Christine McIntyre: The Three Stooges’ Most Fetching Foil

The head-turning Christine McIntyre (1911-1984) was born on April 16th. Trained as an opera singer, her film career began in 1937, for the next seven years appearing in RKO musicals and B-movie westerns with the likes of Buck Jones and Crash Corrigan. In 1944 she got a ten year contract with the Columbia shorts department. Over the next decade, she appeared in scores of slapstick comedy shorts with the likes of Hugh Herbert, Bert Wheeler, Andy Clyde, Joe Besser, Shemp Howard (solo), and above all the act she is indelibly associated with: The Three Stooges.

The classy, gorgeous McIntyre was the source of many a burlesque inspired gag, often causing the boys to walk into walls or screw up whatever they were doing because they couldn’t take their eyes off her. Sometimes she played an innocent damsel in distress who needed to be rescued; at other times she was a femme fatale. Scenes of her singing in that wonderful soprano are a highlight of many a Stooges picture. Contrasting such scenes with the equally memorable sight of her giving the boys a triple slap is what made her an invaluable part of the ensemble. Still and all, when her contract ran out, so did she. She was tired of getting hit in the face with pies. She married radio producer J. Donald Wilson (a different guy from Jack Benny’s Don Wilson), whose credits included The Whistler and The Adventures of Nero Wolfe.  and retired for show business. But not before this happened:

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