History Trivia / TheThreeStooges

** Moe rarely if ever says "Why I oughtta". There is a common dialogue gag in several of their shorts that this misquote may have come from, where Curly or Shemp say the phrase, and when Moe replies angrily "Oughtta what?", they answer "Oughtta be more careful."

* FatalMethodActing:
** Curly suffered a stroke during the filming of the short ''Half-Wits Holiday''. He is notably absent from the final scene of the short because he had to be written out of it in order to complete it. His health had been declining for a long time, as evidenced by his frail condition in the shorts leading up to his final one.
*** Speaking of which, the pie fight in ''Half-Wits Holiday'' was originally written to feature Curly. It also had to be reworked following Curly's stroke. In the finished film, Curly disappears just before the climax begins, and Moe and Larry carry on as a two-man team. This ultimately proved a blessing in disguise, as without Curly, the pie fight was reused via stock footage in several shorts with Shemp and Joe Besser.
*** Before this, Curly had a few minor strokes that caused some of the Stooges shorts to be rewritten. ''Beer Barrel Polecats'' started out as a remake of the Creator/LaurelAndHardy film ''Pardon Us''. Much of the planned material was ultimately replaced by StockFootage from earlier Stooges shorts, and only part of the short was borrowed from the similar L&H film. Other shorts, notably ''Three Loan Wolves'', merely switched Curly's and Larry's roles.

** In ''Self Made Maids'', the boys play their fiancées and later their babies. Moe also plays the fiancées' father. [[note]]The opening credits claim that "All parts in this picture are played by The Three Stooges", which is [[MetaphoricallyTrue true]] if you don't count the man reading the newspaper in the lobby (at about 8:15, played by Charles Cross), nor the stand-ins that appear whenever the Stooges must interact with their fiancées (or Moe and the fiancées' father) within the same shot.[[/note]]

* RealitySubtext: During ''The Three Stooges Go Around The World In A Daze'', Moe tells one of his Stooge clones in Communist China that they do not do eye pokes anymore. He was telling the truth; during the post-1959 area, the Stooges agreed not to do any more eye poking as children could imitate this and end up hurting each other.

** In ''Heavenly Daze'', Larry Fine really got hurt when he got a fountain pen lodged in his forehead.

* PublicDomain: Four of the shorts -- "[[Recap/TheThreeStoogesDisorderInTheCourt Disorder in the Court]]", "[[Recap/TheThreeStoogesBridelessGroom Brideless Groom]]", "[[Recap/TheThreeStoogesSingASongOfSixPants Sing a Song of Six Pants]]", and "[[Recap/TheThreeStoogesMaliceInThePalace Malice in the Palace]]" -- have entered public domain.

** Originally, after Shemp's death, Moe apparently suggested bringing on African-American character actor Mantan Moreland (who had been a close friend of Shemp's and worked with him during Shemp's solo career) as the third Stooge (Moreland may be most well-known as the chauffeur Baltimore in the ''Film/CharlieChan'' series). Depending on the story, this was vetoed by Harry Cohn, Columbia's head, because a) Moreland wasn't under contract to Columbia at the time (a similar reason was used to veto Joe [=DiRita=]), or b) because Cohn didn't want a black Stooge for some reason. Cue Joe Besser.

* LastOfHisKind: Curly Joe [=DeRita=] called himself The Last Stooge for a reason: not only was he the last the to join the Stooges, he was the last one alive, dying in 1993.

* FatalMethodActing

* OldShame:
** Although it came later in their careers, they thought it was a mistake to do ''Film/SnowWhiteAndTheThreeStooges'' (since the film gave them little screen time, and barely any slapstick). As well as having scenes involving genuine pathos, which was not in their repertoire.
** Moe Howard is also stated to have despised his tenure with Joe Besser, finding him to be a nuisance due to refusing to take part in their trademark slapstick, even going so far as to label him a "prissy little snot with a star ego". Averted with Larry, who spoke fondly of him and was mentioned as being a good sport to the requests of Besser, who himself enjoyed his work on the series.
** Curly Joe [=DeRita=] openly admitted in an interview that he never liked the Stooge style of humor.
--> '''Curly Joe''': I don't think the Stooges were funny. I'm not putting you on, I'm telling the truth—they were physical, but they just didn't have any humor about them. Take, for instance, Laurel and Hardy. I can watch their films and I still laugh at them and maybe I've seen them four or five times before. But when I see that pie or seltzer bottle, I know that it's not just lying around for no reason. It's going to be used for something. I was with the Stooges for 12 years and it was a very pleasant association but I just don't think they were funny.

** ''Kook's Tour'' as a TV series.

** In ''Brideless Groom'', Shemp is to be beat up by a woman who originally confused him for her cousin Basil (Christine McIntyre). She just couldn't convincingly pull her punches and was ruining takes, so Shemp told her just to punch him for real. She did. Shemp ended up with a broken nose.

* LastOfHisKind: Curly Joe DeRita called himself The Last Stooge for a reason: not only was he the last the to join the Stooges, he was the last one alive, dying in 1993.

* UnintentionalPeriodPiece:
** Pretty much unavoidable with the classic 1930s and 1940s shorts. References to pop culture, trends and events of old are a given. That being said, the humor and the charm of The Three Stooges is timeless enough that the shorts continue to find new fans to this day.

** Curly's personal favorite was "Film/APlumbingWeWillGo".

** Curly's personal favorite was "[[Recap/TheThreeStoogesAPlumbingWeWillGo A-Plumbing We Will Go]]".

** Usually crosses over with NotQuiteStarring, often after the actual Stooges [[AuthorExistenceFailure died.]]

** In filming the ''Brideless Groom'' scene in which Christine [=McIntyre=] beats the snot out of poor Shemp (whom she had mistaken for "Cousin Basil"), [=McIntyre=]'s assault was looking rather tepid, prompting Shemp to tell her she had to really "cut loose" and make the next take look real. It became a little ''too'' realistic when her final haymaker actually connected and broke Shemp's nose! [=McIntyre=] was upset almost to the point of tears, but Shemp laughed it off, saying, "Well, I told you to cut loose, and you did...you sure as hell did!"