The Three Stooges were an American vaudeville and comedy act of the early to mid 20th century best known for their numerous short subject films. They were commonly known by their first names: 'Moe, Larry, & Curly', and 'Moe, Larry, & Shemp', among other lineups. The act originally featured Moe Howard (born Harry Moses Horwitz), brother Shemp Howard (born Samuel Horwitz), and longtime friend Larry Fine (born Louis Feinberg). Shemp was later replaced by brother Curly Howard (born Jerome Lester Horwitz) in 1932. When Curly suffered a debilitating stroke in 1946, Shemp rejoined the act. After Shemp's death in 1955, he was replaced by bald-headed comedian Joe Besser, and eventually by Joe "Curly-Joe" DeRita (born Joseph Wardell). After Larry's stroke, Emil Sitka, a longtime actor in Stooge comedies, was contracted to replace Larry, but no film was ever made with him in the role, although publicity photographs exist of him with his hair combed similarly to Larry's posing with Moe and Curly-Joe prior to Moe's death. Larry's stroke marked the end of the act.
The Stooges' hallmark was extremely physical slapstick comedy punctuated by one-liners, within outrageous storylines.
The Three Stooges started in 1925 as part of a raucous vaudeville act called 'Ted Healy and His Stooges' (a.k.a. 'Ted Healy and His Southern Gentlemen', 'Ted Healy and His Three Lost Souls' and 'Ted Healy and His Racketeers'). In the act, lead comedian Healy would attempt to sing or tell jokes while his noisy assistants would keep "interrumping" him. Healy would respond by verbally and physically abusing his stooges. Brothers Moe and Shemp were joined later that year by violinist-comedian Larry Fine.
In 1930, Ted Healy and His Stooges appeared in their first Hollywood feature film: Soup to Nuts, released by Fox Studios. The film was not a critical success but the Stooges' performances were considered the highlight and Fox offered the trio a contract without Healy. This upset Healy, who told studio executives that the Stooges were his employees. The offer was withdrawn, and after Howard, Fine and Howard learned of the reason, they left Healy to form their own act, which quickly took off with a tour of the theatre circuit. Healy attempted to stop the new act with legal action, claiming they were using his copyrighted material. There are accounts of Healy threatening to bomb theaters if Howard, Fine and Howard ever performed there, which worried Shemp so much that he almost left the act; reportedly, only a pay raise kept him on board. Healy tried to save his act by hiring replacement stooges, but they were not as well-received as their predecessors. [1]
In 1932, with Moe now acting as business manager, Healy reached a new agreement with his former Stooges, and they were booked in a production of J.J. Shubert's The Passing Show of 1932. During rehearsals, Healy received a more lucrative offers and found a loophole in his contract allowing him to leave the production [2]. Shemp, fed up with Healy's abrasiveness, [3] decided to quit the act and found work almost immediately, in Vitaphone movie comedies produced in Brooklyn, New York.
With Shemp gone, Healy and the two remaining stooges (Moe and Larry) needed a replacement, so Moe suggested his younger brother Jerry Howard. Healy reportedly took one look at Jerry, who had long chestnut red locks and a handbar mustache, and remarked that he did not look like funny [4]. Jerry left the room and returned a few moments later with his head shaved (though his mustache remained for a time), and then quipped "boy, do I look curly." Healy liked the name, and thus 'Curly' was born. (There are varying accounts as to how the Curly character actually came about.)
In 1933, Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM) signed Healy and his Stooges to a movie contract. They appeared in feature films and short subjects, either together, individually, or with various combinations of actors. The trio was featured in a series of musical comedy shorts, beginning with Nertsery Rhymes. The short was one of a few shorts to be made with an early two-toneTechnicolor process; the shorts themselves were built around recycled film footage of production numbers cut from MGM musicals, some of which had been filmed in Technicolor. Soon, additional shorts followed (sans the experimental Technicolor), including Beer and Pretzels, Plane Nuts, and The Big Idea.
Healy and company also appeared in several MGM feature films, such as Turn Back the Clock, Meet the Baron, Dancing Lady, Fugitive Lovers, and Hollywood Party. Healy and the Stooges also appeared together in Universal's Myrt and Marge. In 1934, the team's contract with MGM expired, and the Stooges parted professional company with Healy. According to Moe Howard in his autobiography,[5] the Stooges split with Ted Healy in 1934 once and for all because of Healy's alcoholism and abrasiveness. Their final film with Healy was MGM’s 1934 film, Hollywood Party.
The same year, the trio (now christened The Three Stooges) signed on to appear in two-reel comedy short subjects for Columbia Pictures. (In Moe's autobiography, he said they each got $600 per week on a one-year contract with a renewable option; in the Ted Okuda-Edward Watz book The Columbia Comedy Shorts, the Stooges are said to have gotten $1,000 between them for their first Columbia effort, Woman Haters, and then signed a term contract for $7,500 per film, to be divided among the trio. According to Moe, Columbia Pictures studio head Harry Cohn would always wait until the last minute to renew the contract [6]. The Stooges, too worried about keeping their jobs in an increasingly declining short-subject market, would not dare ask for a raise during the 23 years they worked for Cohn. The Stooges appeared in 190 film shorts and five features under the "original" contract with Columbia. Del Lord directed more than three dozen Three Stooges shorts. Jules White directed dozens more, and his brother Jack White directed several under the pseudonym "Preston Black". (In the early shorts, Curly was billed as "Curley").
According to a published report,[7] Moe, Larry, and director Jules White considered their best film to be You Nazty Spy! (1940). This 18-minute short subject starring Moe as an Hitler-like character satirized the Nazis in a period when America was still neutral and isolationist about WWII. You Nazty Spy was the first Hollywood film to spoof Hitler, and was released nine months before Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator.
The Stooges made occasional guest appearances in feature films, though generally they stuck to short subjects. Columbia offered theater owners an entire program of two-reel comedies (15 to 25 titles annually) featuring such stars as Buster Keaton. Andy Clyde, Charley Chase, and Hugh Herbert, but the Three Stooges shorts were the most popular of all [8].
Easily the most popular member of the team, [9] Curly's childlike mannerisms and natural comedic charm made him a hit with audiences. The fact that Curly had to shave his head for the act lead him to feel unappealing to women. His constant drinking eventually caught up with him in 1945, and his performances began to lag. Any viewer taking the time to view Curly's last dozen shorts will see a seriously ill Curly, struggling to get through even the most basic scenes. [10]
During the filming of Half-Wits Holiday on May 6, 1946, Curly suffered a debilitating stroke, curtailing his Columbia output at 97 shorts. Older brother Shemp reluctantly rejoined the act to take Curly's place. Curly did make one brief cameo appearance in the third film after Shemp returned to the trio, Hold That Lion!. It was the only film that contained all three Howard brothers on screen simultaneously; Jules White recalled Curly visiting the set one day, and White had him do this bit for fun. (Curly's cameo appearance was recycled in the 1953 remake Booty and the Beast). [11]
Shemp Howard, however, was hesitant to rejoin the Stooges, as he had a successful solo career at the time of Curly's untimely illness. However, he realized that Moe's and Larry's careers would be finished without the Stooge act. Shemp wanted some kind of assurance that his rejoining was indeed temporary, and that he could leave the Stooges once Curly recovered. Unfortunately, Curly's condition declined until his death on January 18, 1952.
With Shemp on board, the Stooges appeared in 77 more shorts and a quickie Western comedy feature titled Gold Raiders. During this period, Moe, Larry and Shemp made a pilot for a Three Stooges television show called Jerks of All Trades in 1949. The series was never picked up, although the pilot is currently in the public domain and is available on home video, as is an early television appearance from around the same time on a vaudeville-style comedy series starring Ed Wynn, (Camel Comedy Caravan, originally broadcast live on CBS-TV on March 11, 1950). Also available on the commercial market is a kinescope of Moe, Larry and Shemp's appearance on The Frank Sinatra Show, broadcast live over CBS-TV on January 1, 1952. Sinatra was reportedly a big fan of the Stooges and slapstick comedy in general. On this broadcast, the Stooges are joined by one of their longtime stock-company members Vernon Dent, who plays "Mr. Mortimer", a party-goer who requests a drink. The Stooges oblige with disastrous results.
The quality of the Stooge shorts declined after Columbia's short-subject division downsized in 1952. Producer Hugh McCollum was discharged and director Edward Bernds resigned out of loyalty to McCollum, leaving only Jules White to both produce and direct the Stooges' remaining Columbia comedies. Production was significantly faster, with the former four-day filming schedules now tightened to two or three days. In another cost-cutting measure, White would create a "new" Stooge short by borrowing footage from old ones, setting it in a slightly different storyline, and filming a few new scenes often with the same actors in the same costumes. White was initially very subtle when recycling older footage: he would reuse only a single sequence of old film, re-edited so cleverly that it was not easy to detect. The later shorts were cheaper and the recycling more obvious, with as much as 75% of the running time consisting of old footage. White came to rely so much on older material that he could film the "new" shorts in a single day.
Death paid the Stooges another visit just three years after Curly's demise, when Shemp Howard died of a sudden heart attack at age 60 on November 22, 1955. Archived footage of Shemp, combined with new footage of his stand-in, Joe Palma (filmed from behind or with his face hidden), were used to complete the last four films of Shemp's contract: Rumpus in the Harem, Hot Stuff, Scheming Schemers and Commotion on the Ocean.
Joe Besser replaced Shemp in 1956 and 1957, appearing in 16 shorts. Besser, noting how one side of Larry Fine's face seemed "calloused" (archiville audio- "E Entertainment", May 2002) had a clause in his contract specifically prohibiting him from being hit too hard (though this restriction was later lifted). Ironically, Besser was the only "third" Stooge that dared to hit Moe back in retaliation and get away with it; Larry Fine was also known to hit Moe on occasion, but always with serious repercussions. "I usually played the kind of character who would hit others back," Besser recalled [12]. Actually, Besser simply continued using the same "whiny sissy" act he had used throughout most of his career (with such catchphrases as "Not so louuuuuuud!" and "You craaaaaaaazy, youuuuuu!") and played that character alongside Larry's and Moe's.
With Besser on board, the Stooge films began to resemble sitcoms. Sitcoms, though, were now available for free. Television was the new popular medium, and by the time Besser joined the act, the Stooges were generally considered throwbacks to an obsolete era. Columbia Pictures, the last studio still producing shorts, opted not to renew the Stooges' contract, which expired at the end of 1957, after production of Flying Saucer Daffy. This last Stooge short is also notable for having been released in stereophonic sound.
Although the Stooges stopped working for Columbia in 1957, the studio had enough completed films on the shelf to keep releasing new comedies for another 18 months, and not in the order they were produced. The final Stooge release, Sappy Bull Fighters, did not reach theaters until June 4, 1959.
See also List of Three Stooges shorts.
In 1959, Columbia syndicated the entire Stooges film library to television (through its TV subsidiary, Screen Gems), and the Stooges were rediscovered by the baby boomers. A "Stooge fandom" quickly developed, and Howard and Fine found themselves back in demand with the public. Moe and Larry discussed plans for a personal appearance tour; meanwhile, Besser's wife had a heart attack, and he preferred to stay local, leading him to withdraw from the act. Moe quickly signed Joe DeRita as his replacement; DeRita shaved his head and became "Curly-Joe" because of his resemblance to the original Curly Howard. ("Curly-Joe" was easy to distinguish from Joe Besser, the previous Stooge called "Joe").
This Three Stooges lineup went on to make a series of popular full-length films from 1959 to 1965. The films were aimed at the kiddie-matinee market, and most were slapstick outings in the Stooge tradition, with the exception of Snow White and the Three Stooges, a children's fantasy in Technicolor. Throughout the 1960s, The Three Stooges were one of the most popular and highest-paid live acts in America [13]
The trio also filmed 41 short comedy skits for The New Three Stooges, 156 animated cartoons produced for television. The Stooges appeared in live-action color footage, which preceded and followed each animated adventure in which they voiced their respective characters.
In 1969, the Three Stooges filmed a pilot episode for a new TV series entitled Kook's Tour, a combination travelogue-sitcom that had the "retired" Stooges traveling around the world, with the episodes filmed on location. On January 9, 1970, during production of the pilot, Larry suffered a paralyzing stroke, ending his acting career, as well as future plans for the television series. A 50-minute version of Kook's Tour was edited together from usable material and initially only made available for the home movie market (years before the popularity of home video); it has subsequently been released to DVD, in an unrestored version.
Larry Fine suffered another stroke in December 1974. The following month, he suffered a more serious one, and slipped into a coma. He died on January 24, 1975, at the age of 72. Devastated by his friend's passing, Moe nevertheless decided that the Three Stooges would continue, and longtime Stooge supporting actor Emil Sitka would replace Larry, and be dubbed "The Middle Stooge". Sitka later said he accepted the offer after receiving Larry's blessings.
Several movie ideas were considered, including one called Blazing Stewardesses according to Leonard Maltin, who also uncovered a pre-production photo (the film was ultimately made with the last surviving Ritz Brothers). However, lifelong smoker Moe fell ill from lung cancer, and died on May 4, 1975.
With Moe gone, it was inconceivable that the Three Stooges would continue without a Howard, although Curly-Joe did perform live with a new group of Stooges in the early 1970s.
Joe Besser died on March 1, 1988, followed by Curly-Joe on July 3, 1993. Emil Sitka on January 16, 1998, making him the last "Stooge" to die (though Sitka never performed on film as a member of the trio, but did appear in a few publicity shots).
Throughout their career, Moe acted as both their main creative force and business manager. Comedy III Productions, Inc., formed by Moe, Larry and Curly-Joe DeRita in 1959, is the current owner of all Three Stooges trademarks and merchandising. (The company is currently operated by DeRita's two stepsons and Larry Fine's grandson, majority owner Eric Lamond [citation needed]).
In Spring of 2000, longtime Stooge fan Mel Gibson produced a TV movie filmed in Sydney Australia about the lives and careers of the Stooges. It was produced for and broadcast on ABC. This movie was based on Michael Fleming's authorized biography of the Stooges, The Three Stooges: From Amalgamated Morons to American Icons. The film regularly runs on the AMC (American Movie Classics) channel.
The Three Stooges shorts aired on The Family Channel (now ABC Family) as part of their Stooge TV block from February 19, 1996 to August 15, 1998. In the late 1990s, AMC had held the rights to the Three Stooges shorts until Spike TV picked them up in 2004, airing them in their Stooges Slap-Happy Hour. By 2006, the network had discontinued airing the shorts. However, WCIU-TV in Chicago currently airs all 190 Three Stooges shorts on Stooge-A-Palooza, hosted by Rich Koz. WSBK in Boston also airs The Three Stooges shorts. In 1959, KTTV in Los Angeles purchased the Three Stooges Films for air. But by the early 1970's, KTLA 5 began airing the Stooges films. They did so until early 1994. The Three Stooges feature films were often shown during the station's "Family Film Festival" segment.
Some of the Stooges films have been colorized by two separate companies. The first colorized DVD releases, distributed by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, were prepared by West Wing Studios in 2004. The following year, Legend Films and 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment colorized the shorts Malice in the Palace, Sing a Song of Six Pants, Disorder in the Court and Brideless Groom. Four more DVDs will be released by Legend in 2007; episodes to be announced. Disorder in the Court and Brideless Groom also appear on two of West Wing's colorized releases.
On October 30, 2007, Sony Pictures Home Entertainment released The Three Stooges Collection Volume One (1934-1936) on DVD. The two-disc set contains shorts from the first three years the Stooges worked at Columbia Pictures. This is the first time ever that all 19 shorts have been released in their original theatrical order to DVD. Every short has been digitally remastered from the original negatives.
Moe Howard
Real Name: Harry Moses Horwitz
Born: 1897-09-06
Died: 1975-04-05
Stooge years: 1922, 1926, 1929-1975
Larry Fine
Real Name: Louis Feinberg
Born: 1902-10-05
Died: 1975-01-24
Stooge years: 1925-1926, 1929-1975
Curly Howard
Real Name: Jerome Lester Horwitz
Born: 1903-10-22
Died: 1952-01-18
Stooge years: 1932-1946
Shemp Howard
Real Name: Samuel Horwitz
Born: 1895-03-04
Died: 1955-11-22
Stooge years: 1922-1925, 1929-1932, 1947-1955
Ted Healy
Real Name: Lee Nash
Born: 1896-10-01
Died: 1937-12-21
Stooge Years: 1922-1925, 1929-1934
Joe Palma
Born: 1905-03-17
Died: 1994-08-15
Stooge Year: 1956 (body double for Shemp)
Joe Besser
Born: 1907-08-12
Died: 1988-03-01
Stooge years: 1956-1957
Curly-Joe DeRita
Real Name: Joseph Wardell
Born: 1909-07-12
Died: 1993-07-03
Stooge years: 1958-1975
Harry (last name unknown)
Real Name: Emil Sitka
Born: 1914-12-22
Died: 1998-01-16
Stooge year: 1975
Several instrumental tunes were played over the opening credits at different times in the production of the short features. The most commonly used themes were:
The Columbia short subject Woman Haters (1934) was done completely in song. It was sixth in a “Musical Novelties” short subject series, and appropriated its musical score from the first five films. The memorable “My Life, My Love, My All,” was originally “At Last!” from the film “Um-Pa.”
Swinging the Alphabet (B-A-bay, B-E-be, B-I-bicky-bi…) from Violent is the Word for Curly is perhaps the best-known original song performed by the Stooges on film.
The “Lucia Sextet” (Chi mi frena in tal memento?), from the opera Lucia di Lammermoor by Gaetano Donizetti (announced by Larry as “the sextet from Lucy”), is played on a record player and lip-synched by the Stooges in Micro-Phonies. The same melody re-appears in Squareheads of the Round Table as the tune of “Oh, Elaine, can you come out tonight?”
Micro-Phonies also includes the Johann Strauss Jr. waltz “Voices of Spring” ("Frühlingsstimmen") Op. 410. Another Strauss waltz, "The Blue Danube," is featured in Ants in the Pantry and Punch Drunks.
The Moe-Larry-Curly Joe lineup of the Three Stooges recorded several musical record albums in the early 1960s. Most of their songs were adaptations of nursery rhymes. Among their more popular recordings were "Making a Record" (a surreal trip to a recording studio built around the song "Go Tell Aunt Mary"), "Three Little Fishes", "All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth" and "I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas".
The Three Stooges also made appearances in many feature length movies in the course of their careers:
In addition to the unsuccessful (see "History" section, above) television series pilots, Jerks of All Trades (1949) and Kook's Tour (1970), the Stooges appeared in a short-lived television show called The New Three Stooges which ran from 1965 to 1966. This series featured a mix of thirty-nine live action segments which were used as wraparounds to 156 animated Stooges shorts.
That cartoon program became the only regularly scheduled television show in history for the Stooges. Unlike other films shorts that aired on TV like the Looney Tunes, Tom and Jerry, and Popeye, the film shorts of the Stooges never had a regularly scheduled national television program to air in, neither on network nor syndicated. When Columba/Screen Gems licensed the film library to television, the shorts aired in any fashion the local stations chose (examples: late-night "filler" material between the end of the late movie and the channel's sign-off time; in "marathon" sessions running shorts back-to-back for one, one-and-a-half-, or two hours; etc.).
Two episodes of Hanna-Barbera's The New Scooby-Doo Movies aired on CBS featuring animated Stooges as guest stars: the premiere, "Ghastly Ghost Town" (September 9, 1972) and "The Ghost of the Red Baron" (November 18, 1972). Due to these guest appearances there was a short-lived animated series, also produced by Hanna-Barbera, entitled The Robonic Stooges, originally seen as a featured segment on Skatebirds (CBS, 1977-1978), featuring Moe, Larry, and Curly as bionic cartoon superheroes with extendable limbs, similar to the later Inspector Gadget.
The Stooges were brought back to life (so to speak) in a 2000 TV movie. Moe was played by Paul Ben-Victor (who also had a small role as a fan who thinks he's Moe in 'StoogeMania'), Larry by Evan Handler, Shemp by John Kassir, and Curly by Michael Chiklis. The executive producer was Mel Gibson.
Gary Lassin, 52, opened the Stoogeum in 2004 in a renovated architect's office in Spring House, 25 miles (40 kilometers) north of Philadelphia. The museum-quality exhibits fill 3 stories (10,000 square feet or 929 square meters), including an 85-seat theater.[14] Peter Seely, editor of the book "Stoogeology: Essays on the Three Stooges." said that the Stoogeum has "more stuff than I even imagined existed." 2,500 people visit it yearly, many during the annual gathering of the Three Stooges Fan Club.[15]
Robert Swerdlow, 53, of Dix Hills, New York has the world's biggest Three Stooges collection. Puppets, dolls, coloring books, paper dolls and toys are displayed in his Long Island home. Swerdlow says is collection is priceless.
A film about the Three Stooges, simply entitled The Three Stooges, is scheduled to be released on 2009. The Farrelly Brothers are still attached to the project[16], even though their Warner Bros. deal to write and direct the film has expired[17], and First Look Studios will distribute the motion picture. The Farrellys said that they were not going to do a biopic or remake, but instead new Three Stooges episodes set in the present day.[18] The plot of the episodes are said to be an adventure that revolves arount the Stooges characters.