User Reviews

Clyde Bruckman borrows the premise of this short from Buster Keaton's "Seven Chances," recently tepidly remade as "The Bachelor." In the original, Buster has 24-hours to get married in order to inherit a large sum of money. In this version, musical teacher Prof. Shemp has only 7 hours (After all, it is a short!). This is one of the better Stooges shorts due to the storyline and wonderful routines (Including the telephone booth scene with Moe & Shemp, reminiscent of Laurel & Hardy's "Berth Marks" and the Marx Brothers famous stateroom scene in "Night At The Opera - here the boys hold their own in their variation of this routine). I'm not a huge Stooges fan, but this one should be noted by any student of comedy as one of their very best since the early 30s shorts.

Brother Shemp was one of the original Stooges when they started out in vaudeville with Ted Healy. Unlike the other Horowitz brothers, he left the act early on and went out on his own in Hollywood as a much-in-demand character comic actor, memorably as the bartender in the Black Pussy (Cat) cafe with W.C. Fields. When brother Jerome (better known as Curly) got sick in 1946, Shemp returned to help his brothers. In this short, brother Moe, the leader of the team, bows to Shemp's obvious talent, and let's him steal the show. This is the one Columbia short that even non-stoogians like, perfectly staged by Eddie Bernstein and cut by Hank DeMond. Watch it for the phone booth scene alone.

The entire civilized world by now knows that this is where Emil Sitka says his immortal "Hold hands, you lovebirds." But Shemp Howard, Professor of Music, steals the show. Watch him tutoring Dee Green as she fractures the "Voices of Spring." Watch Shemp as he shaves by a mirror suspended from the ceiling by a string. Watch him as he gets walloped by Christine McIntyre. Watch him, and you will laugh and learn. Moe is no slouch either. Watch him as he attempts to induce a woman to sit on a bear trap. Larry, as usual, is the Zen master of reaction. All in all, one of the very best Stooge shorts. You won't find one weak moment.

In 1947's "Brideless Groom" Prof. Shemp Howard, "Teacher of Voice" (who happens to be a very contented bachelor) has been unexpectedly informed that his recently deceased Uncle Caleb has willed him a fortune (providing, however, that he be married within but a short period of time).

So, with that in mind - Shemp's two good buddies, Moe and Larry, waste no time seeing to it that there's definitely gonna be an available woman for him to wed before this crucially important deadline expires.

And, so - Among all of the trademark face slaps, eye-pokes, and insults - "Brideless Groom" moves along through a course of comical situations that are sure to produce some genuine laughs from any true fan of The Three Stooges.

Not wishing to repeat what everyone else has noted, I will only say this:

Nearly everybody says they loved Curly best... but I will put BRIDELESS GROOM up against ANY of other the Stooges shorts.

I think it's the most hilarious from start to finish, as well as being the most re-watchable.

The off-key singing student... Christine McIntire's "Cousin Basil" routine, and of course Emil Sitka's J.P. are highlights, but only around the Stooges' impeccable timing and the great writing too!

Nuff said.

Larry is the piano player and Shemp is the voice coach. The student is simply awful. Moe returns with news of uncle Caleb who died leaving Shemp with $500k if only he's married. He has seven hours before the reading of the will.

Shemp is simply not Curly. When he does "My head is off", I just thought this is stupid. It is fun to see him get beaten up by a woman but stupidity is the bread and butter for the Stooges. It doesn't work quite the same. Stupid works for Curly. It doesn't work quite as well for Shemp. Nevertheless, the cat fight is funny and there is enough comedy to be good. It's funny that these tall beautiful women are fighting over Shemp.

Shemp's uncle dies leaving him a large amount of money...if he gets married in 48 hours. He tries to get married with predictable and unfunny results.

I'm not a big fan of the Stooges. I don't find violent slapstick all that funny and this one is VERY violent. It's amusing at first and there is a fun bit with Christine McIntyre but at the end it turns really violent and the fun stops. Larry and Shemp both have pieces of hair torn out, Moe sits down on a bear trap and (worst of all) Shemp has a woman get his head in a press which she continuously turns with graphic crunching sounds. That's not funny at all...it's sick! Also the portrayal of women as doing anything for money is troubling. I originally saw this as a little kid on TV and had nightmares all night about it! Sick and unfunny.

OK, the other reviewers have pretty much covered the main points of this great little gem, i.e. the story started out in life as material for Buster Keaton's silent classic "7 Chances". Comedy, or acting in any genre for that much, is merely interpreting a scene and lines that someone else has written and performed before, if it's not a totally original creation. Here we have The Stooges essentially doing material that was written and performed by someone else and yet for a low budget, short time span of a film, they're handling things just fine. Regardless of what the credits say on their films, real "stooge-philes" know that they had a lot of input on lines and direction. They took their work as seriously as a surgeon does a vital operation. Words spoken by Emil Sitka himself during a documentary about the boys. Here, what appears to be their usual anarchy over something so simple as getting married, is actually organized chaos. Every line is perfectly timed with a related physical action. How many comedians are around today that can claim such mastery? Most obviously the Seinfeld crew but none others that I've seen in the last 35 years of watching TV. The critics will always "pooh pooh" The Stooges or Laurel & Hardy and others but then again...who ever remembers the critic's names or what they said? Simply watch, laugh and enjoy!

I've read a lot of reviews on the IMDb (well, all five of the ones that have been written at the time that I'm writing this) and I'm surprised at the amount of praise heaped upon The Brideless Groom, which is undoubtedly one of the lesser comedies performed by the Stooges. I prefer the older ones where it was Larry, Curly and Moe, although Shemp gets credit for most of the funny scenes in Sing a Song of Six Pants, another Stooges short which is only moderately amusing but far superior to Brideless Groom. Indeed, there is a single slightly amusing scene in the film, the "don't-hit-a-lady" scene, which is barely amusing at all and is 15 minutes into the film. Not very promising in a 17-minute comedy.

Shemp is a voice trainer whose uncle has passed away and left him an inheritance of $500,000, provided he get married within 48 hours, which is short enough notice as it is, but by the time Shemp learns about it he has only 7 hours left. This is a premise that had been done and redone before, but was not, I don't think, a massive cliché at the time this film was made, as it is now. There are a series of gags throughout the film, none of which are even close to the level of comedy for which the Three Stooges are so widely known. It seems that the Stooges have run into the same troubles that plagued so many of Shirley Temple's films – there is too little reliance on content and too much reliance just on the fact that they're there.

The standard characteristics of the Stooges are here, Moe is the mean one, whose meanness is certainly not used sparingly in this film, and the slapstick sound effects (although with more exceptions than usual) are fairly amusing, but are plugged into their standard slots in this film. The line "Hold hands, you lovebirds" is immortal. The rest of the film is not.

There is much talk among the other people who have reviewed this movie for this site about this being one of the best of the Stooges shorts, that you won't find one weak moment, about how this is their best since the early 30s shorts. It's just not true. I can certainly understand a level of automatic respect for milestone classics and for the giants of early comedy, which the Three Stooges certainly are, but that respect is damaged when poorer films are praised more than they should be. The Brideless Groom deserves some respect because it is a Stooges film, but for exactly the same reason, it should have been better. The Three Stooges were just better than this.

I love this short. It's probably most famous for Emil Sitka's, repeated Stooge straightman, line "Hold hands, you lovebirds.". Some of my favorite moments are when Moe and Shemp are stuck in the phone booth, Shemp's critique of his student, and Christine McIntyre thinking Shemp's a cousin. You have to see this one, if you love Shemp, Sitka, and the Three Stooges.

There are one or two other Shemp-era shorts I like more (i.e. SCRAMBLED BRAINS), but I think one can say--without much argument--that in this particular episode, Shemp gives his greatest comedic performance as a stooge after rejoining the team in 1946.

Scene for scene, this episode hardly lets up: from Professor Shemp Howard's voice lessons with the glass-shattering Dee Green, to his futile attempts to win a dame's hand in marriage (this is your little snookums... will you marry me *click*) to the uproarious finish, it never fails to keep me in stitches.

I would be remiss not mention that immortal scene with Miss Hopkins (the always lovely Christine McIntyre). Btw, isn't she rather under-dressed and over amorous in greeting the man she thinks is her 'Cousin' Basil? Who knows, maybe the actual Basil was a "very" distant cousin, which makes it legal in some states (as far as I know). >:-]

"Gargle with old razor blades. Can I help it if I'm not cousin Basil? I think the piano's out of tune. Ginger Grey. This is your little snookums." Laughs throughout the entire 20 minute short as the boys spoof gold diggers and opera singers. They even manage to show us how to properly demonstrate to some attractive ladies how to handle both a rifle and a bear trap. Wonder how many times they rehearsed the scene with the phone booth. Adding Christine McIntyre and Emil Sitka, 2 frequent collaborators, to the mix makes it even better. Only Vernon Dent is missing. The Stooges did some great individual scenes, but this was their best overall.

The Stooges are back and funnier than ever. "Brideless Groom" in my opinion was probably the best Shemp flick.

Shemp has the opportunity to inherit $500,000(which was probably more than a million dollars compared to today) from his dead uncle. BUT! There is a catch. He has to marry someone that day by 6 o'clock. Shemp is a bachelor with not too many admirers, except for one high pitched aggressive annoying singing student of his. But he doesn't want her, he wants someone a little more on the Victoria's Secret model type of women. But obviously he has no choice since he's no Collin Ferrel himself. But when it is printed in the papers that he is to inherit all that money if married, his ex girlfriends are on the "I want my man back" attack!

What a great stooge flick! This is up there with thewinners of all stooge flicks!

9/10

This was my first taste of the long-running trio and, quite frankly, I was left wondering why they remain so popular if this was typical of their output. Then I watched Disorder in the Court, made eleven years earlier, and I understood. This was the Three Stooges long past their prime, rehashing old gags that were performed better by their original owners, and missing the zany touch of Curly, who had suffered a stroke earlier the same year. I really can't understand the high rating and praise for the film on this site, because there isn't much to laugh at here. Only the final scenes, which look like they've been dreamed up by some Eric Stanton devotee, come even close to raising a smile. Avoid this one unless you're an undemanding die-hard fan.

"Professor Shemp Howard - Teacher Of Voice," reads the sign on the door.

After a funny scene with a woman whose voice would crack glass, Shemp learns from Moe that a recently-departed uncle left him $500,000 with the provision that he get married. Whoa.....not a confirmed bachelor like Shemp! No thanks, but wait....thanks to Moe's persuasiveness (some brutality) and thinking how much money that is (about $10 million today), Shem goes searching for a bride.

He has seven hours to find one, too, as a time deadline is alway in the will (only in the Three Stooges flicks to hear things like this!).

One happens after that starts slowly but builds to an incredible finish at the Justice Of The Peace where all hell breaks loose with a bunch of women beating up everyone in sight. It's incredible!

If you like The Three Stooges you'll undoubtedly like this 17 minute short. There were certainly some amusing moments in it, but like all the Stooges' work, this revolves around their particular style of slapstick comedy, and I have to confess that somehow the Stooges just never really did it for me. Their slapstick always seemed angry rather than funny, and even though it was obviously fake, their antics always seemed more likely to cause hurt rather than to cause laughter. In this short, the slapstick revolves around the attempts to find Shemp (who is a Professor of Music in this) a wife, because he's just inherited half a million dollars on condition that he marry within 48 hours of the will being read. One of his students is interested, but once word of the inheritance gets out , there's suddenly a long line-up of potential brides, and a pretty good cat fight emerges between them. Fans of the Stooges will enjoy. For me, it has all the elements that drive me nuts about them. 4/10

This one is so funniest slapstick of 1947's short film from "The Three Stooges" and this one of my favorite "The Three Stooges" short film and Curly is definitely one of my favorite stooges. This one also public domain short film with "Disorder in the Court" (1936), "Sing a Song of Six Pants" (1947) and "Malice in the Palace" (1949) and there too many cheap VHS and DVD (I own some of cheap DVD and VHS) and also "The Three Stooges Collection: Volume Five" DVD and disc 2 from Sony Pictures.

This one of the funniest "The Three Stooges" film short and plenty of slapstick includes face slap again and there plenty of funniest moments with Moe is sewing Shemp's pant and then Moe poke with Shemp's leg with needle for a second time (so cracks me up!), also hilarious with 5 Shemp's former girlfriend attacks (attack with the newspapers and kicking their legs) Moe & Larry, Moe got bear trap his butt, Moe and Shemp in the telephone booth are so funniest scene. Christine McIntyre (as lot of guest-star of "The Three Stooges" short film) is hilarious as she thought Shemp is of her mistaken Cousin Basil. Dee Green who plays Miss Fanny Dinkelmeyer who crush on Shemp and also don't forget of Emil Sitka and he the hilarious funny actor as J.M. Benton the Justice of the Peace and one of Shemp's former girlfriend smashed with birdcage in his head with live bird inside is the most best funniest scene (poor guy).

One of the best of the Three Stooges episodes with Shemp. Very funny, with good gags throughout, and a supporting cast that includes Christine McIntyre and Emil Sitka. Not to be missed!

This was part of a 3-DVD box-set, and this disc came with the Laurel and Hardy ones Mud and Sand, Just Ramblin' Along, Oranges and Lemons, The Tree in a Test Tube and another Three Stooges one, Sing a Song of Six Pants; it also came with Malice in the Palace, and the features Atoll K(or Utopia) and Flying Deuces. You're probably not surprised, if you read my summary, that I did not enjoy this. I've watched very little of the trio, and I intend to keep it that way. Not a fan of slapstick in general, but L&H's brand is light, unexpected, at times clever... this, on the other hand, is angry(bitter much? Seriously, why else would anyone make this?), you know that they're going to hit each other, and I've yet to see anything that hasn't been done far better(yes, we get it, money makes people do stupid things). They're loud and obnoxious, as are their guests, and that appears to be the entire schtick. Misunderstandings and such leading to violence; it seems like it hurts, too, as opposed to those where the characters get up, dust themselves off and are unharmed, where explosions leave you undamaged, just with soot on your face. This particular one has a shot where one of them actually broke his nose. How snuff. I recommend this to fans of the four "comedians", and no one else. 5/10