HOOFS AND GOOFS

This is the first of the redheaded stepson combination of Moe, Larry, and Joe Besser. Not a good debut either. On an old tape we got off TV they ran a slew of the old shorts, with alot of classics. This one managed to sneak in there among the others.

Joe Besser was a good comedian, but his style just didn't fit. Nowhere else is this more appearant than here. Moe and Larry have no chemistry with Besser, and it also is horrific to see him actually hit Moe back!!!! Almost totally unacceptable to Stooge purists.

Some of the Joe shorts were alright for what they were. This wasn't though. Really poor script. Jokes fell flat. Just short of abysmal.

0.5 out of 4 from me.

I have De Rita and Besser tied at the bottom of my stooge list. A reason for that is because this episode stinks. The funniest part is when Moe[playing human Bertie] gives human bertie his personality when he drops the food on Joe on purpose

FourthThird, I think the reason many people dislike Joe Besser is because he would not let Moe strike him and that's one of the reasons why I don't find him to be a favorite stooge. I mean after all, we all are used to the slapstick in this show; The Three Stooges has always been a show about slapstick. If Columbia's budget was still in an upswing even after Shemp died and Joe came along, would we Stooge fans still complain about these shorts because it was Besser's fault? Probably not. But his resistance to violence, his whiny attitude, and his reputation of delivering original lines too slowly (as was the case for shorts like GUNS A-POPPIN or SAPPY BULLFIGHTERS) may still somewhat hurt any shorts that might have been if Columbia's shorts department wasn't waning in popularity. That's probably why Joe is disliked as a stooge.

Anyway, if Shemp hadn't kicked the bucket, do you guys think this short would have been made? Maybe not because Columbia was doing remakes before then, and I personally would think they would have done even more remakes of shorts from 1950 and 1951 to produce shorts for 1957, 1958, and 1959 (maybe occasionally with a few originals). Otherwise the extremely low budget Columbia had would be too noticeable if you know what I mean. That's why they had started doing remakes in 1952, to try to mask the noticeably low budget they started to have due to the declining popularity of the short subjects.

But what else could the suits at Columbia do, now that Joe Besser has joined the trio? They were faced the very difficult task of trying to keep the Stooges afloat with the extremely tight budget they had, as well as only ONE director directing ALL the shorts from 1952 on, and they couldn't do Besser remakes of Besser shorts with the Stooges because he didn't join the Stooges before that time when they were making nothing but originals; he just came in, in early 1956. So this is the result of him just entering the scene, whole new footage being shot with him and the other two Stooge veterans, albeit cheaply, with every little bit of money that Columbia had left.

As for this short, the budgetary constraints and lack of energy here are noticeable, plus the whole premise of a reincarnated loved one into a talking horse didn't really work well for the Three Stooges and paled badly in comparison to the "talking horse" that Blystone did in EVEN AS I.O.U. BTW, the shooting dates for this short are unknown, but I think this was filmed sometime in May of 1956 because I could see the calendar in the background, but I don't know if it is a fact or not.

Sure, the Besser-era shorts were not very good overall, and HOOFS is certainly no exception (though I liked it better than I thought I would, having read many a bad thing about it). But, to be honest, it really annoys me when people blame Joe for the low quality of these shorts. It seems obvious to me that the real problem was lazy writing, recycled plots, and low budgets -- things that were already there several years before Joe came along.

Perhaps it's because I became familiar with the Stooges roughly all at once (as opposed to, say, getting into Curly-era stuff years before ever seeing Besser stuff), but for the most part Joe doesn't strike me as a bad fit for the Stooges. If I saw an average Besser outing without knowing the Stooges' history (and without having seen Curly shorts, which would have been true of a lot of people in the late '50s), it never would have occurred to me that that Joe guy somehow didn't belong with those other two. And that "no-hit" rule everyone talks about only really affected a few shorts.

Give Besser credit where it's due. He took the impossible task of walking in Curly's and Shemp's shoes, with the added disadvantages already mentioned (budgets, etc.), and gave it about the best shot anyone could have given it. Plus he seems to have been humble about his contribution, and genuinely respectful of the legacy that he stepped into. And, come on -- does anyone think that, say, A MERRY MIX-UP would have been improved by having Curly-Joe instead, or that HORSING AROUND would have been better as a "Two Stooges" vehicle?

(P.S.: I think Moe's stand-in kind of looks like the "Ringo" character from THE RUTLES.)