My husband, RJ Smith, began his career as a rock critic in the Stooges backyard, Ann Arbor, Michigan. He has since moved into The Three Stooges front yard, Echo Park. RJ wrote the following for Chicken Corner:Working, it¹s called. You are a writer and selling your writing by the word and you are waiting for inspiration to spill down like the very light of God. Hey it could happen. But in the meantime you are willing to accept inspiration coming like an intravenous drip; you reach idly for the remote. Because you never know where an idea is going to come from. Somewhere, at any moment of day or night, a Three Stooges comedy short is showing and at the moment that concerns us it is showing on our very own living room. Never mind the spouse who casts an uncomprehending look as she leaves the room. Working, it is called. Writing. Casting about for ideas. Hello, Hello, HELLO! Hello. It¹s the Stooges.
On the tube is one of Larry, Moe & Curly¹s classics, a penultimate log of
lunkheadedness titled "Three Little Beers," from 1935. In this one the power
trio are employees at the Panther Brewery. They sneak onto a golf course one
day to practice for a company golf outing. The sod, natch, will never be the
same. After destroying the course they hightail it out of there in a company
truck. Mayhem (as Eisenstein put it) ensues. And there, somewhere in the
middle of things, as a flotilla of beer barrels roll down a steep street and
knock a traffic officer on his keister, a whole intersection comes into
view. Cue the very light of God: There are the Stooges, standing at Chicken
Corner. There, where Echo Park Avenue and Delta Street cross, is the very
same building that now houses the Chango coffee house. The whole location looks shockingly as
it does today. Once was a time when giants strode the Echo Park earth.
Hopefully, no poultry were harmed in the making of this picture.
In the scholarly publication (we say so) The Three Stooges Journal, Editor
Gary Lassin has made great efforts to document locations for some of the
more important Stooges comedies. The winter 2002 issue features images of
Larry, Moe & Curly at work and play at the Corner; Summer 2006 digs even
deeper, tracking down the precise Scott Avenue slope from which those
barrels begin their descent. Pictures and much detail is provided (The Three
Stooges Journal: PO Box 747, Gwynedd Valley, PA 19437). Lassin has visited
Echo Park repeatedly to study the scene. He can sound a little over the
top about the Stooges. We know just how he feels.
"Three Little Beers" was directed by Del Lord, by far the best of the Stooge
auteurs, a proven master rising from Edendale¹s Keystone Studio to inherit
the Stooges franchise.
Lord once explained his appeal to the LA Times: "Kids have always been my
fans as well as the tired businessman and the young people. They don¹t
expect anything but the healthy stuff from me. I would certainly never
disappoint them or myself by wandering away from the clean things."
Maybe one of the kids, some indie scenster hanging out at Chango will take it upon
himself to stage an experiment: 1) project Three Little Beers onto the wall
of the apartment building still standing on the corner today; 2) ponder if
the Stooges were ever really good for you.
