Tricky Chicks (1957) Online

By 1957, Columbia's short-subject department was dwindling down fast. Because the Stooges were fired from the studio around this time, Jules White was desperate to create a new series of two-reel comedies called The Girlie Whirls featuring the duo of Muriel Landers and Bek Nelson. The debut entry for this series was so badly panned that Columbia nixed the project.

Muriel and Bek are nightclub performers who are mistaken as enemy agents by a pair of FBI men. Because the two women are smitten with them, they keep stirring up trouble to keep them around. Even Columbia supporting players Dick Wessel and Benny Rubin can't even save this mess.

The GIRLIE WHIRLS was Columbia's final attempt to create a new series of two-reelers after the Stooges left the shorts department in 1957, when they completed their final filmed short, FLYING SAUCER DAFFY. Unfortunately, this new series produced only one two-reeler, TRICKY CHICKS, which is the low point in Jules White's swan song when he left Columbia in 1958 when studio head and tyrant Harry Cohn passed away.

Muriel Landers is the star of this dreadful short, but she would be better known for the co-starring role she had in SWEET AND HOT with the Stooges. Landers is a nightclub singer who is mistakenly suspected of being an enemy agent, by two FBI men (Dick Wessel and William Leslie). Pretty much, that's the whole plot. Even Benny Rubin shows up doing an unfunny portrayal of a Texan millionaire. Boy, Jules was really slumming with this one.