The comedy team of The Three Stooges have been praised by their fans as one of cinema's funniest trio. To appreciate their talent and how the people behind the scenes made their stunts a work of ingenuity, a close look at their visible goofs unveils how they were able to deliver such eye-popping routines. In April's "3 Dumb Clucks," several mistakes are proof there was a lot of thought taken before the cameras rolled.
In the opening scenes of "3 Dumb Clucks," The Three Stooges are in prison and make plans to escape to save their father from marrying a gold digging woman, Daisy (Lucille Lund). Larry unclogs an oil can's spout to lubricate Curly's saw as he's using to cut through a window bar by blowing through it as Moe holds one end of it. The blown oil flies into Moe's face. The astute viewer can see a hose coming from the inside of Moe's sleeve where the oil streamed from. In the next scene, Curly has drilled a series of holes through the concrete wall, but can't punch it out. Moe decides to use Curly's head as a battering ram and, with Larry's assistance, wings Curly head first. A camera angle allows the Stooges' crew to replace Curly with a dummy. Inexplicably the dummy they use has a full head of hair.
To illustrate Curly's endurance to pain, "3 Dumb Clucks," a title ripped from Deanna Durbin's 1936 "Three Smart Girls," the Stooges confront their father, a Curly lookalike, iss adamant he's going through with the marriage. In all the confusion of the wedding preparations, Curly is mistaken by Daisy's two associates. After the ceremony, they plan to kill him by throwing him down an elevator shaft. While falling, Curly accidentally hit a protruding 2"x4" board in the shaft, slicing the actor's scalp on his left side. A studio doctor rushed over and stitched him up while giving him a heavy dose of pain killers. The make-up artist placed a tuft of hair over the gaping wound. Director Del Lord, who did what is the normal film practice of not filming chronologically, shot the haberdasher scene placed earlier in the movie. Curly is clearly seen with the fake strands of hair on the side of his shaved head.
