The Yoke's on Me

One particular Three Stooges film found itself banned on many syndicated television stations in the late 1970s reasoning it jarred the sensibilities of the Japanese people. The short movie in question was May 1944's "The Yoke's on Me," released at the height of World War Two. Those bothered by the closing segment felt it ridiculed Japanese-Americans who were incarcerated in federal relocation camps in the Western states during the war. The final sequence of the Stooges' 79th Columbia Pictures short film depict escapees from a nearby confinement facility intruding in the trio's recently-purchased farmstead.

One stereotype held by some Americans on the Japanese during the war is they all shared the distinction of having buck teeth. The actors playing the escapees all sport elongated front teeth, further enflaming a number of executives at the TV networks and stations to take the action of blacklisting the episode, a practice which remains to this day. However, "The Yoke's on Me" has been available on videotape and other home media for the public to see. The Jules White-directed and Clyde Bruckman-written script opens with the Stooges ineligible for the draft because of Curly's water on the knee. Spurred on by their parents, played by the acting couple Robert and Eva McKenzie, both stage and movie actors dating back to the silent era, the Stooges buy a farm from an anxious owner waiting to find a sucker to unload his dilapidated homestead. The Stooges elicit bellyful of laughs as they bumble around the farm, discovering the livestock promised in the sale is scant. They did find a domesticated ostrich which provides Curly feathers for his memorable 'fan-dance' routine. And they stumble upon plenty of pumpkins, prompting them to carve several into Halloween Jack-O'-Lanterns. The pumpkins make their way onto the heads of the escapees, causing all sorts of chaos.