ThreeStoogesBlog.com

This is the Boys’ entry in the eternal “Three Men and a Baby” theme. A despondent mom leaves a baby on the Stooges’ doorstep.

Moe insult: To Curly, “When you were born, you were delivered by a buzzard.”

Curly also has a World War II insult on the Japanese.

Moe mispronounces Worchester Sauce as “woochestershire.”

Among the many things the Boys feed the baby are Limburger cheese. Most people probably don’t know about that, but it’s really stinky German cheese.

The Stooge Diet: When feeding the baby, Moe says, “Now you’re getting your vitamins: starch, vegetables, hypocodriacs.”

Curly calls an artichoke a smarty-choke, a party-smoke, an okey-doke, a feathered apple, and a barbed-wire pickle.

The short peters out with the father, a cop, and mother coming for the kid. The Stooges run away, thinking they’ll be arrested.

Rating: Three Nyuks. Some laughs, but not near a classic.

By the way, the Stooges were by all accounts excellent fathers and beloved by their children.

This is one of the better High Curly Period shorts. It begins with the Boys hawking racing forms for 15 or 25 cents. That compares to the $5.50 cost of a racing form today. Taking the 25-cent price, that’s a 2,100% increase. It compares to the rise in the price of gold from 1942 to today ($35 to $672). That’s a 1,820% increase.

(Who said you couldn’t learn something from the Stooges?)

The cops chase the Stooges, who take refuge behind a billboard with a woman and her daughter, who have been “dispossessed.” Nowadays, a lot of people are suffering the same treatment.

Funniest scene: Curly wrestles a tuba.

Curlyism: He sees the tuba and says, “Oh! A Bazookey!”

Moe insult: “Go on! I’ll mash you like a potato.”

As a lifelong journalist, this includes one of my favorite gags. The Boys get into a horse race for free when Moe and Lary flash “Press” buttons. Curly picks up the rear and flashes a “Pull” button, then mugs for the camera.

They buy a talking horse, foreshadowing “Francis” and “Mister Ed” — and for that matter, “My Mother the Car.” (But let’s forget about “Hoofs and Goofs.”)

The horse is named “Seabasket — the Wonder Horse.” To which Moe retorts, “Looks to me like a fugitive from a glue factory.” When Ed and I were kids watching this, we didn’t know that the name was a play on Seabiscuit, the great race horse of the late 1930s, about which a 2003 movie was made.

The short ends with Seabasket having a colt. We never find out what happened to the woman and her daughter. Maybe the mom went to work in a defense plant. Or maybe Columbia ran out of film stock from wartime shortages.

Rating: 4 Nyuks, mainly for Curly’s antics.