My Scrapbook: The Three Stooges as Private Eyes?

My Scrapbook
The Three Stooges as Private Eyes?
No, not really…

Here’s the cover for issue #1127 (August-October 1960) of Four Color, Dell’s long-running and highly collectible series (1332 issues!), known for its photo covers and their film and television tie-ins. In their long, long run, Dell covered cartoons, kids shows, adult dramas, sci-fi, detective shows, westerns and anything else that could conceivably per of interest to kids.

It’s not much of a laugh riot, but the cover of this issue boasted an odd sartorial choice for Larry, Moe and Curly. To do their private sleuthing decked out, not in the traditional fedoras and trench coats or even Mannix jackets, but lab coats. Then again, how many gumshoes go around sticking their fingers in each other’s mouths? Or in the maw of a human skull?

In “The Private Eye-Balls, “ the Stooges are rookie window washers, whose first job is to clean the windows of the office of private detective Clyde Transom, who’s conveniently out of the office. If you’ve ever seen Bob Hope in My Favorite Brunette, you know what’s next. While the Stooges are cleaning up after accidentally smashing every window in the place, a beautiful young woman in distress walks in the door. Naturally, she mistakes Moe for a private eye and hires him to retrieve her missing pearl necklace.

And so it goes. To raise the $5000 to give their new client so that she can hire them (I know, I know), they take on another job, first as firemen (yes, they pretty much destroy the station), and then Curly becomes a prize fighter.

None of it makes much sense, the skull and the lab coats never make an appearance, nor do the Stooges ever really get to act as private eyes (although they do eventually lose $5000 on the deal). It’s just one of five such stories in the issue. In others, the trio act as lifeguards, Moe is hospitalized, Curly goes to battle with a housefly and the trio take on a gig as postal workers. There’s dumb, and then there’s stupid. These stories manage to be both.

But what do I know? I never found the Stooges all that funny, even as a kid—I’m more of a Marx Brothers man, I guess. Still, issues of this comic are currently going for $400 or so…

COMICS

FOUR COLOR
(1942-62, Dell Comics)
1332 issues
- “The Private Eye-Balls” (August-October 1960, #1127) | Kindle/ComiXology it!
  Written by Carl Fallberg
  Art by Pete Alvarado , Tony DiPaola

PENDING FURTHER INVESTIGATION

Apparently, the Three Stooges had previously been private eye in the 1949 Columbia short Who Done It?

FURTHER INVESTIGATION

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My Scrapbook: The Three Stooges as Private Eyes?