The Three Stooges:We Want our Mummy (1939)

My first Stooges post is a classic episode from 1939. A personal favorite and very familiar to Baby Boomers into the Stooges. The plot involves the Stooges as detectives hired by a museum to locate a missing professor and find the tomb of King Rootentooten! Along the way the boys run into various crooks trying to scare them off.

This kind of a "scary" situation is always surefire for comics. The Stooges were the best with scared reactions and their patented shrieks of Nnnnaahhh!!! Jazz fans will love the inside joke of an Egyptian radio playing Ali Ben Woodman and his Swinging Bedouins (a Benny Goodman gag).

Of course, we have the "Uncle in Cairo who's a chiropractor" and "Let's go to Tunis for tuna sandwiches" gags. A great topical gag has Curly dressed as a mummy. When one of the crooks finds a newspaper inside of him, the heading is "Yanks Win World Series!"

This episode also features some of the great Columbia supporting players. Bud Jamison and James C. Morton play the museum curators. Dick Curtis (a great blustery villain) and Ted Lorch (a versatile character player) are two of the crooks. Eddie Laughton, who worked as the Stooges' straight man on stage is the cabbie told to head to Egypt in the middle of N.Y.C., complete with double take!

By the way, when the Stooges find Rootentooten, it turns out he was a midget and they accidentally destroyed the mummy of his wife, Queen Hotsytotsy! Great fun and a classic Stooges episode. This should be out soon on DVD.

We want our Mummy is available on Sony's Three Stooges Collection. (Vol. 2).

Till next time-SPREAD OUT!