"The Three Stooges" Failed Pilot (1949)

★★★★★ · EEP EEP EEP! · cosmico · 2010-01-20

I abso-bleeping-lutely love this, and find it as funny or funnier than many of the Stooges shorts. As a Stooges fan for over fifty years, it's gut-busting hilarious to see Moe, Shemp and Larry (not to mention the amazing Emil Sitka, along with the rest of this pilot's supporting cast) do their shtick on live TV. I also saw them live when I was a kid, but that's another story. This is pure gold to a Shemp fan like myself (he was always my favorite Stooge), and many thanks to Video Cellar for the great contribution to the Archive!

★★★★★ · Historical overview · Donfield · 2012-03-25

According to The Three Stooges Scrapbook published 1982 by Jeff Lensburg, Joan Howard Maurer (Moe's daughter), Greg Lensburg, we're given a lot of information on this. It was filmed in one day, on October 12, 1949. It was filmed at ABC and produced by Phil Berle (Milton's brother). Emil Sitka ("Hold hands you lovebirds"), Symona Boniface ("I'll get it in a minute"), and Joseph Kearns (later of tv's Dennis the Menace) are in the supporting cast. In terms of a "failed pilot," Columbia Pictures prevented it from ever being aired. Their contract with Columbia stipulated they could not perform in…

★★★★★ · live tv? · 60skid · 2011-04-22

what this proves is that the 3 stooges physical comedy was "real" not a studio special effect

Understated! · sammyk1964 · 2020-11-14

"Failed Pilot" is most definitely an understatement! This was the Nagasaki of television bombs! If this had ever been the first thing I'd watched of "The Three Stooges", I would NEVER watch another one of their shows! To put it bluntly, they tried too hard! And, nothing worked! Waking up one morning and deciding to get the gang together and put on a show that night in Uncle Jakes barn, to raise their mortgage money just doesn't work out! They should have taken time to think everything through, instead of throwing everything pun in their arsenal at the television audience ALL AT ONCE! Yes!…