Today, Joe Besser is mostly known for replacing Shemp Howard with the Three Stooges after Shemp's death. Many might also know him from his very annoying little boy role from "The Abbott & Costello Show". However, before either, he was a solo act and made several shorts for Columbia...the same studio that made the Stooges shorts.
For years, I have hated the film Besser made with the Stooges...mostly because they were often remakes of previous films. Sometimes they were even remakes of remakes of Stooges films, so they offered little in the way of originality AND you couldn't help but remember how much better Curly or even Shemp had played those same parts.
Despite my predisposition to dislike him, I saw this Besser solo film and was shocked, as I liked "Waiting in the Lurch"! It was original, rather funny and Besser did NOT play that little boy character (thank goodness). Instead, he plays 'Eric'...a hopeless pyromaniac. But he doesn't start fires...he just is obsessed with going to fires to watch the firemen put them out. And, when he's distracted on his wedding day and arrives at the church very late because he was on a fire call, his fiancee calls it off...though he vows to become a new man.
The film is never laugh out loud funny, but it was good and more restrained than most of Columbia's shorts. Well worth seeing...and a surprise to me.
