The Three Stooges
Many kids (boys) raised in the 1950s and 1960s adored the wild antics of The Three Stooges. When their short films were given new life on TV in the late ’50s, the Stooges were re-born. They had just wound up a 25-year contract at Columbia Pictures, and as age crept up, they were seemingly retired. TV stations buying the films paired them with a wacky local host, which helped propel the Stooges into a new career. They filmed feature movies (1959-1965), appeared on late night TV (Joey Bishop and Dick Cavett), daytime TV (Mike Douglas) and the Ed Sullivan Show. They public appearances around the country usually tied into a charity they worked with and had guest shots on local TV stations’ shows such as Officer Joe Bolton at WPIX-TV in New York, and The Great Mac Nutt on WDSU-TV in New Orleans, where I grew up.
In 1964, the Stooges were visiting the New Orleans for the Shrine Circus. They appeared on the Great Mac Nutt Show, an after-school hour of Stooges films and kids sitting in a club house. It was that day that I convinced my grandmother to take me to visit them. My grandmother, not a fan of the Stooges, saw that they would appear on WDSU-TV’s Midday news/talk program. So, we went to the studios in the French Quarter.
After the program, like many in the audience, I went over to meet them. There were no Curly or Shemp. I didn’t know why. I approached Larry Fine, who was the bushy hair of the original two. Moe Howard was always considered the leader of the group. As Larry was autographing a picture for me, I asked him, “Where’s Shemp?” He looked at me and said, “Sorry, son. Shemp’s dead.” I was stunned. Over the years, as I read about the Stooges’ history, I learned that Shemp, who originally joined the team in Vaudeville, then replaced by Jerome “Curly” Howard (younger brother of Shemp and Moe), had died years earlier.
A few years later, I started to correspond with Moe. Surprisingly, he answered, and the letters kept on flowing from Los Angeles to New Orleans for about three years. He told me he was writing his autobiography and told me a lot about their history. His autobiography did come out and the Stooges, like many of the original movie comedy teams still enjoy some success, decades later.
He and Larry appeared to be very gentle nice men, far from the personalities they played from the 1930’s to late 1960’s. Ah, those memories.
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