Three Smart Saps

Three Stooges observers rank Curly as the best dancer of any of the actors appearing as a stooge. He exhibited his exceptional agility on the dance floor in July 1942's "Three Smart Saps," the 64th short film for the trio. What's remarkable about Curly's dexterity is his left leg was thinner from a bullet than his right leg. He shot himself in the left ankle when he was thirteen, and the injury plagued him for the rest of his life. The teenager was cleaning his rifle when the gun went off, prompting his older brother Moe to rush him to the hospital, saving not only his leg but his life. He walked with a slight limp because of his thinner left leg. He learned to hide the defect by exaggerating his walk on the set. Determined to develop the muscles on the leg, he danced regularly at the Triangle Ballroom in Queens, New York, near his family's home, where he would occasionally see future actor George Raft dancing alongside him.

Curly's famous dance sequence in "Three Smart Saps," a title gleaned from the 1936 musical "Three Smart Girls" starring Diana Durbin, was part of an undercover investigation by the Stooges. They had discovered their fiancees' father, a warden at the penitentiary, jailed by the mob. After several attempts to get themselves embedded in jail, the three simply walked in and found the future father in a cell. He tells them about the mobsters converting the prison to a hotel with a nightclub and gambling casino, and hands them a camera to film the evidence. Securing formal clothes to gain entry to the nightclub, the Stooges begin scoping the joint before actress Barbara Slater asks Curly if he rumbas. "Only when I take bicarbonate," answers Curly. "Yuk. Yuk. Let's dance anyway." The nearly six-foot Slater towered over Curly, but he made up for the discrepancy by gyrating in step with the music. In a later Charlie Chaplin movie, 1947's "Monsieur Verdoux," Barbara Slater used her height advantage by playing a florist who eavesdrops on Chaplin's character as he phones his next victim. While dancing Curly's attire begins to separate in the seams. He seeks stitching help from Larry, who, in a rare moment in Stooges' filmography, gets drunk behind the curtain guzzling a hidden stash of liquor. Scriptwriter Clyde Bruckman, later sued by comedian Harold Lloyd for stealing one of his movie ideas, was at it again in "Three Smart Saps" by writing the dancing seam-unraveling skit which was similar to Lloyd's 1925 silent "The Freshman."