Throwback Thursday Comedy Special: "Slowly I Turned..." (The History of the Niagara Falls Joke)

"Slowly I turned" (The Niagara Falls joke) has been made famous by Abbott and Costello, The Three Stooges, Lucille Ball and Phil Silvers, Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca, and countless other comedy teams. It's such a renowned comedy classic that it has its own listing in Wikipedia that reveals its historical origins.

The listing states that it was not created by any of the above comedy teams, but started out as  a popular vaudeville sketch that has also been performed in cinema and on television. Comedians Harry Steppe, Joey Faye, and Samuel Goldman each laid claim to this routine, also referred to as "The Stranger with a Kind Face" by clowns and clowning aficionados, "Niagara Falls" by fans of The Three Stooges and Abbott and Costello, "Martha" by fans of I Love Lucy, "Pokomoko", and "Bagel Street".

Our favorite version is the one performed by Moses Harry Horwitz, Louis Feinberg, and Jerome Horwitz. You never heard of them? Sure you did, but you know them as Moe Howard, Larry Fine, and Curly Howard, or the Three Stooges.

Enjoy!

A SPECIAL NOTE FOR NEW EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS:  THE VIDEO MAY NOT BE VIEWABLE DIRECTLY FROM THE EMAIL THAT YOU GET EACH DAY ON SOME COMPUTERS AND TABLETS.  YOU MUST CLICK ON THE TITLE AT THE TOP OF THE EMAIL TO REACH THE JEWISH HUMOR CENTRAL WEBSITE, FROM WHICH YOU CLICK ON THE PLAY BUTTON IN THE VIDEO IMAGE TO START THE VIDEO.



#Throwback Thursday, #TBT

The Great Jewish Comedians: The Three Stooges

The Three Stooges started in 1928 as part of a raucous vaudeville act called "Ted Healy and His Stooges" (also known as "Ted Healy and His Southern Gentlemen", "Ted Healy and His Three Lost Souls", "Ted Healy and His Racketeers", and "Ted Healy and His Three Stooges".) 

Moe Howard (born Moses Harry Horwitz) joined Healy's act in 1921, and his brother Shemp Howard (Samuel Horwitz) came aboard in 1923. In 1928, violinist-comedian Larry Fine (Louis Feinberg) and xylophonist-comedian Fred Sanborn also joined the group. In the act, lead comedian Healy would attempt to sing or tell jokes while his noisy assistants would keep "interrupting" him, causing Healy to retaliate with verbal and physical abuse.

In 1930, Ted Healy and His Stooges (including Sanborn) appeared in their first Hollywood feature film, Soup to Nuts, released by Fox Film Corporation. The film was not a critical success, but the Stooges' performances were singled out as memorable, leading Fox to offer the trio a contract minus Healy. 

The team appeared in 220 films. In the end, it is the durability of the 190 timeless short films the Stooges made at Columbia Pictures that acts as an enduring tribute to the comedy team. Their continued popularity worldwide has proven to even the most skeptical critics that their films are funny. American television personality Steve Allen went on record in the mid-1980s saying, "though they never achieved widespread critical acclaim, they achieved exactly what they had always intended to do: they made people laugh."

An extensive biography and filmography of the trio appears on tensive biography and filmography of the trio appears on Wikipedia.

Here's a look at a comic sequence, one of their most violent, from the 1943 movie They Stooge to Conga.

Enjoy!

(A SPECIAL NOTE FOR NEW EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS:  THE VIDEO MAY NOT BE VIEWABLE DIRECTLY FROM THE EMAIL THAT YOU GET EACH DAY ON SOME COMPUTERS AND TABLETS.  YOU MUST CLICK ON THE TITLE AT THE TOP OF THE EMAIL TO REACH THE JEWISH HUMOR CENTRAL WEBSITE, FROM WHICH YOU CLICK ON THE PLAY BUTTON IN THE VIDEO IMAGE TO START THE VIDEO.)