The Three Stooges “Hold That Lion”/Death of Shemp trilogy
February 16th, 2010 by Scott Marks
Volume seven of the luxuriant Three Stooges Collection became the most recent addition to my personal archive. The two DVD, 22 short set takes us through the declining years of the Shemp dynasty before reaching the nadir known as Besser.
With just shy of 30 shorts yet to be released, there is obviously enough left over for the concluding and defining box set. This would constitute the notorious final four Shemp’s, shot posthumously with the aid of stand-in Joe Palma as the seventh Stooge, and of course, the most reviled addition of the bunch: the 13 Bessers.
“Hold That Lion” is legendary among Stooge fans as the only time both Shemp and Curly appear on screen together. It is also Curly’s swan song. Tough times and television forced the Columbia shorts unit to cut corners. Originality was supplanted by the cost cutting need to regurgitate previous hits.
While studying each short in chronological order a certain air of familiarity began to color the proceedings. The studio could not let go of “Hold That Lion.” Long before America went green, filmmaker Jules White was one of the earliest practitioners of recycling. Between March and May of 1953, 8 years before Ingmar Bergman directed “Through a Glass Darkly,” Columbia Pictures released three “new” Stooge shorts to first run theatres that would collectively come to be known as the “‘Hold That Lion’” or “Death of Shemp” trilogy. These three shorts combined contain the entire 1947 two-reeler “Hold That Lion,” also directed by Mr. White.
“Hold That Lion” features bit player Kenneth MacDonald in his career defining role as Ichabod Slipp, a character he would revive two years later for another pair of shorts. Slipp swindles the boys and they hop a train in order to hunt him down. On board an escaped lion wreaks havoc among the passengers. The spruced up video restoration is so sparkling it reveals a new-found flaw not inherent in softer 16mm prints. Look carefully when the boys are trapped in the cage with Leo. One can now spot the camera reflection in the pane of glass that separates the boys from their maned menace. Also take not of the FAO Schwartz stuffed lion that menaces the boys at the foot of their bunk.
Doubles, dubs and Dudley round out the festivities. Study the mangy-haired Larry stunt double that flees the cage. Listen to the passengers docile, dubbed in moans of “Oh, a lion.” “Look, a lion.” And what can be said of Dudley Dickerson? Studio head Harry Cohn vowed that the only time you’d see a person of color in one of his films is if they were cast in subservient roles. As the hapless train porter, Dudley is Cohn’s theory put to the test.
So here in essence are four films for the price of three. If you watch “Loose Loot” before “Booty and the Beast” you’ll get a stronger grasp on “Hold That Lion’s” proper chronology. While “Tricky Dicks” only contains one brief reused sequence, I’m sure you will all agree that my reasons for including it solely on the basis of Murray Alper’s performance are justified.
Booty and the Beast (1953)
Directed by Jules White
Written by Felix Adler and Jack White
Starring: Moe Howard, Larry Fine, Shemp Howard, Kenneth MacDonald, Vernon Dent, Dudley Dickerson, Blackie Whiteford, Heinie Conklin and Curly Howard
Photographed by Fayte Browne
Edited by Edwin Bryant
Running Time: 16 min.
The short opens on new footage of old Kenneth MacDonald playing a burglar breaking and entering into a cheap soundstage flat. Bamboozling the boys into believing he’s the owner of the house, they willingly aid and abet the desperate intruder’s attempt to gain entry and the expected safe cracking that ensues.
The mighty Stooges pull up in front of a rolled painted backdrop of a poverty row Twelve Oaks. The reason it looks so unconvincing is because it’s a flat backdrop, not a trans-screen, a translucent picture lit from behind.
Moe was at his most abusive while under Jules White’s watch. In one of the team’s most brutal exercises, Moe chokes, groin stomps, kicks, hammers, knocks out teeth and spits in Shemp’s eye before threatening to push it through the other side of its socket with a stick of TNT. Commanding Larry to bend over, Moe sets the willing Stooge in motion for a mud facial pay off. A power drill burrows Shemp a new a’hole before acting as a joy buzzer for Moe to shake hands with. As Moe, the pissed off Uber Stooge aims the power tool at Larry’s head he gleefully snarls, “I’ll jam it in your face.”
Disciples, Larry enthusiasts in particular, will delight in the venerated middle Stooge’s trademark cry of “Hey, leave him alone.”
Aside from our trio of halfwits, Ken MacDonald’s revival of the role, in one form or another, of the infamous Ichabod Slip is the film’s unifying link. The Nixonian MacDonald plays a man with no name to enable Columbia’s crack post sound team to seamlessly (and seemingly) transform I. Slipp into a new and fascinating screen presence. MacDonald looks like a deer caught in the grip truck’s headlights as he fumbles with a crowbar to jimmy his way through the balsa wood plantation.
The Slipp cover absconds with the loot leaving running time for a sagging Vernon Dent to show up for SAG scale. Dressed in a costume more befitting a filling station attendant than a security guard the white-haired, belt busting bit player looks ever day of his 58-years plus 30. Kudos to the corpulent comic trooper for performing his own stunt. The production probably couldn’t afford to pop for a dummy that big.
At precisely 7:38 an optical wipes us six years into the past when such luxuries as extras, props and set “dressing” were built into the budget. What makes this reimagining unique can be found in the extensive effort in keeping continuity by redubbing every utterance of Slipp’s name. Whole sentences are replaced, but it’s a quick one word substitution that functions as the short’s raison d’être. A dazed Moe looks up, sees the stock footage Slipp and cries, “Hey, its’ him.”
A concluding five seconds of original footage is all that’s needed to tie up the new plot line.
Continue reading The Three Stooges “Hold That Lion”/Death of Shemp trilogy
Tags: booty and the beast, curly howard, DVD Review, hold that lion, Jerome Curly Howard, kenneth macdonald, Larry Fine, loose loot, Moe Howard, moe larry curly, shemp howard, The 3 Stooges, The Three Stooges, three stooges vol. 7, tricky dicksReview: THE COVE / Louie Psihoyos (2009)
August 12th, 2009 by Scott Marks
The Cove (2009)
Directed by Louie Psihoyos
Starring: Ric O’Barry
Running Time: 92 min.
Rating: 
“The Cove” washes up on movie screens at a time when most discerning filmgoers have all but abandoned theaters to 9-year-old boys in search of Hogwarts, 3-D gerbils and Megan Fox.
At the tender age of 9 I found myself undergoing a period of dolphin delirium. Along with millions of children worldwide, I was hooked on “Flipper.” These ever-smiling creatures with their infectious cackle and an uncanny ability to pop tail fin wheelies found me studying the show (and its two big screen incarnations) closer than the Warren Commission examined the Zapruder footage. The obsession seems to have attached itself like a barnacle to my cerebrum. As the opening credits from “Flipper” played in “The Cove,” my lips moved along with every lyric of its theme song, nary missing a one.
Ric O’Barry has no one to blame but himself for kindling America’s preoccupation with dolphins. In the early 60s, producer Ivan Tors hired O’Barry to capture and train five dolphins to star as TV’s great grampus. O’Barry faults his work on “Flipper” for starting the global obsession with porpoises.
For years he lived in a world full of wonder bonding with the mammals and picking up a handsome paycheck in the process. His favorite of the bunch was Karen, the exceptionally photogenic dolphin used in all the close-up work. The trainer kept a close relationship with his star student long after the show ceased its run. He sensed an ever-growing sense of anxiety on the dolphin’s part and fed his aquatic friend Maalox to prevent an ulcer. O’Barry swears that Karen, who stopped breathing while in his arms, committed suicide.
You try packing around that kind of responsibility. There is nothing worse than a reformed cetacean coach, and over the years O’Barry has developed a guilt complex that elevates his story to near Hitchcockian proportions. In a fundamental about face, O’Barry became a champion of dolphin rights. He not only besmirches swim with dolphins programs, but our own money-spinning tourist mecca, Sea World, as well. O’Barry notes, “Having intelligent sentient animals perform stupid tricks for our amusement is a form of bad education for our children.”
O’Barry’s calling led him to a remote coastal village in Japan where, in the hush of night, hunters herd and slaughter tens of thousands of dolphins. We first see O’Barry driving through the streets of Taijai with a surgical mask covering half his face. The radical activist has something a lot more deadly than the SARS epidemic on his mind. Many a Japanese citizen would like to see him dead.
The title slaughterhouse is situated in a remote estuary blockaded by barbed wire and cautionary signage. O’Barry likens his band of dolphin liberators to the cats in “Ocean’s 11.” No offense, but you aren’t that well dressed. Tom Cruise may not be smarter than your average dolphin, but his Impossible Missions Force is a more likely antecedent.
Toward the beginning of the film, O’Barry laments the erosion of the Japanese shoreline. Ironically, his team of experts help beef up the coast by adding rock formations under which they will hide surveillance cameras. No one on the crew expects to single-handedly bring down the gang. They will be more than happy to show the world graphic photographic evidence of the slaughter. It has been a long time since I found myself wanting to cheer at the end of a movie. My heart soared as our daredevil activist crashed an otherwise serene gathering of the International Whaling Commission, wearing a television monitor tuned to the atrocities.
Why the Japanese choose to continue the slaughter remains unclear. The driving force behind dolphin hunting is the multimillion dollar theme park business which places a $150,000 price tag on each porpoise’s grinning kisser, but they want ‘em brought back alive, not dead.
Another argument — dolphins consume so much fish that they place the ecological balance and food supply at risk — is quickly dismissed.
Long before I encountered Flipper I was befriended by Borden Milk’s animated spokes-bovines Elsie and Elmer Cow. I was actually privileged enough to meet Elsie the Cow on a day camp field trip. (I swear to you it was really Elsie, not some random cow with a yellow yoke flung round its neck.) If you told me the steak on my plate was one of Elsie’s calves, I’d still eat it.
Were dolphin meat a healthy and nutritional food alternative, let the slaughter begin. An attempt to make Fillet ‘o Flipper a staple of school lunch programs throughout Japan met with major opposition. Dolphin meat is toxic and has been known to contain mercury at more than 1,000 times the maximum allowable level.
You can’t eat them, they aren’t messing up the ecology and the market only allows for a limited number to be sold to seaquariums. Why is Japan legally allowing the slaughter of 23,00 dolphins each year?
“The Cove” is a slam-bang adventure yarn with a true hero at its core. As much as I would love to recommend this myth-breaker for the entire family, there is one unduly descriptive passage where the water turns redder than anything Cecil B. DeMille and his Technicolor Consultant could have cooked up.
This review originally appeared in the San Diego Uptown News.
Tags: dolphin, dolphin slaughter, DVD Review, flipper, flipper dolphin, flipper tv show, Movie Review, porpoise, ric o'barry, the coveFiled Under Reviews, Theatrical
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