‘Some More Of Samoa’ (1941) is the 59th short comedy made by The Three Stooges for Columbia Pictures. It was photographed from Monday, May 12 through Thursday, May 15 1941 and was released on Thursday, December 4th of that year–the 338th day of the Gregorian Calendar and a scant three days before the Japanese attacked the American navel base at Pearl Harbor.

I have to confess something: I’ve never seen this film before watching it today. In all my years of Stooge watching I’m quite sure I’ve seen them all. But during the past two years of posting these films on the weekend, this is the second one that I don’t recall a thing about. (The first was a dreadful late-Curly item called ‘Rhythm And Weep’ which I have a feeling was judged to be too poor to include in any of the TV packages sold to Screen Gems by Columbia Pictures). Was this film truly never shown on television in the 1970s? If not, why? There’s a brief Amos & Andy impression done by Moe and Larry that would probably limit its viewing potential nowadays but I don’t think that things were that sensitive back then. (Perhaps Curly kicking the Samoan tribal guy into a vat of boiling water was too much). In any event it’s a rather strange comedy with a truly bizarre set-up–an eccentric man has been driven to a nervous breakdown due to worry over his rare tree that sits in a pot in his bedroom. Somehow this leads to the Stooges going into the jungle to find the tree a mate and…oh, it’s pointless. The script is credited to longtime Stooge scribe Elwood Ullman as well as to Harry Edwards, a silent comedy director who co-directed several Harry Langdon films with young Frank Capra. While Capra became the king of the Columbia lot, Edwards checked-in as a lowly short-subject unit free-lancer. (This must have been courtesy of Langdon, who was given a shorts series in the late thirties at the studio). After a couple of tryout writing credits, Edwards was allowed to direct, quickly gaining the reputation of being the studios worst director–both the Stooges and Vera Vague requested not to work with him. He was assigned mostly to Hugh Herbert shorts and a few Andy Clyde’s as well. None of these comedies are even remotely funny anymore so their poor quality can’t really be blamed on Edwards. He left this earth in 1952 in a particularly horrible way: he somehow was exposed to Carbon tetrachloride, a non-flammable, dense colorless liquid used in fire extinguishers and since discontinued since high exposure to it can affect the central nervous system and degenerate the liver and kidney’s. Poor Harry Edwards. Capra got the AFI lifetime achievement award and he got a dose of fire extinguisher poisoning. And with that, enjoy the show!