I’m watching the Three Stooges on AMC right now and I got to wondering: were the Three Stooges respected in their time, or were they considered schlock? I know that acts like the Marx Brothers, Abbott and Costello, and Laurel and Hardy were held in almost universal high regard, but were the Three Stooges considered on the same level or were they seen more like, say, the “Blue Collar Comedy Tour” of their time?
I would say they were regarded as low brow, since they relied so much on extreme farce and violent slapstick. While they did some verbal jokes and wordplay, these were much less important for them than the others.
With regard to the others, I would rank them according to critical respect as the Marx Brothers, Laurel and Hardy, and Abbott and Costello. When they did slapstick, it was usually more complicated and often more subtle than the Stooges. Wordplay and verbal jokes were also more sophisticated than those of the Stooges.
Abbott and Costello gained fame on radio first before starting their movie career. They were late comers to vaudeville, first getting together in 1935. By 1940 they were radio stars and the “Who’s on First” routine was already a classic. Their first movie was in a revue where they performed Who’s on First. You can argue - I would - that they were highly respected until they started making their increasingly sillier movies, which drove them down into kiddie territory.
The Stooges always were in that category. They got rescued by the accident of television, which could use their hundreds of shorts that didn’t look completed outdated by old-fashioned verbal humor and situations. They had many competitors in shorts in the 30s that never got a second life.
They were known as hard-working professionals but nothing more. I’m sure their contemporaries and audiences ranked them below many people who are forgotten today.
The Stooges were clearly not big stars, since nearly all the work (until the very end) was in short subjects. They never made the leap into features and were considered at the level of people like Edger Kennedy, Our Gang, Leon Errol, Pete Smith, etc. Even the Ritz Brothers (who are far worse) were more popular (at least, popular enough to go into features).
James Agee in his film criticism mentioned the Marxes, Chaplin, Keaton, Abbott and Costello, Bob Hope, and Stan Laurel, but not the Stooges. Critics did ignore them because they did shorts, since the shorts were considered filler (they also ignored cartoon short subjects).
The Stooges and, to a lesser extent, Our Gang, became familiar to later generations through TV. Back in the day, people did not go home talking about the Stooges film they saw.
I read Moe Howards book years ago. The Stooges were better at comedy than business. Moe got them into a bad contract that didn’t pay very well. The studio manipulated them terribly. During negotiations they’d tell Moe the theaters didn’t want the shorts anymore. Later he found out the theaters were begging for more shorts. The studio also controlled their careers. They weren’t loaned out to do movies.
Still, Moe was very positive about their career. The theater shorts made them very popular on the vaudeville circuit. They made most of their early money there. Eventually vaudeville ended and things dried up in the 1950’s. TV came along just in time.
I highly recommend Moe’s book. He had it almost finished when he died. The editors were able to finish it and publish.
used copies are $5
‘Now look, you knuckleheads! This contract is gonna make us a fortune! slap slap’
Did the Stooges ever try to do any work in radio? Guest spots on popular shows or anything? I know that both Laurel & Hardy and Harpo Marx both appeared on radio, even though they were both physical comedy acts. The 3 Stooges would’ve been better on radio than either of those acts, in my opinion.
The Stooges got an Oscar nomination for their short Men In Black.
So, yeah.
That was their second short, and they never got another nomination. El Brendel was also nominated that year, and the winner was La Cucaracha featuring the immortal Paul Porcasi and Steffi Duma.
The Three Stooges were “respected” by lots of people, but they weren’t considered “highbrow”. They played some big venues, and they were in demand. The Moe Howard autobiography notes that the U.S. Navy brought them in to perform, and treated them extremely well. There’s even a picture of it in that book.
I don’t think they ever performed a command performance for the Queen, but Life put them on a fold-out color cover in the early 1960s, and they had cameos in It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World and in the Dean Martin western Four for Texas.
The TV movie about them would have you believe that Moe was reduced to running for coffee for studio execs, but look at his iMDB entry – his last Columbia short (with Joe Besser) dates from 1959, the same year that the Stooges made their first “real” movie since 1930’s “Soup to nuts” – “Have Rocket Will Trave;l” (with Curly Joe de Rita).
The Stooges never got the respect they deserved while they were alive. I say, for plain pound for pound on the laugh scale, their best work is easily the equal of any of the classic teams. Only the Marx Brothers can rival them for sheer energy. And art? The Stooges art is anti-art. And it’s done extremely well. And hilariously too.
The reason that respect eluded them for so long is because they were relegated into shorts for nearly their entire careers. If they weren’t in feature films, they were considered a lesser item. When they finally appeared on TV, and the kids watching them grew up, they were finally recognized as true American Icons. For Duty and Humanity!
Well, in all fairness, La Cucaracha was one of the earliest 3-strip Technicolor films–a truly glorious technological innovation–so it had the distinct advantage, no matter that it was cast full of musical nobodies.
As mentioned, the amount of money they made for their pics was dismal by today’s standards, though it was certainly far better than 99% of the U.S. made and the live appearances paid much more. The studios were complete asses I understand when Curly had a stroke- basically their sympathy card was “you’re contracted for three (3) stooges so you better have a third when you start shooting the new short!”
Here’s a great story about The Stooge in Winter- a guy recalls his friendship with Moe in Moe’s later years. (Don’t worry that Moe was having to beg for change- he was living in comfortable semi-retirement.) Among other great factoids is that Moe kept a volume of the Encyclopedia Britannica on a bookstand in his house because he was super proud of the fact they used a picture of the Three Stooges for their article on comedy. You realize from the photos (taken at his house) just how tiny Moe was.
TV is what made the Stooges, it also made the careers of “The Little Rascals.”
TV gave new life to the Three Stooges unfortunately most of the “Our Gang” kids were not able to capitalize with the TV revival.
Incidentally, the studio in question was Columbia which, at the time, was run by Harry Cohnwho even among other Hollywood moguls of the era was notorious for his frequently abrasive and heavy-handed management style.
But, to be fair, he had the whole world wired into his ass. 
The World Book Encyclopedia used a picture of the Stooges to illustrate their article on Slapstick.
There was a TV moviemade a few years ago; I can’t attest to its accuracy because I don’t know enough about the Stooges but it was a decent movie- better than most made for TV stuff anyway. Like most movie biopics it’s filmed in flashbacks as the elderly Moe recounts their early days with the unstable Ted Healy, the Harry Cohn years, the WW2 years when they did constant bond drives and USO performances, etc… It deals with personalities a bit as well: Moe was the serious one investing in real estate and acting like a big brother to the others, Larry spent everything as soon as he made it, Curly had a weakness for stray dogs and a much more expensive weakness for women, they all liked Shemp of course but couldn’t stand Ted Besser, and finally brings in Curly Joe Derita.
Moe has near heart failure when he learns that the rights to the movies have sold to TV for an ungodly amounts (many millions of dollars) after he’d passed up a chance to buy them fearing it wouldn’t be a good investment. The movie ends with them on stage at a nightclub during their comeback. Moe is afraid that it’s going to be a dismal failure but of course it’s an enormous success and they’re bigger than ever as a nightclub act.
As I mention above, the TV movie shows Moe delivering coffee to one of the execs after the end of the shorts. I can’t buy that that happened – the last short came out the same year that the new Stooges (Joe de Rita joined after the last Columbia Short) released their fist full-length film. There wasn’t time for Moe to be degraded that badly.
And, despite what that movie shows about the Stooges doing a live show woith some trepidation about how they’d be received, it’s clear from Moe’s autobiography that they had been performing live on stage the whole time.