The Three Stooges were one of the most well-known American comedy troupes for over half a century. Getting their start in vaudeville, like so many comedy acts of the time, the Stooges—Larry Fine, and brothers Moe and Shemp Howard (who was later replaced by his younger brother, Curly)—quickly gained fame in Hollywood through a series of successful short films made for Columbia Pictures starting in the 1930s. This program will screen four classic shorts—some featuring Curly, some Shemp—newly remastered and preserved for the next generation of Stooges fans. They are:

Brideless Groom (1947): To inherit his uncle’s fortune, Shemp must find and marry before six o’clock, but no girl will accept his proposal. Always looking for their next meal (and get rich quick scheme), Moe and Larry offer their assistance to help Shemp get his inheritance.

A Plumbing We Will Go (1940): To escape the police, the Stooges pose as plumbers and are hired to fix a leak in a fancy mansion. Eager to keep up their charade, the Stooges set to work, bringing their own brand of plumbing expertise to the problem.

Three Little Pigskins (1934): Panhandling for spare change, the Stooges are mistaken by a gangster for the “Three Horsemen of Boulder Dam,” a group of famous bruiser football players. In a plot turn similar to the Marx Brothers’ Horsefeathers (made two years earlier), the boys are hired by the gangster to play for his team, only to be humiliated both on and off the field. Featuring comedy legend Lucille Ball in a small role as one of the gangsters’ molls.

Men in Black (1934): In one of the biggest suspensions of disbelief in Stooges history, Moe, Larry, and Curly play doctors who are graduated from medical school simply for being enrolled for too many years. Throughout their first day of work at a hospital, they have run-ins with nurses, a patient in the mental ward, and the stuffy hospital superintendent.