Young knuckleheads
The Museum of the Moving Image is pretty much the only place I get to see movies anymore. My shitty schedule of working nights and writing days along with watching the kid half the week means that I barely have any time to watch anything anymore, or get out of the house. My membership to the museum keeps things cheap (75 bucks for a year of unlimited films!) and they’ve been doing a great job with the programming, thankfully finally fixing the horrible projection issues that plagued their first few months of programming.
Most recently they’ve been screening some rare 35mm prints of classic Three Stooges shorts and I don’t care if it’s in order to promote that upcoming film, because I’ll take advantage of it. Yesterday they featured a great triple feature consisting of Women Haters (1934), Gents Without Cents (1944) and Dutiful but Dumb (1941), three Curly films.
Women Haters is a musical, which I thought would throw off the crowd that seemed to consist mostly of little kids, but they stuck with it and laughed through the great slapstick. It features Larry (playing the ladies man as usual) about to get married, to the chagrin of his club members who have taken an oath never to hook up with any dames.
Gents Without Cents was the clear highlight of the trio, where the Stooges play versions of themselves, guys who are trying to get on stage with a vaudeville act. Best of all it’s got the famous “Niagara Falls” bit, one of my faves (although Abbot and Costello’s version is probably the best), and it absolutely killed the crowd. The kids were rolling.
Dutiful But Dumb has another classic Stooges bit, the one with Curly attempting to drink Oyster soup while battling a defiant oyster.
Honestly, as much as I enjoyed watching these projected on the big screen it was the reaction from the kids that made me happiest. I almost felt proud when I left the theater, hearing multiple kids saying “Step by step!” to their parents and laughing.
Three more next weekend!
