Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, March 5, 1990 TAG: 9003032551
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: E-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: GORDON MONSON LOS ANGELES DAILY NEWS
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES LENGTH: Long
Approach it with a measure of sensitivity toward those who have not always busted a gut laughing at grown men barking at one another and even those who would rather hammer a small nail through their lower lip than watch Moe steam-press Curly's head or take a grappling hook to Larry's face.
Before everyone comes down on his or her usual side regarding this significant American issue - the Three Stooges, do we love 'em or hate 'em? - let us open our minds, hear some opinions and, if not get this thing settled, at least not become more confused.
With any luck, then, you can wake up and go to sleep.
There is no arguing the fact that Moe Howard, Larry Fine and Curly Howard (Curly was later succeeded by Shemp Howard, Joe Besser and Joe DeRita) have stood - or shuffled through - the test of time.
Since the early 1960s, a majority of the 190 18-minute short subjects made by the Three Stooges in the '30s, '40s and '50s have been played and continue to be replayed on television stations around the country.
Gary Lassin, leader of the Three Stooges Fan Club, estimates the Stooges currently are shown in 50 regional markets, including Los Angeles, New York, Boston, Detroit and Chicago, and are broadcast nationally on cable by TBS.
In some of the markets, the Stooges have become something of a sacred sow.
For example, when WTXF, a station in Philadelphia that had been providing Stooge programming for years, decided to yank the show, it was bombarded with pro-Stooge phone calls and mail. The same thing happened in Los Angeles last fall when an independent station replaced Moe, Larry and Curly with a colorized version of "McHale's Navy."
To regular watchers, it was considered, as Curly would say, sabotoogie.
"We were deluged with daily calls," said Ed Harrison, spokesman for the station. "There's a vocal following out there."
The size and demographics of that following might surprise you.
In May, the Stooges picked up an overall Nielsen rating of 4 (just under 200,000 households were watching in Los Angeles) - respectable, considering their time slot was from noon to 1 p.m. Saturdays and Sundays.
The highest ratings, Harrison said, were among children between the ages of 6 and 11. The next highest ratings came from females between the ages of 12 and 24, and 18 and 34. Males in each age category brought up the rear.
However, Harrison said the figures are misleading because many men are distracted during that time period by football, basketball and baseball games.
Still, more than a few have their VCRs rolling so they can catch both Michael Jordan high-fivin' and Curly jivin'.
Traditional thinking has always had boys (of ages 10 to, oh, about 55) as the nut(s) of the mainline Stooge movement.
"I guess it's because the Stooges were men," said Lassin, whose club membership is 95 percent male. "Men can relate to them. [They] do things men would like to get away with. Wouldn't you like to throw a pie in your boss's face?"
Sounds manly enough.
"To a lot of guys," said Frank Reighter of Philadelphia, who works with his wife, Phyllis, and Lassin in organizing an annual Stooge convention there, "the Stooges are macho. They like the roughhousing."
Indeed, men fondly imitate Moe reaching out his fist, telling Larry to "hit that," then swinging his fist in an arcing motion, bopping his buddy on the head.
This goes on in locker rooms and board rooms all across the country. It is the stuff of which male bonding is made.
While self-respecting guys everywhere have, at one time or another, slapped their heads and faces repeatedly, twisted their stomachs from side to side and grunted unintelligibly, women, generally speaking, have tended to pass up - and maybe even get a little uncomfortable around - such behavior.
All sexism aside, it is fair to say a good number of women hate the Three Stooges.
There are a few unscientific theories as to why this is so.
One is that the bumbling trio represent almost everything a woman finds repulsive in a man.
They are perceived to be ignorant, clumsy, uncouth, loud and undisciplined. (This, of course, is why men are so taken by them.)
Another reason centers on the physical nature of the comedy - the abundance of eye-poking, nose-pounding, belly-bumping.
"The violence seems silly to me," said Elise Jones, a Southern California housewife who said she outgrew her childhood Stooge fascination. "It's irritating. Younger kids may not know that they can't hit their younger sister over the head with a hammer."
Still another comprehensively points the finger at the entire package.
"A lot of women don't like the hitting, the poking," said Stooge-struck Heidi Wilkins of Wenham, Mass. "The violence turns them off. And they think of them as homely and dumb. When they think of the Stooges, they think `stupid.'
"I don't know a lot of women who like them."
"Some women just don't think they are funny," said Joan (Howard) Maurer a Los Angeles-area resident and Moe Howard's daughter. "If he weren't my father, I don't know that they'd be my first choice, either. They were very physical, more than physical," she said.
Before we dismiss this as just another brick in the wall between the genders, a closer look is warranted.
Phyllis Reighter, co-organizer of the three most recent Three Stooges conventions, said she sees growing interest - and attendance figures - among females.
Last July, for instance, 300 of the 1,500 participants at the three-day convention were women.
"In the past, it just wasn't ladylike to say you liked them," she said. "Some women felt it was a brand of comedy that said you were less educated. It was beneath them. But, now, they are starting to come out of their shells."
Don't expect a sudden outbreak of woofing at the Junior League, but other women, Wilkins and Maurer included, have shuffled toward a growing appreciation of the Stooges, leaving their shells far behind.
"I don't like the slapping," said Wilkins, 29, who has joined the Stooge fan club and regularly attends the conventions, "but I like the little things they say to each other. If you look beyond it, you see a down-to-earth comedy. They let you laugh at life. I feel relaxed when I watch them. They're an escape from a bad day. I just put on a Stooges short, and it makes me laugh."
Although Maurer used to be embarrassed to admit she got an occasional kick out of her father's and uncles' antics, in recent years, she has stepped completely out of the closet, becoming an ambassador for preserving their popularity among females and males of all ages.
"I'm trying to be a catalyst to keep the Stooges popular into the 21st century," she said.
Thursday, Maurer is scheduled to appear at the Popular Culture Association conference in Toronto, where she will speak to a group of educators on "The Popularity of the Three Stooges in the 1980s."
Soitenly, the past decade saw some benchmarks in the Stooge legacy:
There was a Three Stooges retrospective at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.
The moon walk of Michael Jackson, a devoted Stooge fan, was at least in part inspired by the Curly shuffle.
All 190 shorts were donated to UCLA Archives.
The Stooges received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
They were seriously considered - although ultimately turned down - for a commemorative stamp that was to be issued by the U.S. Postal Service.
According to Lassin, whose fan club has grown to 2,000 active members, Moe, Larry and Curly are referred to an average of 60 to 70 times a month nationally in newspapers, television programs and feature films.
Combine that with the facts that 88 of the Stooge shorts are currently available on home video, and ratings for TV stations showing the shorts are, if not sparkling, at least decent, and the impression becomes clear that the Three Stooges will not be fading away in the near future.
Add into the mix that it's now socially acceptable for self-respecting women to drop to the floor, spin around on their backs, barking and nyuk-nyuking it up, and you realize, even if you would just as soon tear the wise guys' tonsils out, the Three Stooges may live on forever.
by CNB