A Stooge week-end --

A Stooge week-end --

A few years ago, I made it to the 18th Annual Stoogefest again and had a nice evening at a great old theater filled with 3 Stooges fans of every shape, color and age group. The "Alex" was built in 1925 and played vaudeville acts as well as silent films.  Three friends also came along and call themselves, Stooge-i- files. Anyone who grew up in early 60's knew every aspect of the Stooges. 

The Three Stooges were clowns of sorts, not fancy but each short of about 15 minutes told you all about the rich and the poor and how they fight each other, if you want to think that's my take. They were everyman in sorts, the guys who don't get the girls and usually have to work hard. Moe, Larry and Curly. They were always looking for jobs and losing them and always trying.

They were clowns to us, but heart to them.  Moe was the leader, Larry was the one who kept the ideas to a fine pin. And Curly was the lost fool but you got to love him.




Now, it's been completely redone in it's original style and looks great.Now the Stooges aren't really cool to the millennials as they didn't have the Stooges playing on every TV station in early morning TV for the most. My brother claims that he learned all you need by watching the Stooges.

The Stooge event begins with a host to talks about the Stooges and later, introduces several family members including Moe's daughter. Moe was the one with the crewcut for those of you who aren't stooge fans.

This year held a surprise when they announced that someone found a print of a Stooge film in Australia that had never been seen since a big fire at MGM years ago. It seemed that someone in Australia had kept a copy in his basement and finally decided to see if anyone wanted the print. It's biggest feature was that it was shot in color way back in 1933 and now, the only print of that era.

When it came to the audience, as I mentioned, every kind of person and almost every age group. There are the hardline Stooge fans who call themselves Stooge-files and there's the "Knuckleheads", who belong to the Knucklehead club of course.

There were five shots played as usual and with some comments beforehand as sometimes the shorts had what we could call "insensitive" to certain groups.

And as for me, I'm just one of the many people who like to drop by now and then to bring back memories of the little movie theater I would go to in my small town of 539 people. Our theater was a revised church hall that became my lifeline living in a small town with very little to do.

From the movies, I learned about the world and also learned about who made the movies. 

I would always watch the titles and credits and began to remember names of people who wrote the movies, directed the movies and everyone else whose name was on the screen from casting to make-up and everything in between...

Here's my rag-tag movie theater now gone forever as it was torn down in 1988.

As you can see, the Alex is a little more flamboyant than my old theater. But it still gave me movies to watch and with them, the 3 Stooges.

 

 Larry, Curly and Moe. "soitenly"