I Stooged to Conquer Read online

  Helen whispered, “Tell him that you’ll let him know.”

  I felt like floating on air. My spirits had been at such a low point for a year and a half. I phoned Ted later at his home in Connecticut and told him that I’d join him. He said he’d send his chauffeur for Helen, Joan, and me in the morning, and we could stay at his home in Connecticut until rehearsal started.

  Ted was a star now. He had a new foreign car, a Renault. His home in Darien, Connecticut, was palatial: twenty-six rooms, including twelve bedrooms with a fireplace in each. And the grounds were magnificent. There was a seemingly endless pine grove, covered with very valuable specimen trees and the usual babbling brook. It was a wonderful change for me and my family; we spent a Christmas there that I shall never forget.

  Ted’s wife and vaudeville partner at the time (who used to be half of a dancing act—the Braun Sisters) was the former Betty Braun. She made us feel very welcome, although there were some very uncomfortable moments between her and Ted.

  I remember when Betty arrived in Darien she came in the front door as Ted rushed a showgirl he was having an affair with out the back door. I also remember how, during the week, a package arrived from J. J. Shubert with a dozen magnificent handkerchiefs for Betty and nothing for Ted. In a rage, he threw Betty’s gift into the fireplace.

  We had gotten to Ted’s place in time for lunch and talked right through the night, developing material for the show, some of which we used to the end of our vaudeville days—material like the sketch where we enter onstage and Ted asks us, “Who are you gentlemen?”

  “We’re from the South.”

  “So you’re from the South,” Ted says. “Did you ever hear of Abraham Lincoln?” Whereupon I extend my hand to Ted and say, “Glad to meetcha, stranger.”

  At this point, for the first time, Ted gives us the triple slap, hitting, machine-gun-like, across our three faces.

  In another sketch, Ted is in the cockpit of an airplane and pointing to the gas gauge, says, “How much fuel do we have?” Shemp replies, “I don’t know, Ted, I looked at the gauge and the arrow points halfway. I don’t know if it’s half empty or half full.” For this retort Ted gave Shemp a sharp rap over the head.

  Another one had Ted saying to Larry, “Did you take a bath this morning?”

  “No, somebody was in the bathroom,” said Larry.

  “What time was that?”

  “About nine in the morning,” said Larry.

  “That was my wife,” Ted replied.

  “Ain’t she skinny!”

  A Night in Venice, which was staged by Busby Berkeley, played three weeks of break-in dates in New Haven, Atlantic City, and Akron and then opened on Broadway in May 1929. I remember how critic Brooks Atkinson described Shemp, Larry, and me as “three of the frowziest numskulls ever assembled.” The show went over very well and ran for seventeen weeks. Then we went on the road until 1929, when it closed because of the Depression.

  While rehearsing for A Night in Venice we were working with Ted Healy, along with the Stevens Brothers and their wrestling bear.

  Healy came up with the bright idea of making our entrance onstage with a dozen or more cats following closely at our heels. But how to get a dozen cats and teach them the art of acting?

  I told Ted I’d locate the cats, but he’d have to figure a way of training them. “Okay,” Ted said. “Go get the cats and we’ll keep them in the men’s room.” We were rehearsing on the second floor of the Sardi’s Building on 44th Street. My plan was to stand out in front of a little movie theater on Eighth Avenue, and when some kids came out, I’d give each fifty cents to bring me a good-size cat. I went back to the rehearsal room and waited. Soon, one kid came in carrying a wriggling paper bag. I gave him half a buck and brought the bag into the men’s room on the second floor. I gave it a shake and out fell a tiger cat. I had all I could do to keep him from squeezing out the bathroom door. Then in came another kid with a cat in a burlap sack. I took the squirming sack and paid out the fifty cents. Another kid came strolling up, this time with a baby buggy. In it were two more cats in a pillowcase. He got a dollar. I was curious to know how he managed to get two cats. He said he went to a friend’s house with the buggy and a pillowcase. He rang the doorbell, knowing his friend wasn’t home. The mother answered the door, and the boy kept her in conversation until the cat came out in the hallway and onto the porch. When the door closed he snatched the cat and put it into the pillowcase and then into the baby buggy. (He was a regular catnapper.) He did the same thing with another friend.

  Ted Healy and His Three Southern Gentlemen, Larry Fine and Moe and Shemp Howard, in A Night in Venice.

  I carried the three cats up to the men’s room and tossed them in. By five o’clock, there were sixteen cats—every color, size, and description imaginable—all locked in the second-floor men’s room.

  Now, I must make clear one essential fact. J. J. Shubert was deathly afraid of cats. Monday morning, we all came in for rehearsal, under Shubert’s eye. We had just finished with the first sketch when Mr. Shubert started for the men’s room. As he opened the door sixteen angry cats jumped him. Shubert fainted. He was taken to the hospital and revived but refused to come back to rehearsal until all the cats were taken away. We called the stage carpenter to build a cage for the cats, and after a struggle, we finally got them into it. We emptied five cans of salmon in with them, just to keep them quiet.

  Publicity for A Night in Venice (1929): Larry, Moe, Shemp, and Ted Healy.

  Later, we were transferred to the Century Theater to continue our rehearsals. The cats were carted to the theater and put in the basement. Ted’s new idea was to put salmon in our cuffs so that the cats would follow us onstage during the act. We asked Zwickie, the caretaker for the Stevens Brothers’ wrestling bear, to feed the cats for us. We gave him some money, but we didn’t know he spent it going to the ball games.

  Before long a terrible stench began to permeate the theater. The smell got so bad we had to stop rehearsing. Ted and I went down into the basement and found three of the cats lying dead in the cage. When we opened it, the rest of the cats took off as though they were shot out of a cannon. We gave the dead cats a proper burial and didn’t come back to the theater to rehearse until the following Monday. I know for a fact that there were relatives of those cats running around the Century Theater until it closed down many years later.

  One of the most unusual stories in show business happened during the run of A Night in Venice. The story kept cropping up whenever show folks gathered and was retold for many years thereafter, with some exaggeration along the way.

  The show was touring and playing the Grand Theater in Chicago, while on the bill of the Shubert Theater across the street was an Earl Carroll show—I think it was Sketch Book. This is how the story was told to me:

  It was Thanksgiving eve and a group of showgirls from Sketch Book and from A Night in Venice were having a high old time at the 606 Club after their performance. In the wee hours the club management raffled off chances on a turkey, and a group of the girls who had pooled their tickets won the twenty-four-pound bird—live, no less! It was packed in a large wooden crate, head protruding and gobbling like mad. The astonished doorman helped the girls put the crate into a cab and off they went to their hotel. With more help, they got the bird into their room and out of the crate. The frightened creature then tore wildly through the suite, under beds, and over tables. The girls were at a loss as to what they should do. One of them had an idea: tie the bird’s legs to a chair until morning, at which time they’d cook it. A second girl suggested that they lock it in the closet. A third girl said, “Not with my clothes in there.” Finally the girls went into a huddle and came up with a solution. One went to the all-night drugstore on Michigan Avenue where her boyfriend worked and asked him for some chloroform. She returned to the hotel, chloroformed the bird, gave it a vicious blow over the head, removed the feathers, and put it into the refrigerator.

  The next morning, one of the
girls went to the refrigerator, opened the door, and that poor featherless gobbler staggered out naked as a newborn bird.

  This awesome sight sent the girls screaming down the hall to the apartment of some chorus boys, who completed the necessary task of doing away with the bird. A beautiful Thanksgiving dinner was served by the chorus boys in their apartment, but the girls wouldn’t eat a thing.

  One of our routines in A Night in Venice was an act with a wrestling bear. This bear had absolutely no talent other than wrestling any person who held his arms outstretched. It looked quite effective onstage. One of the Stevens Brothers, who owned the bear, would hold it by a halter and strap which was drawn through a ring in its nose, while the other brother and his assistant would each wrestle the animal.

  During our act, if either Shemp, Larry, or I came near the bear, it would reach out with its paw, grab us around the ankle, and send us sprawling. After flooring Shemp a couple of times and wrestling with the Stevens Brothers, the bear would start to chase us. Larry and I would run across the stage with our pants falling, exposing our brightly colored shorts. The bear, hot on our tail, chased us offstage.

  In the wings, hanging on a hook, was a bear hide stuffed with paper, rags, and telephone books. Attached to the bear hide was a long wire which went up into the gridiron through pulleys to the other side of the stage. There was a large ring attached to the wire. Shemp would take the fake bear, enter from the wings, and pretend to be struggling with it onstage. Suddenly, he’d throw the bear hide over the heads of the audience, the lights would go out, and the bear hide, sailing over the heads of the people in the first few rows, would bring a series of screams. A stagehand would then pull the ring on the wire and bring the hide back onstage.

  One time we were doing the show as usual. The Stevens Brothers had finished wrestling, Shemp had taken a few spills, and Larry and I had run on and off the stage a couple of times with our shorts exposed. When we got backstage, Shemp reached for the fake bear hide, took it off the hook, and started wrestling. Tripping over his pants, he accidentally let go of the hide, which swung loose offstage. Seeing Shemp drop the bear, the stagehand figured the routine was over and walked away from his end of the wire. In the meantime, I saw Shemp fall and drop the hide, so I grabbed it and began struggling with it. I ran with it to the center of the stage and then threw it into the audience. But there was no one on the other end to pull in the slack. There I stood, center stage, and watched this thirty pounds of hide wrap itself around three or four heads in the seventh row of the orchestra. I was stunned, and so was J. J. Shubert, who had to pay $11,000 in settlements.

  Following our run in A Night in Venice, we did our first big-time vaudeville tour on the Loew’s circuit. We opened with Ted Healy at Loew’s Capitol in Washington, DC, in late 1929. There were eight acts on the bill with us: a troupe of Arab tumblers and acrobats; the Kennedy Brothers, very accomplished piano players and singers; a comedy act called Willie, West, and McGinty; then Spencer’s Dogs. After intermission came a team of adagio dancers, followed by Ted Healy and His Southern Gentlemen: Moe, Shemp, and Larry. The Stevens Brothers’ wrestling bear appeared with us onstage again, led on by its trainer, followed by Shemp, Larry, and me. The bear started its usual routine by grabbing for my foot and tripping me. Then it proceeded to move its bowels on center stage. The electrician immediately doused the lights, leaving the stage in darkness except for a baby spot on the four of us as we tried to continue our act.

  Zwickie, the bearkeeper and cleaner-upper, rushed out with his broom and shovel. Groping in the dark, he began to take care of the bear’s mess. The electrician, seeing someone move onstage, hit Zwickie with the second spot. There he stood, open-mouthed, broom and shovel in hand. All he could think of doing was taking a bow. He bent over and the piled-up mess slid off the shovel and splattered back on the stage. The audience howled. Healy had his hands full trying to quiet them. Then a fellow in the balcony started to chant, “We want the bear.”

  Healy stared in the direction of the voice and shouted, “If that’s the kind of crap you want, we’ll give it to you!”

  For that line of dialogue, neither Healy nor the three of us could get another Loew’s booking for over three years—this after looking forward for so long to working in that gem of circuits. We did get our first booking at the Palace on Broadway, though, in March 1930. The New York Times called Healy’s Racketeers (Larry, Shemp, and me) “unkempt ruffians and gladiators.” The paper’s critic said of our act, “It is rough and hardy sport, but unendingly funny.”

  9

  GETTING INTO MOVIES, AND ALONG COMES CURLY

  We made our film debut as a team in 1930. Ted Healy came up with an offer to do a feature film for Fox Studios, the forerunner of Twentieth Century-Fox. The salary was not up to what vaudeville paid at the time, but we were dying to see the palm-lined streets of Hollywood. Healy was to get $1,250 a week, and each of us would be paid our now-standard $100. The filming would take five weeks.

  I can remember how Ted told us before we started filming, “Boys, one of us or all of us may click in films, so it’s the best of luck to anyone who makes it.” Our first movie: Soup to Nuts, an original story and screenplay by Rube Goldberg, the noted cartoonist and inventor. After it was completed, Winnie Sheehan, the head of Fox at the time, came to us with a seven-year contract. Several days later, we were told that Fox had changed its mind and the deal was off. Each of us would be given $500 for expenses and fare back to New York. Not long afterward, a friend who worked with us during the filming of Soup to Nuts told me that he was in Sheehan’s office when Ted came in and said, “You know, Mr. Sheehan, you’re ruining my act by signing the boys for a contract. I didn’t think that one Irishman would do this to another Irishman.” Sheehan told him, “Don’t be concerned, Ted. I’ll take care of this.”

  When our Fox contract was canceled, we had every intention of rejoining Ted, but when I found out what he’d done, I said to Shemp and Larry, “This is our opportunity to see what we can do as a single act, and I for one am not going back with Ted.” We all agreed, and the decision was made to go on our own as Howard, Fine, and Howard—Three Lost Souls (I was calling myself Harry Howard at that time). We contacted the William Morris Agency and were immediately booked into the Paramount Theater in Los Angeles for two weeks, followed by one each in Portland and San Francisco.

  While rehearsing material for our new act, we took some time to relax by playing a few hands of three-handed bridge. During one hand Larry insisted that he had four honor cards. This was impossible, as Shemp and I each had one. Shemp became incensed, and in a fit of anger he stood up, reached over, and poked his fingers into Larry’s eyes. I started to laugh hysterically and went over backward in my chair. I tried to break my fall by throwing my arm behind me; instead I went crashing through a French door in back of me, smashing the glass and cutting my arm. Larry’s eyes were tearing and my arm was bleeding, but I just continued to laugh. The next morning at ten, we opened at the Paramount in Los Angeles. At one point in the act, I said to Larry and Shemp, “Who’s the manager of this act?” Walking toward me from my left and right side, they each said, “I am.” It was then that I threw my arms out with two fingers on each hand extended and poked both Larry and Shemp in what appeared to be their eyes. The audience erupted, and we kept this bit in the act, using it at every performance and in countless films in later years. I never hit them squarely in the eyes, although I did come close a few times.

  While we were establishing ourselves as Howard, Fine, and Howard, Ted found himself three other stooges and got a booking at the Roxy Theater in New York. After his first performance, the manager took him aside: “Ted, you’ll ruin yourself working with these three men. They have no sense of timing and don’t understand your act. Play sick, and get out of this date.” Ted realized he was right and walked out after that first show.

  During the next few months, Ted attempted to break up our act. First, he sent Larry an offer to work with him. Lar
ry wired back, “Sorry, Ted, I’ve signed with Moe and Shemp.”

  I have recalled and retold this story many times. It happened when we were appearing at an RKO vaudeville house in Kansas City. On the bill with us was Georges Carpentier, the French heavyweight fighter who had made such a good showing against Jack Dempsey for the world championship but, of course, didn’t win.

  Moe as drawn by inventor/cartoonist Rube Goldberg, who wrote Soup to Nuts (1930).

  The Stooges and their wives on the set of Soup to Nuts: Shemp and Babe, Moe and Helen, and Larry and Mabel.

  Ted Healy, Fred Sanborn, Larry, Moe, and Shemp in Soup to Nuts.

  Moe takes a break from his eye-poking to become a cowpoke.

  On this particular day, I was in one of my mischievous moods—a hangover from my spit-ball days—because of the boredom between shows. Since it was terribly hot and humid, I was going to lie down on a cot on the roof of the theater to try to get a tan, while Shemp, Larry, Fred Keating, and Georges Carpentier were sitting on a bench outside the stage door. On my way up to the roof I passed the dressing room door where the girls of the Mangine dance troupe were talking to Fred Keating’s young assistant, Anderson. I also noticed a tray of soiled plates and cups on the makeup table and one uneaten piece of blueberry pie. The scene just sort of triggered something. I popped in and asked them if I could have the pie; they told me to take it. I sauntered to the roof and looked over the edge, then back at that wedge of blueberry pie. Below I could see that large, shining bald spot on the top of Larry’s head. I leaned over, held the piece of pie in my right hand between my thumb and middle finger, and lined it up with that spot. I just opened my two fingers and let go. It was heavy enough to go straight down without flopping or turning and made a perfect landing smack in the middle of Larry’s skull. I ducked back and waited, then slowly started down the stairs.