Flagpole Jitters

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Flagpole Jitters

Directed by	Jules White
Produced by	Jules White
Written by	Felix Adler Jack White
Starring	Moe Howard Larry Fine Shemp Howard Barbara Bartay Frank Sully Beverly Thomas Bonnie Menjum Mary Ainslee David Bond Vernon Dent
Cinematography	Irving Lippman
Editing by	Harold White
Distributed by	Columbia Pictures
Release date(s)	April 5, 1956
Running time	15' 15"
Country	United States
Language	English
Preceded by	Creeps
Followed by	For Crimin' Out Loud
Allmovie profile
IMDb profile

Flagpole Jitters is the 169th short subject starring American slapstick comedy team the Three Stooges. The trio made a total of 190 shorts for Columbia Pictures between 1934 and 1959.

Original poster for Flagpole Jitters.

[edit] Plot

The Stooges are three paperhangers who also look after invalid Mary, who is confined to a wheelchair. While working, they are taken by one poster that advertises a great hypnotist, Svengarlic ("He'll steal your breath away!" the poster announces). The Stooges want the hypnotist to work his magic on Mary so that she can walk again, but Svengarlic is more interested in winning an audience to create a diversion by hypnotizing the Stooges. While the audience watches the Stooges dance on an overhead flagpole, Svengarlic's henchmen are in the process of robbing a bank. But a distracted bicyclist knocks Svengarlic over and the Stooges are abruptly awakened. They immediately panic when they see where they are, then the flagpole breaks, sending them flying through the open window of the bank being robbed, thwarting the theft.

[edit] Notes

The Stooges make an amusing reference to Sing Sing Correctional Facility, in which Shemp believes he has hypnotized Moe into thinking he is locked up in the infamous prison.
The character name Svengarlic is a parody of Svengali, the name of a fictional character in George du Maurier's 1894 novel Trilby.
Flagpole Jitters is a reworking of 1949's Hokus Pokus using ample stock footage from the original. In particular, the two pictures have very different endings: Mary is actually paraplegic here, whereas in the original she was a fraud. Here, Svengarlic is the fraud.

[edit] Further reading

Moe Howard and the Three Stooges; by Moe Howard [1], (Citadel Press, 1977).
The Complete Three Stooges: The Official Filmography and Three Stooges Companion; by Jon Solomon [2], (Comedy III Productions, Inc., 2002).
The Three Stooges Scrapbook; by Jeff Lenburg, Joan Howard Maurer, Greg Lenburg [3] (Citadel Press, 1994).
The Three Stooges: An Illustrated History, From Amalgamated Morons to American Icons; by Michael Fleming [4](Broadway Publishing, 2002).
One Fine Stooge: A Frizzy Life in Pictures; by Steve Cox and Jim Terry [5], (Cumberland House Publishing, 2006).
The Three Stooges: The Triumphs and Tragedies of the Most Popular Comedy Team of All Time, by Jeff Forrester, Tom Forrester, Joe Wallison. [6], (Donaldson Books, 2004).

Shemp flips the sunnyside down eggs over his shoulder onto Moe's face. Shemp then asks "Hey, Moe, where'd you get the sunglasses?"