Helen Dickson

Slippery Silks (1936) starring the Three Stooges (Moe Howard, Larry Fine, Curly Howard) and Vernon Dent

Slippery Silks begins with a photograph of the Three Stooges (Moe Howard, Larry Fine, Curly Howard) dressed as young children, which a lawyer is trying to use, with the help of the police, to find these three nephews of a recently-deceased man. “That’s the only photograph we could find among his effects.  The old man died very suddenly.”  “Probably took a look at the picture and couldn’t stand the shock.”  It turns out that the Three Stooges have inherited a “swanky dress shop.” In the meantime, those three missing nephews are working as “artistic woodworkers” where the rich Mr. Morgan (played by Three Stooges regular Vernon Dent) is bringing his $50,000 ornate box from a museum,  to have a duplicate made.  The inevitable destruction of that poor little Chinese box is hilarious, slowly building up to a crescendo of slapstick, and is the highlight of the film.