‘Hold That Lion’ (1947) is the 100th short comedy made by The Three Stooges for Columbia Pictures. It was photographed from Tuesday, January 28 through Friday, January 31 1947 and was released on Thursday, July 17th of that year (the 198th day on the Gregorian Calendar). The film is notable for being the only one which features all four stooges–Curly makes a cameo as the passenger asleep with a hat on his face and a clothespin on his nose. This was shot only a year or a little less after Curly’s big stroke that effectively ended his career. Apparently he’d been visiting the set when director Jules White came up with the idea for the cameo and Curly happily agreed. It’s nice to see them all together. And a also a bit of a heartbreak. Last week I posted ‘Loose Loot’ ( 1951), which lifted the entire first half of this short and simply added a different second act which had nothing to do with the train or the lion. By the way, what was the lion doing on the train? It’s never explained, though it would have been easy (and perhaps even funny) to show something to the effect of a circus troupe being present on board. But perhaps that was expecting too much at this point from the on-the-way-to-being-exhausted Columbia Shorts department.

Now, what about that lion? His professional name was “Tanner’ and this was the final Three Stooges film to feature him. He’d previously appeared in You Nazty Spy!, Three Missing Links, Wee Wee Monsieur, and Movie Maniacs,. Whenever Tanner was required to growl or act angry, he was filmed by himself, while when he was onscreen with other people, he was filmed in a tame state. The FAO Schwartz lion ‘Plush’ served as a stand-in for Tanner when the Stooges see him sitting at the foot of their bed. The film also recycled gags from Tanner’s previous appearances (breathing from behind and licking the Stooges’ feet). Shemp was reportedly so frightened of lions that he insisted a glass plate be placed in between him and Tanner while filming the scene in the crate, and the Stooges’ reflection in the glass can be seen as they are hastily exiting the crate.  Emil Sitka later commented that the feline was “so sickly, he would fall asleep in the middle of a take.” Tanner died in 1952–presumably at the ‘Motion Picture Country Zoo.’