Production Information
Title: Three Troubledoers
Studio: Columbia
Short Number: 91
Release Date: April 25, 1946
Running Time: 17:04
“Are we mice or men?” “Mice!” – (Moe, Larry, & Curly)
Three Troubledoers Short Take
Three Troubledoers is set in the Western town of Dead Man’s Gulch, The Stooges learn the last 6 sheriffs were killed by the villainous Badlands Blackie. He has kidnapped the father of a woman named Nell and Blackie threatens to kill her father unless Nell marries him. With Curly as the new sheriff, and Moe & Larry as his deputies, how can Blackie possibly succeed?
Dick Curtis and Christine McIntyre – as Badlands blackie and Nell – carry the plot of Three Troubledoers. Curtis towers over everyone and delivers on purty Western cliche’ after another. He had played in Westerns since the early 1930’s and ultimately amassed nearly 200 movie credits.
Three Troubledoers Cast & Crew
| Directed by | Edward Bernds |
|---|---|
| Produced by | Hugh McCollum |
| Written by | Jack White |
| Starring | Moe Howard Larry Fine Curly Howard Dick Curtis Christine McIntyre Victor Travers Hank Bell Ethan Laidlaw |
| Cinematography | George F. Kelley |
| Edited by | Henry Batista |
Three Troubledoers Trivia
Curly’s illness
The Three Troubledoers was produced after Curly Howard suffered a mild stroke. As a result, his performance was marred by slurred speech, and slower timing. Though Curly’s falsetto voice had deepened slightly by this point, the ailing star was comfortable enough to deliver his dialogue in his regular speaking voice. Director Edward Bernds later recalled how Curly’s condition would have its peaks and valleys:
“…it was strange the way he (Curly) went up and down. In the order I shot the pictures, not in the order they were released, he was down for A Bird in the Head and The Three Troubledoers, he was up for Micro-Phonies, way down for Monkey Businessmen, and then up again, for the last time, in Three Little Pirates.”
Moe’s injury
The script for The Three Troubledoers called for a gag in which a bazooka gun was to backfire and shoot black soot into Moe’s face. “The special effects man used too much air pressure,” says director Edward Bernds, “so some of the soot shot up under his [Moe] eyelids. They had to pry his eyes open and remove these big chunks of black powder from his eye. I was terrified; I thought the poor guy had been blinded.”[4] Moe had a similar ordeal while filming 1939’s Oily to Bed, Oily to Rise, when gobs of black goo (representing oil) shot under his eyelids.
Production Notes
- Three Troubledoers was filmed on May 11–15, 1945, nearly a year prior to its release date.
- It was the last western-themed short starring Curly Howard and the tenth of sixteen Stooge shorts with the word “three” in the title.
