Curly, Moe, and Larry in “Three Little Beers” (1935)

For the last quarter of a century, my favorite part of the four-day Thanksgiving weekend was the Three Stooges festival put on by the Alex Film Society in Glendale. It was Martine who found out about it and got me into going with her on the Saturday afternoon after Turkey Day. In the intervening years, we have attended most of the screenings, except for those few times I was off to Mexico or South America at the time.

Of course, part of Martine’s interest in the festival are two of her favorite chicken restaurants in Glendale: Sevan Rotisserie Chicken and Elena’s Greek Armenian Kitchen. I am not a great lover of chicken, but I do love to see Martine happy.

When I was growing up, I started liking the Stooges; and I distinctively remember owning a 3-D Stooges comic book. But then, as my little brother Dan (who is six years younger than me) started liking the stooges, I decided they were too downmarket for me and disparaged them at every opportunity.

Now I appreciate the comics and marvel at their long career and the fact that they survived several deaths in the troupe. When Curly became ill in 1946, Moe and Curly’s brother Shemp took over without any diminution in the quality of the films. After Shemp died in 1955, he was followed by Joe Besser and Joe DeRita, who were not quite up to the mark.

The best of the six Stooges shorts I saw yesterday was “Slippery Silks” (1936) in which the boys inherit a fancy women’s clothing boutique and put on the most cockeyed fashion show imaginable.

Fashion Model in “Slippery Silks”

The still above is explained by the fact that, before inheriting the dress shop, the stooges were carpenters who accidentally destroyed a priceless Chinese antique wooden box. I guess they still had their carpentry background in mind.

In any case, I laughed uproariously throughout the two hour screening.