The Three Stooges

$325.00

4 in stock

Only thirty (30) prints of THE THREE STOOGES were produced for this 2017 edition. Each print is signed in the lower right, hand-titled in the center, and numbered in the lower left (all beneath the image).

The image area is 16-1/2″ high x 14-3/4″ wide on an untrimmed 22″ x 17″ sheet. Paper, ink, and production specifications, as well as shipping details, are available on our PRINT SPECS page.

Prices will increase for subsequent prints as the edition depletes. Purchase price does not include shipping costs, which are calculated during checkout.

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Description

In vaudeville, a “stooge” was a performer planted in the audience to be picked, seemingly at random, to come onstage and serve as a foil to the headliner. Three of the most successful in the 1920s were the Howard brothers, Moe and Samuel (“Shemp”), and their buddy Larry Fine, who worked for a popular but abusive comedian named Ted Healy. Onstage the antic Healy would smack his sidemen around—a style of comedy called “slapstick,” though the alcoholic Healy could be brutal beyond the call of theatrical amusement, onstage and off.

After the troupe achieved Hollywood success on-screen in the early 1930s, Shemp decided he’d been roughed up enough by Healy and left to pursue a solo acting career. To replace Shemp, Moe recruited his youngest brother, Jerome, who shaved his wavy locks and was dubbed “Curly.” The reconstituted trio continued to perform with Healy in shorts and feature films with growing popularity. In 1934 they broke from Ted and signed with Columbia Pictures to star in their own shorts. No longer beholden to Healy as hired stooges, they nonetheless embraced their identities, billing themselves as “The Three Stooges.”

At Columbia their shorts were a commercial success, one reason being that the Stooges’ comedic violence was heightened by Columbia’s sound effects editors, who developed comic noises to accent face-slaps, eye-gouges, nose-bites, belly-punches and ripping scalps. This “living cartoon” approach to filmmaking—imitated by kids but abhorred by parents and teachers—became very influential. The stocky Curly evolved into the pivotal swing player of the team—a dancing, spinning, sputtering, barking, squealing man-child. His exaggerated physical gestures had a huge influence on