Suicide And The Three Stooges

I'm watching Vol. 5 of the collected short films of The Three Stooges, and I'm getting dangerously close to the end of Curly's tenure with the team. The episode I'm commenting about is "Rhythm and Weep," which is followed by two more Curly episodes. And he vanishes ¾ of the way through "Half Wit's Holiday," after he had a real life stroke. (Of course he makes a brief appearance in one other film, then that's it.)

So, my friends, that means it's going to be Shemp, Shemp, Shemp from there on... for quite a ways anyway. I think I'm ready for it.

I wanted to comment today on "Rhythm and Weep," since it has suicide as its theme much of the way through, the first half, I'd guess. I've just been reading the book by Kay Redfield Jamison on suicide, "Night Falls Fast" (I got it at Goodwill the other day), and of course now I'm seeing suicide everywhere I look ... including The Three Stooges!

I don't believe I've ever seen this episode before. Not unless it was when I was a little kid, because I definitely don't remember it. But there they are, supposed to be high up on a tall building, failures as actors, meaning to end it all by leaping to their deaths. They get up there and they meet three lovely actresses, also failures in show biz, who are also about to leap. When what to they hear? A guy up on the roof playing piano. So they dance and perform. (If you watch this episode when you're super tired, I'm sure it would be like a crazy dream, because it's one of the craziest episodes in places.)

The piano guy reveals that he is a producer, trying to get together a big production, and he hires the six performers before him. This leads to some stage dancing by the girls, then the Stooges dressed as women, with full make-up, looking quite seductive (ha ha). It's funny. Spoiler alert: The end is this, that the producer himself is crazy. Attendants come from a home to retrieve him and take him back, meaning the Stooges and the girls are once again performers. I can't remember if it ends with them threatening suicide again or not. Heck of an episode, except I could live without the production number by the girls.

Then in other suicide news, we have the report of Sylvia Plath's son in Alaska, now passed on.

So suicide is everywhere.

As for the book by Jamison, I'm up around page 80-something. It's gripping in places, including in the intro when she tells of a pact she had with a guy (both she and he were suicidal). They were to call one another if either felt suicidal, then get together and the one would try to talk the other out of it. But the pact didn't hold and the guy killed himself. The other gripping place is a chapter on a guy named Drew, in the Air Force or something, but he got some serious depression and other mental illness issues, and ended up killing himself. It's very interesting writing on a very important topic.

Jamison shows in a chart (this was published in 1999) that suicide is the number 2 cause of death of young women and number 4 cause of death for young men.