What I watched: An episode of The Ed Wynn Show (also known as The Camel Comedy Caravan), an early variety show. This week’s guests were the Three Stooges and Helen Forrest. Ralph Levy directed, while the script was written by Hal Kanter, Leo Solomon, and Seaman Jacobs. This episode aired at 9:00 on KTLA on Saturday, March 25, 1950 and was re-aired on the East Coast on CBS the following week. Maybe. imDb lists this the Three Stooges episode as airing on March 11, but the YouTube video labels it as the 25th. Normally I would just go with the later date, but to my confusion Internet Archive has the Gloria Swanson episode posted as March 25. I’ll sort all this out eventually. Anyway, whenever it happened, the episode can be viewed on YouTube
What happened: The show opens with Ed Wynn getting a call to get him to the front of the stage. A little kid comes out and stamps on his feet, based off some wordplay I didn’t get. Ed gets another call saying that CBS network executives will be visiting the studio. Wynn goes on a rant about the executives and their lavish $50, 000 salaries.
It turns out that the executives are, of course, the Three Stooges, up to their typical eye-poking, tie-cutting, bubble-blowing antics. Wynn demands an end to this executive interference, so that he can run a cigarette ad. I’m not sure he was being ironic about that part.
When we come back, we find Ed trying to pick oranges from a tree, but it’s still so cold that he only gets frozen orange juice. The elaborate natural backdrop is designed for the guest singer, Helen Forrest, but the Stooges show up again instead. Ed makes a wish at the wishing pond, and Forrest finally shows up. The trio bring a television camera on screen, through which Ed watches a Hopalong Cassidy film.
After distracting the Stooges with a quarter, Wynn draws the curtain and quickly changes the set to a 1920s speakeasy. Forrest sings a “torch song”, one that goes on a long journey including taking her sister Kate to a burlesque show. Wynn follows this with another paean for Camel cigarettes. This involves a giant tower of cigarette cartons. It’s a real game of Junka.
The “executives” return and start meddling with the precarious tower. Wynn lures them all into a telephone booth and locks the door, but through the magic of slapstick they escape.Wynn tries to present a romantic “drama”, but the Stooges immediately interfere.
A sandbag drops from the rafters, as if the symbolism needed to be more obvious. Wynn decides he’s going to try to kill the executives by making them stand in the path of the dropping sandbags. A little drastic, but I guess he’s a Marxist. The sandbags keep barely missing, and of course one lands on Ed. Possibly concussed, he staggers back to bed for the usual ending.
What I thought: This is another episode in the vein of the Buster Keaton guest appearance, with Wynn looking to highlight a legendary film comedy act. The Three Stooges were not quite as far from stardom as Keaton was in 1950 — they were still making film shorts for Columbia, despite waning interest in the form. Still, they look old here (Moe and Shemp were into their fifties, and Larry not far behind), already a tribute act to themselves.
It was the original line-up of the Stooges that appear here, with Shemp appearing as the third star, although the trio with Curly would always be the best-remembered version. The Stooges actually wanted to get into television, rightly sensing that their short-form comedies would be perfect for the new medium. They had filmed a pilot for a show called Jerks of all Trades, but Columbia blocked it from becoming a series.
The role which the Stooges are asked to play in for Wynn is interesting as well. They portray bumbling TV executives who keep messing up the show — in some sense a throwback to their original vaudeville act, where they had ruined the plans of straight man Ted Healy. It is interesting to see that, this early, TV execs were already portrayed as meddling and out of touch. Given that Wynn’s CBS show didn’t have long to live, these jokes may have been channeling genuine frustration at his superiors.
Theoretically this moment, like the Buster Keaton appearance, should have been a passing of the torch between one medium of popular comedy and the next. But who was the torch being passed to? Wynn was even older than the stooges, and his tastes showed it — one gets the sense he booked Keaton and the Stooges not because of any desire to appeal to nostalgia, but simply because they were the acts he was interested in. From the episodes that have been preserved, Wynn’s show was mostly a country for old men and young women.
The Stooges would eventually establish their empire on television, when Columbia finally wound up the film short series and syndicated them to TV stations. The syndicated films would become popular among children and spur a revival of the Stooges as a touring act. For as old and played out as they seemed to me, one wonders what would have happened if more of those meddling execs had seen the possibility of the trio as TV stars.
Coming up next: Just when you thought you were safe, Howdy Doody returns.
The Eternal Couch Potato 