Three Little Pigskins (1934)

In the early to mid 1930s, football comedies were rather popular. The Marx Brothers' "Horse Feathers" is the best and most famous of these but others such as Wheeler and Woolsey, the Disney studio and others made some screwball football films as well. "Three Little Pigskins" is the Three Stooge's efforts in the genre. As for the title, it's a play on the title to the super-successful Disney short, "The Three Little Pigs".The film begins with the Stooges out bumming for coins. At the same time, some gamblers (led by the scary looking Walter Long) are talking about setting up a game featuring three fantastic college ball players, the 'three horsemen'. Oddly, they think the Stooges are these three players. What happens next is, oddly, not nearly as funny as you'd expect. It has its moments but all in all, the laughs are a bit few and far between. Not bad...just not all that good. I say see "Horse Feathers" instead.

Harry Cohn was known to use The Three Stooges shorts as opportunities to try out young players in supporting roles. But in his wildest imagination I'm sure he never thought that in casting this short, Lucille Ball would grow up to be a comic icon, every bit as much as the stars of this film.Of course Lucy who is a Jean Harlow platinum blond in this film does not get to display too much comic talent except as a foil for the Stooges. She's the moll of some gangsters who want to hire some football players from college on the sly so the kids don't lose amateur status. The idea is that they'll be ringers. Instead it's the gangsters who get good and rung when they hire Moe, Larry, and Curly.College films were so popular in the Thirties, showing upper class kids who did very little study, but always had time for music, girls and the inevitable big football game. This particular short is right in keeping with Horsefeathers, College Humor and so many more I can't count. They all were pretty much the same and Three Little Pigskins doesn't break any new ground.Still what Moe, Larry, and especially Curly do to the game of football is not to be believed. Knute Rockne must have been turning over in his grave, doubled up with laughter of course.

"Three Little Pigskins" is a very good Three Stooges comedy that deals with football follies. Curly, Larry, and Moe are hobos mistaken for the Three Horsemen, a trio of crackerjack football players from Boulder Dam College. In terms of the plot, need I say more? Obviously the major highlight from "Three Little Pigskins" is the much-too-brief football sequence at the end, which features several hilarious mishaps. Other highlights: Curly breaks a dumbwaiter apart, causing his two partners, as well as mob leader Joe Stacks (Walter Long), to fall down the shaft in succession. This short marks the first occurrence of Larry laughing at another Stooge for getting creamed and then receiving the same kind of punishment; in this case, it happens during the way-too-long seltzer bottle scene. AND when the Stooges' seltzer bottle antics have gone too far, they are briefly scolded for horsing around while there are ladies present, so they shift gears and squirt the ladies! (Incidentally, one of the ladies is a very young Lucille Ball, believe it or not.) "Three Little Pigskins" is one of the earliest Three Stooges shorts at Columbia Pictures, so the boys still had the advantage of youth during the strenuous football sequence. Moe once referred to this film as "a humdinger of bangs and bruises"; specifically, this meant a broken leg for Curly, a knocked-out tooth for Larry, and a series of broken limbs for the Stooges' stunt doubles on the football field!

This is a Three Stooges short comedy that starts and ends a little slowly, but in between there are some hilarious moments. It starts when the three are pan-handling on a college campus, and get mistaken for the school's three star football players. They are then hired by a group of gangsters to play for a professional team, with predictable results. The funniest parts are in the middle of the film, when the Stooges are in the apartment where the gangsters and their girls (which include a very young Lucille Ball) hang out. "Three Little Pigskins" may not be one of the Stooges' best, but it's still pretty good.