Friday, March 13, 2015

The Three Stooges for Simoniz (1960)

Remember Simoniz? Long eclipsed by Turtle Wax as one of the leading automobile polishes, Simoniz hired The Three Stooges (Moe Howard, Larry Fine, & Joe DeRita) for a series of ads in the 60's. Here's one:



Note how the slapstick had gotten softer due to the Stooges' advanced age.  DeRita's hair appeared to be growing back in this spot. Still lots of fun.

4 comments:

magicdog said...

The slapping does seem mild but I chalk that up to a lack of strong sound effects. The classic "Stooge Slap" sound was missing and affected the performance IMO.

hobbyfan said...

I'll have to check and see how many of these ads the Stooges did, and we'll find out for sure.

Mike Doran said...

Quite belatedly:

This was the only Simoniz ad with the Stooges.
It was part of an overall comic campaign for Instant Simoniz, with the car cleaner used for sight gags.
I can only recall two others in the set:
Harpo Marx working silently (off-screen narration by Bill Baldwin);
Peter Lorre mournfully cleaning his car, in front of a dark background.
There may have been more, but those are apparently lost.

hobbyfan said...

Thanks for the info.