Jerks of All Trades

The Three Stooges has always been some of the many actors that I have loved. I love just about every one of the shorts that they have made. I love all six of the Stooges (Curly, Shemp, Moe, Larry, Joe, and Curly Joe)! All of the shorts are hilarious and also star many other great actors and actresses which a lot of them was in many of the shorts! In My opinion The Three Stooges is some of the greatest actors ever and is the all time funniest comedy team!

One of the most hilarious Three Stooges shorts is Jerks of All Trades. In this short are Emil Sitka and Symona Boniface! The acting by these actors are good especially. There are many funny scenes here that I think most Three Stooges fans will love! In My opinion this one of the most different Three Stooges shorts. I recommend this one to all!

Pretty stilted attempt from Stooges in the infant days of T.V. Worth a look from die hard fans....that's about it

While The Three Stooges were busy making their short films for Columbia Pictures, they also appeared on television in the early days of the medium. Their first TV appearance was on the popular Milton Berle variety show 'Texaco Star Theater' on October 19, 1948. Ever the entertainer, Berle was comfortably acting alongside the untamed Stooges at their wildest best. Two months later the three were guests on The Morey Amsterdam Show New Year's Eve Special airing live on December 31,1948. The program was basically a two-hour vaudeville show which featured the Stooges acting their zany best. Loving to act before the camera just as they did on their live stage shows, the Stooges were offered a television series on ABC-TV which was planned to be titled "Jerks of All Trades." As all prospective TV series had to do at the time, the Stooges made a 20-minute pilot before a live audience shot on October 12, 1949. Their proposed series placed them in different jobs for each episode, a format similar to their short films. In the pilot they posed as interior decorators and painters, and gave fits to office and home owners Emil Sitka (Mr. Pennyfeather), Symona Boniface (his wife), and Dink Trout (Mr. Fink). The primary shortcoming of television was the lack of sound effects whenever one of the Stooges was hit, eliminating a crucial dimension from their short films which made them so entertaining.

The Stooges found themselves in hot water with their contracted Columbia Pictures because they never received permission to embark on a TV career. The studio felt their television preparation and shooting would get in the way of spending time making their popular film series, and threatened to sue them in court and cancel their contract. Intimidated, the Stooges withdrew from the proposed series, and the pilot was never seen on TV. Today it can be viewed on the internet. Columbia, however, allowed the three to continue to make guest appearances on television, which they took advantage of a number of times.

This is a TV pilot from 1949 with Shemp in the 3rd role that ABC filmed and was considering for broadcast, until the Columbia Shorts Division took legal action. In the end, they settled by allowing ABC to air their old shorts instead. Today this pilot is in public domain and available on YouTube as well as DVD.

Oddities noticed would include the audience laughter, something missing in their shorts. While not normal for the Stooges, when looked at through the lens of television, its a normal thing to hear. It seems many of the lower rated reviews don't appreciate the audience and would prefer the pilot without it. I would agree that after nearly 200 shorts without it, the show might have been more appreciated without an audience. Another oddity was the sets, and lack of detail. This reminded me of old Honeymooners episodes with the plain sets. I'm sure this was cost cutting, as they boys dealt with that in their movies often as well, just not to this extreme. These "oddities" brought to mind the trios days in Vaudeville, as this lineup would of been more likely to have the live stage work experience. As such, Larry stands out a bit more as his reactions seem a little bolder than in the shorts. Moe is seen as trying to say too much, al.ost as if he was worried about dead air. In the shorts the trio would use more sight gags, and a lol in dialog often allowed for a scene to build visually. Here that doesn't happen in the same manner. Using Emil Sitka as the main foil was brilliant. The familiarity of working with the boys likely helped in the pilot, as well as having Symona Boniface in one of her last filmed roles, another Stooges regular. Most of the jokes have been seen in many other shorts, such as the painting of the table. A highlight (dare I say scene stealer) was the salesman who stopped by. While not at the top of the game in this pilot, it clearly set up a premise that likely would run well as a TV show in the 50s. Not the place to be introduced to the Three Stooges, but a nice peek into how they were back in their Vaudeville days. Real fans of the boys will find it interesting.

The biggest drawback of putting The Three Stooges in a sitcom, as I can see, is the use of a laugh track. I always found their comedy the funniest when we, in the audience, were the only ones laughing-to hear laughing at their antics on the film itself is detrimental to the humor, in my opinion. So would a Stooges sitcom have worked, or was it just a poor idea in the first place?

The second biggest drawback in this pilot is the direction. Comedy films require more than just gags and funny jokes, they require timing and proper direction and pacing. This film has great gags and jokes, some of the best the team ever did-but it suffers because the direction is bad. At times (especially during the painting-and-papering scenes, which should ZING but don't), it almost seems like the camera is focused on the wrong Stooge. It even sometimes appears hard to follow, though this could also be due to the poor quality print I watched, to be totally fair.

Though the laugh track distances us from the "pure" humor of The Three Stooges, a Stooge series might still have been fun in its own right, and indeed, this pilot *is* sometimes fun, especially in the first act. There seem to be more gags and jokes per minute in this film than in their standard Columbia Pictures shorts, and this is both a good thing and a bad thing. Good, because even with poor quality direction the Stooges on a bad day are better than no Stooges at all. Bad, because it throws off the all-important pacing.

You'll note that despite this seemingly negative review, I did give this film six stars out of ten, which may seem incongruous. This is because The Three Stooges are among my favorite comedians of all time, and even at their worst they're still better than most "comics" today, though this particular film strikes me as a miscalculation and a missed opportunity. This pilot is probably best left for serious Stooge buffs alone, certainly not for people discovering them for the first time.