General News

Photos from The Joe Besser Film Festival Yesterday in St. Louis

By Tom Stockman | June 10, 2013

“Not so haaaard!” was uttered several times yesterday as we celebrated the life and career of Joe Besser, the ‘St. Louis Stooge’ at the Esquire Theater in St. Louis. The film festival was part of a campaign to raise awareness in St. Louis that Joe Besser is one of us and to perhaps get him a star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame.

Attendance was strong at the fest yesterday with the crowd skewing older as though are the folks that remember Joe Besser who was born in 1907 and raised here, the 9th child of Morris and Fanny Besser up in Florissant. Joe Besser worked in vaudeville and Broadway and starred in his own comedy shorts for Columbia pictures before joining the Three Stooges in 1955 after Shemp Howard died suddenly. Besser would star in the last 16 Stooges shorts. After that Besser returned to films and television, most notably as superintendent “Jillson” on The Joey Bishop Show, and the voices of Babu in an animated version of I Dream of Jeannie and the character Putty Puss on the cartoon series The Houndcats. Joe Besser died of heart failure in 1988 at age 80.

Tom Stockman, publicist for the event, with Stooge fan Mike Dugge
Yesterday we showed Besser’s early shorts ARMY DAZE and FRAIDY CATS and the Stoooges shorts FLYING SAUCER DAFFY, A MERRY MIX-UP, and SAPPY BULLFIGHTERS! This was followed by a slide show featuring hundreds of rare photos of Joe Besser starring alongside Milton Berle, Abbott and Costello, and many more Hollywood stars. Abby Dalton, who costarred with Besser on the Joey Bishop Show TV series, called in and gave a nice remembrance of Besser over the phone. Two of Joe’s nieces were in attendance and asked questions from the audience and signed pictures of Joe with Larry and Moe. The Joe Besser Film Festival was a lot of fun. Thanks to everyone who attended.