Three Little Pigskins

Three Little Pigskins (1934)

Famous football players?? I think NOT!

The stooges are mistaken by a gangster for the "Three Horsemen of Boulder Dam", famous football players. Hired to play for his team, they blow the big game and get it in the end. Lucille Ball has a nice part as a gun moll.

Date of release
1934-12-08
TMDB
7.1 / 10 (22)
Runtime
20m
Genres
Comedy
Director
Ray McCarey

Casting

Interesting facts

Three Little Pigskins is a 1934 short subject directed by Raymond McCarey and starring American slapstick comedy team The Three Stooges. It is the fourth entry in the series released by Columbia Pictures starring the comedians, who released 190 short films for the studio between 1934 and 1959.

Production

Three Little Pigskins was filmed on October 25–30, 1934. The title is a multiple pun, derived from The Three Little Pigs, and pigskin is a synonym for football. It is one of the earliest credited appearances for a then platinum blonde-haired Lucille Ball, who played a supporting role as one of the female recruiters and became famous years later for her own physical comedy.

The game is set at Gilmore Stadium. One shot includes a billboard for Gilmore Oil with its trademark lion symbol. Despite a football game being played, real-life baseball teams are listed on the scoreboard, the Detroit Tigers and the Chicago Cubs. The football team the Stooges played against was that of Loyola Marymount University.

A planned concluding scene had the Stooges, years later, telling the story to their sons. It is unknown if this scene was ever filmed, but publicity photos show the Stooges, each paired with a young son made to resemble his father.

Moe Howard once called Three Little Pigskins "a humdinger of bangs and bruises", as it is the first time the Stooges flatly refused to perform a stunt. In the film, during the game the boys are stopped by photographers on the sideline to pose for a picture, when the football players then tackle them. The team consisted of genuine college football players, and the Stooges—with their small stature—were afraid of being hurt.

McCarey assured the Stooges that it was safe, saying "Listen, fellows, you know how to take falls. You've done enough of them. It'll take hours to find doubles for you. Besides, we can't afford them. Don't worry, you won't get hurt." Moe Howard dryly agreed with McCarey, saying, "You're darn right we won't get hurt. We're not doing the scene."

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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