In a Stooges short set in the Middle East, with Shemp talking to a harem girl:
SHEMP: Nice perfume. What brand do you use?
GIRL: Sphinx.
SHEMP: I know, but what brand do you use?
(Moe hits Shemp in the head with a vase.)
In Hebrew, “Samuel” is “Shmuel” or “Shemuel.” So, it’s not hard to see how “Shemp” could be a nickname for the Old Country version of his name.
Many American Jews were named after deceased relatives who came from Russia or Poland, and who had old-fashioned Hebrew names. If “Susan Cohen” was named in honor of her grandma Shoshannah, her family might call her “Shani.”
I seem to remember Officer Joe saying it was an accented name version. Perhaps he gave the wrong information once and someone corrected him.
Look up at post #12.
I know I’m posting – I can feel my fingers type.
And, of course, a “shemp” is now fairly standard movie lingo for a no-name stand-in, courtesy of the Raimi brothers and Bruce Campbell. (All of their movies have credits for this shemp and that shemp; Campbell’s brief cameo at the end of *Darkman *is credited as “Final Shemp.”
They got it from spotting “fake Shemps” in the Stooges shorts that were completed with a bad stand-in for Shemp.
I think Joe DeRita was better than Joe Besser any day. Sure he was a Curly clone without the personality or sheer comedic brilliance of Jerry Howard, but Besser was just whiny and annoying. Even I wanted to slap him.
My Hebrew name also, by the way, though not close to my real name. And no one ever called me Shemp.
Must not have seen that episode. However, in the Spike Jones version of “Yes, We Have no Bananas,” the Jewish dialog bit, champagne is pronounced Shemp-agne. Not that I believe that derivation for a second.
Awesome.
1000% in agreement.
I disagree. Joe de Rita actually fit in with the other stooges, was willinmg to perform stunts and get hit with pies, and looked kinda like Jerone “Curly” Howard. He was Moe’s first choice to replace Shemp (according to Moe’s autobiography), but was under contract* and couldn’t work with the Stooges yet, so they got Joe Besser instead. You’d think “getting hit with fake cream pies” would be in at least the first paragraph of the Stooges want ad, but apparently not, or else they were too desperate.
Nevertheless, although I was alive when they were still making Besser Stooge shorts, IK didn’t see them until they showed up on TV. “Curly Joe” was the Stooge I grew up on, and saw in the actual movie theaters. To me, he was a legit and funny Stooge.
*You have to wonder who had him under contract, and for what. I never saw him in anything but Stooges stuff. The internet movie database lists his earlier work, but it’s all movies and TV shows I’ve never heard of. His last movie job was the Stooge film Kook’s Tour in 1970, but I know that he formed a group of “new Three Stooges” – of which he was the only “legitimate” Stooge – that performed onstage and in live venues, but never on TV or in film.
Perhaps unfairly, the first thing I think of when I think of Shemp is this quote from “King of the Hill.”
Here’s a good article about Shemp.
“Born Samuel Horwitz, he was called ‘Shemp’ because ‘Sam’ came out that way in his mother’s thick Litvak accent.”
Side note: I just saw in that Wikipedia link that US Representative Barney Frank is related to Shemp by marriage. He’s the son of Shemp’s wife’s cousin.
Yep.
Shemp can also be a Jewish/Hebrew/Yiddish dimunitive of Samuel, which is Shemp’s real birth name, and his mother often called him something close to that, which morphed into Shemp.
I used to have a still from that - framed and prominently displayed in my office. When people would make a comment about my “Three Stooges” picture I would correct them and say, "No, that’s a picture of the FOUR Stooges.
I already know that I have odd tastes. I’m one of the few people who liked Timothy Dalton as James Bond, and one of the FEWER people who liked the Stooge pictures with Joe Besser.
The one with Joe’s sister Birdie reincarnated as a horse was one of my favorites. Joe didn’t like slapstick and wasn’t good at it, but his movies often had an absurdist element that appealed to me, even as a kid.
The saving grace about Joe Besser is that he * was * a good comedian, but, as noted, not in slapstick. He was certainly not a clone of Curly or Shemp.
Joe Besser had a clause in his Stooge contract that prohibited Moe from slapping him excessively the way he would hit Curly, Shemp, or Larry.