# Were the Three Stooges respected? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 11, 2010, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-three-stooges-respected/546303 "2010-07-11T14:51:02Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2010, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-three-stooges-respected/546303/21 "2010-07-12T20:53:31Z")
[According to this site](http://movies.amctv.com/person/70872/Three-Stooges/details), the Stooges were paid $60,000 per year by Columbia which they split evenly and which was never raised in all the years they worked for them. As mentioned they earned much more for their live appearances. Joe Besser was actually paid significantly more than Larry or Moe because of his pre-existing contract. $20,000 may sound like chicken feed, but it was the equivalent of a moderate 6 figure income in the late 1930s through WW2, so with the personal appearances they did alright. NOTHING compared to what the Marx Brothers were paid though (Groucho alone received $175,000 plus 15% of the gross of _A Day at the Races_ and _A Night at the Opera_ per [imdb](http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000050/bio). ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_A.Robrin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sam_a.robrin/32/14497_2.png) [@Sam\_A.Robrin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_A.Robrin)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2010, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-three-stooges-respected/546303/22 "2010-07-12T21:01:12Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > … despite what that movie shows about the Stooges doing a live show woith some trepidation … Maybe _you_ thought it was woith some trepidation, but it just made me _noivous_! Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk … ---
**Author:** ![DChord568](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/439d5e/32.png) [@DChord568](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DChord568)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2010, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-three-stooges-respected/546303/23 "2010-07-12T21:04:17Z")
I think the ultimate answer to the question posed in this thread is “It doesn’t matter.” The Stooges entertained millions during an era when critical respect for film comedy was almost an oxymoron anyway…unless it had highbrow pretensions of some sort. And you have to give all of this sort of thing time for perspective, and also consider who’s doing the evaluating. For example: • Chaplin was the be-all and end-all of silent film comedy when contemporary and for years afterwards, but lately Keaton has eclipsed him in critical regard (and rightly so, I believe). • Harold Lloyd’s silent features were more financially successful than any of his contemporaries. They were very popular as well, but don’t get a lot of notice today. • The Marx Brothers, though successful, were more popular with critics than with the public during their relatively brief run. Their regard in the public eye is as much a reflection of Groucho’s subsequent long career in other media than anything else. • Abbott and Costello were wildly popular with the masses for a time, but except for “Who’s on First” (a genuine classic), they haven’t aged well, and were never highly regarded critically. • Laurel and Hardy (my personal favorites) were generally poorly regarded by most critics during their careers, whereas the public consistently adored them. They were also more popular overseas than any of their contemporaries. Critical acclaim was bestowed upon them only in the latter half of the 20th century. As one of millions of kids who grew up with them on after-school TV, I love The Three Stooges…while recognizing that they aren’t in the same league as Laurel and Hardy. Both teams made films for the sole purpose of making people laugh. But Stan Laurel was enough of an artist…and Oliver Hardy enough of an actor…that their films achieved something in addition to this, without them even trying consciously for it. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2010, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-three-stooges-respected/546303/24 "2010-07-12T22:10:15Z")
You’re just plain wrong about the Marx Brothers. They were huge hits in Vaudeville for a decade. Their three Broadway plays were huge successes, with relatively long runs for the era. They were among the first to be solicited for sound movies, filming The Coconuts while Animal Crackers was still on Broadway. By their fourth film, they had made the cover of Time magazine. They bombed with Duck Soup. It was just the wrong movie for the time. Room Service wasn’t really a Marx Brothers movie and the audience reflected that. But then they moved over to MGM. Irving Thalberg revived their career with Night at the Opera and Day at the Races. Both earned well over $5 million, huge grosses for the day. Irving Thalberg also killed their career by forcing them into bad love story plots, but by then they were approaching 60 and making movies only because Chico perpetually gambled away all his money. They were A-list stars, of the same rank as Garbo, Cooper, Powell & Loy. Only Chaplin, Mae West and W. C. Fields were of the same level among comedians. I’m not convinced by the rest of your assertions either. Keaton certainly has grown in critical acclaim, but at the time nobody on earth was more respected than Chaplin. It doesn’t make sense to proclaim that the critics liked the Marxes better than the public and then claim that Keaton is better because of critical approval. [Lloyd](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Lloyd) was cumulatively successful, but only because he made a lot of movies. > [@](#): > > Although Lloyd’s individual films were not as commercially successful as Charlie Chaplin’s on average, he was far more prolific (releasing twelve feature films in the 1920s while Chaplin released just three), and made more money overall ($15.7 million to Chaplin’s $10.5 million). Chaplin was the highest paid figure in Hollywood. Both Abbott & Costello and Laurel & Hardy were popular among the masses. A&C were huge radio stars and their movies made incredible amounts of money. They were the #1 box office success of 1942. Yes, their critical acclaim declined later. L&H were among the top comedians in shorts, much higher rated than the Stooges. Their later films were not great but also made lots of money, though probably less than A&C. Again, I can’t figure out your point. Critical reputations go up and down. At the time they made their movies, however, there’s little doubt where these people stood relative to one another. Chaplin, the Marxes, Lloyd, A&C, L&H, and way at the bottom, The Stooges. ---
**Author:** ![Superhal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Superhal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superhal)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2010, 10:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-three-stooges-respected/546303/25 "2010-07-12T22:18:47Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > You’re just plain wrong… I wonder how an online argument involving the Stooges will end up. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2010, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-three-stooges-respected/546303/26 "2010-07-12T22:29:27Z")
> [@Superhal](#): > > I wonder how an online argument involving the Stooges will end up. What’s the emoticon for a finger to the eye? ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [July 12, 2010, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-three-stooges-respected/546303/27 "2010-07-12T22:30:55Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > They bombed with Duck Soup. It was just the wrong movie for the time. Room Service wasn’t really a Marx Brothers movie and the audience reflected that. But then they moved over to MGM. Irving Thalberg revived their career with Night at the Opera and Day at the Races. Both earned well over $5 million, huge grosses for the day. Irving Thalberg also killed their career by forcing them into bad love story plots, but by then they were approaching 60 and making movies only because Chico perpetually gambled away all his money. My only quibble is that Thalberg killed their career by dying. While today we wince at Alan Jones in Opera, then it definitely helped the popularity. Thalberg also put enough money into the production. A version of Night at the Opera toured before the movie was shot, and the Marxes were able to improve the script based on what worked for the audience. The later MGM movies were pale reflections of the two great ones, and loves stories were far from the problem. I watched At the Circus not long ago, and besides “Lydia” they were clearly just going through the motions. One book I read on them noted that Groucho being kicked down the stairs in “Go West” showed that the writers no longer understood the characters. Groucho might sidestep the punch so that Harpo fell down the stairs, but he would never take the fall himself. In any case, the Marxes did features and the Stooges did shorts, which says it all. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2010, 12:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-three-stooges-respected/546303/28 "2010-07-13T00:11:09Z")
> [@Superhal](#): > > I wonder how an online argument involving the Stooges will end up. With a post that doesn’t talk about the Stooges except to agree with the previous poster? > [@Voyager](#): > > My only quibble is that Thalberg killed their career by dying. While today we wince at Alan Jones in Opera, then it definitely helped the popularity. Thalberg also put enough money into the production. A version of Day at the Races toured before the movie was shot, and the Marxes were able to improve the script based on what worked for the audience. > > The later MGM movies were pale reflections of the two great ones, and loves stories were far from the problem. I watched At the Circus not long ago, and besides “Lydia” they were clearly just going through the motions. > One book I read on them noted that Groucho being kicked down the stairs in “Go West” showed that the writers no longer understood the characters. Groucho might sidestep the punch so that Harpo fell down the stairs, but he would never take the fall himself. > > In any case, the Marxes did features and the Stooges did shorts, which says it all. Thalberg’s contribution is complicated. Despite the tour for _A Day at the Races_, to me that movie fails, although it was even better received at the time than _Opera_. That’s just the power of a sequel, though. Look at how many recent sequels have out-grossed the original though not being nearly as good. Thalberg’s notion of a movie hurt the Marxes in several ways. Groucho had to be a sympathetic character, which meant that he had to be at the bottom. No more the president of a university or a country. Love stories were nothing new - _The Coconuts_ drips with them - but look at the power difference between Zeppo the love interest in _Monkey Business_ and the zeroes in the later movies. Zeppo may have been too young to develop a distinct character in vaudeville like the others, but he wasn’t mush. Thalberg also had a theory known as the “99-yard line.” It was a football metaphor, in which the heroes had to go the length of the field in the final reel to win the day. That wasn’t in itself bad - you can say that it’s the plot of _Duck Soup_. But putting the Marx Brothers on a park bench misunderstands the characters. Thalberg wanted to appeal more to women and get them buying tickets. A good business decision. How it would have worked out had he lived is impossible to say. It’s quite true that his death put them in the hands of Louis B. Mayer, who hated the Marxes and that absolutely did kill their career with cheap writers and plots, but Thalberg’s notion had already changed them into bad copies of themselves. You only get one _Night at the Opera_ in a lifetime. But you could say that about _Duck Soup_, too. And there aren’t a half dozen comic careers that had a _Monkey Business_ or a _Horsefeathers_. George S. Kaufman or S. J. Perelman wrote six of their first seven movies. And they collaborated with the top-ranking comic writers of the era. Nobody else had that luxury. (Fields and West had to write their own stuff and seldom came out well when working with the material from others.) The Marxes are towering characters in the comedy of the 20th century. No other group except the Pythons are in the same ballpark. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2010, 2:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-three-stooges-respected/546303/29 "2010-07-13T02:18:39Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > But you could say that about _Duck Soup_, too. And there aren’t a half dozen comic careers that had a _Monkey Business_ or a _Horsefeathers_. George S. Kaufman or S. J. Perelman wrote six of their first seven movies. And they collaborated with the top-ranking comic writers of the era. Nobody else had that luxury. (Fields and West had to write their own stuff and seldom came out well when working with the material from others.) The Marxes are towering characters in the comedy of the 20th century. No other group except the Pythons are in the same ballpark. By all accounts the Marxes improvved as much material as was written for them. A story, possibly apocryphal, is that one of the screenwriters (I believe Kaufman) attended shooting on one of the movies and asked “Is Groucho feeling okay today?” “I think so, why?” “Because I think that last line he said was actually in the script.” ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2010, 3:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-three-stooges-respected/546303/30 "2010-07-13T03:44:30Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > By all accounts the Marxes improvved as much material as was written for them. A story, possibly apocryphal, is that one of the screenwriters (I believe Kaufman) attended shooting on one of the movies and asked “Is Groucho feeling okay today?” > > “I think so, why?” > > “Because I think that last line he said was actually in the script.” It was from the Broadway run of _The Cocoanuts_. Groucho would often ad-lib during the many months a play ran. (And they also took that show out on a two-year tour of the country afterward.) The line is certainly apocryphal and has been improved itself. Joe Adamson in the magnificent _Groucho, Harpo, Chico, and Sometimes Zeppo_\* has it as “Hey, somewhere in the second act I think I heard one of the original lines.” Kaufman also is supposed to have said to co-writer Morrie Ryskind, “You should see Cocoanuts sometime, Morrie. It’s not what we wrote.” Kaufman was a legendary stickler (he wrote and directed) and didn’t tolerate ad-libbing except by Groucho. Even Groucho got to be too much and he put his foot down, which worked for a while. Stefan Kanfer in \*Groucho \*has the more familiar version: “I may be wrong,” Kaufman muttered, “but I think I just heard one of the original lines.” Oddly, the earliest I can find the line is not in a Marx Brothers bio but in a Kaufman one, Howard Teichmann’s _George S. Kaufman: An Intimate Portrait_, from 1972. > [@](#): > > Kaufman and Heywood Broun stood backstage watching the Marx Brothers romp through _The Cocoanuts_. Broun was talking, when Kaufman interrupted him and walked closer to the stage and listened. After a moment, he returned. > > “Now what were you saying?” Kaufman asked. > > Broun was annoyed. “Why did you stop me in the middle of a story?” he wanted to know. > > “Well, I had to,” Kaufman said. “I thought I heard one of the original lines of the show.” None of these is sourced and Teichmann’s is obviously a staged story of the sort told around the Algonquin Round Table and environs. It doesn’t sound like anything that would happen in real life, but it’s the sort of quip they would rehearse and tell to the crowd. Adamson’s book is 1973 and that seems to be whence it spread through the Marxist world, getting honed to perfection. Groucho seldom monkeyed with the script while filming. The scripts went through endless versions before shooting and none of the Brothers liked multiple takes. Besides, when they did a tour beforehand the lines were rewritten until they killed and then timed to the split second. A trouper like Groucho would never tamper with an audience laugh. The stage and its boredom and freedom was a different scene. \*Adamson wrote the definitive line on why the later movies didn’t work. _At the Circus_ and _Go West_ were written by Irving Brecher, a wit as fast as Perelman or Groucho, and a much more successful movie writer than either. “His drawback was that he was, perhaps incurably, one person.” All of the earlier Marx writers were teams that bounced funny lines off each other. The new cheapo MGM wouldn’t allow that. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2010, 4:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-three-stooges-respected/546303/31 "2010-07-13T04:05:30Z")
Much has been written about Minnie Marx, a major stage-mother, but I haven’t read anything about Solomon & Jennie Gorovitz Horwitz, parents of Moe (Moses), Shemp (Samuel) and Curly (Jerome) and two other boys. Does anybody know if they were stage parents or if their remaining brothers were ever in the act? ---
**Author:** ![DChord568](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/439d5e/32.png) [@DChord568](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DChord568)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2010, 5:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-three-stooges-respected/546303/32 "2010-07-13T05:17:44Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > You’re just plain wrong about the Marx Brothers. And so are you, as we’ll see. > [@](#): > > They were huge hits in Vaudeville for a decade. Their three Broadway plays were huge successes, with relatively long runs for the era. None of which translates into popularity with the masses, despite New York City’s view of itself as the center of the universe. The rest of the country was sublimely indifferent to Broadway hits, which they never got to see. > [@](#): > > They were among the first to be solicited for sound movies, filming The Coconuts while Animal Crackers was still on Broadway. By their fourth film, they had made the cover of Time magazine. > > They bombed with Duck Soup. It was just the wrong movie for the time. Room Service wasn’t really a Marx Brothers movie and the audience reflected that. But then they moved over to MGM. Wrong. _Room Service_ was made in 1938, _after_ A Night at the Opera and A Day at the Races. > [@](#): > > Irving Thalberg revived their career with Night at the Opera and Day at the Races. Both earned well over $5 million, huge grosses for the day. Irving Thalberg also killed their career by forcing them into bad love story plots, but by then they were approaching 60 and making movies only because Chico perpetually gambled away all his money. Your chronology is way off here as well. In 1935, when they made their first film with Thalberg, _A Night at the Opera_, Chico turned 48, Harpo 47 and and Groucho 45. Groucho considered this and A\* Day at the Races\*, made two years later, to be the team’s best films. I suspect they were also their most successful financially, though I don’t have a cite for it. So much for your theory. The Marx Brothers’ decline came in their post-Thalberg MGM films, _Go West_, _At the Circus_ and _The Big Store_. > [@](#): > > They were A-list stars, of the same rank as Garbo, Cooper, Powell & Loy. Only Chaplin, Mae West and W. C. Fields were of the same level among comedians. The Marx Brothers made only eight feature films in the entire decade of the 1930s (as did West). Fields made 15, and Chaplin made two (though he made dozens of shorts and features leading up to the decade). Cooper, Powell and Loy probably made eight in a year during some of the 1930s. I’m not at all saying The Marx Brothers weren’t popular with audiences, but I don’t believe your A-list assertion is supported by the facts. > [@](#): > > I’m not convinced by the rest of your assertions either. Keaton certainly has grown in critical acclaim, but at the time nobody on earth was more respected than Chaplin. Which is why I used the word “lately.” Did you miss that? > [@](#): > > It doesn’t make sense to proclaim that the critics liked the Marxes better than the public and then claim that Keaton is better because of critical approval. Reread my post. I never claimed anyone was “better” except as seen from my personal taste…which is based on…my own personal taste. I merely gave assessments from several different perspectives. > [@](#): > > [Lloyd](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Lloyd) was cumulatively successful, but only because he made a lot of movies. > > Chaplin was the highest paid figure in Hollywood. I agree with both of these statements. However, my statement about Lloyd’s films was that they were “financially successful,” which is a different animal entirely than what the star is paid for his services. > [@](#): > > Both Abbott & Costello and Laurel & Hardy were popular among the masses. A&C were huge radio stars and their movies made incredible amounts of money. They were the #1 box office success of 1942. Yes, their critical acclaim declined later. No argument here. > [@](#): > > L&H were among the top comedians in shorts, much higher rated than the Stooges. Their later films were not great but also made lots of money, though probably less than A&C. Laurel and Hardy’s film decline began after 1940, when they parted company with Hal Roach. Their post-1940 films are dreadful, though as you say, they did reasonably well at the box office. > [@](#): > > Again, I can’t figure out your point. Critical reputations go up and down. My point was made in the first three paragraphs of my post. The bullet points were, I believe, accurate assessments…again, from several different perspectives. > [@](#): > > At the time they made their movies, however, there’s little doubt where these people stood relative to one another. Chaplin, the Marxes, Lloyd, A&C, L&H, and way at the bottom, The Stooges. Stood relative to one another in what regard? There is more than one set of criteria by which they may evaluated. Your ranking is surely wrong in terms of critical respect if you rank Abbott and Costello ahead of Laurel and Hardy. L&H were also more prolific than A&C, and their top-rank film career lasted longer as well (though much of it was in shorts rather than features). Finally, they were far more popular in Europe, Asia and South America than Abbott and Costello ever were. ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_A.Robrin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sam_a.robrin/32/14497_2.png) [@Sam\_A.Robrin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_A.Robrin)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2010, 12:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-three-stooges-respected/546303/33 "2010-07-13T12:57:49Z")
Well, somebody had _better_ respect them!: > **[Exodus Of The 3 Stooges](https://whosoever.org/exodus-of-the-3-stooges/)** > > (Author Unknown) (Author is T. J. Englander, NL, F 1984) ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2010, 1:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-three-stooges-respected/546303/34 "2010-07-13T13:56:17Z")
> [@DChord568](#): > > The Marx Brothers made only eight feature films in the entire decade of the 1930s (as did West). Fields made 15, and Chaplin made two (though he made dozens of shorts and features leading up to the decade). Cooper, Powell and Loy probably made eight in a year during some of the 1930s. How is this even remotely relevant? More important in comparison, how many features did the Stooges star in during this period? At best, they were a supporting act. Further, though Fields made 15 films, they never made much money\*. Critics loved him, but general audiences did not, and often didn’t get their humor (most though “The Fatal Glass of Beer” – one of the funniest shorts ever – was absolutely devoid of laughs). And Chaplin’s two films were extremely popular. It actually got audiences to see what was considered a dead art. \*Except perhaps for **David Copperfield** , but that’s not really a Fields film. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2010, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-three-stooges-respected/546303/35 "2010-07-13T14:33:24Z")
> [@DChord568](#): > > I think the ultimate answer to the question posed in this thread is “It doesn’t matter.” > > The Stooges entertained millions during an era when critical respect for film comedy was almost an oxymoron anyway…unless it had highbrow pretensions of some sort. > > And you have to give all of this sort of thing time for perspective, and also consider who’s doing the evaluating. > [@DChord568](#): > > And so are you, as we’ll see. > > None of which translates into popularity with the masses, despite New York City’s view of itself as the center of the universe. The rest of the country was sublimely indifferent to Broadway hits, which they never got to see. > > Reread my post. I never claimed anyone was “better” except as seen from my personal taste…which is based on…my own personal taste. I merely gave assessments from several different perspectives. > > My point was made in the first three paragraphs of my post. The bullet points were, I believe, accurate assessments…again, from several different perspectives. I’m not going to bother refuting you point by point because it’s obvious you didn’t pay attention to the rest of my posts. If you had you’d see that your assertion that the rest of the country was indifferent to Broadway hits is just, again, plain wrong. As I said, the Marxes toured for two full years with Cocoanuts. They spent six months in Chicago alone. They toured with their other Broadway shows as well. Unlike today, when touring companies don’t normally contain the original casts, that wasn’t an option for the Marxes. They went into every city and were supremely popular with audiences all over the country. They had already become one of the biggest acts in Vaudeville and that also meant in the country, not simply in New York. They toured the country relentlessly for almost two decades. They were superstars on a national level. Your post, besides the factual errors, tossed into a blender time periods and critical and popular acceptance pulling out whichever one you wanted to make a particular point, leaving you with no coherent argument. The OP asked specifically whether the Stooges were respected in their time. Everybody else has been trying to answer that question. You didn’t have the courtesy to do so. Hollywood had a hierarchy that was known to everyone in the business. Anybody familiar with movie history would know this. The number of films made was never the issue. Star power was. I’m talking in their time. You are not. If you want to make an issue of reading a post, you have to read others’. ---
**Author:** ![BwanaBob](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bwanabob/32/2985_2.png) [@BwanaBob](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BwanaBob)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2010, 3:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-three-stooges-respected/546303/36 "2010-07-13T15:58:12Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > Much has been written about Minnie Marx, a major stage-mother, but I haven’t read anything about Solomon & Jennie Gorovitz Horwitz, parents of Moe (Moses), Shemp (Samuel) and Curly (Jerome) and two other boys. Does anybody know if they were stage parents or if their remaining brothers were ever in the act? The Horowitz parents were not stage parents at all. However, the dad did appear without a speaking part as a juror in “Disorder in the Court”. Not sure about the non show-biz brothers. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2010, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-three-stooges-respected/546303/37 "2010-07-13T16:35:16Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Thalberg’s contribution is complicated. Despite the tour for _A Day at the Races_, to me that movie fails, although it was even better received at the time than _Opera_. That’s just the power of a sequel, though. Look at how many recent sequels have out-grossed the original though not being nearly as good. > > Thalberg’s notion of a movie hurt the Marxes in several ways. Groucho had to be a sympathetic character, which meant that he had to be at the bottom. No more the president of a university or a country. Love stories were nothing new - _The Coconuts_ drips with them - but look at the power difference between Zeppo the love interest in _Monkey Business_ and the zeroes in the later movies. Zeppo may have been too young to develop a distinct character in vaudeville like the others, but he wasn’t mush. Before I respond to this let me note that in the main I totally agree with you that the Marxes were far more respected than the Stooges. And saying America did not care about Broadway is just silly. Besides the touring companies you mentioned, Broadway show tunes were played all over. I don’t know if they tried to put shows on the radio the way they did movies (I have a radio version of Duck Soup) but it wouldn’t surprise me. I’l disagree about the love interest in the earlier movies. In Night at the Opera, the comedy stops when the romantic songs begin. In Monkey Business, the love interest is played for laughs - how Zeppo says to the girl “I’ll never leave you” just before being chased off by ship’s officers. I hope you don’t consider the Zeppo - Groucho - Thelma Todd love triangle in Horse Feathers a real love interest! It is easier to mistake Thelma Todd as a real love interest than Margaret Dumont (though Dumont was a lot funnier, even if unintentionally.) Grouch begins Night at the Opera standing up Margaret Dumont - at the next table. In Day at the Races he is a quack doctor. I’m not sure he was ever actually respectable. My point wasn’t that, it was that like Bugs Bunny, Groucho always more or less comes out on top. Daffy gets flattened, Bugs, never. > [@](#): > > Thalberg also had a theory known as the “99-yard line.” It was a football metaphor, in which the heroes had to go the length of the field in the final reel to win the day. That wasn’t in itself bad - you can say that it’s the plot of _Duck Soup_. But putting the Marx Brothers on a park bench misunderstands the characters. Thalberg wanted to appeal more to women and get them buying tickets. A good business decision. How it would have worked out had he lived is impossible to say. It’s quite true that his death put them in the hands of Louis B. Mayer, who hated the Marxes and that absolutely did kill their career with cheap writers and plots, but Thalberg’s notion had already changed them into bad copies of themselves. You only get one _Night at the Opera_ in a lifetime. > > But you could say that about _Duck Soup_, too. And there aren’t a half dozen comic careers that had a _Monkey Business_ or a _Horsefeathers_. George S. Kaufman or S. J. Perelman wrote six of their first seven movies. And they collaborated with the top-ranking comic writers of the era. Nobody else had that luxury. (Fields and West had to write their own stuff and seldom came out well when working with the material from others.) The Marxes are towering characters in the comedy of the 20th century. No other group except the Pythons are in the same ballpark. We’re back to the respected in the day or respected now issue. I am pretty sure that Duck Soup is the favorite Marx movie for most people today - it is certainly mine, followed by Monkey Business and Horsefeathers. Biut I also love Perelman, thanks to my mother. But at the time Duck Soup was clearly ahead of what the audience could accept. Thalberg pulled them more into the mainstream, which hurts the movies from today’s standards but not for the ones at the time. I’m not surprised Groucho liked Night at the Opera - he was petrified about being poor again, and he got a lot more respect at MGM - in the beginning - then he got at RKO. I suspect we both agree that means nothing. BTW, the script of Animal Crackers appears in one edition of Kaufman’s plays. It follows the movie fairly closely, but the notes say it was more or less taken from the movie, since the play didn’t have a stable script. I would have loved to see the original one. We know that the Marxes added stuff - the classroom scene in Horsefeathers is from the Skul Daze vaudeville skit. Finally, no one can know of a healthy and involved Thalberg could have supported them enough for another classic, and if they would get engaged with this support. I bet there was one more great movie in them. ---
**Author:** ![DChord568](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/439d5e/32.png) [@DChord568](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DChord568)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2010, 9:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-three-stooges-respected/546303/38 "2010-07-13T21:32:33Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > I’m not going to bother refuting you point by point because it’s obvious you didn’t pay attention to the rest of my posts. More likely you won’t do this because it would involve taking responsibility for your own blunders with regard to _Room Service_, the Marx Brothers’ ages at the time they became associated with Thalberg, and your other errors, which rendered at least one of the major points you made foolish. I would have more respect for your criticisms of me if you would acknowledge your own mistakes instead of pretending you never made them. > [@](#): > > If you had you’d see that your assertion that the rest of the country was indifferent to Broadway hits is just, again, plain wrong. > > As I said, the Marxes toured for two full years with Cocoanuts. They spent six months in Chicago alone. They toured with their other Broadway shows as well. Unlike today, when touring companies don’t normally contain the original casts, that wasn’t an option for the Marxes. They went into every city and were supremely popular with audiences all over the country. They had already become one of the biggest acts in Vaudeville and that also meant in the country, not simply in New York. They toured the country relentlessly for almost two decades. They were superstars on a national level. It’s of course, silly to say that they “went into every city” (a logistical and practical impossibility), but I agree with you that the Marx Brothers gained considerable exposure through touring in vaudeville, touring the two Broadway plays, and “trying out” scenes from A\* Night at the Opera\* and _A Day at the Races_ before live audiences. I have never denied that they were popular with many. My point (which I would also make in response to RealityChuck’s post) is that popularity depends upon exposure, and no amount of relentless touring can make up for the more frequent and widespread exposure afforded by motion pictures. Nearly every one-horse town in America had a movie theater, and it was often the sole source of entertainment in those towns. The price of admission was generally lower than it would have been to a stage production. In addition to this degree of penetration to markets unserved by live venues, you have to factor in the frequency of appearances. The Marx Brothers made no films in 1934 and 1936, and just one in each of the decade’s other years. Contrast this with Laurel and Hardy, who made as many as eight shorts _per year_ through 1935, as well as at least one feature film (sometimes more) in every year of the 1930s. I’m very confident of what the results of a popularity poll pitting L&H and The Marx Brothers would have been in the 1930s. The prolific output of many of the other “A-list” stars you mentioned in your post vs. The Marx Brothers is another reason I don’t believe they occupied quite the same status as you seem to think they did. > [@](#): > > Your post, besides the factual errors, tossed into a blender time periods… Wow, congratulations. It takes real balls to say this after your own performance in this regard! > [@](#): > > …and critical and popular acceptance, pulling out whichever one you wanted to make a particular point, leaving you with no coherent argument. The OP asked specifically whether the Stooges were respected in their time. Everybody else has been trying to answer that question. You didn’t have the courtesy to do so. Here is what the OP asked: > [@](#): > > 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? The key issues that need to be clarified with respect to this question are: “respected” by whom? “Considered schlock” by whom? “Considered on the same level” by whom? The answers are quite different depending on who is doing the “respecting” or “considering.” The OP’s statement that “…Abbott and Costello and Laurel and Hardy were held in almost universal high regard” is clearly untrue if one is speaking of the majority of film critics or highbrows of the day. So it’s not really clear from which perspective the OP is approaching this question. In my posts, I’ve tried to cover all the bases by approaching it from both, acknowledging that the answer will be different depending upon who is asked. Were The Three Stooges considered “schlock” by the millions who laughed at their shorts year after year at the theater? Tell me, would you have had the nerve to walk up to such an individual and tell him “You know, that’s real schlock you’re laughing at there”? > [@](#): > > Hollywood had a hierarchy that was known to everyone in the business. Anybody familiar with movie history would know this. And legions of moviegoers cheerfully ignored that hierarchy and watched and laughed at what they damn well pleased, irrespective of the stars’ New York City origins or other highbrow connections. It has always been thus with any art form. > [@](#): > > The number of films made was never the issue. Star power was. It’s an issue when it comes to exposure. We forget in this day and age of instant DVD releases and endless TV reruns that back then, once a film had its run in the theaters, it disappeared for good unless it happened to have a limited reissue several years after the fact. Familiarity is a not inconsiderable component of popularity. > [@](#): > > I’m talking in their time. You are not. If you want to make an issue of reading a post, you have to read others’. Pardon me ever so for not strictly adhering to the “in their time” edict in my replies. ---
**Author:** ![Jim\_s\_Son](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19adc/32.png) [@Jim\_s\_Son](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jim_s_Son)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2010, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-three-stooges-respected/546303/39 "2010-07-13T21:44:15Z")
I was in the local library glancing through some biographies about Lucille Ball to see what they said about an appearance she had in a Three Stooges short “Three Little Pigskins” early in her career. I forget to write down authors/titles but they were contradictory. One of them said ‘no one ever chased laughs harder than the Stooges and even then they were renown for it. However, Three Little Pigskins" was not one of their better efforts". The other was more negative, saying "Ball later said she didn’t know what she was getting into which was wrong. Everyone knew whatever the Stooges would do would be gross and it was. However seeing her name in a screen credit was a big thrill for Ball.’ I don’t know if this means anything but when "I Love Lucy: went to Hollywood, lots of people from Ball’s career made appearances such as Harpo Marx from “The Big Store”. The Stooges didn’t. Besides the death of Irving Thalberg and luke warm studio support, I don’t know how interested the Marx Brothers were in making movies. Arthur Marx in “Life with Groucho” and “Son of Groucho” talks about how conscious his father was of turning 50 and how he was constantly looking for a “softer racket” which he considered radio to be. Groucho always envied how Jack Benny could come out in a suit and tie, tell jokes and get people to laugh and Groucho felt people had a built in resistance if you dressed funny. Groucho had more work to do on a set and off it: Chico was too busy gambling (badly) and getting women in the sack (did well in that) and Harpo was too much of a daydreamer to do the off screen work (very nice guy, though). Plus with three distinct comedians, it was hard for even skilled writers to write for all three and come up with scenarios where they interacted with each other. ---
**Author:** ![Peanuthead](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peanuthead/32/360_2.png) [@Peanuthead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peanuthead)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2010, 4:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-three-stooges-respected/546303/40 "2010-07-14T04:31:12Z")
Sorry, no cite, but I recenly read somewhere that the key to the success of the 3 Stooges was not the actual slapstick but the _ **sound effects** _. Unless you’re 4 years old there is nothing funny about grabbing someone’s nose. But add the HONK of a bicycle horn and some people find it hilarious. Try watching them without sound and you’ll see quite a difference. As for Abbot and Costello, you might as well call them the “2 Stooges” as their whole schtick was the slick Abbot slapping around the bufoon Costello. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-three-stooges-respected/546303.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/were-the-three-stooges-respected/546303.md?page=3)