Flagpole Jitters

Flagpole Jitters (1956)

The Three Stooges hit a new high in low-down laughs

The stooges are taking care of their invalid friend Mary who is confined to wheelchair. At their jobs in a theater, where they hope to earn money for an operation for Mary, they witness a hypnotist, doing his act. The stooges become subjects for his show and are hypnotized into walking out on a flagpole high above the ground. When they come out of their trance and realize their predicament they fall into a window and foil a robbery in progress thus earning reward money to pay for Mary's operation.

Date of release
1956-04-05
TMDB
6.0 / 10 (7)
Runtime
16m
Genres
Comedy
Director
Jules White

Casting

Interesting facts

Flagpole Jitters is a 1956 short subject directed by Jules White starring American slapstick comedy team The Three Stooges. It is the 169th entry in the series released by Columbia Pictures starring the comedians, who released 190 shorts for the studio between 1934 and 1959.

Production notes

Flagpole Jitters is a remake of 1949's Hokus Pokus using ample stock footage from the original. The films have different endings: Mary is actually paraplegic here, whereas in the original she was a fraud. In Flagpole Jitters, Svengarlic is the fraud.

The Stooges make a reference to Sing Sing Correctional Facility, in which Shemp believes he has hypnotized Moe into thinking he is locked up in the infamous prison.

The character name Svengarlic is a parody of Svengali, the name of a fictional character in George du Maurier's 1894 novel Trilby.

Flagpole Jitters was the last short produced that included new footage of Shemp Howard. For Crimin' Out Loud is commonly thought to be the last film featuring new footage of Shemp. However, the new footage used in For Crimin' Out Loud was filmed on June 30, 1955: Flagpole Jitters was filmed the next day on July 1. Shemp died on November 22, 1955, before any new films were produced.

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

Recommended