Michael Fleming tries to explain the appeal of three morons who liked to hit each other with a hammer or a wrench or twist each other's noses with a pliers.
Fleming's illustrated history isn't much more than a glorified magazine article. There's a factoid here and a factoid there: Moe was a Shakespearean actor on the Mississippi river boats. Larry could've been a concert violinist. Curly had four wives. Shemp was a hypochondriac. The Stooges' father, Solomon, had a bit part in one of their shorts.
The truly interesting stuff--Ted Healy's murder, Curly's stroke, Shemp's sudden death--is given short shrift. The Stooges were in their thirties when they began to make the shorts. I would have liked to know more about their vaudeville careers. Moe's daughter is still alive. I don't think Fleming made full use of her as a source.
Fleming spends a chapter trying to explain why men and boys love the Stooges; whereas, women seem to hate them. Guys like violence. Slapping people is funny. "The Stooges were a beacon of hope to the average underachieving male who could watch a trio of homely midgets with comical haircuts romance stunningly beautiful platinum blondes a foot taller than they, even though they were either unemployed or absolutely incompetent in menial jobs."
Mel Gibson wrote the foreward for the book and Mel Brooks tries to explain Stooge appeal, as does Danny Jacobson, co-creator of MAD ABOUT YOU. The text is complete by page 138. Part three is a capsulization of the 190 shorts the Stooges made. They don't make a whole lot of sense; I don't know if that's Felming's fault or the cobbled together plot lines. All I know is they were really hard to read.
As the title indicates, this is an illustrated history; unfortunately, the illustrations are mainly professional. There is one nice one of the Horwitz brothers' parents, Jennie and Solomon (She looks like Curly, he resembles Moe), but not much else. Click here to post or read comments.
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