Pop Goes the Easel is a 1935 short subject directed by Del Lord starring American slapstick comedy team The Three Stooges (Moe Howard, Larry Fine and Curly Howard). It is the seventh entry in the series released by Columbia Pictures starring the comedians, who released 190 shorts for the studio between 1934 and 1959.
Amidst the economic turmoil of the Great Depression, the Stooges, facing dire unemployment, embark on a desperate quest for livelihood. Their initial plan is to undertake menial labor by borrowing a merchant's brooms to sweep his sidewalk, but this unexpectedly angers the merchant who thinks they are stealing the brooms. He calls for police and the trio find themselves pursued by a law enforcement officer.
In a bid to evade capture, the Stooges seek refuge within the confines of an art school. Donning smocks, berets, and false whiskers in order to disguise themselves as art students, they partake in impromptu art lessons while evading detection by the persistent police officer.
The trio's mishaps include Larry falling out of a window and Moe's destruction of a fellow student's painting. Larry's attempt to create a painting by hurling handfuls of clay at a canvas initiates a clay fight among the Stooges that quickly escalates to a riotous melee in which student artists, models, and bystanders alike are pelted with clay. The film concludes with the trio enduring a resounding defeat at the hands of vengeful artists.
Pop Goes the Easel marks several Stooge firsts:
The title of the film Pop Goes the Easel is a pun on the nursery rhyme "Pop Goes the Weasel", which is used for the one and only time as the opening theme. The film also ends with the tune, as with the ending of Punch Drunks. It was filmed on February 6âÂÂ11, 1935.
The two girls playing hopscotch on the sidewalk are Larry Fine's daughter, Phyllis (who died in 1989 at age 60) and Moe Howard's daughter, Joan (Who died in 2021 at the age of 94).
A colorized version of Pop Goes the Easel was released in 2006 as part of the DVD collection entitled "Stooges on the Run".
According to the updated version of the book The Three Stooges Scrapbook, there was an alternate clay fight in the script by Jules White. It was listed as unused or edited. A careful viewer of the clay fight can see some places where the two clay battles were filmed and edited to make one battle. Differences include: The female model is standing in the foreground close to the screen at the beginning, but when she's hit with clay she's standing in front of the windows. She's brunette throughout the whole short, but at the ending, her hair is blonde. As the Stooges walk through the studio, there are spots on the wall made from clay. The officer who was chasing them is out cold and struck with a piece of clay, but later is shown getting his toupee knocked off his head (from a thrown piece) as he is throwing clay.