Book Review – Moe Howard – I Stooged To Conquer.

1977 and 2013. Chicago Review Press

Moe Howard's I Stooged To Conquer book cover

Spoilers

Uncompleted before his Death, Moe Howard’s wonderful, honest and touching account of his life and the story of The Three Stooges was originally to have been called I Stooged To Conquer, but the 1977 publishers insisted on renaming it simplt Moe Howard & The Three Stooges. The lavishly photo-illustrated 2013 edition fortunately restored the original title, a pun on She Stooped To Conquer.

Moe tells his story from the start, growing up in a poor family in the Depression. He was quite a tearaway, who enjoyed fighting at school, and his love of cinema led to him chasing after backlot jobs at Hollywood studios and led to roles in some silent films. His brothers, Shemp and Curly, later to become Stooges alongside him, shared in his wild adventures. Shemp & Moe started performing in sketches on vaudeville stages, and eventually teamed up with Ted Healy, a straight man to their goofball antics. Healy was a difficult man to work with and grossly underpaid them and Curly (who joined the group later). They got to make a feature film with Healy in 1931, after which Shemp got a solo film career for a time while Ted & the others returned to theatre work, until they returned to film, along with a friend Larry Fine, creating the first and mostly legendary Stooges like up, Larry, Curly & Moe. They became a huge success, but the studio contracts paid them only for the immediate work, not royalties for repeat screenings, and Ted Healy also grossly underpaid them, largely to fund his alcoholism. This got so bad that the Stooges split away from him to form their own team. Healy eventually died after a severe beating in a drunken pub brawl. Moe felt genuinely heart-broken over it.

The Stooges went on to enormous success, which ran intoi a crisis when Curly suffered a stroke during filming his last regular appearance on screen. Shemp was persuaded to rejoin his brother and Larry and worked with them until his own death in the mid-1950’s.

A newcomer joined the team now, Joe Besser, a popular comedian who had worked with Abbot & Costello (Shemp was in one of their films with him). Besser pulled out after two years to tend to his sick wife, and for a time it looked like the Stooges were finished. Two reel comedies were no longer to be made to accompany feature films, so Moe was prepared to call it a day, but something amazingly unexpected happened. Television!

Larry Fine pottery model, won by me at a tombola stall

Early Stooges shorts were shown in children’s viewing slots and kids loved the antics of the trio of imbeciles so much the ratings went through the roof. The surviving Stooges were united with an actor called Curly Joe (picked for his resemblance to the original Curly) and a string of feature films came out, taking the Stooges to meet Hercules, Snow White and aliens. In a western comedy they worked with Adam (Batman) West.

The Stooges were working on a TV series called Kook’s Tours, a parody of travel shows, but only the pilot episode was done before Larry Fine became too ill to continue working. The Stooges were finally done. Moe made guest appearances in a few films and started work on his memoir. He was apparently the best custard pie thrower in Hollywood, every pie thrown in a Stooges film (except for those aimed at him) was chucked by Moe Howard as he never missed his targets.

The Stooges did many of their own stunts and often got badly injured, Moe more than the others. The laughter he and the other Stooges, including Ted Healy, brought to the World, remains a joy to watch. Moe’s autobiography gives great insight into their amazing lives and careers.

As Curly would say, Nyuk nyuk nyuk.

Photos taken by me.

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Arthur Chappell