Mixture of animation and live-action: 40 short comedy skits featuring the Three Stooges actors were filmed as wraparounds for more than 150 cartoon episodes (more than one short episode per show). The skits were reused multiple times as more shows were compiled than there were shorts filmed. A different set of actors recorded the cartoons.
Wikipedia and IMDb indicate the series ran until 1973, however according to the Three Stooges Wikia site, new episodes were only produced in 1965-1966 and later rerun multiple times.
Correct title of the series uses the digit 3 rather than the spelled out word Three to differentiate from the widely syndicated live-action Hollywood short films.
@ Record Collector "This would be the last live action the three stooges appear together"
No it wasn't. They went on to do the Kook's Tour pilot film which was shot in 1969 and released initially on 8 mm in the early 1970s. They also filmed a few TV guest appearances. Their filmography also lists the film The Outlaws is Coming as being released in 1965, the year they shot the wraparounds, but I don't know which was filmed/released first. But it was definitely not long before the end for these guys as a team.
RC, It depended on economics of running a cinema. Bob Mason(who also owned and operated the Lake Cinema, Boolaroo, in the Lake MacQuarie area) didn't run his cinemas during the week, He concentrated on weekend trade with Friday evenings, and Saturday afternoons(matinee session) and evenings. It was his normal routine to run a "double feature" with a not-so-well-known movie on before intermission, a cartoon or serial, or even a Three Stooges short after advertising slides for businesses that supported whichever of his cinemas, then into the main feature. If a movie was so long that it would occupy the entire session, he'd run the ad slides, a short, then the feature would be spread across the session, before and after intermission. Set-ups like the Tower Cinemas in King Street Newcastle, Scotty's Cinemas at Raymond Terrace or the Cinema 300 Complex here at Nelson Bay will run the schedules that you suggest(11.am, 2.pm, 5.pm and 8.pm or variants of those times, offset by 15 or 30 minutes maybe) but with only the feature movie after some advertising. no cartoons(aww!) no shorts(double-aww! Bummer!). Cinema 300 is closed on Mondays but runs Tuesdays to Sundays.
Trying not to throw some people off the subject back then when cinemas had four sessions a day 11,2,5 and 8 first was a slide presentation a short intermission and main feature shame that doesn't happen anymore
@23skidoo, I'm not exactly sure who was in the movie as I didn't see the very start or the end credits. I take your point on Curly's real name, though, Like many, I always believed it to be Joe. Sorry I can't help with the actor names but I do agree with you on being annoyed with people calling these shorts "TV episodes", they most certainly were not! They were short twenty-five minute featurettes intended for screening in cinemas between the support film and the main feature where double-features were the "order of the day" or as openers for the feature movies where a cinema may only run the advertised feature without a supporting film. My old theatre at Stockton, NSW(Australia) where I grew up, was The Savoy, only operated on Friday evenings and Saturdays(matinee and evening sessions) and ran double features. You'd get a Warner cartoon, a serial(very early "Batman") or Three Stooges shorts, and depending on the length of the features, you'd get at least two of those three "extras" in the programme. I guess it depended on what cinema proprietor, Bob Mason had at hand. Oh, There was also the midnight horror doubles on "Black Fridays"(Friday, 13th of any given month) and New Years Eves. The cinema closed a couple of decades ago and the building is now a back-packers' hostel.
@Neil. There have been a couple of movies about the Stooges. Are you referring to the one where Michael Chiklis of The Shield played Curley? (Whose name was Jerome or Jerry, not Joe; Joe came later. It does help to have a flowchart of stooges at times!). Curly suffered his career-ending stroke between scenes of the 1946 short Half-Wit's Holiday. An urban legend says you can see Moe react on camera to seeing Jerome fall over behind the camera but this I believe is false. They did have to complete the short without Curly, which was very tough on the two fellows. Believe it or not, though, Curly actually had a fairly good life for a few years: he got married in 1947, had a child soon after, and even made a cameo appearance in one of the Shemp films (Hold That Lion) before his death in 1952.
As an aside, something that always annoys me is people who insist on calling the Three Stooges shorts "TV episodes". I've even seen some marketed on DVD that way. They were of course Hollywood short films made to show in theatres, but they were the ideal length to be edited into half-hour shows for syndication. The Stooges attempted a couple of times to do a TV series, including a variety show in the very early 50s (with Shemp), and the Kook's Tour project. This animated show is the only series they ultimately did. I can't remember if its success was responsible for the Abbott & Costello cartoon series of the same era.
And to 23skidoo as well, thanks! I wasn't aware Larry Fine had also suffered a stroke. Again, I'd like to have another look at that movie I referred to. It's good to get a behind-the-scenes look at the careers of these people. There was a sequence in the movie where Moe and Joe Howard were checking into a hotel, other guests started poking and prodding at him, thinking he wouldn't feel it because of what they saw in the featurettes, but Joe fell to the floor from the pain and was distressed by it. That sequence really stood out for me.
Thanks for the info, RC. I remember a movie about the Stooges and how their career started. The opening scene shows some kid reporter pestering Mo Howard for a story about the Stooges while Howard worked as a security guard at Columbia Pictures while trying to secure ongoing payments for him and the remaining two Stooges for repeat screenings or repackaging(can't think of the term for this) of the Three Stooges shorts. The movie also showed how the stroke-incapacitated Joe Howard was conned into signing away his share of the rights to royalties from the shorts. I'd like to see the movie again.
The wraparounds were made in the mid-1960s at the same time the Stooges were still actively making movies. Larry Fine suffered a stroke in 1969 while filming the pilot episode for a planned travel documentary series called Kook's Tour and was forced to retire. Emil Sitka, longtime straight man for the Stooges, was hired as Larry's replacement but Moe died in 1975 before the revised Stooges could make their first movie (the X-rated (!) Blazing Stewardesses, which was ultimately made with the surviving members of the Ritz Brothers). The original Curley was forced to retire in the late 1940s after suffering a stroke; he was replaced by Shemp Howard who was actually an original Stooge from the early 1930s. After Shemp died in the mid-1950s, Joe Besser because the third stooge for about a year, and then Joe DeRita, who was actually known for playing villains in movies, was cast as Curley-Joe when the Stooges started making feature films in the late 1950s. Despite the name, DeRita never actually attempted to impersonate Jerry Howard (the original Curly). People are starting to add one-off specials to this index; if they are in fact allowed I might create a listing for Kook's Tour which was the very first occasion where a failed pilot saw release to the home viewership market; this was pre-video, but it was successful when released as an 8-mm home movie in the early 70s.
By the time it was produced, only MO(Morris Howard) was still healthy enough to actually appear in the wraparounds. Larry(Lawrence Fine) may have passed away after completing some of the live wraparounds and Curly(Joseph Howard) had suffered a stroke some years earlier(late 1940s). Joe DeRita would've been Joe Howard's replacement. Similar in appearance(dead-ringer?) and voice.