Violent Is the Word for Curly: Difference between revisions

Violent Is the Word for Curly
File:ViolentCurlyTITLE.jpg
Directed by	Charley Chase
Produced by	Charley Chase Hugh McCollum
Starring	Moe Howard Larry Fine Bud Jamison Gladys Gale Dick Curtis Marjorie Deanne Pat Gleason Al Thompson
Cinematography	Lucien Ballard
Edited by	Art Seid
Distributed by	Columbia Pictures
Release dates	July 2, 1938
Running time	17' 37"
Country	United States
Language	English

Violent Is the Word for Curly is the 33rd short subject starring American slapstick comedy team Three Stooges. The trio made a total of 190 shorts for Columbia Pictures between 1934 and 1959.

The short begins at Mildew College, an all-girl school, with some of the administrators begging the school's largest benefactor, Mrs. Catsby, to provide an athletic fund for the school. She does not approve of girls playing sports, and informs the administrators that the money will be used for the salaries of the three new European professors that are arriving that day.

Meanwhile, the Stooges have just started a new job as servicemen at a service station. The motto is "Super Service." When they get a customer (three older German men driven by a chauffeur), they proceed to provide their own inept slapstick brand of "super service", angering the men. The mayhem ends when Curly accidentally puts gasoline in the radiator and Moe checks it with a match. The resulting explosion prompts the Stooges to flee in a nearby Ice Cream truck that they had coincidentally thrown the German mens' suitcases into. Curly climbs in the back while Moe and Larry are in the front.

The Stooges finally stop when they run out of gas. Moe and Larry realize that Curly is still in the back of the truck and is now frozen solid. They thaw him out by tying him to a tree branch over an open fire. (Moe: "Twenty minutes to a pound...we'll be here a month!") This works fine until Curly wakes up on fire and jumps into a nearby lake. When Moe and Larry try to help him out, he pulls them in with him. Now wet, the boys decide to see if there are any dry clothes in the suitcases they had thrown into the truck.

It turns out that the men in the car were the three European professors. As the Stooges hitch hike, the car that passes by is driven by Mrs. Catsby. She mistakes them for the professors and invites them back to Mildew College.

During the introductions of the "new professors", Larry (as "Professor Feinstein") asks the class if they have any questions; one of the girls responds: "Is it true that time and space are calculated by the direct ratio of interplanetary magnetism to solar radiation?" The Stooges' response (after Moe asks her "What do you think?") is to teach the class mental coordination by performing a rendition of "Swinging the Alphabet".

During the buffet lunch, the three professors show up, blowing the Stooges' cover and vowing to return to "Hamburg on the Clipper!"

• Curly: "I never heard of such a thing!"
  
• Moe: "You never heard of what?"
  
• Curly: "He's gonna get a hamburger with a zipper!"

When Mrs. Catsby angrily confronts the Stooges, they tell her that the college needs athletics, not the foreign professors. They offer to demonstrate and the class follows. Meanwhile, the professors mix an explosive into a basketball.

The boys demonstrate football plays, using the basketball, and force Mrs. Catsby to join in. After being tackled "on her own five yard line" she agrees to provide an athletic fund if the boys would get the professors back. As the boys are about to agree, Curly throws an errant basket, going over the fence and exploding in front of the professors, who are blown back into the Stooges clutches. The boys vow to clean them up and give a little "super service".

During one scene, Curly is tied to a revolving spit that is placed over an open fire. He is then "roasted" in order to thaw him out after having slept in a freezer truck. Future Stooge director Edward Bernds was present during the filming and noticed that Curly's weight was causing a problem. "Curly was so heavy Moe and Larry couldn't turn the crank," Bernds said. The straps holding him slipped and he was hanging directly over the fire. Before they could get him off, he was pretty well seared. Curly was hollering his head off, and I don't blame him. Being roasted alive belongs to the Inquisition, not making two-reel comedies." ^[1]

• The title Violent Is the Word for Curly is parody that refers to the film Valiant Is the Word for Carrie.

• Curly suffered from third-degree burns while filming a scene in which he's being cooked over a fire pit.
• A colorized version of this film was released in 2004. It was part of the DVD collection entitled "Stooged & Confoosed"

"Swinging the Alphabet"

• Violent is the Word for Curly at threestooges.com

• Moe Howard and the Three Stooges; by Moe Howard (Citadel Press, 1977).
• The Complete Three Stooges: The Official Filmography and Three Stooges Companion; by Jon Solomon (Comedy III Productions, Inc., 2002).
• The Three Stooges Scrapbook; by Jeff Lenburg, Joan Howard Maurer, Greg Lenburg (Citadel Press, 1994).
• The Three Stooges: An Illustrated History, From Amalgamated Morons to American Icons; by Michael Fleming (Broadway Publishing, 2002).
• One Fine Stooge: A Frizzy Life in Pictures; by Steve Cox and Jim Terry (Cumberland House Publishing, 2006).