Moe, Larry, and Curly were just a few funny fellas who grew up in the school of hard knocks.
Unfortunately for them, the knocks didn't stop coming after they hit it big in showbusiness.
Here's a look at the tragic true-life story of the men known as The Three Stooges.
Moses Horwitz, better known to fans as Moe Howard, was the group's fearless leader.
He was born in a small Jewish community outside Brooklyn, the second youngest of five brothers.
He had shoulder-length hair and was ruthlessly picked on for it.
So one day he decided to give his locks a big chop.
The result was the famous bowl cut he became known for, long before The Beatles made it
cool.
Moe survived the bullying in grade school, but he dropped out of high school after just
two months, as he was far more interested in something else: showbiz.
He would stand outside the local theater waiting for someone to buy him a 10-cent ticket.
When he'd get in, he'd stand at the top of the balcony, chin on the railing, dreaming
about becoming an actor one day.
He hustled at the theater, running errands and doing odd jobs until he got his own gig
performing in blackface at minstrel shows along the Mississippi River.
In 1922, Moe and his brother Samuel, aka Shemp, linked up with Ted Healy and brought their
boyhood jostling to vaudeville.
Larry Fine was born Louis Feinberg to Russian Jewish parents in Philadelphia.
One day, he was playing with his father's jewelry tools and he saw what he thought was
a refreshing cool drink.
But it was actually a bottle of acid used to check the authenticity of gold.
He picked it up to take a sip, but his father slapped the bottle away, burning the boy's
forearm in the process.
He needed a skin graft for the burn, and his doctors had him take up violin lessons as
a way to strengthen it.
He took to the violin unbelievably well and even ended up playing professionally.
In addition to his musical pursuits, he also became a lightweight boxer.
In 1925, Larry was playing a musical comedy act in Chicago when he came across Ted Healy,
who happened to be playing the same venue and got a look at Larry's show.
Larry's bit was good enough that Healy invited him to become one of his stooges, joining
Moe and Shemp.
What formed was a lasting friendship between Moe and Larry that lasted for the next half-century.
As for Healy, he gave the Stooges their start, though he had a major falling out with Shemp,
who eventually parted ways with the rest of the Stooges.
When Shemp left the Stooges, Moe's brother Jerome, who went by Jerry, was brought in
to try out.
The problem was, he didn't look very funny.
He had brownish-red hair and a handlebar mustache, and Ted Healy didn't think people would laugh
at him.
It also didn't help that his own brother didn't think he had any talent whatsoever.
But Jerry was determined, so he shaved his head bald right in front of the guys.
He reportedly said,
"Boy do I look Girly."
Healy thought he heard him say "Curly," and the name stuck.
The silly and lovable Curly went on to become almost everybody's favorite stooge.
His legacy would live on for decades to come.
His on-the-ground shoulder spinning may have inspired breakdancing, and his backward shuffle
bounce walk may have even inspired Michael Jackson's moonwalk.
"Soitenly."
After all the hits, jabs, and slaps the Three Stooges endured, it would be miraculous if
they didn't come away with some serious injuries.
But miracles... didn't happen.
(head conking sound effect) (whistling noise)
In Moe's autobiography I Stooged to Conquer, he revealed that he often got hurt during
filming and once broke three ribs.
He wrote,
"As rough a character as I seemed to be in pictures, and as tough as I came across, I
was hurt in our films more often than either Larry or Curly or any other member of the
cast."
Moe also revealed that the origin of the Stooges' violence stemmed from a live performance in
1925 in Brooklyn.
Moe told Ted Healy that his brother Shemp was in the audience, so Healy called Shemp
to the stage, who wouldn't drop the pear he was eating.
While on stage, Shemp offered the pear to Healy, but he refused, grabbing it and smashing
it over the newcomer's head.
This became a recurring bit, and Shemp became part of the team.
Moe's famous two-fingered eye poke also arose thanks to Shemp.
The guys were playing cards, and when Shemp suspected Larry of cheating he jumped up and
poked him in both eyes.
Moe thought the whole thing was hilarious, so he worked it into the act.
Harry Cohn, the co-founder of Columbia Pictures, was a bit of a monarch.
In fact, he reportedly modeled his office after that of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini.
His tyrannical reputation extended to his awful treatment of the Three Stooges.
After first signing them in 1934, Cohn had the trio sign new contracts every year, convincing
them that the shorts department was on its last legs.
But that was only half true.
Over the years, shorts were slowly going the way of the dodo as TV and feature-length films
took over, but Columbia wouldn't close its shorts department for decades.
"We are morons, tried and true, and we'll do our yell for you.
(babbling)"
In the meantime, the Stooges were making the studio big bucks.
While Columbia was only paying each of them a maximum of $20,000 per year, the studio
was raking it in.
But the Stooges never saw viewership numbers, so they had no idea how popular they really
were.
To make matters worse, the Stooges' manager, Harry Romm, was ripping them off.
He also had a cozy relationship with Cohn.
In 2008, Moe's daughter Joan told The New York Times that her dad grew up poor and that
he didn't know how to fight for what he and the Stooges were worth.
As she put it,
"My Dad was fearful.
He didn't want to rock the boat.
He didn't have the confidence to sit down with Harry Cohn and say, 'We need more money.'"
The Three Stooges' brand of comedy was inspired by Eastern European Yiddish archetypes: the
schlemiel, the schlimazel, and the persecutor.
Curly was the childish and clumsy schlemiel, Larry the unlucky schlimazel, and Moe the
abusive persecutor, even though he was just as stupid.
This made the Stooges part of a long tradition of Jewish comedy.
And while they never explicitly drew attention to their culture or tradition in their act,
save for the odd Yiddish phrase or two, they did make two important exceptions.
In 1940, while Adolf Hitler was carrying out the Holocaust, the Stooges made You Nazty
Spy!, starring Moe as Moe Hailstone, a goofy imitation of Hitler.
This was the first film to be released that featured an American comedian imitating the
German chancellor, beating out Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator by less than a year.
Then in 1941, the Stooges came out with the sequel I'll Never Heil Again, thereby forever
influencing the world of American political satire.
"Let them kill each other, and you and I will share the world."
Everybody loved Curly, but he struggled in his personal life.
He was known for reckless partying, hardcore drinking, and falling for women who weren't
good for him.
All those hits to the head surely didn't help either.
By the mid-1940s, his health was visibly declining.
He wasn't getting his lines right, he lost weight, and he just didn't look healthy.
Moe asked Harry Cohn to give Curly some time off to recover, but the Columbia boss wouldn't
allow it.
While on set in 1946, Curly suffered a brutal stroke, though he was able to recover.
When he was healthy, he appeared in the 1947 Three Stooges short Hold That Lion!, which
would be his last film.
It was the only time that the three Howard brothers appeared in a short together.
Curly's health continued to seriously decline as he had more strokes.
Moe took it upon himself to be his brother's caretaker, but Curly wasn't long for this
world.
On January 18, 1952, he died at the tragically young age of 48.
Jules White, a director on several Three Stooges shorts, could never forget what Curly said
to him on his last day on set:
"Gee Jules, I guess I'll never be able to make the children laugh again."
While the Three Stooges rocketed off into stardom, original Stooge Shemp was off doing
his own thing after falling out with Ted Healy.
And he was doing well and happy on his own.
But when his brother Curly died, Moe pleaded with him to rejoin the Stooges.
Moe also had to convince Columbia to bring Shemp back.
Columbia and Shemp eventually agreed to a deal, although Shemp had to forgo half of
his paycheck to do so.
Shemp's return was successful, albeit short-lived.
On November 22, 1955, he was in a taxi on his way home from a boxing match.
He was in the middle of a joke, smoking a cigar, when he teetered over and fell onto
his buddy Al Winston's lap.
He'd had a heart attack and died at the age of 60, just three years after his brother
Curly's passing.
By the end of the 1950s, Columbia Pictures needed to adapt or die.
In 1957, the studio was the only one in town that still had a shorts department.
They decided to close it as the winds of TV and feature films were sweeping through.
With the closure of the shorts department came the decision to let the Three Stooges
go after 23 years of blood, sweat, and tears.
That's right, they just laid them off without so much as a thank you or a tribute.
If that didn't sting enough, think about how Moe must have felt when he got back to the
office to say goodbye to his colleagues and security guards blocked him from entering.
Complete and total disrespect was all Columbia had to offer, but that wasn't the last we'd
hear from Moe.
After the breakup with Columbia, the Three Stooges found new ways to stay on the air.
Columbia syndicated their shorts to local and national TV, which not only put money
in the remaining Stooges' pockets but also made their material more popular than ever
before.
As new fans emerged, the Stooges started to cash in on merchandising.
But there was just one problem: who could replace Curly?
A couple of guys named Joe...
Joe Besser and Curly Joe DeRita… ended up filling the role, but most fans don't feel
they quite stacked up to the original Stooges.
Nevertheless, in the 60s the Stooges managed to churn out feature-length films, 41 live
wraparound segments, and a cartoon series.
In 1969, they even started shooting a pilot for a proposed travel TV show called Kook's
Tour.
Alas, a tragic event in 1970 prevented any footage from ever being shot.
Just like his comedy brothers, Larry Fine had a hard personal life.
He squandered a lot of his dough on gambling, which meant that he and his family spent a
lot of time living in hotels.
In 1961, his son John died in a car crash at the age of 24.
Six years later, his wife Mabel died as well.
He heard the news just before he was about to take the stage for a gig in Rhode Island
and his castmates covered for him when he was too distraught to go on.
In 1970, when the Stooges were in the midst of planning Kook's Tour, Larry had a stroke
that paralyzed the left side of his body and put him in a wheelchair.
Five years later, he had another stroke and died at the age of 73.
Meanwhile, Moe was still trying to keep the Three Stooges alive.
Even after Larry died, Moe signed longtime Stooge costar Emil Sitka to a deal, but it
wasn't meant to be.
Three weeks after Larry's passing, Moe succumbed to lung cancer.
And with that came the end of one of the most fascinating and influential acts to ever grace
American screens.
"Hi!
Remember us?
That's how we made our living for 50 consecutive years."
"Yeah, we got the scars to prove it."
"And I still got a few of the aches and pains."
"Yep."
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