Malice in the Palace (1949)

Director:

Jules White

Writers:

Felix Adler (screenplay)
Felix Adler (story)

Release Date:

1 September 1949 (USA)

Genre:

Comedy | Short

Plot:

Set in a desert land where the stooges run a restaurant, the boys set out to recover the stolen Rootin...

Plot Keywords:

Diamond | Restaurant | Public Domain | Cook | Butcher

Cast

Shemp Howard	...	Shemp (as Shemp)
Larry Fine	...	Larry (as Larry)
Moe Howard	...	Moe (as Moe)
Vernon Dent	...	Hassan Ben Sober
George J. Lewis	...	Ginna Rumma (as George Lewis)
Frank Lackteen	...	Affa Dolla
rest of cast listed alphabetically:
Curly Howard	...	Chef (scenes deleted)
Everett Brown	...	Nubian Guard (uncredited)
Johnny Kascier	...	Emir of Schmow (uncredited)
Joe Palma	...	Guard outside palace (uncredited)

Directed by
Jules White

Writing credits (in alphabetical order)
Felix Adler		screenplay
Felix Adler		story

Produced by
Jules White	....	producer

Cinematography by
Vincent J. Farrar		(as Vincent Farrar)

Film Editing by
Edwin H. Bryant		(as Edwin Bryant)

Art Direction by
Charles Clague

Production Companies

• Columbia Pictures Corporation

Distributors

• Columbia Pictures (1949) (USA) (theatrical)
• Hollywood Home Theatre (1980) (USA) (VHS)
• Digital Disc Entertainment (1997) (USA) (DVD)
• Madacy Entertainment (1997) (USA) (DVD)
• BFS Video (2000) (USA) (DVD)
• Starcuts (2001) (USA) (DVD)
• Starcuts (2001) (USA) (VHS)
• Echo Bridge Home Entertainment (2003) (USA) (DVD)
• Alpha Video Distributors (2004) (USA) (DVD)
• Passport Video (2008) (USA) (DVD)
• GoodTimes Home Video (????) (USA) (VHS)
• Platinum Disc (????) (USA) (DVD)

Other Companies

• Screen Time Images  audio restoration
• Screen Time Images  film restoration

Also Known As:

Here We Go Shmow (USA) (working title)

Runtime:

16 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Recording)

Certification:

Australia:G

Company:

Columbia Pictures Corporation

Trivia:

Larry Fine's autobiography contains a photograph of Curly Howard as a chef in a deleted scene from this film. Curly had suffered a stroke a few years earlier and had left the act. He had clearly lost weight, and his face was disguised with a huge handlebar mustache.

Goofs:

Crew or equipment visible: After the table gets knocked over, a finger can briefly be seen under the leg of the table, poking at the cat to get it to leave the shot.

Quotes:

Moe: There's only one 100-carat diamond, and it comes from Rootin Tootin's Tomb.
Shemp: That's government property.
Moe: Right, and if we return it, we'll get a big reward.
Larry: Yeah! Maybe fifty-thousand bucks. Boy, with that kind of money, we could rent a one-room apartment in Hollywood... maybe.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Army of Darkness (1992)

I have never been a fan of Shemp, but this is still an excellent Stooges effort

Okay, when it comes to comedy I love the old silent stars as well as Laurel and Hardy BUT I never was a huge fan of the Stooges. Plus, after the incapacitation and subsequent replacement of Curly, my interest in their antics became even less--mostly because I missed Curly so much and he just wasn't replaceable. While Shemp wasn't quite as funny and many of his films were remakes of older Stooge films, he at least was considerably more entertaining than his replacements--the insipid Joe Besser and Joe DeRita. Both Joes were "comedians" who relied on schmaltz instead of slapstick. As a result of this, the edge was gone after Shemp died and NONE of these later films are worth seeing.

Fortunately, this Shemp film is one of the best ones--because of one particularly funny scene and because while parts of it were re-hashed, the overall story was still pretty fresh. In particular, I loved the long sequence in the restaurant that,...wait, I'd better not say, as I don't want to spoil the surprise. However, this film is funny and is worth seeing--even to a casual fan like myself.