Controversial episodes
Wishkah875
any?
--
Gina Dellago
L.S. Coker
when they were first being played to the public. In the 60's of course many
parents would not let their children watch this "ultimate in TV violence".
Today (in Canada at least) we are suppose to frown on derogatory humour on
people of other faiths, colours and creeds. In the work place we can even be
fired for it.
I do not believe there was any malice intended back then and it's the same
shorts we're watching today..so we should not let it bother us now. Making
fun of the axis forces was a way of relieving tension during the war wars so
the boys did their German and Japanese routines.
So I'm interested too: were there any complaints?
Stephen
Brent Seguine
>From: wishk...@aol.com (Wishkah875)
>What were the most controversial Stooge episodes ever made? Anyone know of
any?
>
>Gina Dellago
What type of controversy?
If you're referring to political correctness, I think "The Yoke's on Me" will
remain the most controversial for years to come. Many fans think the
antagonist characters are escaped Japanese POWs... not true. They are escapees
from a Japanese-American relocation center. Relocation centers are a definite
black page in recent American history.
Scholarly controversies? Fellow Stooge fan Dr. Don Morlan published a paper
several years ago, reporting on "You Nazty Spy!" going into production several
months before Chaplin's "The Great Dictator." Many hoi polloi film historians
were outraged.
Violence? "They Stooge to Conga" has been known to have the climbing spike
scene edited by local TV stations.
Possibly another type of controversy you have in mind?
Brent
Wishkah875
correction. I remember when they showed The 3 Stooges on the Family Channel,
they cut out a lot of parts.
--
Gina Dellago
Mike Shawaluk
Brent), he told me about a very nice web site, www.stoogeworld.com , if you
click on the "Stooge Goofs" link near the bottom of the screen, you'll be
taken to a page which has information on "goofs" and continuity errors in
their shorts, as well as links to pages describing the "film-cut carnage"
(those are the words used by the webmaster) inflicted during Family
Channel's airing of the shorts. Very interesting reading. I remember being
excited a number of years ago when I Family Channel first started airing the
shorts (no one else was showing them at the time), but after a few nights of
videotaping, and noticing how much stuff was being removed, I quickly gave
up on this taping effort.
Long Live AMC and their uncut shorts (well, except for "Movie Maniacs" and
"A Bird In The Head", but no one's perfect)
- Mike
"Wishkah875" <wishk...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:20010210095824...@ng-cs1.aol.com...
James L. Neibaur
stereotypical role. But especially A Gem Of A Jam. I realize in our more
enlightened times it is hard to understand why a man afraid of ghosts in a
comedy would be so offensive. But back then that is virtually the only way
African Americans were portrayed. You wouldn't seem them in leading roles
within top Hollywood films like you would today.
Japanese stereotyping abounded during the war years No Dough Boys, The Yoke's
On Me). But that doesn't seem to bother Ted Okuda, who is Japanese, and who
co-authored The Columbia Comedy Shorts with Ed Watz.
But Ted is born American (so were his parents, but they were in an interment
camp during the war). Ted has stated his only problem with The Yoke's On Me is
that it just isn't very funny.
In Some More of Samoa, Moe and Larry do a mock Amos 'n Andy bit that has
effectively gotten that short censored. Even some diehard stooge fans have
never seen it.
The climbing spike in They Stooge to Conga always makes me laugh, but it is
considered too gruesome -- same with the screwdriver in Shemp's ear from Listen
Judge.
JN
Please visit the most poorly designed web pages online:
my Favorite Movies web page:
http://hometown.aol.com/jimneibr/myhomepage/movies.html
and my Favorite Performers web page:
http://hometown.aol.com/jimneibr/myhomepage/rant.html
Mike Shawaluk
news:9Yfh6.1864$9r5.2...@news1.primary.net...
> I'd still like to see "Yoke" (5/26/44) again; ditto for "They Stooge
> to Conga" (1/1/43) and without any censorship of any scenes. ...
>
> IOW, will "Conga" and "Yoke" never be shown on AMC, even if they have
> permission to show it? If so, is there any way a letter-writing campaign
> would help?
Well, I was able to locate tapes with both of these shorts at a nearby
Blockbuster Video. Both of these tapes appear to be available for purchase
on Amazon; the names of the tapes are "They Stooge to Conga" and "Higher
than a Kite". In fact, it's been pointed out that all of the Curly shorts
not in AMC's 130 episode rotation are available for purchase on a commercial
tape.
I'm more interested in trying to track down shorts like "Cuckoo on a Choo
Choo, which are no longer available on tape & aren't in the current 130 show
package. BTW, if anyone reading this message has the Goodtimes tape with
this short (and "Love at 1st Bite" and "Shot in the Frontier") & would be
interested in selling (or loaning) their copy, please email me; I've been
searching for this tape for ages, with no luck so far.
- Mike
D.W.
entertainment. WW2 put a slant on many features concerning the Japs and
the Germans that made any Stooge short mild in comparison. It's been
the past 15 years or so of the PC movement that has screwed things up.
Dennis
Brent Seguine
>From: "R." r7777@*cdmnet.com
>Does AMC have them in their library, but just refuse to show them, or are
those two of the 60 they don't have specifically because of the attitude of the
day against these countries because we were at war? If so, why did AMC (C3?)
show "No Dough, Boys" (11/24/44) and other "anti-Japanese" shorts? Is there
any consistency in this censorship idea?
The films AMC does not present are the result of business decisions at C3 and
Columbia. Censorship has no bearing whatsoever on what AMC is showing, or not
showing.
> Does anybody know which shorts will never be seen on AMC no matter if they
get approval to show all 190 shorts?
That is purely conjecture. If AMC receives the go-ahead for the other 60
films, I assume all 60 will be shown. But anything is possible these days...
wait and see.
>How about to C3 [owners of all 190?], if that would help.
Comedy III does not own the films... they are owned by Sony/Columbia. But
Comedy III's trademark rights and producership of "Stooges Playhouse" have
given them leverage over the marketing of the films.
Brent
Ltb3105
stooges' website, and of course, received no response. I didn't expect one,
but figured what the hell......
"to say the least, if not less......."
Laura
P.S. It was about the remaining unseen shorts......
James L. Neibaur
-----
Longer than that. As far back as the late sixties many of the politically
incorrect sequences were under fire and being censored by various TV stations.
I have said this before, but...
I interviewed Mantan Moreland ("feets do yo stuff") shortly before his death in
1972. He said "I was a comedian, if I wasn't afraid of ghosts I wouldn't have
been funny."
Now that we seemingly have overcome stereotypical images in cinema, I hope the
earlier examples are no longer censored and instead reveal the truly talented
comedians that worked hard to make people laugh during the Depression and
subesquent world war. Dudley Dickerson included.
ShempFan1955
>P.S. It was about the remaining unseen shorts.....
u might want to try them again....cause last time i checked, i had them
on..........the boxer shorts that iz.........shemp taught me how to model
undergarments....hes the boss!
Ltb3105
Nobody likes a smartass, titmouse......
Laura
Jon Taylor
> stereotypical images in cinema, I hope
> the earlier examples are no longer
> censored and instead reveal the truly
> talented comedians that worked hard to
> make people laugh during the Depression
> and subesquent world war. Dudley
> Dickerson included.
Agree.
Now when are they going to start showing Amos and Andy again?
j
James L. Neibaur
>Now when are they going to start showing Amos and Andy again?
I worked at a local TV station back in 1980 and we ran the old Amos N' Andy
episodes with a local sponsor. We called the local chapter of the NAACP and
its president gave us the go ahead, stating: "I'd kind of like to see those
again."
Amos N' Andy was the first all black TV show (and the last until Sanford and
Son). It featured black actors as doctors, lawyers, etc, for the first time in
TV. Perhaps it can be considered to have played on stereotypes, but that
doesnt negate the real talent of the performers.
I ran four episodes for my African American students recently as part of a
Black History Month presentation (I told them the story behind the production,
etc). They loved it.
I think Amos 'N Andy is among the most important TV shows in the medium's
history and it would be a great tribute to some exceptional performers if the
reruns were revived.
Ell Jay
> I do not believe there was any malice intended back then and it's the same
> shorts we're watching today..so we should not let it bother us now. Making
> fun of the axis forces was a way of relieving tension during the war wars so
> the boys did their German and Japanese routines.
War wars? Do you know of any other kinds of wars? :)
L.S. Coker
did remember seeing them on TV when I was a wee little squirt. About a year
ago there was some talk on one TV channel (sorry I can;t remember if it was
U.S. or Canadian) about re-runs for A & A. They said they were told it was
racist and would never be allowed on TV! Wow! At the same time the cartoon
"The PJ's" came out (which may have stirred interest in A & A). I thought
what was wrong with those old flicks when this new show really stereo-typed
"the projects and people". I thought it was in good humour.
Strangely, I grew up in an almost all white community: A few Japanese,
Italians and Germans were mixed in for good measure. And who was our beloved
leader? A Black gentleman: Leonard Braithwright. He was our local member of
parilament and the only Black I ever saw in real life until I was about 16!
He was the kindest man with a big smile, who visited us at school, helped
the helpless and spoke up for our rights and wishes. Someone "you wanted to
be like" when you grew up. It was often hard to see the struggle for
equality as clear as "Black & White".
Stephen
L.S. Coker
"echoes" (seriously!)...also I have a few extra languages that sometimes
rear their Spelling checkers and change my native tongue to theirs...had
real fun when my browers went Japanese on me! Ichiban!
Stephen
Richard Jarrett
offered in syndication again anytime soon. CBS, which owns it, is
simply too afraid of whatever controversy might follow. The closest it
has come to an official re-release was a couple of years ago when
Columbia House Video toyed with the possibility of releasing videotapes
of the series, to be sold on a subscription basis as they have done with
"I Love Lucy," "The Honeymooners" and many other vintage series. Plans
to offer "Amos 'n Andy" in this manner were dropped when consumer
surveys indicated a low-level of interest in it.
About censorship and the Stooges, there were complaints about violence
in the films almost as soon as they were released to television in the
late 1950s, but for many years cuts were rarely made in them for any
reason other than to whittle down the running times. In the 1970s the
Stooges came under increasing fire for violence, as did children's
television as a whole. That was the era when Warner Bros. cartoons were
suddenly being slashed to ribbons. In fact, about this time CBS
cancelled the vintage Tom and Jerry cartoons they had been running for
several years for no other reason than to satisfy groups like Action for
Childrens' Television.
King World Productions, distributors of "The Little Rascals," slashed
those films to pieces, removing anything that might be even remotely
considered offensive, in an effort to keep the films commercially
viable. At least Columbia never did that to the Stooges, leaving it up
to local stations to decide which shorts to air and to not air and how
to edit the films.
The lack of respect broadcasters have given this material over the years
never ceases to amaze me. One station I dealt with many years ago aired
the Stooges shorts, but had edited each film down to 11 minutes, so they
could easily fit two films into one half-hour. The saddest thing is
that no one at the station cared. The regarded the Stooges as "kiddie
krap," and were completely uninterested in the fact that many of the
films simply made no sense as a result of their bad editing.
Thank god for AMC and home video. Not Comedy III, maybe, but AMC at
least.
L.S. Coker
back they decided not to show a character getting blown up, the Coyote slam
into the canyon floor off the mountain, etc. It didn't last. In Canada shows
like Power Rangers were taken off the air for a while and also "Friday the
13th: The Series" as the Roman Catholic Church in Hamilton Ontario declared
it a work of the devil himself. The latest problem I've heard of is
"Teletubbies" as one of the fun sounds they make is supposed to be the "F"
word in an Asian language and a lawsuit has been threatened by an offended
mother who's little tykes started repeating this "word".
Me? My father-in-law yelled at me when my girls started saying "little
bugger". I played back a video tape of "The Smurfs" the kids had been
watching and Papa Smurf was calling the baby by this very name. They were
quite young then. I always taught them that they'll hear and see things in
their life that are unacceptable (Dad can't censor everything) and they'll
just have to be sure not to the fall to that level. They haven't yet. In the
60's the "bad shows" for kids were 3 Stooges and Popeye.
Stephen
Ltb3105
Weren't the ones they censored war related??? I thought they were.....
Laura
Ltb3105
she saw that Josh was watching Power Rangers......she said it was blasphemy
because one of the evil villians was named "Lord Zedd"......excuse me, aren't
people in England that are knighted called "Lords"???
Also, what the critics did to "Lion King" was awful!!!! Subliminal messages,
indeed! Like a toddler would REALLY pick up on that??
My take is, if you are open with your kids and don't SUGGEST anything to them,
then they will take it at face value....if you don't plant the seed, it won't
grow, dig?? Especially if there's no dirt in the first place.......
Bible toters......HAH!!!!!!!
Laura
P.S. are there any Stooge shorts, btw, that deal with any religious subjects
besides "Heavenly Daze"??? Just wondering......to keep it OT, of course!
L.S. Coker
Walter Lanz (Woody Woodpecker's creator) and a few others talking about the
morals of cartoons. I don't remember them all but here's a few that stuck
with me:
1) cartoon characters can only have up to 4 digits (fingers) on a hand to
distinguish them as "pretend" as opposed to real life people"
2) if a character is injured (burnt,blown up,falling down, run-over etc.) in
the very next scene they must be fully intact showing they are OK.
3) the cartoon must show children that it is not real life..just make
believe or fantasy..just for fun and not to hurt anyone or thing (which is
covered by 1 & 2)
...no this is not a take on "I Computer"....
Stephen
L.S. Coker
If you're extra good to her to might move up one notch and be a Baron (does
that mean you can't have children? oops the barren! sorry)..and Liz takes
her sword and whacks you ..I mean..she symbolically touches the sword to the
shoulders and knights you as "Sir Shemp Howard" or whatever...
A lord is a feudal superior, a peer of the realm, a nobleman..well you get
the drift...he gets but of the folks who do all the work for him on his land
for his benefit. Great deal eh?
Some examples of knights: Sir Sean Connery (atta boy Sean!), Sir Paul
McCartney, Wayne Knight, Knight Rider, Little Sir Echo, Restless Knights,
...oh sorry my medication has worn off!
Stephen
P.S.
REMEMBER: Once a King, Always A King
But once A Knight is Enough!
(that was inscribed along with a "coat of arms" on a pair of men's undies
given to me by co-workers for my honeymoon May/77)
L.S. Coker
oops I mean barren! sorry)..> the drift...he kicks butt of the folks who do
all the work for him on his land
> for his benefit.
Vhat a scewzy cumpootor , A'y?
tSpeehn
barbara turner/ moonwolf
Not sure about ABC, but I know Ted Turner has cut a number of them to
ribbons - censored scenes include those depicting black people, shooting
self in the head, and the war ones (which never get shown now that
Turner bought them all up).
Barb T.
*************************************************
"The most obvious way to buttress one's prejudices, and therefore to
preserve them from conflict with ethical values, is to marshal
'evidence' in their favor." -----Gordon Allport
barbara turner/ moonwolf
> to 4 digits (fingers) on a hand to
> distinguish them as "pretend" as
> opposed to real life people"
I thought they were drawn with 4 digits to make them easier for the
animators? And I know I've seen characters on several WB cartoons with
5 fingers. Barb T.
Alan Peterson
off my chest...
Circa 1979-80, when my local cable system in upstate NY (Teleprompter
Cable TV) used to play some channel running old Stooge reels, each
whack, poke, hit, fall et al was blacked over. EACH ONE. You'd hear the
effect and the "ow-ow-ow" reaction, but never see the impact. It looked
like a glitch in the film or a really bad edit, but it was actually a
knee-jerk reaction to somebody screaming about violence on TV and the
effect it has on kids, with the result being a TV channel overreacting.
Like any kid, I took my lumps, whether we were emulating the Stooges,
falling off our bicycles or getting into fights. Its part of growing up.
Some parents don't know when to pull back and let a kid be a kid.
FWIW, my 11-year-old daughter loves the Stooges, and I have to call
her into the room everytime a pie fight comes on. She throws a pretty
good fake eye-poke, too. Nobody every gets hurt.
Alan Peterson
>>any violence where a character was hurt...I saw a show when I was young with Walter Lanz (Woody Woodpecker's creator) and a few others talking about the morals of cartoons.<<
Ya want violent? Watch a HarveyToon such as Herman the Mouse or Baby
Huey. Those are a lot more painful than most, and a lot of their
characters checked in *dead* at the end -- How often did we see a cat's
"nine lives" flying thru the roof of a house devastated by some
explosive charge, on their way to whatever cartoon heaven awaited them?
The wolf or other bad critter tied to a car fender, heading home after
being hunted? By contrast, Popeye's victims hardly ended up dead, just
humiliated.
The violence in HarveyToons never bothered me, at least not on a
conscious level, but even as a kid I found them unentertaining at best
and unwatchable at worst.
Wishkah875
nowadays? My niece and nephew are only allowed to watch non-violent ones.
--
Gina Dellago
L.S. Coker
fingers on some newer cartoons..in Ontario around the early 70's some
violent looking commercials came out titled "Want A Ride Home? (or added
"..From Work tonight)..with real actors in scenes where they are workers
crushed by a backing dump truck, buried alive in cement or impaled with
reinforcement rod because they didn't follow safety rules. The idea was to
promote safety at the job site. The "ride" was an ambulance, oft times
referred to as "the meat wagon". A little more dramatic than those old U.S.
kid ads "Are You A Stupidupe?"
Another commercial to inform teens about drinking and driving was "hey the
keys are in the car!". One boy smiles as he says this and a group of decent
looking boys, just out for adventure, take a station wagon for a ride (and
finish off a bottle of booze). As they travel down the road they are
drinking and as they approach a red light at high speed you see them as
skeletons just for one microsecond (subliminal)..they plow head on into
another vehicle and they all parish in a gruesome final scene. Great viewing
around suppertime (a very "sobering" ad).
The Simpsons cartoons really outdo themselves with the kids watching "Itchy
& Scratchy" an ultra-violent cat vs mouse cartoon clip that only Grandpa
Simpson seems to recognise as too violent for kids.
Stephen
Ell Jay
I'll let "browers" go, but... "Sell" me? Am I property? :)
L.S. Coker
mean..darn system changing my words! I have to debug some problems as I
previously mentioned have several languages set up for my mail & browser and
it is glitching during sending! I have compared what I've read on the NG and
what is in my "sent" box and there's something fishy going on! My daughter
had a fit when she used it last night to find the browser was in "Japanese"
mode!
Stephen
P.S. come on...explain "El Jay"..your name? nickname? or ? I am curious
yellow.