THREE STOOGES

1. KNUCKLEHEADS TRIO
2. MEN IN BLACK
3. MOE HOWARD
4. I STOOGE TO CONQUER
5. LARRY FINE, THE STRAIGHT GUY
6. STOOGES TRADEMARK
7. CURLY HOWARD
8. NOT SUCH A BULLY AFTER ALL
9. SHEMP RETURNS
10. IDLE ROOMERS
11. RENAISSANCE MAN
12. BE A STOOGE

1. KNUCKLEHEADS TRIO

After breaking from Ted Healy and his vaudeville act known as ?Ted Healy
and his Stooges?, Moe assumed the role of the bully boss, which had up
till that point been played by Ted Healy. Shemp set out on his own at
that time and Moe?s brother Jerome joined the trio. Jerome soon shaved
his head and from that day forward was known as Curly. Moe Howard, Larry
Fine and Curly Howard signed with Columbia Pictures and the ?Three
Stooges? were born.

2. MEN IN BLACK

The first year their two-reeler ?Men in Black? earned The Three Stooges
their first Academy Award nomination.

3. MOE HOWARD

Moses Horwitz began his acting career in 1909 playing bit roles in
silent Vitagraph films. By age 17, he joined a troupe working on a
showboat and soon made appearances in several two-reel shorts. In 1922,
he teamed with Ted Healy forming the act that would span the Three
Stooges. Moe toured Vaudeville and appeared in films with Healy for
nearly a decade before the Stooges parted ways with Healy. Over his life
time, Moe appeared in more than 250 films during his 66-year career,
including 190 Three Stooges shorts. His wife Helen Schonberger, was a
cousin of Harry Houdini.

4. I STOOGE TO CONQUER

?I Stooge to Conquer? was the title of Moe?s unfinished autobiography
when he died, it was later published as ?Moe Howard and the Three
Stooges?. Moe was a quiet family man in real life, he enjoyed playing
bridge and had a hobby of making hooked rugs.

5. LARRY FINE, THE STRAIGHT GUY

Born Louis Feinberg, Larry spilled a bottle of a powerful acid badly
burning his left arm when he was a kid. Doctors recommended that he take
violin lessons as therapy to strengthen the damaged muscles. By the age
of 10, he had played a solo piece backed by the Howard Lanin Orchestra.
During his teenage years, he earned his living as a singer and boxer. At
18, Larry began working vaudeville with "The Haney Sisters and Fine".
Then in 1925, he joined with Ted Healy and Moe Howard. Ted and Moe
offered him a salary of $90 a week and an extra $10 if he threw away the
violin. His stooge trademark was that he always played the middle stooge
with a receding hairline and crazy hair. While he was not dominating as
Moe or as distinctive as Curly or his replacements, his relative
normality allowed him to play the necessary straight man to the others.

6. STOOGES TRADEMARK

Legend has it that Moe became so mad at Shemp during a card game, he
took his two fingers and poked him in both eyes at once, causing Shemp
to fall over backwards in his chair. Larry laughed so hard, it got
everybody else laughing, so they decided to use the gag in their films.
When their films began to appear on childrens? shows in the late 1950s,
there was a wave of kids doing the double poking each other in the eyes.
When Moe heard about this, it was The Stooges who came to the rescue.
They went on many local television shows, as well as national TV and
showed how the eye-pokes were done in a way that nobody got hurt. To the
kids watching, it was like learning a special behind-the-scenes magic
trick.

7. CURLY HOWARD

Curly was an inch taller than the 5?4?? Moe and 5?4?? Larry. Curly had a
pronounced limp due to an accident as a child. One day at summer camp,
he shot himself in the foot by accident with a rifle. It never healed
properly, and he limped from that day forward. To hide it on screen,
Curly developed his famous exaggerated walk. Giving him yet another
trademark as the most popular Stooge. Curly was the youngest of the
Howard brothers and his mother always called him "My Baby." His older
brothers and Stooge partners, Shemp and Moe shortened it to "Babe" and
used it to constantly tease him.

8. NOT SUCH A BULLY AFTER ALL

Moe was the business-minded one of the group. He knew that Curly liked
to spend his money on partying and fast times and Larry liked to spend
his dough at the racetrack. So he drew up an agreement where Larry and
Curly both turned over a certain percentage of their salaries to him. He
in turn invested it for them. The result was that, while Larry and Curly
were not as wealthy as Moe was, seeing how he invested far more of his
own money and was quite well off, he at least ensured that their
spendthrift habits did not result in their being broke when their
careers ended.

9. SHEMP RETURNS

After more than 100 appearances with the Stooges, Curly suffered a
stroke in 1947 and Shemp Howard rejoined the trio until Curly could
recover. Curly never did and Shemp remained with the troupe until he
suffered a deadly heart attack in 1955. Moe was the boss on and off the
stage and after Shemp passed away, Moe filled his role briefly with
comedian Joe Besser. Joe liked comedy, but didn?t like being hit, a
crucial part of their physical humor, so Besser was out.

10. IDLE ROOMERS

The threesome find themselves working as bellboys in a large hotel when
a side show promoter shows up with 'Lupe'. a wild wolfman. The wolfman
promptly escapes and raises havoc. The stooges try to capture the
wolfman by playing music to calm him down, but music has the opposite
effect and makes him go berserk and soon the stooges are the ones trying
to run away. They end up caught in an elevator with the werewolf who
then shoots them into the sky. Otherwise known as ?The Three Stooges
Meet the Wolf Man?.

11. RENAISSANCE MAN

Comedian Joe DeRita shared a remarkable resemblance with the original
Curly and when he joined the team the trio began a comeback with a brand
new outlet - television. Their new success was sidelined in 1970 when
Larry Fine suffered a stroke, he passed away in 1975. Moe was all set to
revamp the group with Emil Sitka taking Larry?s place, but it was not
meant to be and Moe passed away from lung cancer in 1975, effectively
ending the original Three Stooges.

12. BE A STOOGE

With the world of video gaming you can be just about anybody, so why not
be one of the Three Stooges. In the recent Game Boy game, called The
Three Stooges, you go to work raising money to save an orphanage that is
about to be foreclosed on by an evil banker. All of the challenges in
the game are based on plots from Three Stooge films. You'll lob pies at
the crusty upper-class, scurry through a hospital to find discarded
tools, and enter an oyster cracker contest where each salty treat scores
you big bucks. You'll even have to run through a level, avoiding
obstacles by weaving past them or leaping over them in Mario Brothers
fashion. Perhaps the most fun for extreme fans is the trivia contest
segment, where a correct response will net the Three Stooges five
hundred bucks a whack. There is even a super Stooge secret surprise if
you can get enough dough to reveal it.