You Nazty Spy!

You Nazty Spy!
Directed by	Jules White
Produced by	Jules White
Written by	Felix Adler Clyde Bruckman
Starring	Moe Howard Larry Fine Curly Howard Richard Fiske Lorna Gray Dick Curtis Don Beddoe Floreine Dickson Little Billy John Tyrrell Bert Young Joe Murphy Eddie Laughton Al Thompson
Distributed by	Columbia Pictures
Release dates	January 19, 1940 (U.S.)
Running time	17:59
Country	United States
Language	English

You Nazty Spy! is the 44th short subject released by Columbia Pictures in 1940 starring American slapstick comedy team The Three Stooges (Moe Howard, Larry Fine and Curly Howard). The comedians released 190 short films for the studio between 1934 and 1959.

Plot

In the fictional country of Moronika, three munitions manufacturers — Messrs. Ixnay (Richard Fiske), Onay (Dick Curtis) and Amscray (Don Beddoe) — decide their country is in need of a change. They decide to implement a dictatorship, oust the king, and go about finding someone stupid enough to be a figurehead leader. Ixnay volunteers the three wallpaper hangers simultaneously working in his dining room—the Stooges.

Ixnay presents Moe Hailstone, Curly Gallstone, and Larry Pebble with the offer to run Moronika. Moe is instituted as the leader (the Adolf Hitler role), with Curly as Field Marshal "Gallstone" (representing Hermann Göring while also mimicking Benito Mussolini), and Larry as Minister of Propaganda Pebble (a representation of Joseph Goebbels). After his takeover, Hailstone proceeds to give a speech to the masses, cueing Larry to display signs reading "CHEERS", "APPLAUSE" and, accidentally, "HISS".

However, the daughter (Lorna Gray) of the overthrown king pays Hailstone a visit, going by the name Mattie Herring (a spoof of World War I spy Mata Hari). The Stooges eventually suspect her of being a spy, and sentence her to execution, though it does not occur.

Larry then cuts a round table while a dancer arrives and tells them the delegates have arrived for the round table meeting. The meeting goes wrong when Curly knocks the first two delegates unconscious. Later the king's daughter gathers a huge mob to storm Hailstone's palace. The trio quickly abdicate, inadvertently flee into a lion's den, and are eaten.

Significance

You Nazty Spy! satirized the Nazis and the Third Reich and helped publicize the Nazi threat in a period when the United States was still neutral about World War II, and isolationist sentiment was prevalent among the public. During this period, isolationist senators such as Burton Wheeler and Gerald Nye objected to Hollywood films on grounds that they were anti-Nazi propaganda vehicles designed to mobilize the American public for war. According to the Internet Movie Database, You Nazty Spy! was the first Hollywood film to spoof Hitler. It was released nine months before the Charlie Chaplin film The Great Dictator, which began filming in September 1939. You Nazty Spy! was filmed on December 5-9, 1939.^[1]

The Hays code discouraged or prohibited many types of political and satirical messages in films, requiring that the history and prominent people of other countries must be portrayed "fairly". Short films such as those released by the Stooges were subject to less attention than feature films.

Production notes

• The title is a parody of comedian Joe Penner's catchphrase "You Nasty Man!"^[2]
• Moe Howard, as "Moe Hailstone", became the first American actor to portray/imitate Adolf Hitler in a released film, although Chaplin's portrayal was recorded on film before the Stooges' film went into production.^[3]
• Both Moe Howard and Larry Fine cited You Nazty Spy! as their favorite Three Stooges short.^[4]
• You Nazty Spy! was followed by a sequel, I'll Never Heil Again, in 1941. Moronika would also appear in Dizzy Pilots.^[5]
• There is a historical pun when Larry says, "If I take Mickey Finlen, I better be rushin'." Curly replies, "Then quit stallin'." This is a reference to Finland, the Soviet Union, and Joseph Stalin, who was the leader of the Soviet Union.
• Larry Fine affects a limp for his role as a Joseph Goebbels-like propaganda minister (Goebbels walked with a limp due to a club foot).
• The names of the munitions manufacturers are Pig Latin for "Nix" (a slang term of that era), "No", and "Scram", which in turn were known by the audience as slang in their Pig Latin form.
• The parody of the Nazi banner with two snakes in the form of a swastika is captioned with the phrase "Moronika for Morons" which is a play on the Nazi slogan "Deutschland den Deutschen" (Germany for Germans).^[5]
• The Stooges—all Ashkenazi Jews—occasionally worked a word or phrase of Yiddish into their dialogue. In particular here, the Stooges make several overt Jewish and Yiddish cultural references:
  • The exclamation "Beblach!" used several times in the film is a Yiddish word meaning "beans".^[5]
  • "Shalom aleichem!", literally "Peace unto you" is a standard Hebrew greeting meaning "hello, pleased to meet you".^[5]
  • Moe: "We'll start a 'Blintzkrieg' (Blitzkrieg)". Curly: "I just love blintzes, especially with sour krieg." This is a reference to blintzes, an Ashkenazi Jewish dish, sometimes served with sour cream.
  • In Moe's imitation of a Hitler speech, he says "in pupik gehabt haben" (the semi-obscene "I've had it in the bellybutton" in Yiddish). These references to the Nazi leadership and Hitler speaking Yiddish were particularly ironic inside jokes for the Yiddish-speaking Jewish audience.^[4]
  • The name of the female spy Mati Herring is a play on the Yiddish and German name of soused herring, matjeshering.
• When Mr. Ixnay informs the Stooges of how to overthrow Moronika's monarchy, and suggests that the takeover of Moronika start with a "putsch", it refers to the historical Beer Hall Putsch, the real-world Nazi party attempt at a power grab in the Weimar Republic of 1923. Curly's response to Mr. Ixnay's suggestion, to explain it to Moe and Larry, was that "You 'putsch' your beer down, and wait for the pretzels".
• Curly red book of women's addresses and phone numbers has the overt sexual references "Ruby Clutch", "oh, oh oh! G" (bra size) and the unread "Tessie oomph 2 69", which were ignored by the censors. This was a dig at the attempt to censor The Great Dictator then in production.
• Curly Gallstone says "Let's go shoot the works" to Mati Herring when he takes her out to shoot her. Hermann Göring was known to be a morphine addict; this was a slang allusion to the intravenous injection of morphine.
• A colorized version of this film was released in 2004. It was part of the DVD collection entitled Stooged & Confoosed.^[6]
• You Nazty Spy was also the first Stooges short to bear a new opening title sequence, with the "Torch Lady" on the left-hand corner, standing on a pedestal where each step has printed out "Columbia," "Short Subject" and "Presentation," and the opening titles and credits are inside a box with rounded edges. This format will remain in effect through Booby Dupes.^[5]

References

1. You Nazty Spy! at threestooges.net
2. Davidson, Robert (2012). "ThreeStooges.net — you nazty spy!". threestooges.net. Retrieved August 18, 2012.
3. Epstein, Lawrence J. (2008). The Haunted Smile: The Story of Jewish Comedians in America. New York: PublicAffairs. ISBN 0786724927.
4. Lenburg, Jeff; Maurer, Joan Howard; Lenburg, Greg (1994). The Three Stooges scrapbook. New York: Citadel Press. ISBN 0-8065-0946-5.
5. Solomon, Jon (2002). The Complete Three Stooges: The Official Filmography and Three Stooges Companion. Comedy III Productions, Inc. ISBN 0-9711868-0-4.
6. The Three Stooges (2004). Stooged & Confoosed (DVD). Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. ASIN B0002A2WG8. OCLC 56190384.

External links

• You Nazty Spy! at the Internet Movie Database
• You Nazty Spy! at AllMovie
• You Nazty Spy! at threestooges.net
• Moe, Larry and Curly: Premature Anti-Fascists