An Ache in Every Stake on AllMovie

The Three Stooges play ice delivery men in this comic short. It's a hot day, and they've been cooling off in the back of the truck; in fact, Curly has gotten his head stuck inside a block of ice. After the other two Stooges free him, he bowls a strike with another block of ice and some milk bottles. Finally he is put into service carrying some ice up a long, long flight of stairs (no, they're not the same stairs used in Laurel and Hardy's short, The Music Box, but they seem to be located in the same area of Los Angeles -- the Silverlake district). By the time Curly reaches the top, the ice block has melted into an ice cube. As a solution the boys bring the ice box down the stairs and load it up at the bottom -- a good idea except that near the top the filled cabinet goes barreling down the steps and smashes into a man (Vernon Dent) holding a cake. Up at the house, the Stooges annoy the cook into quitting, and the dismayed matron has no one to fix dinner for her husband's birthday party. The well-meaning Stooges volunteer their services, with the predictably disastrous results. The finale is a fresh cake, which the boys have pumped full of gas because it fell. With a huge blast it explodes, sending the Stooges back down the long, long flight of stairs.