What do you get when you combine yuks with nyahh-ha-ha? “Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk” of course! It’s the most famous of the Three Stooges catchphrases, uttered by Curly in many of the team’s 190 short films.
The phrase—and others like “woo-woo-woo!,” “soitenly!” and the much loved dog bark—came from a variety of sources.
Curly borrowed and adapted comedian Hugh Herbert’s phrase “hoo-hoo-hoo.” Hebert was famous—first on vaudeville and later in films—for playing absent-minded characters, wringing his hands and mumbling, “hoo-hoo-hoo, wonderful, wonderful, hoo hoo hoo!” The rhythm of Herbert’s phrasing inspired Daffy Duck’s “hoo hoo, hoo hoo” line and Curly who changed the words to “woo woo woo” and exaggerated the delivery. In the 1940’s Herbert adopted “woo woo” as well.
Many of Curly’s other quirks came from working on stage as a stooge for a noted vaudeville comic.
“Catch phrases like, ‘Get outta here,’ and “Why, I outta…’ a lot of that originated in the earlier days at the time that they were in partnership with a very skilled Irish-American comic named Ted Healey,” says David J. Hogan, author of Three Stooges FAQ: Everything Left to Know About the Eye-Poking, Face-Slapping, Head-Thumping Geniuses.
“The act was called Ted Healey and His Stooges and Healey was the chief antagonist and the three boys ended up as his stooges. It was a frankly antagonistic approach on stage. A lot of slapping and insults thrown back-and-forth and so after the boys went out on their own and joined Columbia in 1934 they simply took a lot of that with them.
Curly’s most famous line the three words most associated with Stoogedom—the onomatopoeic “Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk”—are featured in many of the Stooges shorts, but rarely appeared in the scripts.
During their heyday the Stooges were under contact to work 40 weeks a year, making ten eighteen minutes shorts in that time. According to Hogan the shooting schedule for each of the films was only four days, “so a lot of usable footage had be done and put in the can every day. That’s a pretty blistering pace.”
He’s goes on to say that while the boys would show up knowing their lines and their blocking, occasionally due to the pace, a line would be forgotten. It was in those moments, the theory goes, when Curly created the distinctive Stooge “nyuk, nyuk, nyuk” laugh.
“It’s often thought that the “nyuk, nyuk, nyuk” was something that Curly resorted to if he forgot his lines,” says Hogan. “I guess he did that occasionally and he was quick enough that he could fill up that silence. In something similar, if he forgot a line he might drop to the floor and do that pivot on his shoulder in a circle. It was a time filler and it was something very funny. It worked.”
I’m not sure if the first rule of comedy is that it is always funny when someone falls down but it is the certainly the cornerstone of the career of the Three Stooges. For fifty years they fell down, got back up and, well, fell down again. This weekend they’re back–or at least a reasonable facsimile is–to try and uplift a new generation by falling down.
Directed by the Farrelly Brothers–the twisted minds behind “There’s Something About Mary” and “Dumb and Dumber”–the new film is ninety minutes long, but made up of three short movies, the length of the classic Stooge’s shorts. Part One sees them growing up–and falling down–in an orphanage from childhood to age thirty-five. In Part Two they leave their home to try and raise $830,000 to save the orphanage from foreclosure and wind up involved in a murder plot. Part Three sees Moe joining the cast of Jersey Shore. Seriously.
Well, that’s not true. There’s nothing serious about this movie. It is as silly a film as will be released this year.
Fans of the original Stooges will know what to expect. Lots of hair pulling, face slapping and even three way eye pokes and even though the traditional Stooge pie fight is sadly missing, the slapstick is state of the art thanks to studied performances from Sean Hayes, Chris Diamantopoulos and Will Sasso as Larry, Moe and Curly.
For those unfamiliar with the Stooge oeuvre–a generation that associates poking with facebook and not slapstick–the old school jokes–like a lawyer’s firm called Kickum, Harter, Indagroyne–and the physical humor may seem too silly in the post Apatow world.
But the harmless humor has heart. The Farrellys stress the family connection between the Stooges and even though they whallop the heck out of one another they have genuine affection for each other. That detail makes a great deal of difference.
Remember “Borat”? Offensive and funny it succeeded because the main character’s journey was spurred on by his love of Pamela Anderson. Contrast that with “Bruno.” Same kind of humor but the heart was gone and it failed to connect with audiences.
“The Three Stooges” works because of its soft center and because there is a certain pleasure in watching Moe beat up the “Jersey Shore” kids.
There are some differences between new and old. I doubt the original Stooges would have used Sofía Vergara’s cleavage as a plot device and there’s loads of stunt casting–in addition to the “Jersey Shore” cast there’s the Old Spice Guy and Larry David as a nun named Sister Mary-Mengele–but the Farrellys and a talented cast have expertly reimagined the Stooges anarchy and their heart for a new generation.
The Three Stooges—Larry Fine, Curly Howard and brother Moe Howard were the most famous incarnation—“nyuk! nyuk! nyuked!” their way through 220 slapstick movies in a career that spanned the heyday of vaudeville to the 1970s.
They elevated the double cheek slap to a fine art, made the nose tweak a signature move and threw more pies than the busiest pastry chefs.
They also made an impact. Mel Gibson worked Stooges references into all the Lethal Weapon movies and Quentin Tarantino inserted a clip of the Stooge classic the Brideless Groom into Pulp Fiction. Iggy Pop named his band The Stooges in tribute and in 1983 the Jump ‘N the Saddle Band had a hit with The Curly Shuffle. There’s even a Philadelphia museum devoted to them—named The Stoogeum, of course—which attracts thousands of people yearly.
This weekend a new trio says “Hello! Hello! Hello!” in The Three Stooges, a Farrelly Brothers directed comedy starring Chris Diamantopoulos, Sean Hayes, and Will Sasso as Moe, Curly and Larry. Its vintage Stooges so expect head butts, the occasional hair pull and assorted slaps, all with a new twist.
To see classic Stoogisms, however, check out these movies:
The story of Hoi Polloi was so effective the trio recycled it twice more in the films Half-Wits Holiday and Pies and Guys. The Pygmalion-esque plotline of a professor who claims he can turn the Stooges into refined gentlemen features a dancing scene voted by fans as their favorite Stooge moment of all time.
Disorder in the Court casts the boys as star witnesses at the murder trial of their friend, a nightclub dancer. The film’s most famous scene, Curly taking the witness stand oath, was borrowed almost in its entirety from the Buster Keaton movie Sidewalks of New York.
Curly’s favorite film was A Plumbing We Will Go which featured the guys as plumbers hired to fix a leak in a mansion. They mix and mingle the electrical and plumbing systems causing havoc in the house. The result? A woman turns on a TV report from Niagara Falls and a wave of water pours out of the set.
Also recommended are Violent Is the Word for Curly, featuring the classic Swingin’ the Alphabet song and Grips, Grunts and Groans, which gave birth to the famous Stooge stunt of attempting to escape a room only to wind up running in circles.
What do you get when you combine yuks with nyahh-ha-ha? “Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk” of course! It’s the most famous of the Three Stooges catchphrases, uttered by Curly in many of the team’s 190 short films.
