With six members total, the Three Stooges carried
a legacy of slapstick comedy across multiple generations.
The backbone of the Three Stooges was undoubtedly the brothers: Samuel, Moses,
and Jerome. Born to Solomon and Jennie Gorovitz — whose surname was changed
to Horwitz with U.S. immigration — the brothers would later be known
in Hollywood by their iconic stage names: Shemp, Moe, and Curly Howard.
The first Howard to enter the world was Shemp, born on March 17, 1895,
in New York City. His nickname came from their Lithuanian mother's pronunciation
of his first name, Sam. Moe was born on June 19, 1897, with Curly arriving on October 22,
1903. According to Michael Fleming's authorized biography, The Three Stooges:
From Amalgamated Morons to American Icons, Curly was known to his family as Babe.
Moe enters show business
Moe was the first of his family to catch the acting bug. Per Turner Classic Movies,
while he was an avid reader, he was also a regular truant. He put off going to school
because of bullies and a desire to watch performances at local theaters. And he
only made it two months into high school before deciding to forego formal education entirely.
Moe's earliest performances were done for fun on Coney Island, but his first professional
break came when he was hired as an errand boy for Vitagraph Studios in Brooklyn. During this time,
the company occasionally offered him minor roles in their silent short films. Moe also
started performing with Shemp in vaudeville, saloons, and even on a riverboat. But it was
when comedian Ted Healy linked up with the Howards that their path to the Three Stooges truly began.
The troupe started as Ted Healy and his Racketeers in 1922, with the Racketeers
later changing to Stooges. A typical performance saw Healy try to tell jokes or sing songs as
Moe and Shemp did everything they could to mess it up. After Healy and his Stooges won
success on vaudeville and Broadway, by the start of the 1930s they moved into movies.
Call it a bowl cut, a mushroom cut, or a mop top — it was one of Moe Howard's trademarks.
Throughout his adult life, the leader of the Three Stooges always sported the same unnaturally sharp
fringe of hair. Paired with Larry Fine's thinning curly hair and his brother Curly's
round shaved head, it seemed to fit. But Moe's haircut wasn't exclusively for comic purposes.
"They used to have a name for these when we were kids during the depression–"
"Skunk heads." "Well, no –"
In a late-in-life talk show appearance, Moe explained the story behind his childhood
haircut. His mother persisted in styling his hair with shoulder-length curls until
he was 11 years old. The teasing from schoolmates drove Moe into fights,
and on the advice of a friend, he took a pair of scissors and sheared himself.
The result was none too neat, but as he grew up, Moe adopted the look as his own.
Moe wasn't the only stooge with a story behind his hair. According to Michael Fleming,
before Curly joined the act, he wore his hair long and even had a mustache. With his sporty looks,
Healy — the ringleader of the act at the time — felt Curly would be out of
place alongside Moe and Larry. To appease Healy, Curly reluctantly buzzed his head.
While the Howard brothers and Healy founded the iconic act, the only constant member besides
Moe was Larry Fine. According to Turner Classic Movies, Larry dabbled in boxing and sang with Gus
Edwards — one of the most important vaudevillians in history — and he earned a name for his talents
as a combination comedian and violinist. This talent originated in his childhood when a doctor
recommended that Larry play the violin as a way to rebuild arm strength following an accident.
Fine the fiddling funnyman first came to the Stooges' attention in 1925 when the Howards and
Healy caught a performance of his in Chicago. The impression he left was enough for Moe to recommend
Fine to Healy as a possible replacement when Shemp left the act. Healy agreed on one condition:
The violin had to go. As compensation, he threw in an extra $10 on top of Fine's $90-a-week contract.
"Don't hit him on the head, you know he's not normal."
"I am."
Curly was relatively late in joining his big brother Moe and their partner Larry
Fine as a member of Ted Healy and his Stooges. But
Curly's rascal persona became the darling of fans for generations.
"Do you solemnly swear to tell the truth, the whole truth,
and nothing but the truth?" "Certainly, what've I got to lose?"
According to Turner Classic Movies, Curly looked up to Moe and Shemp from a young age. His early
efforts to follow in their footsteps were more musical than comedic and included singing,
dancing, and conducting bands in a breakaway suit. The chance to get involved in stoogedom
came when Shemp decided to go his own way after repeatedly clashing with Healy.
The youngest Howard was eager to join his brother on stage. But according to Fleming's biography,
Curly suffered from stage fright in his early days that was so bad,
it pitched his voice higher than normal. Far from hurting his performance, the high
voice and Curly's improvisational instincts helped to define his on-screen character.
Ted Healy might have been the first to assemble the Stooges into one act,
but he was often drunk, controlling, and cheap. According to Fleming's biography,
when the Stooges briefly struck out on their own, Healy allegedly called in a
bomb threat. These sorts of episodes helped convince Shemp to initially leave the act.
While Moe, Curly, and Larry remained as Healy's stooges for a while longer,
Hollywood beckoned in the early 1930s. According to Fleming, MGM signed the act
for work in features and short subjects, often built around stock footage. The good
notices Healy picked up convinced him to renew with MGM, but as a solo act,
leaving the Stooges behind. But the trio had picked up their own fans by this time.
Cut loose from their partner, in 1934 they formally adopted the name the Three
Stooges and won deals with Columbia and Universal. Unfortunately, these two deals
were negotiated at the same time, with Moe at Columbia and Larry at Universal. Per Fleming,
neither knew the other was bartering until they both came back with contracts, with an hour's
difference making the Columbia deal binding. According to Britannica, this made Columbia
Pictures the Stooges' home base for the next 24 years — during which they never got a raise.
While Moe, Curly, and Larry started achieving fame as the Three Stooges at Columbia, Shemp
established himself as an actor and comedian in his own right. According to Turner Classic Movies,
after leaving the family act in 1930, Shemp stayed in Brooklyn for the next
seven years. He built his career up in two-reel shorts, slowly moving from bit player to star.
"You can't see" "Oh, I see."
"No, you don't see." "Oh…"
The Jewish Virtual Library tells us that Shemp had attempted to create a group act
of his own — first seen in the 1934 short film, The Knife of the Party. But it ultimately didn't
work out. Fortunately, Shemp was still in demand, even if not always in the most flattering terms.
His agent even went as far as promoting him as "the ugliest man in Hollywood." When he finally
went west, he co-starred with everyone from Abbott and Costello to John Wayne.
Curly Howard liked to live fast, and success gave him ample opportunities to enjoy the
good life. However, the same career that allowed him to indulge in this lifestyle
became just as taxing, and he turned to the same vices to cope with the stress.
His deteriorating health was noticeable on screen by the 1940s, but things came to a head during
the filming of Half-Wits Holiday in 1946. A massive stroke left Curly unable to perform,
and a second stroke the following year put him in a wheelchair. Suddenly short one Stooge,
Moe and Fine appealed to Shemp to join the act. While reluctant to give up his steady solo career,
the elder Howard agreed to fill in, assuming that Curly would make a full recovery.
Per The Three Stooges: From Amalgamated Morons to American Icons, Curly's condition only
deteriorated from there. He did have enough energy to hold down a bit part in 1947's
Hold That Lion — the only Three Stooges film to feature all three Howard brothers together — but
he was eventually committed to a sanitarium. Curly died in 1952 at just 48 years old.
At the start of the 1950s, the Three Stooges — now consisting of Moe, Shemp,
and Larry — were still churning out shorts and features for Columbia. Elsewhere in Hollywood,
comedian and actor Joe Besser was enjoying his own career. Garnering attention since the 1940s,
Besser's comic persona was that of a simpering man-child,
recognizable for his part as Stinky in The Abbott and Costello Show.
"I'll harm you."
Besser fell in with the Stooges after Shemp's death from a heart attack in 1955. Having
lost two brothers, Moe was still a willing performer under contract with Columbia — and
neither he nor Fine were inclined to work on their own. According to Michael Fleming,
it was up to Moe and Columbia to select a replacement stooge, and they settled
on Besser due to his established act — not to mention his own contract with Columbia.
Besser's tenure with the Three Stooges was short-lived, as he joined at a time
when short films were falling out of favor. According to Empire, by 1957,
Columbia was the only studio still making live-action shorts. But following the death
of studio chief Harry Cohn, the department was shuttered, and the Stooges were unemployed.
Even without production and distribution woes, the Stooges found their partnership with Besser
to be awkward. His wimpy persona didn't mesh well with the violent slapstick of Moe and Larry, and
he personally had a low tolerance for getting hit. He departed the act after the break with Columbia.
A former crew member claimed that Moe said Besser was Columbia's choice to replace his
brother Shemp and not someone he and Fine sought to retain later. And according to Moe himself,
Besser declined to continue because of his sick wife.
The last man to join the Three Stooges was Joseph Wardell, known professionally as Joe DeRita.
According to the Three Stooges' official website, DeRita was born in Philadelphia on July 12, 1909,
to a stagehand father and a dancer mother. His parents brought him onto the stage at
just 7 years old, and he continued on the vaudeville circuit as a young man.
DeRita began transitioning into films with an appearance in 1944's The Doughgirls,
and he remained steadily employed throughout World War II. He would partner with various
famous names for work with the United Service Organizations, and he moved into radio and
television at the war's end — which included short subjects at Columbia, alongside the Stooges.
"What's going on here? Why I oughta —" "Now, just — Just a minute. Wait. It was all
a mistake, you see. I thought she was a dummy." "A dummy!?"
Curiously, DeRita didn't hold the Stooges in especially high regard.
In Jeff Lenburg's The Three Stooges Scrapbook, he is quoted saying,
"They were physical, but they just didn't have any humor about them [...] I was with the Stooges for
12 years, and it was a very pleasant association, but I just don't think they were funny."
He felt the Stooges didn't measure up to acts like Laurel and Hardy,
citing the obvious predictability of their antics as a reason for not liking their humor.
According to the Three Stooges' official website, DeRita was initially reluctant
to join the Three Stooges. But Michael Fleming suggests that after so many years going it alone,
DeRita may have wanted a more settled arrangement. He may also have been playing the long game,
foreseeing that association with the Stooges would pay off eventually.
Around the time that DeRita joined the act, Columbia sold the television rights to their
extensive catalog of Stooges short films, reviving the group's popularity just in time
for the new line-up's initial round of personal appearances. The most popular of these old shorts
came from Curly Howard's tenure, which had a direct impact on DeRita's persona. According to
The Three Stooges Scrapbook, DeRita initially wore his hair in parted curtains like Shemp,
but children who attended live shows expected Curly. While unwilling to imitate Curly,
DeRita did shave his head and adopted the name Curly Joe.
The Three Stooges spent the 1960s performing, cameoing in TV shows and
starring in six feature-length films. But none of them were young men anymore. Larry Fine in
particular struggled to maintain the necessary energy for the Stooges' trademark slapstick,
and a series of minor strokes made it increasingly difficult for him to remember
his lines. He persisted until 1970 when a more severe stroke left him paralyzed on the left side.
Moe considered bringing in Emil Sitka — an actor who had performed alongside the
Stooges for decades — to take Larry's place, but no projects ever manifested. Larry's
incapacitation effectively ended the act, and he died in January 1975. Moe would pass away
only five months later from lung cancer. According to The Three Stooges Scrapbook,
DeRita reportedly had Moe's permission to keep the Three Stooges going with
two stand-ins for Moe and Larry, but this venture flopped with hardly any notice.