In “Dizzy Pilots” (1943), our heroes are airplane builders named ‘The Wrong Brothers’. The episode opens to Moe reading a letter they’ve just received from their draft board announcing that they’ve been granted an additional thirty days to complete the airplane they’re working on, which they claim will revolutionize flying. But if their plane does not live up to their claims, they will be inducted into the military. When the plane fails, they are shown next in Army basic training, where they fare no better.
So where’s the supposed censorship?
The letter from the draft board is written on stationary bearing the heading “Republic of Canabeer”. And the Stooges R.F.D. address is “Stinkola, Moronica”. They make this obvious: Moe reads these words out loud before he starts on the body of the letter.
So, despite the obviously, unanimously American accents of the Stooges (and two airplane executives who come to witness their test flight, and the drill sergeant they face in basic training), this story is supposed to be taking place in a fictitious foreign country, not the U.S. of A.
Why would this be?
The only explanation I can think of is that wartime fervor drove concerns that it would harm the war effort to suggest - even as a joke - that the U.S. government would ever consider buying airplanes from “three screwballs like the Wrong Brothers” (as the executives refer to them). This sensitivity may have been amplified by that fact that (AIUI) Germany had air superiority early on, so the U.S. was playing catch-up for a while.
I have no idea whether there was actual government censorship going on here; it may have been preemptive self-censorship by the Columbia Pictures Corporation.
Other Three Stooges episodes (e.g., “Fuelin’ Around” (1949), later repackaged as “Hot Stuff” (1956)) portrayed fictitious countries. But here, the Stooges were American carpet layers targeted by the “State of Anemia” (who mistook Larry’s hair for, presumably, Einstein’s, before kidnapping the boys). And in the wartime parodies “I’ll Never Heil Again” and “You Nazty Spy”, it was made painfully obvious who they were referring to.
But the premise of “Dizzy Pilots” seems to be a unique little sidestep.
I’m surprised I never noticed this until recently. In my defense, I first came to love this episode as a little kid, when I wouldn’t have understood such concerns.
Thoughts?
