| Men In Black |
[Feb. 23rd, 2009|07:10 am] |
Released September 28, 1934
With: Dell Henderson, Bud Jamison, Billy Gilbert, "Little Billy," Jeanie Roberts
Story and Screenplay: Felix Adler
Directed by: Raymond McCarey
The Stooges' only short to be nominated for an Academy Award (it lost to RKO's La Cucaracha -- no idea what that was about) continues a streak of momentous shorts, but also does little to advance the Stooges' characters. It's another zany attempt to establish an identity for the Stooges' brand of comedy, but they still didn't quite nail it.
At Los Arms Hospital, Superintendent Graves lets his incoming doctors know that he will be kind and not reveal the identity of the three doctors who were only released from medical school out of pity. The Stooges, therefore, thank him loudly and publicly. Superintendent Graves tells them to heed the call of the loudspeaker and do their best "for duty and humanity." Immediately, the call is heard: "Calling Dr. Howard! Dr. Fine! Dr. Howard!"
The Stooges rush off to create mayhem in the halls, grabbing bicycles from the store room and "treating" a random wheelchair patient in the hall. When her temperature is revealed to be 95 1/8, Moe says "I think we oughta sell." They then exchange some patter with a giggling nurse, who tells them that a "pippin is an apple with its skin on the outside." When Moe asks her if she's seen an apple with its skin on the inside, she says she's seen it in homemade apple pie.
Dr. Graves debriefs them unsuccessfully on their rounds, and they're off again to the store room, exiting upon a horse. They do a vaudeville routine with a telegraph boy before "treating" a cross-dressing midget who's being attended to by Bud Jamison. "What do you know about medicine?" asks Jamison. "Why, we graduated with the highest temperatures in our class!" replies Larry.
Dr. Graves directs them to crazed mental patient Billy Gilbert. To get there, they use small motorized cars from the store room. Gilbert paces up and down, mangling Shakespeare and claiming rats are coming out of his buttonhole. He then claims to see green canaries, whereupon one promptly lands on Moe's shoulder. (In a black and white film, we have to take their word for it on the bird's color.)
After another scene with the giggling nurse, who's now hiccupping, the Stooges run back to Dr. Graves' office. He tells them that some life-saving radium is locked in a safe, and he accidentally swallowed the combination. The Stooges offer to operate on Dr. Graves, who's less than enthusiastic about it until he's "anesthetized".
The Stooges then proceed to the operation with a whispering nurse, manically grabbing an assortment of tools with goofy made-up names. However, they end up using a jackhammer to open up Dr. Graves and get the combination. After sewing him up again, they discover they've left the tools inside of him.
The loudspeaker calls out for them again. They do their best to destroy it before striking a Three Musketeers pose and crying "For duty and humanity!" at the fade out.
With no plot and just a series of gags, this was clearly an attempt to capture the Stooges at their most manic and Vaudevillian. Much of the stock cast comes from Hal Roach; Raymond McCarey, the director, worked with Laurel and Hardy, as did Billy Gilbert and Dell Henderson. Thus it's very unlike the later Stooges shorts and doesn't do much to advance their personalities. It's still implied that Moe is the "boss" but nothing in the short really indicates this; everyone has lines that could easily be said by someone else.
The individual gags can be quite funny. Billy Gilbert is a scream, and the routine where they question the nurse about their whispering is also worth a laugh. At other times it seems as though they believe just running around would be funny. Despite the Academy Award nod, it was clear that if the Stooges were really going to take off, they needed to develop their personalities and work with semi-coherent scripts.
One routine appeared here for the first time: "I'll do it when I'm ready!" ... "Are you ready?" ... (meekly) "Yeah, I'm ready." The Stooges would repeat this, with variations, throughout the rest of their career. |
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