If a Body Meets a Body

Jules White, the overall head of Columbia Pictures short film unit, never admitted Curly's condition to Bernds before he was given the Stooges assignment. In the Stooges previously released movie, August 1945's "If a Body Meets a Body," filmed in mid-March 1945, White directed the comedy where Curly stands to inherit money from his late uncle Bob O. Link. The script of Jack White's, brother of Jules, sees the Stooges attending the reading of the will at his late rich uncle's house, only to discover the lawyer was killed before he had a chance to unveil its contents. Forced to spend the night in the mansion by the detective investigating the murder, the Stooges experience several hair-raising incidents, including an escaped caged bird walking around with a skull over its body.

For the first time a slower version of the Stooges' 'Three Blind Mice' is heard in the opening credits of "If a Body Meets a Body."This would introduce the Stooges short films until 1948. The version is identified as the "ill Curly" arrangement, denoting the period when Shemp Howard-Moe and Curly's real brother-was a temporary replacement for Curly until the comic was healed, which never happened. Curly barely got any recuperation time after he left the hospital in January 1945. Realizing how profitable the Stooges short films were, Cohn insisted they resume filming shortly after Curly's hospital discharge. Finally seeing Curly's condition, the studio head gave them five months off between August 1945 until January 1946. But the Stooges decided to give a two-month live performance during the break, wearing out the ailing Curly even further.

Well, I'm sure very ardent stooge fan knows the story behind this particular short. The first one where it's painfully obvious Curly was not his old self--given that he suffered a stroke or possibly multiple strokes when this 2-reeler was filmed.

Whatever the case may be, anyone with eyes can see that Curly is definitely "off." And yet--in spite of that--I still like this one. One plus to the "Sick Curly" era is that this is when Larry's character started getting more development for the first time in years, and old "porcupine" really steps up his game during this time period.

Plus, even Curly at half-strength still beats most comedians in their prime & old Jerry was still capable of getting laughs--i.e. that hilarious backwards jump he does in reaction to poor Mr. Link being murdered on the very spot he was standing.

8 stars

I understand that the Stooge films were a way of making a living for all involved, but I really think someone should've looked at the dailies and seen that Curly was very sick, and either halted production or sought Shemp as a replacement sooner. But all I could think while I was watching this film was "Poor Curly! He looks so miserable!", which is the last thing you want to be thinking while watching a Three Stooges film. True, the Stooges are always hurting each other (especially during the Curly era), but you want to think of them as cartoon characters who are never really impacted. You want to see them get up after being knocked down, brush themselves off, and move on to more pratfalls, just as strong as ever. But when Curly is incapable of doing that, the productions lose their trademark sense of humor.

This is one of Curly's last short subjects but it is very good.Theodore Lurch is very good and of course the Stooges are as well.The stuff that happens in the room where the Stooges sleep is hilarious!This spooky short is very funny and a good one to watch around Halloween!

This short would've been a classic like the successful from the early 1940's if Curly have'nt suffered his stroke which led to his decline but what Curly couldn't do, Moe and Larry make up for him, although they're were some slow scenes in the haunted house, the highlight comes when Curly and Larry constantly wake up Moe and Moe gets grouchy, I thought that it was hilarious and the parrot in the skull routine is a classic and it was later reused in Ghost Talks and Scotched in Scotland, I thought that this was one of the better shorts during the 1945-46 period even though Curly was showing signs of slowing down and slurring his speech a bit, watch the next short that the boys did (Bird in the Head) and Curly was worse in that short but fortunately the short after that called Micro Phonies Curly pulled off a great performance even though Micro Phonies was released better Bird in the Head.