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"Loco Boy Makes Good" (1942, short number 60 in the Columbia series) is a cut above the average entries. Trying out an insurance scam, the boys find themselves helping a little old lady get her hotel on a paying basis to save the mortgage. Somehow on $52 and a pickpocketed watch, they manage to do a wonderful job; but when their act does not appeal to the ritzy audience, a series of mistakes with a magician's jacket and their natural stupidity save the day. There is an incident in which Curly acts very human, walking out when a drunk hits him with a tomato. A very interesting look at the Stooges as performers.
"Matri-Phony" (1942, number 63) has much to offer. We have the ancient Roman setting replete with anachronisms, Vernon Dent (without mustache) as the Emperor Octopus Grabbus, the old routine of manipulating an unconscious body from behind a screen, a variation on the living oyster in the soup routine (here, a crab), and Curly in drag being chased by the "husband" around the room. But with little plot, there is the all-too-usual non-ending.
"Saved by the Belle" (1939, number 40) has the boys trying to sell fur coats to the natives of a sleepy but earthquake-prone town south of the border. Of course, there is a revolution about to break out and attractive Carmen LaRoux enlists them to obtain a secret map to the leader. The leader turns out to be the hotel owner that they stiffed only a short while before, and they are taken away to be shot. The unusual bit is Curly's reference to his real-life wife, Elaine. The rest is good Stooging with a simple plot to tie the routines together. --Frank Behrens
