Snow White and the Three Stooges

Snow White and the Three Stooges is a feature-length The Three Stooges theatrical film. It was released in theaters on May 26, 1961 by Columbia Pictures in North America and by 20th Century Fox overseas. It was re-released in theaters on May 26, 1972, and was released on Betamax and VHS in the United States and Canada by Columbia Pictures Home Entertainment on October 15, 1980. The film was given a "PG" (Parental Guidance Suggested) rating from the Motion Picture Association of America due to some adventure violence.

Plot
Once upon a time, in the kingdom of Fortunia, a noble king and his lovely young queen lack but one blessing to make their joy complete. The queen gives birth to a daughter named Snow White, but dies soon after. The king mourns her, but in time, he remarries because of the pleading of his people. His new Queen is a beautiful, but evil woman who soon becomes jealous of Snow White's beauty.

On her 17th birthday, Snow White's father dies and the wicked queen immediately imprisons her. Eventually, the wicked queen's jealousy of her stepdaughter becomes so great that she orders her killed. Snow White escapes her hired assassin and finds refuge in the empty cottage of the seven dwarfs, soon to be joined by the Three Stooges, who are traveling to the castle with their ward Quatro. But the boy they have raised since childhood (also narrowly escaping an assassination attempt by the wicked queen) is in reality Prince Charming, who thought he had lost his memory, is betrothed to Snow White.

Snow White and Prince Charming fall in love, but the wicked queen has him kidnapped when she suspects his true identity. Disguised as cooks, the Stooges attempt to rescue him, but he falls from a staircase in the palace and is presumed dead. Meanwhile, the wicked queen learns from her magic mirror that Snow White is still alive. With the help of wizard Count Oga, she transforms herself into a witch and succeeds in getting Snow White to take a bite from a poisoned apple.

As she rides back to the palace, she encounters the Stooges, and thanks to an inadvertent wish they make on a magic sword (stolen from Count Oga), she crashes her broom into a mountainside and falls to her death. The Stooges then find the poisoned Snow White, but they do not bury her. Instead, they place her on a bed, and pray to her each day. Meanwhile, Prince Charming (Quatro) has not died from his fall. Instead, he is saved by a group of men who want to revolt against the Evil Queen's rule over Fortunia. As Quatro recovers, he realizes that his memory has returned, and so he knows that he is indeed Prince Charming, and that Snow White is the princess he was destined to marry.

After leading a successful revolt which places him on the throne of Fortunia, Prince Charming sends out searchers to find Snow White and the Stooges, unaware that, thanks to yet another inadvertent wish on Count Oga's sword, they are no longer in the country of Fortunia. All searches are fruitless, and Prince Charming is close to giving up hope when he learns of the Evil Queen's magic mirror. The mirror responds truthfully to the desperate Prince's pleas, and Prince Charming leaves on his journey. He arrives at the Stooges' cabin just in time to dispel the effects of the poisoned apple. Snow White and Prince Charming are married and live happily ever after.

Trivia

 * This was the first of several things:
 * The first The Three Stooges film shot in color.
 * The feature-length Three Stooges production released on home video in the United States and Canada.
 * This was the only Three Stooges film shot in CinemaScope.
 * This movie used the ice rink that was seen in Sonja Henie's 1941 movie Sun Valley Serenade, which was also released by 20th Century Fox. It had been kept under the floor of Fox's Sound-stage 15.
 * Both Columbia Pictures (the North American distributor) and 20th Century Fox (the international distributor) attributed this film's financial failure to it being aimed at a juvenile audience. In 1961, the average child movie admission was only 50-cents. Since this film's budget ballooned to around $3.5 million, it would have had to sell about 15 million children's tickets in the U.S. merely to recoup its budget. Since it fell far short of that mark, Olympic skating champion Carol Heiss never made another movie, and all subsequent Three Stooges features were made in black-and-white rather than the more costly Technicolor.
 * This was the most expensive The Three Stooges movie ever made.
 * Columbia Pictures and 20th Century Fox both hoped Carol Heiss would duplicate Sonja Henie's success in films during the 1940's, since they were both Olympic champions. But although Heiss made several appearances in sports documentaries and variety TV shows, this would be her only feature film.
 * Snow White's (Carol Heiss) uncredited singing voice was dubbed by Norma Zimmer (of Lawrence Welk fame), while perennial "voice ghost" Bill Lee dubbed the Prince's (Edson Stroll) singing voice.
 * Originally budgeted at $750,000, the film ended up costing $3,500,000.

Goofs

 * When the Three Stooges play music to Snow White, Curly Joe plays a concertina, an instrument that was not invented until 1844.
 * When Snow White escapes to the cottage of the Seven Dwarfs, she is scared by the animals in the forest. One of them is a puma, an animal from America.