Webster defines stooge as “an actor stationed in the audience to assist a comedian by heckling him or feeding him lines or being the victim of pranks.” In 1924, successful vaudevillian, Ted Healy, would create an act with two brothers, Samuel and Moses Horwitz (who went by the stage names of Shemp and Moe Howard) called Ted Healy and his Stooges. Louis Feinberg (Larry Fine) would later join the act. When Shemp left the act in 1932 to peruse a solo movie career, he was replaced by his brother, Jerome Horwitz (Curly Howard) in Healy’s act.
In the early 1930s, Healey was the highest paid comic in the country, making as much as $30,000 a week. Despite the small fortune he got, he paid his three “Stooges” (Moe Howard, Larry Fine and Shemp Howard (and after Shemp left, Curly Howard) $100 per week – split three ways. In 1934, Howard, Fine & Howard left Healy’s act for Columbia pictures to make movie shorts that are still viewed on TV today.
Healy met a tragic end, dying celebrating his son’s birth. A stroke would separately claim Curly Howard and Larry Fine. Moe Howard would die from lung cancer and Shemp Howard would die from a heart attack. That said, the three Howard brothers and Larry Fine would leave behind some of the funny physical humor that has ever been performed as witnessed by the compilation piece directed by Scott Spiegel entitled “Breakdancing Stooges.” The 9 year old kid in me still laughs at their act; the act of “The Three Stooges.”