Follow up...it was Tom Bergevin. If you google Howard Stern Lost and Found Stooges interviews. Great stuff...
I have all the DVDs twice over. The individual sets and the big box with the solo shorts of Shemp and Joe Besser. Love it all.
I think anyone who doesn't also appreciate the talents of Joe Besser is a big meanie who deserves a great big pinch.
Yeah, I love 'em. They've been "my boys" for 40+ years! When I finally got a smartphone a few years back, I made sure to add this as my ringtone...
They are on the Twilight Time blu-ray of THE MAD MAGICIAN with Vincent Price. They are both viewable in 2-D and 3-D and look great. Looks out of print as Amazon has it for $88!
I remember in the late 70s and early 80s a theater in St. Louis would run Three Stooges marathons as their midnight show on Friday nights. They advertised on one of the local FM stations and part of the ad would say "see the original episodes uncut containing all of the racism". Forum rules prohibit me from describing in detail what they were referring to - but those of us familiar with the episodes know what I am referencing.
I first saw the Stooges on a local children's TV show called "Captain Penny". Captain Penny - Wikipedia It would always include Three Stooges shorts, and Little Rascals, and old cartoons. I think as often as possible I watched both versions (noon and late afternoon) every day, IIRC they showed different content the two different times of day. I loved that show, and I really loved the Stooges. I do remember though one of the reasons I didn't want to start school was because I'd miss seeing the earlier show. Watching it for those years I'm sure I saw most all the shorts several times over. I don't see any of them very often these days, but when I do they still make me laugh...when Curly is in them. I'm definitely in the Curly camp, and never to this day liked when Shemp was in it instead.
But I was just thinking about the bit where Curly and Dudley Dickerson are twiddling each others' thumbs without knowing it. I don't know it for a fact, but I suspect the South couldn't have been happy about a black man and a white man holding hands.
I thought the deal with those festivals was that the violence would be left intact for the Stooges and the racism was left intact for Our Gang.
A lot of people don't know that Shemp was the original third Stooge. Curly replaced him - and then Shemp re-replaced Curly in 1947. Here's their pre-Curly screen debut. They all look so young.
