Many Three Stooges fans have taken to various online forums to declare \u201cSweet and Hot\u201d as the team\u2019s worst film. It isn\u2019t \u2013 not by a long shot \u2013 but, admittedly, it is an experiment that didn\u2019t quite work.
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The problem is that \u201cSweet and Hot\u201d deviates wildly from the usual Three Stooges structure, with the trio split up as independent characters supporting Muriel Landers, an amply proportioned singer and comic actress. Columbia Pictures recruited Landers for a short subject series where she would be teamed with starlet Bek Nelson. However, only one film \u2013 the 1957 \u201cTricky Chicks\u201d \u2013 was produced in that series and Landers was shuttled over to the Stooges\u2019 series, which had undergone a personnel change with Joe Besser replacing the late Shemp Howard.<\/p>\n
With \u201cSweet and Hot,\u201d Larry is a successful New York City producer who wants to bring the singing Landers (playing a farm girl named Tiny) to the Big Apple for a nightclub engagement \u2013 Joe is Tiny\u2019s brother, but he is unable to convince Tiny to leave the farm and overcome her phobia of singing in front of people. Larry and Joe take Tiny to the psychiatrist Dr. Hugo Gansamacher, who is played by Moe with an outlandishly bogus German accent. The Teutonic shrink uncovers the core of Tiny\u2019s phobia \u2013 her abusive father (also played by Moe) punished her when she complained that she was uncomfortable performing for an audience. (The flashback has Landers pretending to be a child \u2013 it is silly but not funny.) With her phobia immediately erased, Tiny becomes a nightclub sensation with Larry and Joe joining her act.<\/p>\n
Landers was a very talented performer \u2013 she was paired with Ray Bolger in his nightclub act and appeared on television with Frank Sinatra and Jack Benny \u2013 but a lot of the humor in \u201cSweet and Hot\u201d consists of puerile jokes regarding her girth. Even her character\u2019s name is a childish slur against her heaviness. Her nightclub rendition of \u201cThe Heat is On\u201d was borrowed from \u201cTricky Chicks\u201d and she displays a sassy sense of humor in belting out a torch song. It\u2019s a shame that her teaming with the Stooges wasn\u2019t fully concentrated in a nightclub setting where Landers could have been seen at a better advantage. <\/p>\n
If there is a saving grace to \u201cSweet and Hot,\u201d it would be Moe Howard\u2019s zany German psychiatrist. With his hair slick back and his eyes lost behind bottlecap-thick glasses, he offers a grand burlesque of the stereotypical German medical professional. And even funnier is when he declares that he can do rock-n-roll dancing, only to break into bizarre hopping movements that neither rock nor roll.<\/p>\n
As for Larry Fine (whose hair is also combed back) and Joe Besser (who reportedly encouraged his teammates to forgo their trademark haircuts for the film), they are doing a double act in \u201cSweet and Hot\u201d with Larry as the aggressor. But splitting up the Stooges from their usual protocol never clicked and Besser didn\u2019t fit it in well with the knockabout aspects of the act.<\/p>\n
Columbia dropped Landers after \u201cSweet and Low\u201d was released and she mostly confined her later work to television, most notably in a jolting performance on the \u201cTwilight Zone\u201d episode \u201cA Piano in the House\u201d and in an early episode of \u201cRowan & Martin\u2019s Laugh-In\u201d \u2013 it\u2019s a shame that she didn\u2019t gain tenure as part of that show\u2019s ensemble, because she was a gifted performer who always brightened up a show. <\/p>\n