SATURDAY STOOGE-FEST

‘Goof On The Roof’ is the Three Stooges 152nd short film made for Columbia Pictures. It was photographed from Monday, November 17th through Wednesday, November 19th, 1952 and was released a full year later on Thursday, December 3rd, 1953. The film is probably the most violent of any of the Shemp shorts, with an abundant amount of physical torture inflicted by a particularly vicious and bullying Moe, while also containing numerous violent encounters with household objects–doorways, pails, brooms, a television set, hammers destroying walls, electrocutions, fires etc. The film is a spiritual cousin of two Laurel and Hardy shorts, ‘Helpmates’ (in which L&H need to clean up a house in an unexpected hurry and wind up destroying it) and ‘Hog Wild’ (where they attempt to install a radio antenna on a roof). In ‘Goof On The Roof’ the actual roof action is limited to the last two minutes of the film and is vastly inferior to the L&H film, which features elaborate and terrifying comedic stunts. But ‘Goof On The Roof’ stands as a fine example of how much could be accomplished with three great comedians on one set with nobody else there to interfere. Apparently Shemp Howard suffered a minor stroke two weeks after filming was completed but was rushed back to work a week later for work on their next short. Did the NFL have anything to do with this?

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