The first response to my long post about Woody Allen came from Tom Schmidt. Here it is in its entirety…
You think Shemp was a better Stooge than Curly? Seriously?
Yeah. This is not something I feel strongly about but I have a lower opinion of Curly than most other folks who love the Stooges. Or maybe a better way to put that would be that in the Moe/Larry/Curly films, I value Moe and Larry more than most folks do. I think the films with Curly are generally better but that's mainly because of bigger budgets and better writing.
I certainly don't dislike Curly. I don't even dislike Joe Besser or Joe DeRita and when people say they weren't as funny in their films as Curly was in his, I point out that Moe and Larry weren't as funny in the Besser/DeRita films as they were in the ones with Curly, either.
The story of the Stooges' career is, for me, the story of a varying set of funny men who managed to still be entertaining even as the budgets and writing declined year after year after year and their films turned into cheap rearrangements of stock gags and stock footage. They were the guys who rode the two-reeler format all the way down to its demise. Shemp, to me, was the one who usually managed to be better than the material he was given.
But like I said, I don't feel that strongly about this. If you prefer Curly, we can still be friends.