THREE LITTLE TWIRPS

Production Information
Title: Three Little Twirps
Studio: Columbia
Short Number: 71
Release Date: July 9, 1943
Running Time: 15:27

“I haven’t been to the circus since I got out’a the 4th grade.” “Yeah, that was last year.”

Short Take

The Stooges have a job putting up posters for the circus, but thoroughly bungle the job and discover that their pay is admission tickets, not cash. When Curly accidentally finds a long string of tickets, The Boys try to scalp them.

While being chased by a cop, they’re dragged before the circus owner, who instead of sending them to jail, offers them a job at the circus… as human targets for the Mad Sultan of Abadabba, a spear thrower!

Three Little Twirps Cast & Crew

Directed byHarry Edwards
Produced byDel Lord
Hugh McCollum
Written byMonte Collins
Elwood Ullman
StarringMoe Howard
Larry Fine
Curly Howard
Stanley Blystone
Chester Conklin
Bud Jamison
Heinie Conklin
Al Thompson
Duke York
CinematographyJohn Stumar
Edited byPaul Borofsky

Three Little Twirps Trivia

  • This was the second and final short to be directed by Harry Edwards
  • Edwards was known for over-producing contrived gags (e.g. the clay cigar incident in Matri-Phony and the opening scene in this short) and he was one of the more controversial directors at the Columbia short-subject unit
  • Barbara Jo Allen absolutely refused to work with Edwards after 1944 and, according to Okuda (28), The Stooges requested that they never work with him again either
  • Nonetheless, he did co-author such Stooge classics as No Census, No Feeling and Some More of Samoa
  • It is the eighth of sixteen Stooge shorts with the word “three” in the title
  • The movie poster The Stooges cover over in the first scene is for Columbia’s The Man Who Returned to Life (1942)

Production Notes

  • Filming for Three Little Twirps took place from August 3–7, 1942
  • The background march music during the ticket sequence can be heard briefly in Termites of 1938 and it will be reused again for Curly’s trombone scene in Idle Roomers, for the radio-in-the-sink sequence in Gents in a Jam and elsewhere