Idiots Deluxe

Idiots Deluxe (1945)

You're sentenced to a LAFFTIME of your life!

Moe is on trial for assaulting Curly and Larry with an ax. Moe relates how Curly and Larry took him on a hunting trip for his nerves. Out in the woods they confronted a bear which Curly and Larry stunned, and thinking it was dead, threw it in the back of their car, where it came awake, tossed Moe out and drove the car into a tree. The judge finds Moe not guilty and Moe promptly goes after Larry and Curly again with the ax.

Date of release
1945-07-20
TMDB
6.5 / 10 (10)
Runtime
18m
Genres
Comedy
Director
Jules White

Casting

Interesting facts

Idiots Deluxe is a 1945 short subject directed by Jules White starring American slapstick comedy team The Three Stooges. It is the 85th entry in the series released by Columbia Pictures starring the comedians, who released 190 shorts for the studio between 1934 and 1959.

Production notes

Idiots Deluxe was filmed on October 5–9, 1944, the last short film produced that year. The title is a satire on Idiot's Delight, a play by Robert E. Sherwood and later an MGM movie of the same title with Norma Shearer and Clark Gable.

Idiots Deluxe marks a change in the title screens, most notably featuring the Greco-Roman comic mask of the Muse Thalia in the upper left-hand corner. This new format would remain in place for the remainder of the Stooges shorts run at Columbia Pictures.

The film is a remake of Oh, My Nerves, starring Monte Collins and Tom Kennedy. It would be remade with the Stooges again in 1957 as Guns a Poppin, using minimal stock footage. The initial plotline of a person going on a retreat to heal an illness was originally done by Laurel and Hardy in the 1934 film Them Thar Hills.

One notable gag was the Stooges' unorthodox cuisine. Idiots Deluxe shows Larry and Curly putting almost every known condiment onto slices of bread but, not surprisingly, they are never shown actually eating the whole bread (partly because Moe interrupts them before they can).

At Moe Howard's urging, Curly Howard was admitted to Santa Barbara Cottage Hospital in January 1945, where he was diagnosed with severe hypertension, obesity, and retinal hemorrhaging. The subsequent short film, If a Body Meets a Body, was produced in March 1945, five months after Idiots Deluxe and shortly after Curly had experienced a minor stroke.

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