You Nazty Spy! (1940) Online
In this satire of the Nazis the stooges are paperhangers in the country of Moronica. When evil cabinet ministers overthrow the king, they decide to make Moe the new ruler as he'll be stupid enough to follow their orders. Moe becomes Dictator, Curly is a Field Marshal and Larry becomes Minister of propaganda. After successfully preventing a female spy from committing mayhem, the boys are run out of office by a mob and eaten by lions.
Complete credited cast: | |||
Curly Howard | - | Curly Gallstone (as Curly) | |
Larry Fine | - | Larry Pebble (as Larry) | |
Moe Howard | - | Moe Hailstone (as Moe) |
Was the first Hollywood film to spoof Adolf Hitler, released nine months before Charles Chaplin's more famous The Great Dictator (1940).
A billiards 8-ball was used as a fortune telling device in the scene with the female spy, Mattie Herring. This predates by ten years the popular toy fortune telling device, "The Magic Eight Ball", first marketed by Alabe Crafts Company in 1950.
The Three Stooges, who were all Ashkenazi Jews, occasionally worked a word or phrase of Yiddish into their dialogue. In particular here, they make several overt Jewish and Yiddish cultural references: The exclamation "Beblach!" used several times in the film is a Yiddish word meaning "beans". "Shalom Aleichem!", literally "Peace unto you" is a standard greeting in Yiddish meaning "hello, pleased to meet you". "Moe: We'll start a 'Blintzkrieg' (Blitzkrieg). Curly: I just love blintzes especially with sour krieg." This is a reference to the Ashkenazi Jewish dish blintzes with sour cream. In Moe's imitation of a Hitler speech, he says "in pupik gehabt haben" (the semi-obscene "I've had it in the bellybutton" in Yiddish). These references to the Nazi leadership and Hitler speaking Yiddish were particularly ironic inside jokes for the Yiddish-speaking Jewish audience.
Curly Gallstone's red book of women's addresses and phone numbers has the rather overt sexual references "Ruby Clutch", "oh, oh oh! G" (bra size) and the unread "Tessie oomph 2 69" which were ignored by the censors. This was a key dig at the attempt to censor The Great Dictator (1940) then in production by Charles Chaplin (Curly was also noted in his personal life for being a womanizer).
This was the first Three Stooges short to not open with the classic Columbia Pictures logo.
"Moronika for Morons" parodies the Nazi slogan "Deutschland den Deutschen" (Germany for Germans).
Filmed in 1939, not released until 1940.
This was Moe Howard's personal favorite of all the Stooges shorts.
Writer Felix Adler's name is misspelled in the credits as "Felix Alder".
User reviews