LYNN — Wright Museum of World War II Outreach Coordinator Dan Schroeder will present his lecture on “The Three Stooges Take on the Axis Powers” in the Grand Army of the Republic Hall and Museum (G.A.R.) on May 13.
Schroeder, a Lynn native, graduated from St. Mary’s High School, and went to the U.S. Army out of the recruitment station in Lynn, he said.
“I grew up in this city; I have a history with it,” said Schroeder.
Inspired by all the great lecturers at the Wright Museum — a nonprofit dedicated to recognizing and honoring the contributions and enduring legacy of WWII-era Americans — Schroeder soon realized he wanted to do a lecture too, but he couldn’t come up with a topic.
“One day I came home, sat down, turned on the TV, and it was ‘The Three Stooges’ short ‘You Nazty Spy!’ and I said, there is my lecture,” said Schroeder.
Contrary to a widespread belief that it was Charlie Chaplin who first made fun of Adolf Hitler, it was the Three Stooges who did it first, according to Schroeder. An urban legend even read that when Hitler found out, he put the Three Stooges on the dead list along with former U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Winston Churchill, and Soviet Union political leader Josef Stalin.
“I’ve come to believe that that’s just an urban legend, but because Nazi Germany copied American Hollywood, they probably were aware of it,” said Schroeder.
“The first time I did it, I was petrified. I got there early, and I set up my things, brought my notes, and my DVD, then I walked around my museum, I came back five minutes before it started, and we had a 60-seat theater — it was full,” said Schroeder about his first lecture at Wright Museum in New Hampshire.
Next time the organizers had to put extra chairs to accommodate all the people who came, and at the following occasion, Schroeder had to give two lectures, one after another, for the first time in the history of the museum.
The first lecture in his six-part series focused on two shorts, “You Nazty Spy!” (1940) and “I’ll Never Heil Again” (1941), and it lasted for about an hour. In his lectures, Schroeder tells the history of the Three Stooges and shares fun facts about them, such as there were not three stooges, but six of them, or that some of the movie icons of the time appeared on the show.
“Lucille Ball said that she learned to take a pie on the face from the Three Stooges,” said Schroeder.
For his appearance at the G.A.R. museum, Schroeder picked two shorts on the American Civil War — “Uncivil Warrior” (1935) and “Uncivil War Birds” (1936). He said he will be connecting the two wars — WWII and the Civil War — in his lecture.
Schroeder has already visited other states of New England with his “The Three Stooges” series, and he also presented it at the National WWII Museum in New Orleans. For more information on the museum, visit https://www.wrightmuseum.org.
“The Three Stooges” was a slapstick-comedy series that started in Vaudeville. It then became so popular that when contracted by Columbia Pictures in 1934, people went to see them instead of the movies.
“There were A-movies, big-name movies, and then there were B-movies, and to make theaters take the B-movies, if they wanted ‘The Three Stooges’ short they had to take the B-movie,” said Schroeder.
In 1958-59, Columbia sold the show to television for $13 million, and “they became so popular they were among the highest-paid live entertainers during the ’60s, same pay as people like Frank Sinatra (and) Elvis Presley,” according to Schroeder, who watched them “growing up all the time.”
“I am a self-proclaimed stoogeholic,” Schroeder said.
