Rockin' Thru the Rockies

In this sort the boys are heading west but they run into indians that tell them to leave or they will die, but before they can go they have to get there wagon fixed. This had some funny moments in it like Curly's snap slap thing and when they go fishing and Larry tries to save Moe who fell in, I won't say anything else just see for yourself.

45th Stooge film short and one that finds them really at odds with the brutal elements. Although it's all props, right?

Mission: Escort three pretty showgirls, played by Dorothy Comingore, Lorna Gray and Dorothy Appleby across the mid west (circa 1800s) to San Francisco, getting stuck in the Rocky Mountains. And it's COLD!

I agree with the last reviewer, the girls are kind of put off to the side, while Moe, Larry and Curly get involved in all sorts of insane stuff. The frigid weather makes it impossible to sleep. How about jumping into ice cold lake water??? And don't forget a wild bear wanderin' around. One more thing -- Indians! Leave NOW or get killed NOW. Has that zany old west feel that all us kids love, and it's a duel between Moe and Curly as to who gets the best lines or clobbered the most.

A labor of love by Clyde Bruckman, one of the team's best writers. Good part for big guy Dick Curtis as the Indian chief. Final appearance for Lorna Gray, who would move to Republic Pictures and co-star in many classic serials. Dorothy Comingore, of course, would soon go onto fame appearing in CITIZEN KANE.

Yes, for movie buffs, some gag lines referring to IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT. And this is one bumpy night.

Another Stooge gem. Always on dvd, generally by decades, 30s, 40s, and 50s episodes. Many thanks to METV for running these oldies every Saturday.

The above question wan posed by an irate woman called "Nell." Now that's an odd insult that she used: a sun-baked ham? Well, in an old film, particularly a Three Stooges short that is 68 years old, you're going to get a lot of strange name-calling. I suppose in real life, the boys would be called a lot worse.....a lot worse.

Daisy, Tessie, Flossie and Nell (the old coot who has no patience with the bumbling boys) actually hire the Stooges to take them West so they can perform their singing and dancing act. Of course, five months into the trip they've only made it about 100 miles to Kansas and Nell has lost her patience. Can't blame the poor woman.

The bulk of the story contains classic Three Stooges gags, some of which are good no matter how many times, or in how many films, you see them: like the grizzly bear wandering into the shed and Curly, at first, thinking it's a warm blanket.

Then, PC-aside, we get the normal adventures with Indians which are usually pretty funny. The highlight, however, of this "western adventure," is the ice-fishing scene..Without giving too much away, suffice to say all three Stooges wind up taking humorous plunges into the icy waters. You can't help but laugh out loud at some of them.

Daisy, Flossie, and Tessie are performers for the traveling road show Nell's Belles. Larry, Curly, and Moe are frontier guides protecting the ladies traveling from Kansas to San Francisco. Indians order them to leave Indian territories. Their horses run away and they are stuck.

The girls are a missed opportunity. They barely have anything to do. The Indians have more screen presence. The girls may as well be empty dresses. The boys do their stuff but they don't have good partners. All in all, it's perfectly good Stooges short but it could be even better.

In The Stooges' short film, March 1940 "Rockin' thru the Rockies," Jules White directed his fifth straight Stooges' short, finding the three as guides leading 'Nell's Belles,' three female entertainers with matron Nell (Katheryn Sheldon) as their chaperone supervisor, through the Indian-infested Rockies to their destination San Francisco. Strangely, the Stooges' 1945 feature film, 'Rockin' Thru the Rockies,' shares the same name as this 1940 short. Curly pays homage to Columbia Pictures' 1934 Academy Awards Best Picture winner "It Happened One Night." He mutters Clark Gables' famous line, "The walls of Jericho are falling," when he stumbles through a blanket-hung wall separating the ladies from the men inside a prefab stage cabin scampering from an intruding bear in their sleeping quarters. Gable labeled the wall 'Jericho' he set up made of bedsheets shielding him from Claudette Colbert in their shared motel room.

"Rockin' Thru the Rockies" was Lorna Gray's final Stooges' film before she left Columbia for Republic Pictures, where she excelled mostly in Westerns. Appearing as one of Nell's Belles was actress Dorothy Appleby, a former winner of the Miss Maine contest who was chosen by Rudolph Valentino as the prettiest of her competitors. The short is also known for Curly's enthusiastic chant, "Give 'em the axe, giving 'em the axe, right in the neck, right in the neck," a variation of Stanford University's well-known student body shout during football games popular during that era.