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Woman Haters is the first 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.
Plot
The Stooges, employed as traveling salesmen, join the Woman Haters Club. After an induction ceremony involving eyepokes, they officially become members of the club. They swear never to get romantically involved with any woman. This pledge is short-lived. Jim (Larry) finds a woman, Mary (Marjorie White), falls in love, and has proposed marriage. Misogynists (Tom) Moe and Jackie (Curly) talk him out of it, but Mary's father threatens Jim by telling him the story of what he and his brothers had done to the fiancee of the man that was to marry his other, unattractive daughter. This convinces Jim to marry the attractive woman. Later, on a train ride, a confrontation escalates between the Stooges and Mary.
Mary uses her feminine charm to woo both Jackie and Tom in an attempt to make Jim jealous. She sings a theme ("for you, for you my love my life my all") with each of the stooges in turn, as she flirts with them. Each is attracted to her charms as she proves the oath they swore as Women Haters was fraudulent. Finally, Mary tells Tom and Jackie the truth, that she and Jim are married, and pushes her way into bed with the trio, knocking Tom and Jackie out of the train window in the process. The film closes as the Stooges, now old men, finally reunite (at the now empty Woman Haters headquarters) reaffirming their hatred of women.
Notes
- This was the sixth entry in Columbia's "Musical Novelty" series, and the whole film is done in rhyme. Jazz-Age style music plays throughout the entire short, with the rhymes spoken in rhythm with the music. The Three Stooges had different names in this short; Curly: Jackie, Moe: Tom, Larry: Jim.
- This is one of the few Stooge shorts that features Larry as the lead character. Others include Three Loan Wolves and He Cooked His Goose.
- Being the sixth in a “Musical Novelties” short subject series, the movie appropriated its musical score from the first five films. The memorable song “My Life, My Love, My All,” featured in this short, was originally “At Last!” from the film Um-Pa.
- Co-star Marjorie White [playing Larry's wife] died a year after this short in a car accident.
- Bud Jamison's character delivers the first "eye pokes" to the Stooges, as part of the initiation into the Woman Hater's Club. He pokes Larry in the eyes first, followed by Curly. Finally, he delivers an eye poke to Moe, who mistakenly blames Curly and promptly slaps him, igniting the first real Stooge brawl of the short films.
- This short includes a young Walter Brennan playing the train conductor being initiated into the Woman Haters club by Moe and Curly.
- Curly delivers his first "Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk" in this short, although it is not quite delivered in the eventual "classic" style.