''In the Sweet Pie and Pie'' is a 1941

short subject A short film is any motion picture that is short enough in running time not to be considered a feature film. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences defines a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes ...

directed by

Jules White Jules White (born Julius Weiss; hu, Weisz Gyula; 17 September 190030 April 1985) was a Hungarian-American film director and producer best known for his short-subject comedies starring The Three Stooges Early years White began working in mo ...

starring American

slapstick Slapstick is a style of humor involving exaggerated physical activity that exceeds the boundaries of normal physical comedy. Slapstick may involve both intentional violence and violence by mishap, often resulting from inept use of props such a ...

comedy team

The Three Stooges The Three Stooges were an American vaudeville and comedy team active from 1922 until 1970, best remembered for their 190 short subject films by Columbia Pictures. Their hallmark styles were physical farce and slapstick. Six Stooges appeared ...

(

Moe Howard Moses Harry Horwitz (June 19, 1897 – May 4, 1975), known professionally as Moe Howard, was an American actor and comedian. He is best known as the leader of The Three Stooges, the farce comedy team who starred in motion pictures and television ...

Larry Fine Louis Feinberg (October 5, 1902 – January 24, 1975), known professionally as Larry Fine, was an American actor, comedian, and musician. He is best known as a member of the comedy act the Three Stooges. Early life Fine was born to a Russian Je ...

and

Curly Howard Jerome Lester Horwitz (; October 22, 1903 – January 18, 1952), known professionally as Curly Howard, was an American actor and comedian. He was best known as a member of the American comedy team the Three Stooges, which also featured his elder ...

). It is the 58th entry in the series released by

Columbia Pictures Columbia Pictures Industries, Inc. is an American film production studio that is a member of the Sony Pictures Motion Picture Group, a division of Sony Pictures Entertainment, which is one of the Big Five studios and a subsidiary of the mu ...

starring the comedians, who released 190 shorts for the studio between 1934 and 1959.

Plot

Tiska (

Dorothy Appleby Dorothy Appleby (January 6, 1906 – August 9, 1990) was an American film actress. She appeared in over 50 films between 1931 and 1943. Career Appleby gained early acting experience as an understudy and a chorus member in plays in New York ...

), Taska (

Mary Ainslee Mary may refer to: People * Mary (name), a feminine given name (includes a list of people with the name) Religious contexts * New Testament people named Mary, overview article linking to many of those below * Mary, mother of Jesus, also calle ...

) and Baska (

Ethelreda Leopold Ethelreda Leopold (July 2, 1914January 26, 1998) was an American film actress. She appeared credited in approximately 65 films between 1934 and 1972. She also appeared in commercials. Leopold is familiar to modern viewers for her roles in seve ...

) Jones, three snippy

society A society is a group of individuals involved in persistent social interaction, or a large social group sharing the same spatial or social territory, typically subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations. Socie ...

girls, are willed a huge inheritance so long as they are married by a certain time and date, but their fiances postpone their engagements as they, along with the

Fleet Fleet may refer to: Vehicles *Fishing fleet *Naval fleet *Fleet vehicles, a pool of motor vehicles *Fleet Aircraft, the aircraft manufacturing company Places Canada * Fleet, Alberta, Canada, a hamlet England * The Fleet Lagoon, at Chesil Beach ...

, are bound for

Honolulu Honolulu (; ) is the capital and largest city of the U.S. state of Hawaii, which is in the Pacific Ocean. It is an unincorporated county seat of the consolidated City and County of Honolulu, situated along the southeast coast of the island ...

. Their shrewd lawyer Diggins (

Richard Fiske Thomas Richard Potts (November 20, 1915 – August 10, 1944), known professionally as Richard Fiske, was an American film actor. He appeared in over 80 films between 1938 and 1942. Career Born Thomas Richard Potts, Fiske was born to Frank a ...

) suggests they marry three death row inmates, the Mushroom Murder Gang (the Stooges) to retain the dough; once they are married, they get their inheritance, the convicts are hanged, and the girls can marry their fiances free and clear. The girls soon show up to the Stooges' cell and marry the three inmates, then the girls depart. (Moe and Curly, disappointed that they did not receive a wedding kiss, give each other a kiss instead.) The Stooges are brought to the scaffold at Hang-em'-all Prison as other prisoners watch from the stands. But the ropes break during the hanging attempt, and the Stooges and the warden are tangled in a mess below the scaffold. A message arrives saying the governor has pardoned the Stooges after Mickey Finn and his gang confessed to the Mushroom murders, and the boys are freed. As the girls celebrate their new bout of widowhood, the Stooges make their way into their house and make themselves at home. Mortified, the devious debutantes try to think up an excuse to divorce their new beaus and decide to force them to become society gentlemen, something they feel the Stooges will be unable to accomplish. However, the Stooges realize what their wives are up to and decide they need to succeed so their wives cannot throw them out. After enrolling the Stooges in an ill-fated dance lesson, and after finding them to be more accommodating to entering society, the girls turn to their lawyer again for help. They demand Diggins fix this mess they're in because he was the one who got them to marry the Stooges in the first place. He suggests that the girls throw a formal party, hoping the Stooges will make shambles of the evening. They do, and Diggins bribes the maître d’, Williams ( John Tyrrell) to hit Moe with a large cake to make it look like Moe was guilty. However, his plan fails as the girls' society friends sympathize with Moe and blame Williams for setting him up. The evening ends with the Stooges' first genuine

pie fight Pieing or a pie attack is the act of throwing a pie at a person. In pieing, the goal is usually to humiliate the victim while avoiding actual injury. For this reason the pie is traditionally of the cream variety without a top crust, and is rarel ...

. Diggins chastises the boys for their social ineptness and threatens to annul their marriages at once. However, the girls have had enough of Diggins and decide to keep the Stooges as their husbands. They, along with the Stooges and the other guests in attendance, strike back at Diggins by covering him in pie from head to toe.

Production notes

''In the Sweet Pie and Pie'' was filmed between April 30 and May 3, 1941.''In the Sweet Pie and Pie'' at threestooges.net
/ref> The film makes references to several popular songs/series' of the era: *Moe's comment "I am The Shadow" parodies the 1940 Columbia radio serial ''

The Shadow The Shadow is a fictional character created by magazine publishers Street & Smith and writer Walter B. Gibson. Originally created to be a mysterious radio show narrator, and developed into a distinct literary character in 1931 by writer Walter ...

''. *"Bill Stein," who broadcasts a "jerk-by-jerk" description of the hanging of the Mushroom Murder Mob, is a parody of real-life sportscaster

Bill Stern Bill Stern (July 1, 1907 – November 19, 1971) was an American actor and sportscaster who announced the nation's first remote sports broadcast and the first telecast of a baseball game. In 1984, Stern was part of the American Sportscaster ...

. *The title ''In the Sweet Pie and Pie'' is a play on the old song, "

In the Sweet By and By "The Sweet By-and-By" is a Christian hymn with lyrics by S. Fillmore Bennett and music by Joseph P. Webster. It is recognizable by its chorus: Background Bennett described the composition of the hymn in his autobiography. Per ...

"; the names of the sisters, Tiska, Taska, and Baska, were a play on the song, "

A-Tisket, A-Tasket "A Tisket A Tasket" is a nursery rhyme first recorded in America in the late nineteenth century. It was used as the basis for a very successful and highly regarded 1938 recording by Ella Fitzgerald, composed by Fitzgerald in conjunction with Al Fe ...

"; Curly's comment to Moe "I hear a rhipsody" parodies the 1940 song "

I Hear a Rhapsody "I Hear a Rhapsody" is a 1941 pop song that became a jazz standard, composed by George Fragos, Jack Baker, and Dick Gasparre. Written in 1940, in 1941 it was a top 10 hit for three separate artists, Charlie Barnet, Jimmy Dorsey and Dinah Shore. ...

". Footage was borrowed from earlier shorts and reused for ''In the Sweet Pie and Pie: *The dancing lesson sequence was lifted from ''

Hoi Polloi Hoi polloi (; ) is an expression from Greek that means "the many" or, in the strictest sense, "the people". In English, it has been given a negative connotation to signify the masses. Synonyms for ''hoi polloi'' include "the plebs" (plebeians) ...

''. *The cell block footage is later re-used in '' Beer Barrel Polecats''. *Several shots from the pie fight would later appear in ''

Pest Man Wins ''Pest Man Wins'' is a 1951 short subject directed by Jules White starring American slapstick comedy team The Three Stooges (Moe Howard, Larry Fine and Shemp Howard). It is the 136th entry in the series released by Columbia Pictures starring th ...

''. ''In the Sweet Pie and Pie'' marked the final appearance of supporting actor Richard Fiske. A perfect foil for the Stooges, Fiske's promising career was cut short when he was killed in action during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

Pie fights

recalled that the most grueling scenes in ''In the Sweet Pie and Pie'' involved pies:

References

External links

* *
''In the Sweet Pie and Pie''
a
threestooges.net
{{The Three Stooges 1941 films The Three Stooges films American black-and-white films Films directed by Jules White 1941 comedy films Columbia Pictures short films American slapstick comedy films 1940s English-language films 1940s American films