A ho ho ho holiday event

A belly laugh is a wonderful thing. But there is something even more magical when an entire movie theater shares one.

For the holidays, the American Cinematheque is serving up nine nights of belly laughs with its “Too Much Monkey Business: The Marx Bros., Abbott & Costello and the Three Stooges!” festival. The family-friendly retrospective, which begins tonight, includes 17 feature comedies and 14 short subjects starring three of the greatest movie comedy teams of all time. All were masters of slapstick and wordplay.

In the case of Bud Abbott and Lou Costello, it’s a rare chance to see any of the former vaudevillians’ comedy films from the 1940s and ‘50s on the big screen.

“This is a unique opportunity to get reacquainted or get acquainted for the first time with Abbott & Costello,” says Mike Schlesinger, vice president of Sony Pictures Repertory, who programmed the Three Stooges shorts and made suggestions to the Cinematheque about the Abbott & Costello films. “They have really fallen off the radar. People don’t realize how funny they were.”

Perhaps best known for their baseball comedy sketch “Who’s on First?,” Abbott & Costello were the most popular movie comedy team of the 1940s and early 1950s. The festival will show some of their best vehicles, including 1941’s “In the Navy”; “Pardon My Sarong” and “Who Done It?,” both from 1942; and 1948’s “Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein.”

Chris Costello, daughter of Lou Costello, says that the comedy team’s films get far more exposure on the East Coast. “The whole eastern corridor of the United Sates, New York and New Jersey, they grew up with Abbott and Costello on [TV station] WPIX,” she says. “If you go back East, it’s like night and day. You have a festival and they come out in droves. Once a year I go back to Fort Lee, N.J., for the annual Abbott & Costello film festival, and it’s not just adults who come but adults bringing kids. They were New Jersey boys, and Dad especially never forgot his roots.”

At the recent Fort Lee festival, she says, fans told her that seeing the team’s movies gave them comfort.

“They see the world and how sad it’s become ... and they come into a theater to watch a black-and-white Abbott & Costello film, and it takes them back to their youth.

“I think what I appreciate about the comedy back then versus today is comedy today is very crude,” Costello adds. “You can’t take an entire family to it.”

“Nobody is making those kind of comedies anymore,” agrees Arthur Marx, son of Groucho Marx. “My father would be surprised [at the longevity of the films]. He was always discouraged with the movie business anyway. He retired because he didn’t want to make any more movies. He didn’t think anyone was interested in them. That’s why he went into television.”

The festival will highlight four of the five films Groucho, Harpo, Zeppo and Chico made at Paramount, including the 1933 war satire “Duck Soup” -- which, though it bombed upon release, is one of the favorites of fans today. Also included are the two best films from their tenure, sans Zeppo, at MGM: 1935’s “A Night at the Opera” and 1937’s “A Day at the Races.”

The Three Stooges are probably the most misunderstood of the three comedy teams. Those who aren’t really familiar with their comedy think that it consists solely of them hitting and slapping one another silly.

“If you watched any fairly decent portion of their body of work, you’d find that’s largely a myth,” Schlesinger says. “What you will find is that Moe will slap somebody as a comic after-beat for a joke that’s already been told. There was also a lot of clever dialogue.”

Seeing their shorts on the big screen is something of a revelation for those who have only watched them on television, because the gags were timed for an audience’s reaction.

“They knew how to build the gags one on top of the other,” Schlesinger says. “They are so precisely timed for a theatrical venue, when you watch it on television it doesn’t seem quite right. Sometimes the jokes seem too fast and others too slow.”

Not only does the festival feature early Stooge shorts with Curly, but also the much maligned Shemp Howard, Moe and Curly’s older brother, who replaced Curly after his stroke.

“Shemp is long overdue for a reappraisal,” Schlesinger says. “He was an extraordinarily talented comedian. The reason a lot of people think Shemp is inferior to Curly is that he’s a different comedian altogether. He is older, and he was probably a little too much like Moe.”

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Too Much Monkey Business

The Marx Bros., Abbott & Costello and the Three Stooges!

Where: Egyptian Theatre at the American Cinematheque, 6712 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood

When: Today through Jan. 2

Price: $9; $8, seniors and students; $6, members

Contact: (323) 466-FILM or www.egyptiantheatre.com

Schedule

7:30 tonight: “Animal Crackers,” “Buck Privates” and “A Plumbing We Will Go”

5 p.m. Saturday: “Duck Soup,” “In the Navy” and “You Nazty Spy!”

5 p.m. Dec. 26: “Horse Feathers,” “Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein” and “Violent Is the Word for Curly”

7:30 p.m. Dec. 27: “Monkey Business,” “Pardon My Sarong” and “Oily to Bed, Oily to Rise”

7:30 p.m. Dec. 28: “A Night at the Opera,” “Who Done It?” and “Micro-Phonies”

7:30 p.m. Dec. 29: “A Day at the Races,” “Hold That Ghost!” and “Playing the Ponies”

7:30 p.m. Dec. 30: “The Three Stooges 70th Annivoisary!,” “Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff”

5 p.m. Jan. 1: “Abbott & Costello Meet the Invisible Man,” “The Three Stooges in Orbit” and “The Ghost Talks”

5 p.m. Jan. 2: “Abbott & Costello Meet the Mummy,” “The Three Stooges Meet Hercules” and “We Want Our Mummy”