Mark Evanier's Blog, page 108

ASK me: Meeting Stooges

"Gary from Buffalo" wrote to ask…

You have mentioned on occasion that you were friends with Norman Maurer, son-in-law of Moe Howard. Did you ever ask Norman if he would introduce you to Moe? Seems like that would've been a great opportunity to ask for a ceremonial eye-poke. For that matter did you ever meet Larry Fine or Joe Besser/Joe DeRita?

Well, Curly died two months before I was born and Shemp died when I was three so that let them out. I met Moe on two occasions — not through Norman — but nothing that was said was any more memorable than "I've always enjoyed your films" and "Thank you." He was very nice and like all his partners, way shorter than I imagined.

I met the other three. I made two or three trips (I think two) out to the Motion Picture Country Hospital where Larry Fine was living after his stroke. However many I made, they were all pretty much carbons of each others. Larry was a sweet man who was delighted to have the company but he had about twelve anecdotes and no matter what you asked him about, you got one of the twelve. He did not remember everything about his past and if you'd pointed an AR-15–style rifle at him, he couldn't have told you what he had for breakfast that morning. But I enjoyed spending time with him.

I met Joe DeRita at a one-day comic convention down near Disneyland. He was there to sign photos for money…which is fairly common these days for famous folks but it wasn't then. Kids who wanted to meet him — most of whom didn't seem to know the difference between him and Curly Howard — were shocked that his signature was not free. After a few unpleasant encounters, Mr. DeRita decided to stop charging. Meanwhile, a few tables away from him, famed starlet Edy Williams was selling and signing posters of herself, some of which were pretty darned naked. She left that day with a nice wad o' cash. Joe DeRita looked at one of them and said, "Maybe I should have posed like that!"

I had a great chat with Curly Joe, much of which was about his pre-Stooges film career and his times in Vegas working in splashy, big-budget burlesque revues. But we kept getting interrupted by kids who wanted to meet "Curly," and some of them went away thinking they had.

I met Joe Besser in the waiting room at Hanna-Barbera. He was there that day to record a voice track for some cartoon show — Yogi's Space Race, I think — and I spotted him sitting on a couch and pounced. We talked about everything except his time as a Stooge…which I'd been told was not the happiest gig of his career. Someone who knew him well later told me that it bothered Joe that some people knew him from that and only that, which to him meant they were unaware of 80% of all he'd done…or just plain disinterested.

We talked about him working with Abbott and Costello (he loved them) and Joey Bishop (he didn't like the man) and so many other things. I recall an awkward moment when he asked me about my career and what I'd done and as I replied, he kept saying, "Well, if you're such a fan of mine, why didn't you hire me for that show?" I had that happen to me with Soupy Sales and a few others and there was never an easy way to respond. But I did like the guy and it was fascinating to hear him talk in his not-in-character manner…with occasional lapses into the Joe Besser I knew from TV.

So to sum up: I met two-thirds of the six men who'd been full-fledged members of the Three Stooges. I liked 'em all. I wish I'd had more time with Moe. None of them slapped me or poked me in the eyes or broke pottery over my head. If I sound like I'm bragging…well, yes, I guess I am.

Today's Bonus Bonus Video Link

And watch this…

Today's Bonus Video Link

In case you haven't guessed, I'm busy meeting a deadline so that's why all the video links. I'll be back writing more for this blog before long. Meanwhile, here's the latest installment of Everything You Need To Know About Saturday Night Live. We're up to Season 14, another really good one. I will not be saying that when we reach some higher-numbered episodes…

Today's Political Comment

Yesterday as you know, U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan released a slightly-redacted version of Special Counsel Jack Smith's blueprint for prosecuting the January 6th case against Donald J. Trump. It's pretty devastating — a portrait of a man who said, in effect, "I don't care if I lost the election, I'm going to be President anyway." Kim Wehle explains some of what's in it.

Steve Benen takes apart some of Trump's more insane claims about how good he was for our economy.

Here are some interesting thoughts about political candidates debating from Olufemi Taiwo.

And the best reporting on the debate we just had was done (as usual) by Triumph the Insult Comic Dog…

Today's Video Link

Here's another movie for you. It's The Three Stooges in Orbit, which is pretty much where they belonged. It was produced and partially written by an old pal of mine, the late Norman Maurer. He was the Stooges' manager and Moe's son-in-law and a very fine comic book artist. I think that's mostly his artwork in the opening titles. The narrator, by the way, was Don Lamond, who was the host of the show on Channel 11 here in Los Angeles that showed Three Stooges shorts when I was growing up. He was also Larry Fine's son-in-law. The Stooges believed in keeping things in the family.

This movie was a 1962 release and was one of the better Stooge vehicles with "Curly Joe" DeRita as the third member of the group. Or at least it was when I was ten. If you're that age chronologically or emotionally, you might enjoy it…

My Last Post About Pete Rose

I read a number of e-mails and linked articles today about Pete Rose, mostly but not exclusively about good things he did on the field and bad things he did off the field and I came to a conclusion. My conclusion is that I really don't care if Pete Rose is in the Hall of Fame. A lot of folks pointed out players who are in the Hall of Fame who did bad things while out of uniform and maybe Rose was no worse than some of them but I had a brief moment of caring about this kind of thing and I got over it.

I do care about forgiveness which I think can be an important thing in this world. But to properly forgive someone, you have to know more about them than I did about Pete Rose. So just forget I said anything…or at least try to forgive me for it.

Today's Video Link

Seth Meyers does some (not all) of the kind of fact-checking that folks who are paid to report the news on CBS barely did last night…

Or Maybe I Don’t…

People are sending me a lot of links to articles about reprehensible things Pete Rose did apart from wagering on baseball. I hereby withdraw my forgiveness of the man until I learn more about him. I shoulda known I might have been on the wrong side of this issue when I typed the subject line in the previous post.

I Agree With Donald Trump On Something

I know very little about baseball. The last time I went to a Dodgers game, Sandy Koufax was on the mound. But I do know that Pete Rose had an incredible career that came to an unseemly halt in 1989 when he was found to have been wagering on games — a big no-no for professional athletes. Then two years later, he received a lifetime suspension from being considered for the Hall of Fame. (To be honest, I had to go look up the exact years but I knew the rest of what I just typed.)

I also know that he spent his remaining years apologizing and begging and doing everything he could to get into the Hall of Fame and he was repeatedly turned down. In case you're wondering, Rod Carew — whose record was such that he shared the above baseball card with Rose — was inducted in 1991.

And I know one little thing that Mr. Rose did in his later years beyond petitioning to get into the Hall of Fame.  In Las Vegas, there is or was a sports memorabilia shop located along a walkway of stores between the Luxor hotel and the Mandalay Bay hotel.  One year, a decade or three ago, I spent a lot of time in Vegas and often had to walk down that row of shops and Pete Rose always seemed to be there signing autographs for what I suspect was a substantial fee.

One day, I had some time to kill so I browsed that shop finding absolutely nothing I would ever buy but I was fascinated to eavesdrop for a while on conversations Mr. Rose was having with a rather steady line of people who came by to meet him and buy something on which he would write his name. He was very nice to those folks and why wouldn't he be? They were telling him what a great ball player he'd been and how unfair it was that he was not in the Hall of Fame. Oh — and they were paying him an awful lot of money. Godzilla would be all buddy-buddy with you if you were forking over that kind of dough for his autograph.

I'm sure there are folks in and around baseball who think he did something against the rules and needed to pay the price for that. Okay, fine. But I couldn't listen to those chats for more than a few minutes without thinking, as Mssrs. Gilbert and Sullivan put it, that the punishment did not fit the crime.

Pete Rose was found dead at his home in Clark County, Nevada last Monday. He served out his "lifetime sentence" and now that that lifetime is over, it's time to give him whatever honor he deserved. We've had the public example of paying the price for doing wrong. It might be nice to now see a public example of the power of forgiveness.

Today's Video Link

As regular followers of this blog know, I really like a cappella singing groups and one of my favorites is a pack of vocalists called Voctave. In this video, they team up with another group — The Swingles — to bring us a Jerry Herman classic from the show, La Cage Aux Folles. This is a song that really should be sung by one person but I'll forgive them the dramatic lapse in this case…