![]() ![]() He was still taking care of the team ( at least Moe and Larry, once Shemp was gone ) maybe because he still considered the stooges his talisman, maybe just to make his good luck charm a few more bucks. He kept them on, even though their economic value to Columbia from, let's say, 1953 to 1957 was, I would guess, zero. Cohn could have ended it at any juncture from 1946 on, really, he had unassailable clout, but he didn't. Yes, the Dead Shemps are atrocious, even fifty years after I first saw them I can hardly bring myself to watch them, and maybe business was business and they had to be patched together for distribution somehow, and Cohn certainly has the reputation of being one of the most vicious businessmen of all time, but they didn't have to renew with Besser. Remember that the stooges got canned on the day of Harry's funeral, which tells me that no one else at Columbia cared a rat's ass for them and indeed couldn't wait one more day to be rid of them. No one else got that kind of slack, and let's face it, it's probable that that overseer was Harry Cohn. Someone was watching over their asses all those years, through the illnesses, the deaths, the cast changes, and the ever- diminishing quality. The stooges were coddled compared to most. with no notice, no severance, no pension, nothing, during all those many years that the stooges were active. Consider the many thousands of actors over the years, at all the studios, who were dumped, blacklisted, unwillingly retired, etc. ![]() ![]() I'm not sure what this means, but remember that all available evidence shows that Harry Cohn LIKED the stooges, considered them good luck, and kept them on and working to some degree until the day he died. ![]() This short is a turd, but the fact it contains a few funny scenes from MALICE IN THE PALACE makes this still better than SELF MADE MAIDS. Kind of interesting the way they skirt around Shemp in the opening scene as well, I suppose. Anywho, the most fascinating thing about RUMPUS IN THE HAREM, besides Palma, is that it proves after all these years, Suzanne Ridgeway is not a mute. Wood gave Bela Lugosi the Palma treatment shortly after this in PLAN 9 FROM OUTER SPACE. It's comical in an Ed Wood way, ironic since Mr. The ending is beyond rushed, and Palma running around with pre recorded (or perhaps ghostly), Shemp noises might be the most bizarre moment in Stoogedom. That out of the way, artistically, this thing's a turkey. It's unfortunate Shemp died, but it's show business, both words of equal importance. Also, Moe and Larry carried on the act with Besser, so it's not like they were ready to quit, and from my understanding, at least Larry needed to work. These were filmed seven weeks after Shemp's death, so it's not like they were rushed in a day after the funeral. Did the contract call for Shemp? I'm not sure, but I'd love to know. They had four shorts left on their contract and probably a deadline to meet. Morally, I'm not one of these guys who says Harry Cohn, or Jules White, or whoever your boogeyman of choice may be, should burn in Hell for this. I will, in the below paragraph, get on my soapbox about this era, which lasted about a week if you count filming dates. We start the Moe, Larry, and some guy named Joe era, our first Joe being Joe Palma, the double for the now deceased Shemp. This week, we plunge deeper into a lower ring of Pandemonium. Watch RUMPUS IN THE HAREM in the link above ![]()
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