St. Louis Jews have had a long love affair with the Three Stooges. First, not counting Joe DeRita, they are all Jews, and Joe Besser is from St. Louis, and his family still lives here.

A month after its debut in 1959, KPLR TV began running Three Stooges comedy shorts as part of an after-school cartoon show. Then in the 1980s, they became a staple on Saturday nights. There is now a generation of 45-year-old and plussers who wax nostalgic for the Stooges, and I’m at the top of the list.

The Three Stooges have been making us laugh with their unique and sometimes painful brand of slapstick comedy since 1922. They made their mark in short subjects, television syndication, and full-length feature films, but like anything great, they faded due to changing times and technology.

A Plumbing We Will Go

This is the forty-sixth Columbia Pictures short subject starring The Three Stooges.

Plot

The trio is mistaken as plumbers by a butler. Moe begins to explain but notices that a police officer who is looking at them is coming closer. “We’re plumbers,” he said, and they run inside with the plumber’s equipment but also accidentally hit the butler and Curly goes “WOO! WOO WOO WOO WOO!”. They are told that the leak is in the basement. “To the basement to the basement to the basement,” They both say.

It takes a few moments for them to find the basement. When they do, they run around aimlessly at first. They find the leaky pipe, and Curly goes upstairs to shut off the water. He enters the bathroom and chases someone out. He unscrews the faucet and water comes gushing out. He unsuccessfully tries to stop it. The normal insanity follows.

More Stooges Clips

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Three Stooges Clip Of The Week | "Hold That Lion"

Three Stooges Clip Of The Week | "Micro-Phonies"

The remarkably true Jewish legacy of the Three Stooges