad apple, having also robbed a bank and buried $40 grand somewhere underground!

Meanwhile, to get fast money so they can pay off the girls' bills and marry them, the Stooges become gold prospectors and start DIGGING. The insane part finds them digging "exactly" where Maxey had stashed the stolen gold bonds. What are the chances? Unbelievable, but funny stuff with Curly always hamming it up. Writers Elwood Ullman and Searle Kramer pepper this with lots of Stooge schtick.

Yes, Dick Curtis, nasty bad guy in scores of westerns, makes a fairly tough hombre here. Actor and famous paperback writer Lynton Brent plays Pete. Suzanne Kaaren (known for the DEVIL BAT) plays singing sister #1. Jean Carmen, who also appeared in westerns, plays sister #2 and Lola Jensen plays sister #3.

The gang's all here, ready to rumble, thanks to director Del Lord.

Most Columbia dvd releases are boxed via decades, 30s, 40s and 50 episodes. Thanks much to METV for running these golden oldies Saturdays.

The Three Stooges has always been some of the many actors that I have loved. I love just about every one of the shorts that they have made. I love all six of the Stooges (Curly, Shemp, Moe, Larry, Joe, and Curly Joe)! All of the shorts are hilarious and also star many other great actors and actresses which a lot of them was in many of the shorts! In My opinion The Three Stooges is some of the greatest actors ever and is the all time funniest comedy team!

This is a very funny Three Stooges western short. All of the performances are very good and Curly is hilarious! Dick Curtis performs well as the villain and Lynton Brent does as well. Also there are brief but good performances by Vernon Dent, Jean Carmen, Lola Jensen, Suzanne Kaaren. I recommend this Three Stooges short!

It's not the old west that the Three Stooges are doing their thing in Yes We Have No Bonanza. Instead Moe, Larry, and Curly are in the more modern west of Roy Rogers B films with people using automobiles as much as horses.

The boys are working as waiters, singing waiters even in a saloon where they hope to make a stake and go prospecting. Lending authenticity to this western spoof is traditional movie western villain Dick Curtis who owns the saloon the Stooges work in.

Both in the town scenes and later out on the desert I have to say that Dick Curtis looked like he was as enjoying this as much as the Stooges. In a sense Curtis was like Douglass Dumbrille who was a serious villain in many films, but then did comic villains and did them well with people like Abbott&Costello and the Marx Brothers.

I guess the title sort of gives it away that the boys don't get fame and fortune, just a lot of laughs.

In May 1939's "Yes, We Have No Bonanza," the Stooges appear as singing waiters at an Old West saloon alongside three gorgeous singing cowgirls whom they harbor marriage hopes. They decide to go prospecting for gold to save the ladies' father from debtors prison. By chance they arrive at the same location the loot the saloon owner's associate had buried after robbing a bank. While setting up camp, Moe lights a fuse of dynamite to blow a hole in the ground just before Curly hits him on the head with a rock. In anger Moe throws the lighted stick of dynamite at Curly, missing him but landing at the feet of their working mule Yorrick. Panicking, the two are preoccupied with fetching water to douse the fuse while their dog snatches the dynamite and places it into a case of food. The explosive blows up, and they think Yorrick is scattered in a million pieces, with slabs of meat landing on their head. Moe, saddened by their mule's demise, quotes from Shakespeare's 'Hamlet,' "Alas, poor Yorrick, I knew him well." In the opening scene of "Yes, We Have No Bonanza," Curly is seen riding an Ingo-Bike, otherwise known as an 'Exercycle." Popularized in the mid-1930s, these unique bikes contain a platform where the rider rocks back and forth propelling the large rear wheel to project the bicycle forward. One group of enthusiasts traveled on these bikes in the late 1930s from Chicago to Miami in 30 days. The Stooges' film received its name from Curly's line said late in the short, paraphrasing the popular 1923 song, 'Yes, We Have No Bananas." It's remarkable the title was used to name the long-running 1960s Western TV series, 'Bonanza,' with Lorne Greene and Michael Landon. The 14-season television program's name is also a term miners use when they strike gold or silver.

Larry, Curly, and Moe work at a western saloon. They try to help three sisters who are working to pay off their father's debt to the saloon owner. The saloon owner and an accomplice had robbed a bank for $40k. The Stooges mistakenly assumed that they had found a gold mine. They hope to mine the gold themselves to pay for the girls' debt.

A lot of this is too stupid even for a Stooges short. Why would they assume that the guy had a good mine simply by his $20 coin? I know it's the Stooges. It doesn't have to make sense but I don't like it. Maybe it would be better if the loot is a bag of gold nuggets and one of the nuggets fell out of the guy's pocket. As always, I love the humor and I love Curly. Overall, this is a good fun short.