Vagabond Loafers

When Moe jumps back in sheer horror at the unexpected sight of Larry (who just got plastered with a bag of white baking flour all over his face and hair) and then asks the frightfully scary looking stooge at the end of the short: "how much would you charge to haunt a house?" -- and Larry, assuming that Moe must be serious, and not wanting to pass on a good job, responds by asking -- "how many rooms?"; Moe angrily strikes poor Lawrence across the face, making for a truly classic Stooge moment! I laughed at this moment as hard as I laughed at all the great Curly classic moments in other shorts! Larry's contribution to the overall comedic effect of the Stooges is subtle, but very real, as evidenced by this classic moment! See also the short where they are celebrating the fountain of youth that they just invented and are enjoying some cake; Lawrence tries to steal some icing off the top of the cake but he gets caught by Moe as he is about to swallow it, so he wisely decides to ask Moe if he wants a taste as he reaches his hand out to Moe, as if Moe would lick it off his hand -- of course, Moe, looking supremely indignant, is totally mortified and immediately wallops Lawrence with a smack across his outreached hand, pushing the icing and cake into his face while saying, "No, You Keep It" -- the sound effect of this smack across Larry's face (not to mention the sight of all that cake and icing smearing into Lawrence's nose) is so loud and has such a great echo effect that it adds to the humor of the moment beautifully!

A socialite is hosting a dinner party celebrating a recent purchase of a high priced portrait. She needs emergency plumbers and calls the Stooges. It's not a good call until two party guests steal the painting and the Stooges stumble into capturing them.

Plumbing is good Stooges' mayhem. Water is spraying everywhere. They hit each other with pipes. Pipes are connected in wacky ways. It's all there for them. It's a Shemp Stooges and it's as good as he gets.

This remake almost does as well as "A Plumbing We Will Go" itself! The maze of pipes scene is redone real well with Shemp. There are also some new added plumbing scenes which are quite funny. The new plot addition was great, and adds even more excitement than just an episode in home disaster. The only problem with this one is that most of the footage with the hilarious Dudley Dickerson is from "A Plumbing We Will Go". But overall, an excellent remake well directed by the masterful stooge director Edward Bernds.

Grade: A

As others have mentioned, this was a reworking of sorts from the 1940 Stooges film, "A Plumbing We Will Go," which featured Curly instead of Shemp and the boys.

I'm not going to go into too much of the story because they used some stock footage in here or they just did the same gags they had done earlier in the '40 film, which I hate to see as I've probably seen all these shorts many times over. Still, I never cease to laugh at some things, such as Dudley Dickenson's act as the cook doing double-takes and slipping and sliding all over the floor as the kitchen gets flooded, or Larry's head popping out of the ground.

When you see Kenneth MacDonald in a Three Stooges film you know you've just seen the villain. MacDonald who had a tough, film-noir voice and face. They were always good in those roles, as was Christine McIntyre, another regular in these shorts, and Emil Sitka, who usually was innocent victim of something the Stooges did. Another regular, Symona Bonfice, always plays a stuffy socialite who winds up getting ruined by the inept Stooges. As you can see, there are many familiar "Three Stooges" faces in this humorous remake.

Despite the familiarity of this story, it was still a lot of fun to watch.

The Three Stooges revisited one of their all-time classics with Curly, this with Shemp taking the retired Stooge place in October 1949's "Vagabond Loafers," a title totally non-descriptive of the hard-working plumbers. The Three inexperienced plumbers answer an emergency call needing to patch a basement leak while a posh party celebrating the unveiling of an expensive painting takes place upstairs. Just as Curly did in 1940s "A Plumbing We Will Go," Shemp reroutes the bathroom's pipes into the electric wiring ducts. In fact, some of the footage in the earlier short film is sliced into the update, including regular Dudley Dickerson as the wide-eyed cook. But Dickerson's new scene is memorable after he battles with several water leaks throughout his kitchen. Wearing a raincoat, he announces to the hungry guests, "dinner's postponed on account of rain." The film, Dickerson's seventh Stooges' appearance, was his last, although the studio used a few of his previous scenes for remakes. Another regular's last credited appearance with The Three Stooges was Symona Boniface, whose films with the three comics dates back to 1935's "Pardon My Scotch." In "Vagabond Loafers" Boniface plays Mrs. Norfleet, typical of her characters with the Stooges as a snobbish, upper crust wife. Here she just purchased a 'Van Brocklin' painting for $50,000. The painting's name is a joke on the Los Angeles Rams' 1949 rookie quarterback, Norm Van Brocklin. When the Stooges as plumbers enter through the front door to fix the leak, she bellows, "How dare you come in here and mingle with my guests! Such impertinence!" She turns to her butler and commands, "Wilks, get them out of here and put them to work!" The Stooges have the last laugh when its discovered the 'Van Brocklin' painting has been stolen-by invited guest Mr. (Kenneth MacDonald) and Mrs. Allen (Christine McIntyre). Boniface was in a handful of uncredited roles and played in a Buster Crabbe 1950 serial episode before succumbing to pancreatic cancer in September 1950 at age 50.