by Moe Howard
The success of Hercules was so great that Columbia gave Normandy Productions the go- ahead to do three additional features: The Three Stooges in Orbit, Around the World in a Daze, and The Outlaws IS Coming!, which contained a love story between Nancy Kovack and Adam (“Batman”) West. Norman directed the last two. We Stooges also made appearances in Four for Texas with Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, and turned up as inept firemen in Stanley Kramer’s It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. After completing The Outlaws IS Coming!, we made a deal with Heritage Productions in 1965 to do a series of animated color cartoons, called The New 3 Stooges. Some 156 five-minute cartoons were produced for TV.
In The Three Stooges Meet Hercules, the boys ogle a rather demure Vicki Trickett.
Martians Og and Zog are genuinely baffled by Curly-Joe, Larry, and Moe in The Three Stooges in Orbit (1962).
Larry, Moe, and Curly-Joe doing the twist in The Three Stooges in Orbit.
The Stooges contemplate a model of the tank/helicopter/submarine which will take them into space in The Three Stooges in Orbit.
In early 1971, we decided to do a TV series on our own based on an idea we had toyed with for several years: a series of color travel films with the Stooges visiting and fouling up the entire world. The title would be Kook’s Tour, and it was designed to be a tour by three kooks. With a boat and camper, Larry, Joe DeRita, Norman (our producer-director), and I, plus our costar Moose, a black Labrador retriever, led a caravan of cars supplied to us by the Chrysler Corporation. We were driving through the Northwest seeking location spots for filming of the pilot for the proposed new series. It was a fresh and thrilling experience, shooting a film out in the fresh air in beautiful virgin country rather than the stuffy, confined stages to which we had become accustomed. When location filming was completed, we headed back to Los Angeles to shoot close-ups in the Angeles National Forest several miles from the city.
Larry, Curly-Joe, and Moe masquerade as Arabian sheiks in The Three Stooges Go Around the World in a Daze (1963).
Romantic leads Joan Freeman and Jay Sheffield remain hesitant despite the backing of Larry, Curly-Joe, and Moe in The Three Stooges Go Around the World in a Daze.
Taking The Three Stooges Go Around the World in a Daze to various openings throughout the country, Moe, Curly-Joe, and Larry stop off to clown in Nashville, Tennessee.
The boys confer with Dean Martin about the best way to hang Anita Ekberg’s painting in Four for Texas (1964).
On the set of his last Stooges movie, The Outlaws IS Coming! (1965), Moe and director Norman Maurer entertain Moe’s grandson Jeff.
Then it happened. Larry had gone to his daughter’s home to pick up clothing for the next day’s shooting. That evening she telephoned me. Larry had had a stroke.
After weeks in the hospital, Larry attempted to recuperate at his daughter’s home, but he needed daily therapy and wasn’t getting it. I suggested that she have him placed in the Motion Picture Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, one of the finest institutions of its kind in the country. Every performing member of the film industry gave 1 percent of his weekly salary to maintain this institution. Funds also came from producers and directors (and occasionally the public). At the home one received the best medical attention and care free of charge.
The Stooges display annoyance that their boss, Sheriff Adam West, would take time out for some romance with Nancy Kovack while villains are loose in The Outlaws IS Coming!
Adam West is leery about the enthusiasm of his newly sworn-in deputies—Curly-Joe, Moe, and Larry—in The Outlaws IS Coming!
On one of my first visits to see Larry, I found he was beginning to look better, although his mouth was still affected by paralysis and his speech was very thick. I looked at him; he smiled a crooked smile. I excused myself, saying I had to go to the lavatory, where I broke down completely. When I managed to regain composure, I walked back into the room wiping my eyes. I told Larry I had just used my eyedrops, which made my eyes burn and tear. I had to get out of his room before I broke down in front of him. I explained that I had a doctor’s appointment myself and that I would see him the following Sunday. I visited him almost every weekend after that and would push his wheelchair around while he played shuffleboard with the other patients. He enjoyed that very much.
After Larry’s stroke, I knew the Three Stooges had come to an end as an act. Joe DeRita requested, and received, permission to do personal appearances with an act called “the New Three Stooges” with character actor Paul “Mousie” Garner and acrobatic comedian Frank Mitchell (who was half of the famous 1930s team of Mitchell and Durant). The act, unfortunately, never clicked and was booked into only a few engagements.
During his stay at the home, Larry did his best in entertaining the patients. He helped put on skits for their annual Ding-a-ling Show. The entire cast performed in wheelchairs and would sing and move their chairs into chorus positions. I did a sketch or two with Larry at each performance. He became very adept at drawing, painting, and mosaic work, even though one hand was partially paralyzed.
All’s well that ends well in The Outlaws IS Coming! as the boys wrap up their screen careers and Nancy Kovack heads for new horizons with Adam West.
Every visit to him became more trying. He would tell me jokes which were very hard to understand because of the thickness of his speech (my hearing problems didn’t help), but I would yock loudly to cover the tears welling in my eyes. Over a period of months I could see that Larry was slowly getting worse. He always joked with me. I would laugh uproariously, with tears falling at the same time.
Then, in late 1974, I phoned the home one day and was informed that Larry had been placed in the intensive care unit in the hospital. I tried to reach him there and was told he was unable to speak on the phone.
Shortly after the beginning of the New Year, I received another phone call from Larry’s daughter. She said that Larry had become comatose and that little hope was extended by his doctors. A week later I received the call that really shattered me. Larry was dead.
Larry and Moe clown on the New 3 Stooges cartoon TV series (1965), which included some live action.
Larry and Moe drown in fan mail as TV kid-show host Paul Shannon and Curly-Joe look on.
Moe’s son-in-law, Norman Maurer, rehearses the boys for a special short promoting US Savings Bonds in 1968.
Curly-Joe, Moe, and Larry on the set of the abortive Kook’s Tour (1970) with Norman Maurer.
The Stooges on their anti-pollution Vacuucycle in Kook’s Tour.
16
A SINGLE IN THE ’70s AND MY SEVENTIES
After Larry had his stroke I really felt that the time had finally come for retirement, as far as being a Stooge was concerned. I signed up with an agent on the chance that there might be some character roles available, but I guess the producers were afraid that the Stooge in me might show through.
Then a letter came asking if I would appear at Salem College in West Virginia. It seemed that the nostalgia craze, where the Stooges were concerned, had hit hard. I went only because it was an excuse to go east and visit my son. I didn’t know what I would do, though. How does one lecture at a university? I felt if I asked the students what they wanted to know about the Stooges, there would be bedlam, with everyone yelling their questions at once. I decided that I would just talk briefly and express my pleasure at their wonderful reception. I told them, “I know what you fellows want to know about us, so I’m going to give you the answers before you ask the questions.” I went through, in detail, all that I thought they would like to know. The idea went over well. I showed two of our comedies and told them a series of anecdotes, and they were delighted.
It was in September that I was asked to appear at the State University of New York at Buffalo. This time I had the audience fill out questions on cards and I would answer them from the stage.
The college auditorium was jammed. It had a 1,600-seat capacity and there were about 400 standing. The performance was broadcast on closed
-circuit TV to all parts of the campus.
Moe Howard does a solo personal appearance in 1972.
Moe clowns with Helen and singer Sergio Franchi in 1973.
Moe and his older brother Jack, a retired insurance salesman, discuss the possibility of reviving the Stooges.
Never one to let a good pie go to waste, Moe takes up a familiar pose in 1973.
The last Moe Howard film appearance: Cinerama’s Doctor Death (1973), with Sivi Aberg.
I remember that they showed a couple of our two-reel comedies, and then I did our whole vaudeville routine, doing Curly and Larry’s parts, too. During the question-and-answer period, one of the cards read: “Would you do me the honor of throwing a pie at me?” A young fellow came up onstage with his pie. Instead of the light whipped-cream or shaving-cream pies that we throw, this was the real thing, heavy with fruit and backed with a tin liner (ours were always backed with lightweight cardboard). I frowned and explained the problem, but the young fellow wouldn’t be deterred. I threw, the pie exploded, and the young man fell back a good five feet. He came up all smiles, and he thanked me.
I must say here that never in my career in show business, with or without the other Stooges, have I ever enjoyed such a standing ovation.
I’d come a long way from Moses Horwitz, high school dropout, to Moe Howard, Stooge, at New York University.
I continued on the college circuit, and occasionally on the TV talk shows in and around Los Angeles.
For years I had envied the famous film scene where James Cagney smashed a grapefruit into his sweetheart’s face. Finally, in 1974, my chance came. I was on national television doing a guest shot on The Mike Douglas Show. At the tail end of the show, after an especially gooey pie fight, almost everyone was covered with whipped cream. I wound up holding the only remaining pie. I walked off the stage and into the audience, where my wife, Helen, was sitting in the front row. The cameras followed me. I put my face affectionately close to hers, she leaned forward, and I kissed her. Then, pie in hand, I walked back a few steps toward the stage, turned, and slammed the pie into the face of Soupy Sales, who was cohost for that week.
Several months later I did the third Mike Douglas show, and this time we again wound up in a pie fight, and again I had possession of the last pie. Again I walked toward my wife in the front row and pie in hand, stuck my face out for a kiss. She leaned toward me with a pleased grin, but instead of the kiss, she got the pie smashed right into her surprised face. The look was worth a million dollars. She began laughing, and on national TV she kissed me, smearing my face with her—and my—pie.
When I performed on a fourth Mike Douglas show, Mike asked me to bring Helen up onstage to sit with him. I walked downstage and extended my hand to help my wife up. As I leaned over, she reached down for a concealed cream pie and slammed it right in my face, really clobbering me. A bull’s-eye with the first pie she’d ever thrown—and one of the high points of our long life together.
Helen and Moe in 1974.
AFTERWORD
Moe Howard continued on the college lecture circuit through 1974. He continued to appear occasionally on television with Mike Douglas, and he made one return to film acting—as a single this time—in a small role in a 1973 horror movie called Doctor Death: Seeker of Souls. He then began work on his autobiographical memoirs and was busy taping and transcribing at the time of his death.
After more than half a century of making people laugh, Moe Howard died on May 4, 1975, bringing down the curtain on one of the screen’s legendary comedy acts.
Moe Howard in the mid-1970s.
A STOOGES FILMOGRAPHY
Director’s name follows title
Ted Healy and His Stooges
* 2-reel musical
Ted Healy, Larry, Moe, and Shemp in Soup to Nuts.
Soup to Nuts (Fox, 1930 feature) Benjamin Stoloff
* Nertsery Rhymes (MGM, 1933 short) Jack Cummings
* Beer and Pretzels (MGM, 1933 short) Jack Cummings
* Hello Pop! (MGM, 1933 short) Jack Cummings Plane Nuts (MGM, 1933 short) Jack Cummings Meet the Baron (MGM, 1933 feature) Walter Lang Dancing Lady (MGM, 1933 feature) Robert Z. Leonard
Myrt and Marge (Universal, 1933 feature) Al Boasberg
* The Big Idea (MGM, 1934 short) William Crowley Fugitive Lovers (MGM, 1934 feature) Richard Boleslavsky
Hollywood Party (MGM, 1934 feature) Edmund Goulding, Russell Mack, Richard Boleslavsky, George Stevens, Sam Wood, Allan Dwan, Charles Reisner, and Roy Rowland
The Three Stooges (Larry, Curly, and Moe)
Unless otherwise noted, all sixteen-to-eighteen-minute two-reelers for Columbia
In Wee Wee Monsieur.
Turn Back the Clock (MGM, 1933 feature) Edgar Selwyn
Woman Haters (1934) Archie Gottler
Punch Drunks (1934) Lou Breslow
Men in Black (1934) Raymond McCarey
Three Little Pigskins (1934) Raymond McCarey
The Captain Hates the Sea (1934 feature) Lewis Milestone
Horses’ Collars (1935) Clyde Bruckman
Restless Knights (1935) Charles Lamont
Pop Goes the Easel (1935) Del Lord
Uncivil Warriors (1935) Del Lord
Pardon My Scotch (1935) Del Lord
Hoi Polloi (1935) Del Lord
Three Little Beers (1935) Del Lord
Ants in the Pantry (1936) Preston Black
Movie Maniacs (1936) Del Lord
Half Shot Shooters (1936) Preston Black
Disorder in the Court (1936) Preston Black
A Pain in the Pullman (1936) Preston Black
False Alarms (1936) Del Lord
Whoops, I’m an Indian! (1936) Del Lord
Slippery Silks (1936) Preston Black
Grips, Grunts and Groans (1937) Preston Black
Dizzy Doctors (1937) Del Lord
3 Dumb Clucks (1937) Del Lord
Back to the Woods (1937) Preston Black
Goofs and Saddles (1937) Del Lord
Cash and Carry (1937) Del Lord
Playing the Ponies (1937) Charles Lamont
As Larry watches, Moe handles a pressing problem in Three Little Sew and Sews.
The Sitter Downers (1937) Del Lord
Termites of 1938 (1938) Del Lord
Wee Wee Monsieur (1938) Del Lord
Tassels in the Air (1938) Charley Chase
Healthy, Wealthy and Dumb (1938) Del Lord
Violent Is the Word for Curly (1938) Charley Chase
Three Missing Links (1938) Jules White
Mutts to You (1938) Charley Chase
Flat Foot Stooges (1938) Charley Chase
Start Cheering (1938 feature) Albert S. Rogell
Three Little Sew and Sews (1939) Del Lord
We Want Our Mummy (1939) Del Lord
A Ducking They Did Go (1939) Del Lord
Yes, We Have No Bonanza (1939) Del Lord
Saved by the Belle (1939) Charley Chase
Calling All Curs (1939) Jules White
Oily to Bed, Oily to Rise (1939) Jules White
Three Sappy People (1939) Jules White
You Nazty Spy! (1940) Jules White
Rockin’ Thru the Rockies (1940) Jules White
A Plumbing We Will Go (1940) Del Lord
Nutty but Nice (1940) Jules White
How High Is Up? (1940) Del Lord
From Nurse to Worse (1940) Jules White
No Census, No Feeling (1940) Del Lord
Cookoo Cavaliers (1940) Jules White
Boobs in Arms (1940) Jules White
So Long Mr. Chumps (1941) Jules White
Dutiful but Dumb (1941) Del Lord
All the World’s a Stooge (1941) Del Lord
I’ll Never Heil Again (1941) Jules White
An Ache in Every Stake (1941) Del Lord
In the Sweet Pie and Pie (1941) Jules White
Some More of Samoa (1941) Del Lord
Time Out for Rhythm (1941 feature) Sidney Salkow
Loc
o Boy Makes Good (1942) Jules White
Cactus Makes Perfect (1942) Del Lord
What’s the Matador? (1942) Jules White
Matri-phony (1942) Harry Edwards
Three Smart Saps (1942) Jules White
Even as I O U (1942) Del Lord
Sock-a-Bye Baby (1942) Jules White
My Sister Eileen (1942 feature) Alexander Hall
They Stooge to Conga (1943) Del Lord
Dizzy Detectives (1943) Jules White
Spook Louder (1943) Del Lord
Back from the Front (1943) Jules White
Three Little Twirps (1943) Harry Edwards
Higher Than a Kite (1943) Del Lord
I Can Hardly Wait (1943) Jules White
Dizzy Pilots (1943) Jules White
Phony Express (1943) Del Lord
A Gem of a Jam (1943) Del Lord
Larry Fine.
Crash Goes the Hash (1944) Jules White
Busy Buddies (1944) Del Lord
The Yoke’s on Me (1944) Jules White
Idle Roomers (1944) Del Lord
Gents Without Cents (1944) Jules White
No Dough Boys (1944) Jules White
Three Pests in a Mess (1945) Del Lord
Booby Dupes (1945) Del Lord
Idiots DeLuxe (1945) Jules White
If a Body Meets a Body (1945) Jules White
Micro-Phonies (1945) Edward Bernds
Rockin’ in the Rockies (1945 feature) Vernon Keays