‘Pardon My Scotch’ (1935) was the 9th short comedy made by The Three Stooges for Columbia Pictures. It was photographed from Thursday, April 11th through Monday, April 15th 1935 and released on Thursday, August 1st of that year. Prohibition, which had been repealed sixteen months prior to the film being made, plays a key role in the plot line, making it one of three Stooge shorts to use the current events of the time as plot devices, the other two being the Nazi satires ‘You Nazty Spy’ (1940) and ‘I’ll Never Heil Again’ (1941). We are still in the land of early Stooge comedy pacing-wise, with the routines and their delivery running at half the speed they would in another year (‘Ants In The Pantry’ seems to me to be the first short to lock into the confident pacing one expects from the Curly-era shorts). Indeed, Curly’s lack of manic energy in these early shorts is peculiar–it’s a bit like the lion had yet to be let out of the cage. The spectacular fall Moe takes at 3:25 was apparently something of an accident, according to Moe in his autobiography. I don’t see how this can be–the gag seems to me perfectly planned and executed. But I’ll reprint the Wikipedia account below just to be fair. Moe’s book is littered with inaccuracies and he actually misidentifies this films title as ‘Beer And Pretzles’, a pre-Columbia short they made at MGM with Ted Healy. Dig:

During the opening scene where the boys are assembling a door, Moe asks Curly to saw a piece of wood for him. Curly lays the wood on top of a wooden table, which Moe happens to be standing on. Curly then proceeds to buzzsaw both the wood and table in half, with the table splitting in two. However, the table split inward on Moe’s half of it, and Moe came crashing down on his left side, breaking three ribs. He was able to pull himself up and deliver a double slap to Larry and Curly before collapsing. Moe was then rushed to the hospital while production ceased briefly.