The Stooges, at last, get some respect.

On December 17, 2002, the National Film Preservation Foundation listed another twenty-five films selected for preservation in the Library of Congress. One of them is Punch Drunks, a 1934 two-reel comedy featuring The Three Stooges.

This may be as good a time as any, then, to argue that the Stooges have long been unfairly maligned. While they have been given kudos for longevity (their short subject series at Columbia Pictures ran an amazing twenty-four years and 190 films), and for withstanding the test of time (due to constant television revivals, their films have won new generations of fans right up to the present day), most serious film enthusiasts regard the Stooges shorts as little more than a series of slaps and eye pokes.

The Three Stooges were vaudeville veterans before they entered films, and had appeared in a handful of M-G-M pictures prior to signing with Columbia for their noted series of shorts. Boorish and often overbearing in the same fashion as the uninhibited Mack Sennett productions of the teens, the Stooges nevertheless exhibited genuine raw talent, natural timing, and can even be accused of frequent cleverness.

It is interesting that Punch Drunks was chosen for preservation among all of their two-reelers. It was their second for Columbia, and made before they had truly honed their familiar characterizations. In fact, they play separate characters that find themselves united within the course of the film.

Punch Drunks features stooge leader Moe Howard as a fight manager whose stable of pugilists each represent the term 'palooka.' Curly Howard plays a meek, put-upon waiter in the beanery where Moe and his fighters are having lunch. Larry Fine, the stooge in the middle, is a traveling musician, who agrees with the restaurant manager to play his violin in exchange for a bowl of watery soup. An argument between Moe and Curly escalates into a brawl, causing the observant Larry to play "Pop Goes The Weasel" on his violin. Upon hearing this song, Curly immediately snaps into savage mode and soundly trounces all of Moe's fighters. Moe, of course, signs him on as a boxer and, with Larry's musical help, they enjoy a series of successes. Larry's violin breaks during the world championship bout, rendering Curly helpless in the ring, but all ends well as Larry hastily finds a truck blaring "Pop Goes The Weasel" from its speakers and drives it through the arena wall.

The original story for Punch Drunks was penned by the Stooges themselves and it contains the rudiments of their ensuing characterizations. Moe is the short, pug-faced bully who acts as self appointed leader. Curly is the outrageous, frustrated patsy. Larry is the bewildered middleman.

Off screen it was different. Moe Howard (ne Moses Horowitz) was a serious veteran who began his career as a child in a handful of films at the old Vitagraph studio. None of this early screen work appears to have survived, but, in his later years, Moe would recall having worked with such pioneers as John Bunny and Sidney Drew. He appeared in riverboat productions of Shakespearean plays before hooking up with vaudeville headliner Ted Healy. It was when the Stooges broke from Healy that they were signed by Columbia for their long-running series of short films. Performers recall Moe as being very businesslike on the set, responsible for many of the gags, and he was quite particular about the rhythm at which they were performed.

Curly Howard (Jerome Horowitz) was Moe's younger brother. He was thrust into the act when older brother Samuel (Shemp) left to pursue a solo career. Curly had no formal training, but possessed raw talent and natural timing. His outrageous quirks (including the "woo-woo-woo" refrain) were said to be used to hide the fact that he'd forgotten his lines. His character remains the most popular in the act.

Larry Fine (Louis Feinberg) was the middleman, the bewildered innocent who would side with either Moe or Curly depending on the situation. His quietly endearing contribution was a sort of anchor that helped balance the conflict between his two partners.

The importance of Punch Drunks as a pioneering effort for the trio is certainly valid. The idea of Curly losing control and needing to be contained was apparently considered a successful formula and was revisited at least three more times. In Horse's Collars (1935), he reacts wildly to the sight of mice and needs to be fed cheese to calm him down. In Grips, Grunts, and Groans (1938) he becomes unglued at the scent of a perfume called 'Wild Hyacinth,' so Moe and Larry enlist him as a professional wrestler. Tassles in the Air (1938) has him lose control at the sight of tassles.

Perhaps Hoi Polloi (1935) would have been the better choice for preservation. It can be considered the quintessential Stooges comedy, as well as the one that best represents the context of their characters. The plot for Hoi Polloi was based on a story idea provided by Moe's wife, but was obviously inspired by Shaw's Pygmalion. It features two society gentlemen arguing over whether environment or heredity is the basis for one's personality. The supporter of environment wagers that he can take someone from the lowest stratum of life and make him a gentleman. The Stooges are chosen as his subjects.

Some of their funniest, cleverest moments occur in Hoi Polloi. While learning table manners, the Stooges manage to sloppily stumble through a make-believe dinner course. While learning to read properly from a child's primer, they turn the lesson into a series of puns:

Moe (reading): Oh see the little deer, has the deer a little doe?

Curly: Why certainly, two bucks!

During a dance lesson, a bug crawls down the teacher's back, causing her to yell and gyrate wildly. The clueless Stooges follow her every move and sound, believing this silliness is merely indicative of society's quirks. When a formal party soon evolves into a slapping, eye-poking melee, it is the Stooge behavior that wins out. Their boorish manner is so overwhelming that they effectively turn a group of pretentious, wealthy fops into vulgar fools. The entire film, in fact, seems to demonstrate that the unpretentious, down-to-earth Stooges are somehow more acceptable than the staid society types. Throughout Hoi Polloi, the Stooges are as disdainful towards the quirky behavior of the upper crust as they are of the trio's unmannerly ways. During Depression America, the disproportionate numbers of the poor, who could afford little more than a night at the movies, enjoyed the antics of the Stooges since they usually represented the common man at odds with a snobbish society.

Hoi Polloi is also a study in contrasts. Along with the incongruity of placing the Stooges among the cultured and educated, there is Larry losing his shoe on the dance floor and crawling amongst the dancers in an attempt to retrieve it. Moe is dumb-founded by an attractive society woman's discussion of philosophy. But perhaps the most delightful image is Curly merrily dancing with a woman twice his size. Since Curly Howard was already a seasoned ballroom dancer, his grace on the dance floor makes the sequence that much more amusing.

The Stooges would invade society in a number of other films, including Ants in the Pantry (1936) where, as pest exterminators, they fill a wealthy woman's house with insects and mice so that she requires their services; Termites of 1938 (1938), again as exterminators, only this time they are mistaken as escorts; and Three Sappy People (1939), featuring them posing as psychiatrists who are called upon to tame a wealthy woman with uninhibited behavior similar to their own. The Pygmalion theme itself was revisited at least twice more: In The Sweet Pie and Pie (1942) features them as convicts who are pardoned only if they agree to become gentlemen, while Half Wits Holiday (1946) is a remake of Hoi Polloi. In both of these films, the climax is a well-staged pie fight, footage of which would find its way into many later productions.

Along with their established formulas, the Stooges would often venture off into experimental territory. An early short, Men in Black (1934), was a wild, uninhibited affair set in a hospital. It was nominated for an Oscar as Best Short Subject. You Natzy Spy (1940) and I'll Never Hell Again (1943) are dead-on WWII satires in which Moe's portrayal of a Hitleresque dictator rivals Chaplin's brilliant turn in The Great Dictator. At least two of their wartime shorts, however, The Yoke's On Me and No Dough, Boys (both 1944), reflect the anti-Japanese racism prevalent in many comedies and cartoons of the era.

Perhaps the most typical Stooges short is one in which the trio displays remarkable ineptitude at a given occupation. Among the best of these films, An Ache in Every Stake (1941) is based on the same premise as Laurel and Hardy's long lost silent Hats Off (1927) and their Oscar winning The Music Box (1932). An Ache in Every Stake features the Stooges as ice men who must deliver blocks of ice to a home situated atop a long flight of stairs. By the time they reach the top, the ice has melted in the hot sun. Curly decides to take two blocks of ice, believing that he will then end up with one after his journey up the stairs. Of course, he ends up with two pitiful ice cubes. After this initial premise, the Stooges are recruited into preparing dinner as servants to a wealthy couple (during the wartime help shortage, such things were not so farfetched).

At one point, a cake is removed from the oven and, upon being pierced with a fork, deflates completely. Moe decides to rectify the situation by pumping it full of gas. While stuffing a turkey, Curly follows the instructions a bit too literally. When told to "separate two eggs," he holds them apart several feet, then stuffs them into the turkey, shells and all. For "a pinch of salt," he pinches a handful and tosses it in. A loaf of bread "well soaked" he understands to mean repeatedly punching the loaf before placing it in the turkey.

During the filming of Half Wits Holiday, Curly suffered a debilitating stroke on the set (he is conspicuously absent from the climactic pie fight). His health had been noticeably impaired for nearly a year, which is evident in his lackluster performances during many of the shorts made in late 1945 and early 1946. Curly lived another six years, but could no longer work. He left the act and older brother Shemp returned to replace him.

Shemp had been with Moe and Larry in vaudeville, as well as in one film, Soup To Nuts (1930), a feature for Fox. He left the act to pursue a solo career, and achieved success in short films for both Vitaphone and Columbia, as well as character roles in Universal productions such as The Bank Dick (1940) with W.C. Fields, Buck Privates (1941) with Abbott and Costello, and Pittsburgh (1942) starring John Wayne. At one point, Shemp was under contract to three different studios simultaneously. Lou Costello at one time felt so threatened by Shemp that he offered the comedian a salary to keep him off the screen.

The Stooges films with Shemp are often less interesting than those with Curly, which is not to undermine Shemp. His much different character fit in exceptionally well with Moe and Larry, offering another dimension to the trio's style--that of a dryer, wisecracking, streetwise manner. The Stooges films during Shemp's tenure tackled Westerns (Out West, 1947), Punchy Cowpunchers, 1949), and Merry Mavericks, 1951); medieval times (Fiddler's Three and Squareheads of the Round Table, both 1948); and film noir (Who Done It, 1949), and Crime on Their Hands, 1948). Often the results were quite good, but experiments with political humor (Three Dark Horses, 1952), multiple roles (Self Made Maids 1950), and the new 3-D process (Spooks and Pardon my Backfire, both 1953), fell flat.

Some of the Shemp films were remakes of earlier films. For instance, The Pest Man Wins (1950) is a remake of Curly's Ants in the Pantry, and includes footage from the pie fight in Curly's Half Wits Holiday with shots of Shemp edited in. By the 1950s, many of the Shemp shorts were remakes of his earlier shorts using ample footage from the former productions. Perhaps making shorts in this manner was economically sound, but the results often revealed themselves to be little more than shoddy patchwork.

This use of stock footage took on a rather ghoulish turn when Shemp died suddenly in November 1955. Jules White, head of Columbia's short-subjects division, and now the sole producer and director of the series, completed a handful of films that were remakes containing footage from earlier shorts with a couple of new scenes featuring Moe, Larry, and a double for Shemp (Joe Palma) whose face is never seen.

By 1956, the Stooges were the only ones still making comedy two-reelers for theaters (the studio's only other long-running series, featuring erstwhile Sennett comedian Andy Clyde, ceased production that year). Another vaudeville veteran, Joe Besser, was hired to replace Shemp for sixteen more short subjects made during 1956-1958. Besser himself was a funny, talented man whose work on the Abbott and Costello and Joey Bishop television shows features him at his best. By the time he joined the Stooges, Moe and Larry appeared to be played out, and the scripts were uninspired.

Most of the Besser efforts were remakes of films featuring Curly or Shemp. The few original productions were very low-budget affairs, received minimal bookings, and were made chiefly for children, with titles like Space Ship Sappy and Flying Saucer Daffy. Pies and Guys is yet another remake of Hoi Polloi with Besser in the Curly role, and again resurrects the pie fight footage from Half Wits Holiday, with reaction shots of Besser clumsily edited in.

With television having eclipsed the short subject, the Stooges series finally came to an end in 1958. That same year the earlier Stooges shorts were released in a few major TV markets and immediately caught on with children. This success prompted Moe and Larry to hire yet another third member, Burlesque veteran Joe DeRita who, with his head shaved, resembled Curly enough to be christened Curly-Joe. This new set of Stooges made a few feature-length movies for the kiddie matinee market during the early 1960s, and later provided live-action wraparounds for a series of animated cartoons made for television. Larry and Moe both died in 1975, Besser in 1988, and DeRita in 1993.

The Stooges shorts still run regularly on television stations throughout the nation. The films are even dubbed in different languages and are successful in foreign markets. At least a dozen DVDs containing as many as five shorts each, have been released with substantial success. Their story was presented in a (largely fictitious) network television movie, and they have been the center of at least two network specials in the past five years. The inclusion of Punch Drunks to the National Film Registry is thus rather timely.

Unlike comedians who had pretensions beyond mere laughter, the sole objective of the Three Stooges was to be funny. While many still insist that even their best films are too vulgar to be taken seriously at all, there is at least enough substance to have influenced virtually all of the slapstick films being made today. Their films were certainly not cinematic. They did not have the grace of Chaplin or the technique of Buster Keaton. But their 190 two-reel comedies contain enough interesting ideas and clever moments to make The Three Stooges worthy of some recognition.

James L. Niebaur is the author of five books, including THe RKO Features, The Jerry Lewis Films, and the forthcoming The Bob Hope Films