Like everyone else, i've seen and thoroughly enjoyed the new Hollywood remake of The Three Stooges. It's a well-crafted film that pays just homage to the legendary performers of yesteryear while updating the mythos for today's generation of emerging Stoogaholics. This gives me ample opportunity to ramble on with others at length, for while most people enjoy the antics of the Stooges, i am, for lack of a better term, a dedicated Stoogologist. You've seen the incredible array of Stooge paraphanalia in my house, so you know that i speak the truth when i claim that only a handful of persons in the world -- two or three, at most -- might know more about the Stooges' oeuvre than myself. And even that i would dispute. Would you like to know Larry's blood type or the zip codes of their respective places of birth? I have that information. Oh, i'm moving into the realm beyond the interest of the layman -- forgive me. Well, how about this interesting wrinkle of Stooge lore -- did you know that nearly every Stooges short that you see played on television these days is one of their early works? The latter ones are hardly ever shown. Here's why...
...in the early forties, Jerome "Curly" Horowitz began to suffere severe hypertension as well as ailments related to his heavy drinking, which were exacerbated by the stress of the strenuous shooting schedule imposed upon the troupe. Curly lost weight, developed severe jaundice, and was too exhausted to remember his lines or engage in his trademark physical shenanigans. The resulting material is therefore decidedly subpar and, to be perfectly honest, very depressing to view. An infamous shot in "Hootenanny Hijinks" in which a gaunt and delirious Curly suffers a grand mal seizure and looses control of his bowels was mistakenly left in the initial cut before it was noticed and later removed. (Although it has since been restored in the new Criterion DVD versions.) The next year, Curly suffered a catastrophic stroke that ended his career and led to his untimely death from massive cerebral hemorrhages. Curly's eldest brother, Moses "Moe" Horowitz blamed the head of the studio, Harry Cohn, and assaulted him by throwing hot roofing tar in his face. Fortunately, Moe was sufficiently wealthy and well-connected to avoid arrest from the incident. Curly was replaced by brother Shemp Howard and the Stooges continued on for many years.
As for Cohn, the boiling tar fused with his flesh and went so far as to alter his DNA, and in the next five years he gradually mutated into a tar-skinned abomination, a barely-human monstrosity that was unable to survive without constant medical care. He became reclusive and rarely left his Palo Alto ranch except to occasionally act -- often without the aid of makeup -- in science fiction films. He's best remembered as playing the recurring role of "the Toxic Terror" on the old 1960's-era Adam West Batman serial. Of course, the show wasn't called Batman back then; it was first aired under the title Captain Coward and the Amazing Danger Squad. It began life as a documentary but was heavily edited because it contained a good deal of proprietary military information that later became classified. Once in syndication, all dialogue was redubbed, the signature sound cards (Blang! Wazoom!, etc) were added, bat ears were digitally grafted to Captain Coward's hood, and all the overt homosexual references were removed, much to the dismay of Burt Ward.
As for the remaining Stooges, they ultimately died within mere weeks of one another, and were interred with great honor in their native land of Czechoslovakia. There the Stooge Mausoleum stands today, where its beneficent presence is said to cure various ailments and offer spiritual succor the the afflicted.
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