Production Information
Title: Tassels In The Air
Studio: Columbia
Short Number: 30
Release Date: April 1, 1938
Running Time: 17:09
“Sure, you can help. Go mix me a batch of spotted paint.”
(Moe)
Tassels In The Air Short Take
Nouveau riche housewife Mrs. Smirch (Bess Flowers) has intentions to hire the in-demand interior decorator Omay (Jean De Briac) to redecorate her house in a bid to get in the “who’s who” of the local rich elite. Omay accepts her offer.
Meanwhile, the Stooges are hired as painters to redecorate the building where Omay’s office is and are given the job of painting temporary names on the doors of all the offices. They, of course, botch the job. It comes out that Curly has a strange proclivity to fly into a blind rage whenever he sees a tassel, placated only with soft tickling of his chin.
Mrs. Smirch enters the building and mistakes Moe for Omay. The real Omay offended that his office was mislabeled as the janitor’s closet, gives up his lease. The boys’ boss (Vernon Dent) immediately fires them, and they take on the ruse of Omay and his two colleagues with intention of doing the work on the Smirch household.
They arrive at the Smirch’s residence and begin to work as Mrs. Smirch brings in a few of her new rich friends for a card game. However, the real Omay enters the home, exposes the boys as frauds and publicly embarrassing Mrs. Smirch.
Tassels In The Air Cast & Crew
| Directed by | Charley Chase |
|---|---|
| Produced by | Charley Chase Hugh McCollum |
| Written by | Al Giebler Elwood Ullman |
| Starring | Moe Howard Larry Fine Curly Howard Vernon Dent Symona Boniface Bess Flowers Bud Jamison Victor Travers Jean De Briac Gertrude Astor |
| Cinematography | Allen G. Siegler |
| Edited by | Art Seid |
Tassels In The Air Trivia
- The film’s title is a play on the old expression, “Building castles in the air,” i.e. dreaming of achieving the impossible.
- Curly goes crazy whenever he sees tassels. The cure is to tickle him under his chin with a paintbrush, a similar variety of plot device to those used earlier in Punch Drunks, Horses’ Collars and Grips, Grunts and Groans.
- Many of the gags used in the table painting scene would be reused by Moe, Larry, and Shemp in their unsold television 1949 pilot Jerks of All Trades, which, coincidentally, also featured Symona Boniface. The gags would be recycled again the following year in A Snitch in Time.
- This was the second Stooge film made by the McCollum/Chase production unit.
- Many films since Ants in The Pantry have depended on The Stooges getting ‘one last chance.’ Here, Larry asks the superintendent to give them another chance, but before he can answer, he falls down the elevator shaft.
Production Notes
- Tassels in the Air was filmed on November 26–30, 1937.
- The exterior of The Deeds home is featured throughout Tassels In The Air. The home was named after the 1936 Columbia Pictures film it was built for, Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. The concrete pillars and the gate at the driveway entrance and the fence in front of the property are now gone.
