‘Loose Loot’ (1953/1947) was the 146th short comedy made by The Three Stooges for Columbia Pictures. No production dates are available but the film was released on Thursday, April 2, 1953 (the 92nd day of the year on the Gregorian Calendar). The first half of the film consists of a direct lift from a 1947 short ‘Hold That Lion’, with the new material replacing the earlier films extending train sequence (in which Curly Howard makes a cameo appearance). Lazy though this is, ‘Loose Loot’ more than makes up for it with an abundance of dreadful violence, unwatchable torture (Shemp’s head trapped inside a goldfish bowl, Kenneth MacDonald’s head smashed through a door and held in place by a twisted chair) and more “Why I oughta’s–” then in any five Stooge films combined. I had the odd experience while watching this one of honestly wondering what MacDonald–a fine actor–made of where his career had taken him. This was all in a day’s work, of course, but at some point mustn’t they all looked at each other and thought: ‘aren’t we getting a little old for all this?’ MacDonald is subjected to the fruit-in-face (and eggs as well–‘hen fruit’ as Shemp refers to them) finale while stuck in the door that Trentino in ‘Duck Soup’ gets at the hands of the Marx Brothers. Perhaps he’d had enough by now. A year later he played a member of the court martial board in The Caine Mutiny (1954), and had a bit role as Jerry Lewis‘s father in The Ladies’ Man (1961). And a year after that, Shemp was dead though through the miracle of stock footage (and chutzpah) the Stooge shorts kept a’coming.