Half-Wits Holiday

Half-Wits Holiday (1947)

The Stooges' latest she-nanigans.

A professor bets one of his colleagues that he can turn the Stooges into gentlemen within 60 days. With the aid of his pretty daughter, the professor tries to teach the boys proper etiquette. After many frustrating attempts, he introduces the Stooges into society at a fancy party. At first things go all right, but the party soon degenerates into a wild pie fight.

Date of release
1947-01-09
TMDB
6.8 / 10 (9)
Runtime
18m
Genres
Comedy
Director
Jules White

Casting

Interesting facts

Half-Wits Holiday is a 1947 short subject directed by Jules White starring American slapstick comedy team the Three Stooges. It is the 97th entry in the series released by Columbia Pictures starring the comedians, who released 190 shorts for the studio between 1934 and 1959.

Production notes

Half-Wits Holiday is a reworking of 1935's Hoi Polloi, without the aid of any stock footage. Half-Wits Holiday would itself later be reworked as 1958's Pies and Guys.

The untimely absence of Curly from the pie fight would prove somewhat helpful when pie-fight footage was later needed. The footage was recycled in Pest Man Wins, Scheming Schemers and Pies and Guys, as well as the compilation feature film Stop! Look! and Laugh!.

Half-Wits Holiday was filmed on May 2–6, 1946; this production marked the final appearance of Curly Howard as an official member of the Three Stooges. On the last day of filming (May 6), Curly suffered a debilitating stroke on set and was urgently transported to a nearby hospital, effectively terminating his career.

Curly was originally intended to play a significant role in the pie-fight scene. However, after Moe discovered him with his head slumped on his chest, unable to speak, and tears streaming down his face, it became evident that Curly was in no shape to perform. Moe immediately informed director Jules White of Curly's unfortunate condition, prompting White to promptly revise the scene to redistribute Curly's parts between Moe and Larry.

Supporting actor Emil Sitka, who debuted with the Stooges in this film as first footman Sappington, recounted:

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

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