THIS IS AMERICA - If You Love Lucy and the Three Stooges, Then These Museums Are for You

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Welcome to THIS IS AMERICA in VOA Special English. I’m Steve Ember.

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And I'm Faith Lapidus. This week on our program, we tell you about some celebrity museums.

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Some museums present the best of high culture. These are not the museums we are going to talk about today. We are going to explore places where people can learn about the lives of famous entertainers from the past.

We start with a museum that is not even very easy to find. It opened in two thousand four in a building behind an office park and a food store near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Welcome to the Stoogeum. It honors the old comedy team the Three Stooges.

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Over the years there were more than three Stooges, but the best remembered team was Larry, Moe and Curly. The Three Stooges were popular in movies during the nineteen thirties and forties. They were on television in the fifties and sixties.
　

The Stoogeum is the headquarters of the Three Stooges Fan Club, with 2,000 members worldwide

They were known especially for their physical comedy -- things like hitting each other over the head while caught in some bad situation.

Fans can relive the group's history at the Stoogeum. About fifty thousand photographs and articles written about the Three Stooges are on display. The museum also has about twenty thousand other objects in its collection.

The Stoogeum is a public display of the personal collection of Gary Lassin. He began collecting items about the Three Stooges more than twenty-five years ago. That was after he met his future wife, Robin.

Gary Lassin always liked the Three Stooges. But his interest grew after he learned that Robin's grandfather was the brother of Larry Fine -- the Larry in Larry and Moe.

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Emil Sitka, second from left, is shown in an undated studio photo with the Three Stooges, from left, Shemp Howard, Larry Fine and Moe Howard

The Three Stooges got their start in the stage entertainment of the nineteen twenties known as vaudeville. The museum collection follows them from there through TV appearances in the nineteen seventies.

The collection include games, comic strips, comic book covers, theater posters, costumes, show scripts and an art gallery. The gallery has a room-size painting along with drawings of the Stooges made by famous artists. And the museum has an eighty-five seat theater that continually plays Three Stooges films.

People who want to visit the Stoogeum must make an appointment. Gary Lassin has a full time job, at a mail-order company. But there is no charge to see the collection. He just wants to share it with others.

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A museum in Branson, Missouri, honors Roy Rogers and his wife, Dale Evans. They entertained people for more than a half a century. Roy Rogers was called the King of the Cowboys. He sang and acted in cowboy movies beginning in the nineteen thirties. He and Dale later had their own television show.

The museum includes western hats, boots and saddles; family photographs; letters and recordings; and items from their movies and TV shows.

A statue of Roy Rogers' horse, Trigger, stands outside the museum. Inside the museum are mountings of Trigger; Dale Evans’ horse, Buttermilk; and their dog, a German shepherd named Bullet. These animals were among the most famous ever to appear in Hollywood movies.

The museum also has a cowboy-western show presented by Roy Rogers Junior. He talks about growing up with Roy and Dale. He also performs songs that his parents sang -- like the one at the end of their TV show in the nineteen fifties. Here are Roy Rogers and Dale Evans with "Happy Trails."

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Visitors at the Lucy-Desi Museum in Jamestown, New York

Another museum, this one in New York State, honors two other entertainers who were married to each other: Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz. The Lucille Ball-Desi Arnaz Center is in Jamestown, New York, where she was born.

Lucy and Desi are best known for their weekly television series "I Love Lucy" in the nineteen fifties. It was a situation comedy.

Plots often went like this: Lucy would get into some kind of trouble, often as a result of some attempt to break into show business. Her nightclub-entertainer husband, the Cuban-born Ricky (played by Desi) would get mad at her. Fred and Ethel, their friends who owned the building where they all lived, would get involved. And somehow there was always a funny ending.

The show has remained popular in repeats all these years. The museum says "I Love Lucy" has never been off