Think about this for a moment. The Three Stooges built a career that lasted for nearly 50 years. They went from vaudeville to sidemen to their own long-running series of movie shorts. And even in the twilight of their careers, they found success in feature films – both as stars in pictures like Have Rocket, Will Travel and The Outlaws IS Coming, but also in cameo appearances in Four For Texas and It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad World.
But by the late 1960’s, the trio – now consisting of Moe Howard, Larry Fine and Curly-Joe DeRita – were definitely showing their age. It’s hard to keep up with the eye-gouges and slaps and other resultant slapstick when you’re also eligible for Social Security checks.
With that in mind, the Stooges began work on a TV pilot in which the trio would forego their knockabout comedy and instead participate in a travelogue. The hijinks would be low-key, as the Stooges would instead travel around the world and be straight-up tourists.
Thus began the Stooges’ final film project, a pilot called Kook’s Tour.
Now this pilot could have been picked up by a TV network, or it could have run for several seasons in syndication. However, all we have is the pilot, and even then surviving copies of the pilot are on deteriorating and cloudy film stock.
And, sadly, it’s also the last filmed Stooging from longtime member Larry Fine. See, during the filming of Kook’s Tour, Fine suffered a paralyzing stroke and could not finish the film. What became the final Kook’s Tour product was cobbled from available footage, and was released in the mid-1970’s for the Super 8mm home projector market.
I’ve embedded what may be the best surviving print of Kook’s Tour below. As you can see, the Stooges look like they’re ready for retirement and just want to visit the Great Outdoors and bring us along with them.
There would have been one more Stooges film after this – a project called Blazing Stewardesses with Moe Howard, Curly-Joe DeRita and longtime Stooge friend Emil Sitka – but aside from a couple of publicity photos, the film was shelved when Moe Howard himself passed away.
But what you see above is essentially the last core Three Stooges project featuring the essential Three Stooges core players Moe Howard, Larry Fine and Curly Howard Shemp Howard Joe Besser Curly-Joe DeRita.
Riding off into the sunset.
Chuck The Writer 