Vernon Dent

Acting

Vernon Dent

Born — Died

1895-02-15 — 1963-11-05

Place of birth

San Jose, California, USA

Known for

Acting

Credits

65 titles

Vernon Bruce Dent (February 16, 1895 – November 5, 1963) was an American comic actor, who appeared in over 400 films. He co-starred in many short films for Columbia Pictures, frequently as the foil and the main antagonist and ally to The Three Stooges.

Known for

Film credits

1950s · 6 titles

Knutzy Knights poster
6.5

Set in Elizabethan times, the stooges help their friend Cedric the Blacksmith win the hand of the fair princess Elaine. The only problem is that Elaine is promised to the Black Prince who is plotting to take over the kingdom. The stooges manage to foil the plot and the grateful King allows Cedric to marry Elaine.

Knutzy Knights

1954

The Tooth Will Out poster
6.6

The stooges graduate from dental school and go out west to open a practice. Everything goes well until Shemp "cures" an outlaw's toothache from the instructions in a carpentry book, and the boys must leave on the run.

The Tooth Will Out

1951

Pals and Gals poster
5.8

The stooges go out west for Shemp's health. The boys soon run afoul of a local villain who is forcing pretty Nell to marry him. The bad guy has Nell's sisters locked up, and its up to the stooges to rescue them and save the day.

Pals and Gals

1954

Rumpus in the Harem poster
5.7

Set in a desert land where the stooges run a restaurant, the boys need money to pay their fiancée's taxes, or the girls will be sold as slaves. Some crooks come into their restaurant and convince the boys to recover the stolen Rootin Tootin diamond. The stooges decide to return the diamond to the government and get the reward money. They learn that the Emir of Shmo has absconded with the contraband jewel. They journey to the stronghold of Shmo where they disguise as Santa Clauses and scare the ruler into giving them the diamond.

Rumpus in the Harem

1956

The Golden Age of Comedy poster
7.1

A compilation featuring comedic stars of the silent era including Will Rogers, Laurel and Hardy, and the Keystone Cops.

The Golden Age of Comedy

1957

The Good Humor Man poster
6.3

Biff Jones is a driver/salesman for the Good Humor ice-cream company. He hopes to marry his girl Margie, who works as a secretary for Stuart Nagel, an insurance investigator. Margie won't marry Biff, though, because she is the sole support of her kid brother, Johnny. Biff gets involved with Bonnie, a young woman he tries to rescue from gangsters. But Biff's attempts to help her only get him accused of murder. When the police refuse to believe his story, it's up to Biff and Johnny to prove Biff's innocence and solve the crime.

The Good Humor Man

1950

1940s · 30 titles

The Glass Key poster
6.7

A crooked politician finds himself being accused of murder by a gangster from whom he refused help during a re-election campaign.

The Glass Key

1942

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court poster
6.2

A bump on the head sends Hank Martin, 1905 auto mechanic, to Arthurian England, 528 A.D., where he is befriended by Sir Sagramore le Desirous and gains power by judicious use of technology. He and Alisande, the King's niece, fall in love at first sight, which draws unwelcome attention from her fiancée Sir Lancelot; but worse trouble befalls when Hank meddles in the kingdom's politics.

A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court

1949

The Sea of Grass poster
6.1

On America's frontier, a St. Louis woman marries a New Mexico cattleman who is seen as a tyrant by the locals.

The Sea of Grass

1947

In the Sweet Pie and Pie poster
7.1

The Stooges are convicts about to be executed for some murders they didn't commit.

In the Sweet Pie and Pie

1941

True to Life poster
8.0

A writer for a radio program needs some fresh ideas to juice up his show. For inspiration, he rents a room with a typical American family and begins to secretly write about their true life antics. The show becomes a big hit, but he begins to feel guilty about his charade when he falls in love with the family's pretty older daughter.

True to Life

1943

The Harvey Girls poster
6.6

On a train trip out west to become a mail-order bride, Susan Bradley meets a cheery crew of young women traveling out to open a "Harvey House" restaurant at a remote whistle-stop.

The Harvey Girls

1946

It Had to Be You poster
7.8

A chronic runaway bride is haunted by her conscience, who becomes reality.

It Had to Be You

1947

Address Unknown poster
6.4

When a German art dealer living in the US returns to his native country he finds himself attracted to Nazi propaganda.

Address Unknown

1944

I'll Never Heil Again poster
7.5

The Stooges have taken over the country of Moronica. Moe is Hailstone the Dictator, Curly is a Field Marshal and Larry is Minister of Propaganda. The Stooges are planning with their allies to conquer the world, which mainly consists of fighting over a globe. The former king's daughter gets into their headquarters and plants a bomb which Curly detonates. All ends well as the king regains control of the country and the Stooges wind up as trophies on the wall.

I'll Never Heil Again

1941

The Doctor Takes a Wife poster
6.8

A best-selling author of women's issues and a medical academic find it is to their mutual advantage to falsely claim that they are married.

The Doctor Takes a Wife

1940

House of Errors poster
10.0

Former silent screen comic Harry Langdon earned above-title billing for the final time in his long career in this roughhewn but amusing World War II farce released by Poverty Row company PRC. Langdon and Charles "Buddy" Rogers are newspaper messengers helping reporter Ray Walker obtain an interview with journalist-hating inventor Richard Kipling. But before they know it, Harry and Buddy become unwittingly involved in plans to steal the professor's newest invention: a machine gun.

House of Errors

1942

Squareheads of the Round Table poster
7.0

Set in Arthurian times, the Stooges decide to help their friend Cedric the Blacksmith win the hand of the fair princess Elaine. At night the group sneaks into the castle to serenade Elaine, but pick the wrong window and are caught by the King. Tossed in the dungeon, the boys escape with Cedric's help and manage to foil the plans of the Black Prince who was plotting against the King. All turns out well when the grateful King allows Cedric to marry Elaine.

Squareheads of the Round Table

1948

From Nurse to Worse poster
5.9

The stooge's friend Jerry convinces them to take out on insurance on Curly and then have him act insane to collect. Moe and Larry put Curly on a leash and take him to the insurance doctor and have him act like a dog. Unfortunately, the insurance doctor wants to perform a brain operation (Cerebrum decapitation). The boys try to escape by hiding in the dog catchers wagon, but are caught and taken to the hospital. They escape again, this time by rigging a sheet to a gurney and sailing down the street, where they run into Jerry and knock him into wet cement.

From Nurse to Worse

1940

The Good Bad Egg poster
7.0

In this Columbia All-Star Comedy short (production number 8438), Joe DeRita is a bachelor inventor who reads a marriage proposal written on an egg by a lonely widow with one child. He accepts, and soon finds out the boy is the "bad" part of the egg in the title, as he soon destroys whatever it was that Joe had invented.

The Good Bad Egg

1947

The Lady in Question poster
6.7

When a jury member takes in the defendant he couldn't convict, she has a bad influence on his son.

The Lady in Question

1940

The Villain Still Pursued Her poster
5.2

Victorian melodrama is sent up in this spoof of the old production "The Drunkard; or, The Fallen Saved." Dastardly villain Silas Cribbs schemes to get his lusty clutches on the virtuous heroine by driving her naïve husband to alcoholic ruin. Luckily, a temperance lecturer is on hand to set things straight, as is Buster Keaton as William Dalton, the drunkard's friend.

The Villain Still Pursued Her

1940

Back from the Front poster
7.4

The Stooges join the war effort by enlisting at Merchant Marines. While aboard, they have a brief run-in with (a secret German Nazi officer) Lt. Dungen (Vernon Dent), and then mistake a torpedo for a beached whale. Moe says they have to kill it, and it promptly explodes. After being lost at sea for several days, they come across the SS Schicklgruber and climb aboard. Now with fully grown beards, they come across Lt. Dungen again, who does not recognize them. After realizing they are on a German war ship they eventually overtake the crew and toss them overboard.

Back from the Front

1943

Three Pests in a Mess poster
6.4

The stooges are three inventors trying to a get a patent on their preposterous fly catching invention. When they learn they'll have to catch 100,000 flies to earn enough to get a patent, some crooks overhear and think the boys are the $100,000 sweepstakes winners. When the crooks give chase, the stooges hide in a sporting goods store where Curly shoots a dummy, which they mistake for a real person. The boys decide to bury the "body" in a pet cemetery, but the cemetery owner arrives from a costume party with his partners, all dressed as spooks, and they proceed to scare the devil out of the stooges.

Three Pests in a Mess

1945

Society Mugs poster
7.0

Muriel Allen needs an escort to Alice Preston's dinner party, and her maid Petunia mistakenly places a telephone call to Acme Exterminators instead of Acme Escorts. It's Shemp and Tom to the rescue, and they're assumed to be cultured college seniors. Guest of honor Lord Wafflebottom follows the pest exterminators' lead in proper American party manners, turning the dinner party into an uncouth display. When mice are conveniently spotted, the boys go to work, disrupting the party and the entire mansion.

Society Mugs

1946

His Wedding Scare poster
8.0

El and his new bride go on their honeymoon; no matter where they go, they keep running into her former husbands.

His Wedding Scare

1943

A Bird in the Head poster
6.7

The stooges are working as paperhangers in the home of Professor Panzer, a mad scientist looking for a brain to use in his experiments. The professor wants to put a human brain into a gorilla but has trouble finding a brain small enough, which leads him to select Curly as the perfect donor.

A Bird in the Head

1946

He Stayed for Breakfast poster
8.0

Set in Paris, this romantic comedy revolves around the beautiful estranged wife of a wealthy banker who hides a handsome and fiery Communist fugitive in her apartment.

He Stayed for Breakfast

1940

Sweet Spirits of the Nighter poster
10.0

Officers Brendel and Kennedy are dispatched to a house where scientists are conducting experiments to revive the dead.

Sweet Spirits of the Nighter

1941

Three Little Pirates poster
7.2

The stooges are castaways from a garbage scow who land on Dead Man's Island where everyone is living in olden times. To escape from the governor, they disguise Curly as a Maharaja and win permission to journey to their own country to fetch presents. The governor is fooled, but the boys run into more trouble in the den of Black Louie the pirate where Curly is forced into a knife throwing contest with Larry as the target. Things look bad until a mis-thrown knife cuts the rope that holds the chandelier and it crashes down on Black Louie's men. With the pirates defeated, Moe decides to take over as ruler of the island.

Three Little Pirates

1946

The Doolins of Oklahoma poster
6.8

When the Daltons are killed at Coffeyville, gang member Bill Doolin, arriving late, escapes but kills a man. Now wanted for murder, he becomes the leader of the Doolin gang. He eventually leaves the gang and tries to start a new life under a new name, but the old gang members appear and his true identity becomes known. Once again he becomes an outlaw trying to escape from the law.

The Doolins of Oklahoma

1949

Out West poster
7.2

The stooges go out west for Shemp's health and get mixed up with some bad guys. The villains have locked up the Arizona Kid and their leader plans to marry his girl, Nell. The boys help the Arizona Kid escape and he rides to fetch the Cavalry. Somehow, the stooges manage to defeat the bad guys before the Cavalry arrives.

Out West

1947

Adventure in Washington poster
7.0

A troubled youth is offered the opportunity to serve as a Senate page in Washington, DC.

Adventure in Washington

1941

Secret Command poster
6.6

Sam Gallagher returns home to Los Angeles as an undercover spy for the Navy, getting a job at the shipyards where his brother, Jeff, is a foreman. Jeff still resents Sam for abandoning the family years ago and fears he may steal away Lea Damaron, his current girlfriend -- who is Sam's old flame. While Sam tries to sniff out Nazi saboteurs in the plant, he grows closer to Jill McGann, the agent tasked with pretending to be his wife.

Secret Command

1944

Higher Than a Kite poster
6.2

The stooges are auto mechanics working for the R.A.F. in England. After wrecking an officers car they need a place to hide, but their choice, a sewer pipe, turns out to a bomb which is dropped on the enemy. Finding themselves behind enemy lines, Moe and Curly disguise as German officers and Larry dresses as a seductive fraulein. While general Bommel chases after Larry, Moe and Curly steal the secret plans from the high command.

Higher Than a Kite

1943

The Lone Wolf Strikes poster
6.8

Delia Jordan's father is murdered and some very valuable jewelry stolen. She hires The Lone Wolf.

The Lone Wolf Strikes

1940

1930s · 18 titles

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington poster
7.8

After the death of a United States Senator, the idealistic Jefferson Smith is appointed as his replacement in Washington. The naive and earnest new senator soon finds himself battling political corruption.

Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

1939

San Francisco poster
6.6

A beautiful singer and a battling priest try to reform a Barbary Coast saloon owner in the days before the great earthquake and subsequent fires in 1906.

San Francisco

1936

You Can't Take It with You poster
7.5

Alice, the only relatively normal member of the eccentric Sycamore family, falls in love with Tony Kirby, but his wealthy banker father and snobbish mother strongly disapprove of the match. When the Kirbys are invited to dinner to become better acquainted with their future in-laws, things don't turn out the way Alice had hoped.

You Can't Take It with You

1938

Manhattan Melodrama poster
7.0

The friendship between two orphans endures even though they grow up on opposite sides of the law and fall in love with the same woman.

Manhattan Melodrama

1934

Only Angels Have Wings poster
7.3

A traveling performer arrives at a remote South American port town where the head of an air freight service must risk his pilots' lives to earn a major contract.

Only Angels Have Wings

1939

Easy Living poster
7.2

J.B. Ball, a rich financier, gets fed up with his free-spending family. He takes his wife's just-bought (very expensive) sable coat and throws it out the window, it lands on poor hard-working girl Mary Smith. But it isn't so easy to just give away something so valuable, as he soon learns.

Easy Living

1937

A Ducking They Did Go poster
6.6

The stooges, tricked by some con men into selling memberships to a phony duck hunting club, sell all the memberships to the police department. When the crooks skip town, the stooges are stranded at a duck-less lake with a lodge full of cops.

A Ducking They Did Go

1939

The Shadow poster
7.0

Mary Gillespie is restoring the Col. Gillespie Circus to its former splendor after her father's death. With the help of her publicist boyfriend Jim, the sell-out crowds are returning to the big top. Egotistical equestrian star Senor Martinet, however, holds $60,000 of notes signed by the Colonel and due in 24 hours. When a mysterious shadowy figure is seen on the circus lot, and Martinet is murdered in the center ring during his performance, there are suspects aplenty, including Vindecco, Martinet's badly abused hunchback assistant.

The Shadow

1937

Stanley and Livingstone poster
6.4

When American newspaperman and adventurer Henry M. Stanley comes back from the western Indian wars, his editor James Gordon Bennett sends him to Africa to find Dr. David Livingstone, the missing Scottish missionary. Stanley finds Livingstone ("Dr. Livingstone, I presume.") blissfully doling out medicine and religion to the happy natives. His story is at first disbelieved.

Stanley and Livingstone

1939

Tassels in the Air poster
6.8

The stooges are janitors in an office building. They stencil the wrong names on all the offices, causing a rich lady to mistakes Moe for famous decorator Omay. She hires the boys to redecorate her house, which they proceed to ruin. More trouble ensues when the real Omay shows up.

Tassels in the Air

1938

The Lone Wolf Spy Hunt poster
6.6

Spies force former jewel thief Michael Lanyard to steal defense secrets in Washington.

The Lone Wolf Spy Hunt

1939

Three Little Sew and Sews poster
7.0

The stooges are sailors working in a ships' tailor shop. When they can't get passes to go ashore, they steal officers uniforms and go to a party with Curly passing himself off as Admiral Taylor and Moe and Larry as his aides. Two spies, one of them a beautiful woman, trick the stooges into stealing a new submarine. The boys turn the table on the spies and capture them. When the real Admiral shows up, Curly's reenacts the capture and accidentally detonates a bomb, blowing them all to kingdom come.

Three Little Sew and Sews

1939

Mutts to You poster
6.7

The stooges, professional dog washers, find a baby on a doorstep and, thinking it to be abandoned, take it home. When they read in the paper the baby is believed to have been kidnapped, they disguise Curly as a the baby's mother and try to sneak past the local cop. They are caught, but when the baby's parents show up and realize what happened, the result is a happy ending.

Mutts to You

1938

Yes, We Have No Bonanza poster
6.6

Set in a western town, the stooges are working as waiters in a saloon with the three girls they hope to marry. The proprietor of the saloon is a crook who, with his partner, has buried $40,000 of stolen money. The boys go prospecting in hopes of raising enough money to pay off the debts of their fiancée father, who owes money to their boss. They dig up the stolen money, which the crooks recognize as their loot and abscond with. A wild chase ensues, ending with the bad guy's car crashing into the Sheriff's office.

Yes, We Have No Bonanza

1939

Murder in Greenwich Village poster
5.8

A society girl is suspected of murdering an artist whose brother is a notorious racketeer. In her pursuit of an alibi, she inadvertently implicates a struggling advertisement photographer. Now they must keep up the appearance of being engaged as a bumbling detective snoops around, and their initial distaste for each other blossoms into romance.

Murder in Greenwich Village

1937

Reformatory poster
6.5

A new inmate at a juvenile reformatory tries to organize a mass breakout.

Reformatory

1938

Start Cheering poster
6.9

After retiring from movies to get an education, a man discovers his ex-staff is trying to have him expelled.

Start Cheering

1938

Thanks for the Memory poster
5.8

Steve Merrick is an out of work writer who stays home and plays house husband while his wife goes to work for her former fiancé and Merrick's publisher who is still carrying a torch for her.

Thanks for the Memory

1938

1920s · 5 titles

Series credits

Behind the camera