Three Missing Links (1938) Online

The Stooges go from totally-inept janitors to actors working for the "Super Terrific Productions" movie company, under the leadership of "B.O. Botswaddle." That occurs when the latter takes a good look at our guys and proclaims, "We've found our missing links."

They look just like the Neanderthals Botswaddle is looking for to shoot his next motion picture. The Stooges are too dumb to realize they've just been insulted. They are just happy to become actors.

The real fun happens when the film crew arrives in Africa. We get tons, literally, of gags signs to puns to outrageous physical stuff. (i.e. The Stooges see a sign on a hut that reads, "Dr. Ba Loni Sulami, Medicine Man, Hours 2-5 Or By Appointment.")

The best gags, IMO, come, when a real ape appears and gets confused with Curly the ape role. Both look identical and mayhem ensues and nobody knows if it's Curly or the real gorilla.

Jane Hamilton looked hot as the film-within-in-a-film female star "Mirabel Mirabel."

It's possible that Harry Cohn over at Columbia got wind of the fact that Hal Roach was planning to do an epic about prehistoric times that became One Million BC. So who better to do a spoof on that for a whole lot less money than his favorite comics, The Three Stooges.

After causing the usual amount of chaos and mayhem as janitors at a movie studio, Moe, Larry, and Curly are cast as two prehistoric men and a gorilla. Guess who has the gorilla look about him?

But that's a key part because as the gorilla you get to make love to Jane Hamilton, nicely and scantily clad in animal skins as befits a prehistoric sexpot.

For realism's sake they decide to shoot the thing in the real jungle as real as Hollywood back lot jungles got in those days. Of course when a real gorilla resents the invasion of his turf, the fun really starts.

A lot of the same gags, compacted into Three Missing Links can be found in the later Abbott&Costello feature film, Africa Screams. Best of course is seeing a real battle of wits between Curly and the gorilla.

I'd say they were evenly matched.

"Three Missing Links" is a good Three Stooges short that marks the directorial debut of Jules White. White was essentially the head of the two-reeler department at Columbia Pictures, and he would go on to produce and direct countless Stooge shorts in the next two decades. In this film, the boys are janitors at a motion picture studio, where their boss B.O. Botswaddle (James C. Morton) needs an actor who looks like an ape. After observing the antics of the janitors, Botswaddle, director Herbert Herringbone (Monte Collins), and actress Mirabel Mirabel (Jane Hamilton) select Curly as the ape and Moe & Larry as the cavemen.

My favorite scenes from "Three Missing Links": A lion disturbs the Stooges' sleep when it licks their feet, causing them to giggle. Curly has an unorthodox way of cleaning the boss' desk. Curly has trouble driving stakes into the ground; when Moe helps him, Curly accidentally drives a stake into a mud puddle, splatting Moe's and Larry's faces. Curly looks really funny when he puts on his pudgy gorilla costume, doing a kick-jump and lighting a cigar.

"Three Missing Links" has an odd conclusion - you won't believe who Curly falls in love with!

The Three Stooges has always been some of the many actors that I have loved. I love just about every one of the shorts that they have made. I love all six of the Stooges (Curly, Shemp, Moe, Larry, Joe, and Curly Joe)! All of the shorts are hilarious and also star many other great actors and actresses which a lot of them was in many of the shorts! In My opinion The Three Stooges is some of the greatest actors ever and is the all time funniest comedy team!

This is a very good Three Stooges short. Its funny and its cast includes Monte Collins, Jane Hamilton, Naba, John Lester Johnson, and James C. Morton! Very good acting by Johnson and Morton! The Stooges perform very good in this Three Stooges short! The lion and gorilla scenes are hilarious! I recommend this one to all Three Stooges fans!

Three Missing Links (1938)

*** (out of 4)

The Three Stooges are working as janitors at a movie studio when they're fired but then re-hired to go to Africa where they're filming a jungle movie. In the film Curly is to play a gorilla but sure enough when they start filming a real gorilla shows up on the set. It doesn't appear that this Stooge short has a very good reputation and while it does start off a little slow, things really pick up during the final ten-minutes. The stuff in the office at the start of the film is pretty much "been there, done that" because we get the typical antics like water being slung around and of course each men gets knocked upside the head a time or two. The second half is when things really take off and even though these jokes aren't too original they're still hilarious at times. The highlight for me has the be the scene where the boys are asleep in their tent with their feet sticking out. A lion comes up and begins licking the, tickling the boys but they think it's one another doing the job. More laughs are to follow when the gorilla enters the picture and no one can tell which one is real and which one is Curly. The final ten-minutes had me laughing extremely hard and this is clearly one people should enjoy.

"Three Missing Links" ranks among the best of The Three Stooges' many shorts. They're bumbling janitors in a movie studio, and after wrecking a producer's office, they wind up getting hired as actors in a jungle epic to be shot in the wilds of darkest Africa (which was actually a sound stage in the wilds of darkest Burbank). Curly is to play a gorilla who is the love interest of the beautiful Mirabel Mirabel (the stunning but unfortunately little-known Jane Hamilton, who bears a strong resemblance to the equally stunning but better known Virginia Mayo). Moe and Larry are cast as cavemen who are competing with Curly for the charms of Mirabel Mirabel. Problems arise when a real gorilla show up on location.

This is one of the Stooges' most consistently funny outings. It's the first one directed by their producer, Jules White, who tended to go overboard on the violence but shows a much more restrained hand here. The scenes in the producer's office are hilarious, with Curly at the top of his game and the great James C. Morton, who often served as a foil for Laurel and Hardy, serving that purpose here and doing a terrific job of it. The routines on the "set" in Africa are among the Stooges' funniest.

All in all, a first-rate entry in the long-running series and one that holds up well with repeated viewings, something that many of their later entries didn't.

"Three Missing Links" is an American 18-minute live action short film from 1938, so this one has its 80th anniversary this year. Director is multiple Oscar nominee White, writer is Kramer and these two worked on quite a few Three Stooges short films like this one here. Like all the others, it is in black-and-white and as it is one of the earlier (but not earliest) entries, this is certainly still including Curly who looks young and healthy in here about a decade ago before Shemp had to replace him. The Stooges here enter the world of film while all they really wanted was cleaning the studio. So Moe and Larry end up playing natives and Curly was playing the role of a gorilla. This also shows you how Curly was still in the position of being the comedic star from the trio. What else? Oh yeah racism. The scenes with a Black actor here and the role he plays as well as Moe in black face makeup on one occasion show everybody what it should be like. No whining by politically correct sissies or those who are really offended by every minor thing at all while today the press would have stomped the Stooges and ended their careers for this short movie. But that this is a brave film does not mean it's a good one sadly. As always with the Stooges, realism is completely absent from the plot. And I still believe the Stooges, especially the underused Larry, are all much better actors than they are allowed to show us in their works. Maybe it would have helped if the scripts came from them too. Anyway, I am writing this as somebody who is generally not the biggest Stooges fan, so if you like them more usually, then maybe you will here as well. It's an interesting subject I guess, but most of the jokes weren't working and the one with the actually real gorilla went on for way too long. That's all I guess. I give this one, one of the Stooges' more, but not most, known short film a thumbs-down.