Introduction
Love them or hate them, The Three Stooges hold the distinction of being the longest-running comedy act in Hollywood history. As a team, they entertained the public in an astounding six different decades. Over that time span, they made an incredible 190 two-reel comedies and six feature films.
While their style of slapstick has gone out of style, there’s no denying their long-term impact on popular culture. The Three Stooges never became rich or joined the Hollywood elite. However, their indefatigable work ethic and dogged determination to stick to their craft is the stuff of film legend. It’s a fascinating story in its own right.
Beginnings
Moses (Moe), Jerome (Curley), and Sam (Shemp) Horwitz were all born around the turn of the 20th century into a working-class Jewish family in Brooklyn, New York. As children, both Moe and Jerome suffered severe injuries which would come to play a part in their later careers.
One day, when he was four years old, Moe fell and broke his nose while watching an old picture-card viewing machine at a local arcade. His mother couldn’t afford a doctor, so she traded a copper cooking pot for an impromptu operation. Unfortunately, the doctor wasn’t licensed and botched the job. In later films, you can easily see the scars on Moe’s nose where the doctor literally sewed it back on.
Moe originally had long curly hair. In school, he became so despondent over the teasing he endured from the other children that one day he grabbed a pair of scissors, cutting the curls off around the sides of his head. The result was the bowl (or spittoon) haircut which one day would be world-famous. At the time though, that didn’t stop the teasing. Disenchanted with academics, Moe became a high school dropout.
For his part, Jerome also suffered his own challenges as a teenager. One day he was playing with a loaded shotgun when it accidentally discharged into one of his feet. The accident left him with a painful limp for the rest of his life. While he did his best to disguise his walk, it wasn’t until years later that “The Curley Shuffle” became an accepted part of the Stooges’ routine.
Larry Joins the Team
Like most early film comedians, The Stooges came up through vaudeville. Originally, Moe and his brother Shemp played second bananas to a successful comic named Ted Healy. Looking to add another member to their team, one night they spied another performer on stage playing a “mad Russian” with a violin. His name was Larry Fine.
After the show, they went backstage to introduce themselves. Larry had just gotten out of the shower and answered the dressing room door with his hair sticking straight up. Upon seeing this sight, Moe, Shemp, and Healy knew they had found the perfect visual complement to their act. They billed themselves as “Ted Healy and His Stooges.”
The Ted Healy Years
The act turned out to be quite successful. It was during this time The Stooges began to hone some of their famous routines. Small film contracts soon followed with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. However, Healy turned out to be a hard-core alcoholic and would regularly abuse the other members of the team.
Even worse, he paid them pittances while living in a 26-room mansion in Connecticut. Healy would also regularly take credit for the lines that the Horwitz brothers had developed themselves. After several years of putting up with this treatment, Shemp had finally had enough. Subsequently, he quit the act to pursue a film career of his own.
Curley Arrives
Moe was desperate to find a replacement for the group and soon turned to his younger brother Jerome. The younger Horwitz had zero experience in the entertainment industry. Yet, to Moe’s utter shock and subsequent delight, they discovered that Jerome was a naturally gifted performer.
Without any previous forethought, Jerome would begin to add the “whoop-whoop-whoop” and “nyuk, nyuk, nyuk” phraseology. These physical and verbal mannerisms have since become a signature part of The Three Stooges.
In the beginning, Jerome still had a lot of curly brown hair. One day, Healy had mentioned that his hairstyle didn’t quite fit in with the act. In response, Curly went home and returned with his head completely shaved. “Just call me Curley!” he told his compatriots. The name instantly stuck.
The Three Stooges Are Born
Moe and Jerome also changed their stage names from Horwitz to Howard. Also, the troubles continued with Healy, who became increasingly more violent, as well as addicted to the bottle. Finally, Moe decided it was time to go and announced that he, Larry, and Curley were all quitting. To their amazement, Columbia Pictures literally offered them a contract the very next day.
They immediately signed on the dotted line and for the first time, The Three Stooges became an entity onto themselves. As for Ted Healy, he only lived a few more years. One night at a bar, he got into a drunken disagreement with some other patrons. They stepped outside to exchange blows and Healy died three days later from a concussion he sustained during the brawl.
Read Before Signing on the Bottom Line
For Moe, Larry, and Curley, the contract with Columbia seemed like just the ticket they had been looking for. However, since The Stooges weren’t lawyers, they failed to realize some of the long-term ramifications of what they had just signed. It was a seven-year contract that obligated them to make a minimum of eight “two-reel” shorts over a 40-week stretch, every year. For this, they were paid an annual salary of $20,000 per person.
Even in 1930s Hollywood, this wasn’t a lot of money. Additionally, every year The There Stooges‘ option came up, Colombia would stall until the last minute before renewing the contract. They would tell The Stooges that their shorts weren’t making any money and that the theater owners didn’t want them. In actuality, the opposite was true. They were an instant hit.
Success
For years, exhibitors would beg Columbia Pictures for new Stooge shorts. As a response, the studio would then leverage this high demand in order to pawn off their less successful “B” pictures. Simply put, Columbia was making millions off of Moe, Larry, and Curley as they were easily one of Columbia Pictures’ most profitable commodities throughout the 1930s and 1940s.
The Three Stooges never knew all of this, as they were always under the impression that their jobs were hanging by a thread. Further, whenever they worked up the courage to ask for a raise, the request was always rebuffed. It was several years before they figured out what was really going on.
Adding insult to injury, they discovered that buried in the contract was another clause that gave Columbia the option to extend the same terms of the agreement. The end result was to practically make The Stooges indentured servants at Columbia for 24 years. While other artists became multi-millionaires because of their endeavors, The Three Stooges themselves were fated to never rise above a middle-class existence.
The Art of Slapstick
When it came to their craft, The Three Stooges were consummate professionals. Everything revolved around split-second timings, with the smallest action meticulously choreographed in order to maximize the mayhem. Moe, Larry, and Curly regularly took it on the chin, in the eye, on the head, against the shin, and virtually every other body part to make people laugh.
Of course, the heavy use of sound effects had also added to The Three Stooges‘ incredible charm and likability. The sound department at Columbia Pictures could rightly have been called “The Fourth Stooge.” Without this talented team, the Stooge’s antics never would have had the same appeal.
Hazardous Duty
Watching The Stooges shorts today, and realizing that there were no special effects involved, it seems amazing that Moe, Larry, and Curley were never seriously injured. However, the truth was that mishaps and accidents on the set were common. Here are just a few of them:
In Men in Black, they slammed a door with real glass which shattered. The resulting cuts required first aid. (Stooge trivia: this was the only film they made that was nominated for an Academy Award).
In Beer and Pretzels, they played carpenters. In one scene, Moe is standing on a table that breaks in half. He fell but landed on his side across the edge of the fallen table. He spoke his five words of dialogue before passing out and later waking up in the hospital with three broken ribs.
In Oily to Bed and Oily to Rise, a 1939 short directed by frequent collaborator Jules White, Moe was looking down a supposedly “clogged” oil well. However, the prop man shot the oil up too early while Moe’s eyes were still open. As a result, it was hours before Moe was able to get his vision back.
More Mishaps
Slippery Silks used to hold the world record for the most pies thrown in a single film (over 150). There were so many used in the production, that they ran out of things to throw. As a result, the prop men started scooping up pie cream off the floor and throwing it off-camera into the Stooge’s faces.
Unfortunately, in the act of doing this, they also scooped up a series of nails and splinters. The Stooges suffered minor injuries and just missed doing real damage to their eyes. Additionally, another bit player nearly died when one of the pies hit her open mouth and lodged in her windpipe.
Finally, there was one stunt the Stooges refused to do. In Three Little Pigskins, they play football with actual players from Loyola University. In a scene where the players were supposed to “pile onto” the Stooges and four other extras, the director had promised a safe stunt. The Stooges still refused, opting for doubles. The end result was broken arms and legs for six out of the seven extras.
Tragedy for Curley
Moe, Larry, and Curley continued to make shorts during World War II and into the mid-1940s. That’s when Curley’s health had begun to fail. Always spry and full of vigor, you can see him start to slur his words in several of his later shorts. It’s also obvious that he had started having trouble hitting his marks.
In 1947, while shooting Half Wit’s Holiday, Curley went into an adjoining room and sat down on a chair to rest. When it came time to film one of the final shots, the director called for him and he failed to respond. Moe went to check on him and found his brother slumped over. He lifted his brother’s head to find tears rolling down his cheek.
Curley had suffered a stroke that would leave him partially paralyzed and unable to speak. He spent the next five years trying to recover. However, he had continued to have a series of heart attacks which left him bed-ridden. Curley Horwitz died in 1952. At the time, Curley was only forty-eight years old.
Enter Shemp
Moe was devastated. He and Larry met with Harry Cohn, Columbia’s cruel studio chief. Cohn told them he “was paying for Three Stooges, not two.” Moe turned to his other brother, Shemp, who had originated the part before Curley, and was the obvious replacement. Shemp was enjoying a modest film career of his own and wasn’t too keen on taking a pay cut. However, brotherly love won out, and Shemp again became a Stooge.
Conventional wisdom holds that Shemp wasn’t as talented as Curly. Also, it’s hard to make the argument that he was as entertaining as his younger brother. Still, Shemp had a style that was all his own. He was also a seasoned performer. If you watch some of his earlier offerings, you might find that the shorts have just as much energy and innovation as anything that Curly did.
Shemp made approximately the same number of shorts as Curley and was a part of the team into the mid-1950s. Alas, his days were also numbered. In November 1955, Shemp was riding in a car with some friends telling jokes. Suddenly he slumped over with a smile on his face. He had suffered a massive heart attack and died instantly.
For the second time in three years, Moe Howard was forced to bury one of his brothers. This time, there was no obvious replacement. In order for Columbia to fulfill its contract for 1956, Jules White created four more shorts using old footage of Howard and filming new scenes with double Joe Palma. This is the origin of the term “Fake Shemp” so oft used by director Sam Raimi throughout his career.
A New Stooge
After some searching, Columbia suggested comedian Joe Besser. Besser was best known for his “man-child” routine. While he was an accomplished performer, Besser wasn’t so keen on partaking in the Stooge’s physical brand of comedy. It’s been said that Larry went to him and said:
“…Joe, it’s OK. I don’t mind. I’ll take the slaps…”
Besser had starred in the final sixteen shorts of The Three Stooges. While not altogether bad, these productions were a real comedown from the earlier efforts with Curley. When re-watching these shorts, they tend to come across more like sitcoms, rather than works of inspired comedy.
Bitter Blows
During the late 1950s, just like other movie studios in Hollywood at the time, Columbia was struggling financially. Television and other societal changes had led to a decline in movie theater attendance. As a result of these changes in the business climate, Columbia decided that the time had come to pull the plug once and for all on its short features unit.
The year was 1959 and The Three Stooges, along with the rest of their supporting staff, were let go with no advance notice whatsoever. Later, Moe Howard’s daughter Joan had remembered what it was like:
“…The boys’ careers had suddenly come to an end. They were at Columbia one day and gone the next. No “thank yous” or farewell party for their 24 years of dedication and service…Moe recalled that a few weeks after their exit from Columbia, he drove to the studio to say goodbye to several studio executives when he was stopped by a guard at the gate and since he did not have a current pass, was refused entry… It was a crushing blow…”
A Stooge Renaissance
It looked as if The Three Stooges had reached the end of the line. Joe Besser subsequently retired from the act to care for his ailing wife. Then, something magical happened. Columbia Pictures, in an effort to raise money, had begun to license all of their old films to television.
Included was a new film called Stop, Look and Laugh, which featured a compilation of old Stooge shorts. It was an enormous hit. People who hadn’t seen The Three Stooges in the theater for decades began to watch their films on television with their own kids. Audiences were laughing out loud all over again.
Paying offers soon began to roll in. These included over 1,000 requests for The Stooges to make personal appearances. Moe and Larry were dumbfounded. All those years Columbia had kept them in the dark about how popular they were. Completely unexpectedly, they now found themselves in high demand.
Enter Joe DeRita
Moe and Larry had quickly found another replacement to fill out the act. His name was Joe DeRita. Called Curly Joe, DeRita was a seasoned vaudeville comic who had always been on good terms with Moe. It also didn’t hurt that DeRita bore more than a passing resemblance to the original Curley.
The Stooges signed on to make their first feature film: Have Rocket Will Travel. It made a sizable profit. Five more films followed along with a cartoon series and countless guest appearances on television talk shows and variety programs. Now in their mid-60s, the team was more popular than ever. Their schedule remained full until 1970.
Tragedy for Larry
In January 1970, Larry Fine had suffered a debilitating stroke of his own. Unable to speak clearly, and confined to a wheelchair, he spent the next several years at the Motion Picture Country Home Hospital outside of Los Angeles. Moe later told the story of what it was like visiting Larry for the first time after the initial stroke:
“…his mouth was still affected by paralysis and his speech was very thick. I looked at him; he smiled a crooked smile. I excused myself, saying I had to go to the lavatory where I broke down completely. When I managed to regain my composure, I walked back into the room wiping my eyes. I told Larry I had just used my eye drops which made my eyes burn and tear. I had to get out of his room before I broke down in front of him…”
Moe had continued to visit Larry Fine on a regular basis, but Larry had suffered a number of subsequent setbacks. Finally, in early 1975, Larry slipped into a coma and died. This was truly the final end of The Three Stooges.
Moe On His Own
Throughout much of the early 1970s, Moe Howard toured the lecture circuit, as well as having appeared on various talk shows. Howard’s quick wit and sense of humor never failed to entertain those in his presence. Invariably, Moe would be asked by well-wishers to push a pie into their smiling faces.
He reminded them that real pies were heavier and more painful than the “fake” ones they used in their films. No one ever listened and they were delighted when Moe accommodated their requests. Moe would spend most of 1974 working on his memoirs, as well as taping and transcribing a lifetime of memories that had predated the film industry.
Moe Howard had tragically passed away from lung cancer on May 4th, 1975. This was only three months after the death of Larry Fine, his best friend, and lifelong partner-in-crime. With Moe’s death, the curtain had finally come down on what was the silver screen’s longest-running comedic act.
Reflections
Ted Okuda and Edward Watz offer this critical retrospective on The Three Stooges in their book, “The Columbia Comedy Shorts:”
“…Aesthetically the Stooges violated every rule that constitutes “good” comedic style. Their characters lacked the emotional depth of Charlie Chaplin…they were never as witty or subtle as Buster Keaton. They were not disciplined enough to sustain lengthy comic sequences… Nearly every premise they have employed has been done to better effect by other comedians…And yet, in spite of the overwhelming artistic odds against them, they were responsible for some of the finest comedies ever made… they were not great innovators, but as quick laugh practitioners, they place second to none. If public taste is any criterion, The Stooges have been the reigning kings of comedy for over fifty years…”
