We Want Our Mummy (1939), starring the Three Stooges (Moe Howard, Larry Fine, Curly Howard), Bud Jamison
We Want Our Mummy is a classic Three Stooges short film in every sense of the word. It contains classic slapstick comedy, great verbal humor, and wonderful interaction between Moe, Larry, and Curly. In a nutshell, the Three Stooges are detectives hired to find a missing professor … And unintentionally help the criminal move the professor out of the building. Undeterred, Three Stooges regular Bud Jamison sends our ever-optimistic Stooges to find the lost tomb of King Rootentooten, that only the missing professor knows how to find.
Never letting the impossible slow them down, the boys hop a taxi (!) and drive to Egypt.
After some clowning around in the desert, they accidentally find the tomb. After some frantic racing around the “haunted” tomb, Moe and Larry are caught … By some very human criminals. Moe and Larry escape, while Curly thinks that he’s found the mummy of Rootentooten. Who’s soon chasing the reunited Stooges. They’re soon chased into the burial chamber, and after some slapstick they think that Curly’s destroyed the valuable remains of Rutentooten. The criminals are inside the tomb as well, and so Curly impersonates the mummy. With luck, they rescue the professor and the real mummy. After a short encounter with a crocodile, they run out of the tomb and back to their waiting taxi.
We Want Our Mummy is a very funny Three Stooges short film, fast-paced and funny, with both slapstick and verbal humor – I enjoyed it very much, and hope that you do as well.
Also, there’s a lot of verbal humor – check it out in Funny Movie Quotes from We Want Our Mummy.
Trivia for We Want Our Mummy
- The voice on the taxicab radio is Moe Howard’s normal speaking voice.
- We Want Our Mummy is the first Stooge film to employ “Three Blind Mice” as the Stooges’ official theme song (the song also appeared somewhat prematurely in 1938’s Flat Foot Stooges, due to some confusion in that film’s release date). This version of “Three Blind Mice,” often affectionately known as the ‘sliding strings’ version, would be used regularly until 1942’s What’s the Matador?. An alternate version of the ‘sliding strings’ version would be used for a brief period starting with 1945’s If a Body Meets a Body.
- The title We Want Our Mummy is a play on a child’s cry, “I want my Mommy!”
- We Want Our Mummy marked the final appearance by longtime character actor James C. Morton; he died in 1942.
- The facetious name “Root’ Tootin'” resembles Tutankhamun and “Hotsy-Totsy” resembles Hatshepsut.