Founded in 1924, Columbia entered the sound era as one of the “little three” major studios (alongside Universal and United Artists), so-called because these companies did not have exhibition chains. Lacking a network of theaters, the organization had little obligation to offer contracted exhibitors a full program: as a result, the studio’s initial investment in short subjects consisted primarily in the distribution of a bare handful of independently produced series – Disney’s Silly Symphonies, Charles Mintz’s Krazy Kat cartoons, and Photocolor’s Color Sensation musical comedies – although the studio also produced its own Columbia-Victor Gems and Talking Screen Snapshots. This emphasis shifted, however, when, in 1932, studio head Jack Cohn hired the team of Jules White and Zion Myers to reorganize the studio’s short department to emphasize cheaply-produced live-action comedy. Famous today as the near quarter-century home of the Three Stooges (1934-1958), the Columbia short-subject unit swiftly built a reputation under White as one of the industry’s chief sustainers of earlier slapstick traditions.