Fiddlers Three (1948 film)
Three fiddlers face a magician to save a princess.
Fiddlers Three, a 1948 short film, was directed by Jules White and featured the Three Stooges—Moe Howard, Larry Fine, and Shemp Howard. This was the 107th of 190 shorts the slapstick trio made for Columbia Pictures from 1934 to 1959. The story follows three fiddlers serving as court musicians to Old King Cole, a figure linked to the 4th-century Romano-British leader Coel Hen. They are ordered to play at Princess Alicia’s spring wedding, but when an evil magician kidnaps her, the musicians fight him with swords, partly to save their own skins.
Quick Facts
- Director
- Jules White
- Writer
- Felix Adler
- Cinematography
- Allen G. Siegler
- Editing
- Edwin H. Bryant
- Distributor
- Columbia Pictures
- Released
- 6 May 1948, U.S.
- Country
- United States
- Language
- English
Facts from the source article.
Did You Know?
- Fiddlers Three is the 13th of 16 Stooge shorts with the word 'three' in the title.
- The film was remade in 1954 as Musty Musketeers, using ample stock footage.
- It was filmed on the existing set of the feature film The Bandit of Sherwood Forest.
Plot
In Coleslaw-vania, the Stooges serve as fiddlers at the court of Old King Cole, who has decreed that no marriages may occur until the springtime nuptials of Princess Alicia and Prince Gallant III of Rhododendron. The evil magician Murgatroyd abducts Princess Alicia for his own matrimonial plans. While fitting horseshoes on their horses, the Stooges discover the princess tied up and gagged on the castle floor. Murgatroyd gains King Cole's consent to marry Alicia on the condition that he retrieves her.
Moe and Larry create a diversion among the castle guards, allowing Shemp to free the princess. Their success is brief, as the Stooges and Alicia are soon captured by Murgatroyd and his accomplices. They attempt escape via a rope ladder from a magic box, enduring Murgatroyd's maleficent implements. The box collapses, dropping the Stooges just as Alicia reveals her abductor's identity.
A swordfight ensues between the Stooges and Murgatroyd. As Shemp drinks, water leaks from numerous perforations in his body, a result of Murgatroyd's enchantment during the Sword Box Illusion prestidigitation.
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