Brideless Groom is the 101st short subject starring American slapstick comedy team the Three Stooges. The trio made a total of 190 shorts for Columbia Pictures between 1934 and 1959.

Plot

Shemp plays a voice instructor and the object of affection to tone-deaf vocal student Miss Dinkelmeyer (Dee Green), with Larry is his musical accompanist. After an excruciating session, Moe enters his classroom to tell Shemp that his uncle had died and left him an inheritance of five hundred thousand dollars. Shemp cannot collect the money unless he is married (which horrifies Shemp) within 48 hours after the reading of the will. Shemp uses his filled-up black address book to propose to any and all women he has, with unsuccessful results. With only six hours to get married, Moe and Larry lead Shemp through a series of disastrous situations including the destruction of a phone booth and Shemp being beaten silly by a woman named Miss Hopkins (Christine McIntyre) who had just moved into the building.
Upon recovering from his bruising, Shemp unintentionally proposes to his unattractive and tone-deaf student Miss Dinkelmeyer. She happily accepts and the two of them, with Moe and Larry in tow, head over to the Justice of Peace (Emil Sitka) to get married. Shemp pulls out the wedding ring but accidentally loses it in the piano. Moe forces him to look, and in doing so, Shemp wrecks the piano completely. Eventually he finds the ring, and he is hustled to get married right away. However, the Stooges' building landlord calls Moe to tell him that news of Shemp's inheritance was printed in the paper and all of Shemp's Ex-girlfriends he called and proposed to found out about it and are all out looking for him. They all arrive at the Justice of Peace's office all looking to marry Shemp to get his money, whereupon chaos ensues. The women start fighting, taking out their aggressions not only upon themselves but upon the Stooges as well. Nonetheless Shemp, in a dazed state, ends up marrying his student, just in time to collect the money. Shemp comes to, is told what happened, and is frightened beyond reproach.

Notes

• The basic plot of Brideless Groom is not unique, having been used in (among others) Buster Keaton's 1925 comedy Seven Chances (remade in 1999 as The Bachelor (1999 film) starring Chris O'Donnell). Writer Clyde Bruckman was also partially responsible for Seven Chances.
• The film features longtime Stooges supporting player Emil Sitka's best-remembered line "Hold hands, you lovebirds!" (The line is engraved on Sitka's headstone.) The shot where Emil Sitka has a birdcage smashed on his head was worked into the 1994 movie Pulp Fiction (film) when Eric Stoltz is watching television.
• Brideless Groom would be recycled in the second half of 1956 in film's Husbands Beware.
• Brideless Groom is one of four Stooge shorts that fell into the public domain after the copyright lapsed in the 1960s (the other three being Malice in the Palace, Sing a Song of Six Pants, and Disorder in the Court). As such, these four shorts frequently appear on cheaply produced VHS or DVD compilations.
• In 2005, Brideless Groom was film colorization and included as one of the featured shorts on a Legend Films DVD compilation called Three Stooges, featuring wraparounds from The Film Crew. Sony/Columbia Pictures also Film colorization a restored version of this film that was released in 2007 as part of the DVD collection "Hapless Half-Wits."}}
  
  
  Category:1947 films
  Category:American films
  Category:English-language films
  Category:Black-and-white films
  Category:1940s comedy films
  Category:The Three Stooges films
  Category:Films directed by Edward Bernds