Larry, Moe, and Curly will be spending spring break at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens
Museum of the Moving Image
35th Ave. at 36th St., Astoria
Daily through April 15, free with museum admission
718-777-6800
www.movingimage.us
Some time ago, in a previous incarnation, we penned a bio of the Three Stooges that claimed, “It is nearly impossible for the average American citizen to go a week without somehow coming into contact with some aspect of the Three Stooges.” That statement could not be more true these days, with the impending release of the Farrelly brothers movie The Three Stooges — which is a fictional comedy, not a biopic — and three weeks of Stooges shorts at the Museum of the Moving Image, continuing through April 15. The Moving Image is concentrating on the Curly years, from 1934 to 1936, in which siblings Moses “Moe” Horwitz and Jerome “Curly” Horwitz, using the stage name Howard, teamed up with violinist Louis Feinberg, better known as Larry Fine, to make some of the wildest, craziest, and funniest shorts of cinema’s golden age. Monday through Friday at 2:00 of this week, the Astoria institution will show 1937’s Grips, Grunts and Groans, in which Curly has to stand in for a drunk wrestler, 1943’s From Nurse to Worse, in which the trio schemes to pull off an insurance scam to get some dough, and 1941’s In the Sweet Pie and Pie, in which the boys are on Death Row when they get an offer to marry three scheming dames. There will be encore presentations Saturday and Sunday at 12 noon and 3:00, along with Claymation workshops and daily demonstrations suitable for children ten and up. Short films around twenty minutes apiece was the forte of the vaudeville-trained Stooges, whose feature-length films were an embarrassment, including Have Rocket, Will Travel, Snow White and the Three Stooges, The Three Stooges Meet Hercules, and The Outlaws Is Coming, all of which were made after both Curly and Shemp had died. It remains to be seen whether the Farrelly brothers can pull off a worthwhile full-length homage, although the previews don’t bode well.