Eye pokes and rabbit holes with Three Stooges connoisseur Gary Lassin

The Stoogeum curator matter-of-factly breaks down ‘A Tour De Farce: The Complete History of the Three Stooges on the Road,’ his colossal coffee table tome honoring the screwball 1923–1974 exploits of Curly Howard, Larry Fine, Moe Howard, Shemp Howard, Joe Besser, and Curly Joe DeRita

“Contact? Contact!” Moe Howard and Curly Joe DeRita absurdly lift a fearful Larry Fine into the engine of an American Airlines Boeing jet at Idlewild Airport, since renamed in tribute to John F. Kennedy, on Aug. 28, 1961. The Three Stooges were on their way from Queens to start a week’s residency at Freedomland, a former theme park in the Bronx, and were considerate enough to pause and allow a lucky shutterbug to click away. Photography by Metropolitan Photo Service / Courtesy of The Stoogeum / appears on page 504 of “A Tour De Farce: The Complete History of the Three Stooges on the Road”

If The Rolling Stones have their 1989 Steel Wheels tour dates widely available on the back of a T-shirt, what’s stopping the Three Stooges? In actuality, the most vital elements of the knee-slapping comedy team had been dead for almost a quarter century and last performed together during an inconsequential minor league baseball tournament in Tucson on July 23, 1969. The revelation nonetheless took root as Gary Lassin waited in line and spotted the commemorative shirt in the late ’90s.

The future archivist’s fascination for the Jewish funnymen has existed since he was a Baby Boomer kid with a mere three TV channels for companionship near Philadelphia. Seeing Curly go bananas whenever he heard “Pop Goes the Weasel” in Punch Drunks and bicycling over to the Plymouth Meeting cinema to catch the Stooges’ final full-length movie, The Outlaws…