Saved by the Belle

Film comics throughout the ages have used the destructive power of dynamite, which has the potential to kill scores of people, as a prop for their visual jokes. The Three Stooges proved such explosives can elicit belly-laughs by the caseloads. In two straight 1939 films, the three displayed such a dexterity in handling dynamite that once their viewers saw the sticks with the word on them they expected the jokes to be flying fast and furious.

The Stooges used dynamite to great effect in June 1939's "Saved by the Belle." In this last directed Stooges short of Charlie Chase's, who died the following year of a heart attack at 47, the three are traveling salesmen in the fictional South American country of Valeska. Accused of plotting to kill the country's leader, the Stooges escape prison thanks to revolutionary member Señorita Rita (Carman Laroux). They take a rolled up map (they think) of the government's military positions to the revolutionary leader, only to present a calendar instead. Escorted to a wall where they think they're about to have their picture taken, Curly says to Moe, "I'm gonna send one home to Elaine," who in real life was his wife Elaine Ackerman. They finally realized an execution squad was about to fire upon them. The Stooges commandeer an ammunition truck before Curly casually flings a match he used to light a cigarette into a crate of dynamite, igniting a fuse. After chomping on some grenades, whom Curly thinks are pineapples, the dynamite explodes, sending the three onto a swayed-back horse, galloping away.

"Saved by the Belle" featured Mexican actress Carmen Laroux. The highpoint in her screen acting career which began in 1927 in silent movies was appearing alongside John Wayne in 1935's low-budget 'The Desert Trail.' This was her second-to-last film before she appeared as the maid in Orson Welles' 1941 "Citizen Kane." She committed suicide on August 1942 at 32 by swallowing ant poison.