AH, SWEET MYSTERY OF SONGS AND SUCCESS

The Attenuated Careers of Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald

by Nick Zegarac

For many an old time film fan, the singing duo of Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald has no equal. Hearing the opening strains of ‘Sweethearts’ or ‘Indian Love Call’ immediately conjures to mind a memory of sheer delight into which the non-critical listener is drawn to hushed reverence. If only in song, the sound issuing from their lips is synonymous with eloquent chaste love. It luminously defies that crass commercialism associated with motion pictures.

Yet, what is there about the Eddy/MacDonald chemistry that makes their duets so indelibly etched in our collective consciousness, yet, just as easily is dismissing the fact that their acting apart from one other left much to be desired. To be obvious – they sang well together. But other film teams (most notably, Mario Lanza and Kathryn Grayson) have managed to hit the high notes far more consistently than MacDonald and Eddy.

In fact, the general criticism from musicologists, both during and after their on screen tenure, has always been that either Nelson or Jeanette possessed any ‘great skill’ for any other venue but the movies. An unflattering moniker of their day dubbed MacDonald’s temperamental diva “the iron butterfly” to Eddy’s emasculated “singing capon.”

If it was joy galore together for those brief years of operetta bliss at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, then apart it was MacDonald who clearly had the more lucrative film career. Prior to – and during her - teaming with Eddy, Jeanette MacDonald had appeared opposite Maurice Chevalier in such classics as Ernest Lubitsch’s romantic sex comedy, Love Me Tonight, the melodic – if slightly saucy - The Merry Widow (1934) and as a romantic interest for Clark Gable amidst the earth shaken ruins of San Francisco (1936). Yet, it was her frequent costar, Nelson Eddy’s legitimate start as an operatic baritone away from the movies that MacDonald valued and respected the most.

Born in Providence Rhode Island on June 29, 1901, as a boy, Nelson Ackerman Eddy sang soprano in his church choir. According to relatives, the aspiring youngster never contemplated any venue for his life’s vocation other than singing. With adolescence came a change in his voice and his prospects. Music coach, Dr. Edouard Lippe so fervently believed in his protégé’s abilities that he loaned Nelson Eddy the money to study in Dresden and Paris. Eddy’s lusty baritone easily won a 1922 singing competition; the prize – a chance to apprentice with Philadelphia’s renown Civic Opera Company. By 1924, Eddy was headlining Pagliacci at New York’s Metropolitan Opera, an impressive debut by any standard.

Of her formative years, Jeanette Anna MacDonald might have shared in Eddy’s passion to become an opera legend. She was born on June 18th, 1903 with a rigid Philadelphian crust and quite accustom to having her own way, even as a child.


But MacDonald’s attempts at fame did not compliment her aspirations. Though she entertained dreams of stardom amidst the footlights – and some would argue that her demeanor and temperament suggested some vane greatness beyond the scope of her talents – MacDonald was repeatedly chastised by impresarios and opera managers who told her that her soprano was too frail for the legitimate stage.

Disillusioned, but nevertheless determined, MacDonald assuaged adversity and into bit parts in early Hollywood musicals for Paramount Studios where she began carving a niche as everyone’s favorite naughty and flirtatious girl of the evening.

Director Ernest Lubitsch cast her in his frothy 1929 confection, The Love Parade opposite debonair Maurice Chevalier. As the film’s passionate lovers, the chemistry between Chevalier and MacDonald was so palpable that it generated quite a scandal and Lubitsch reteamed them again for the risqué titled, One Hour With You and later, Love Me Tonight (both in 1932). In the interim, Jeanette was kept busy costarring in a string of largely forgettable – though highly profitable – light musical comedies, most usually finding her warbling a tune or two in a skimpy nightgown or slip.

Meanwhile, Nelson Eddy’s early successes on the stage had paved the way for a venture into radio (then a new medium). Upon giving his first broadcast, Eddy attracted the attentions of a talent scout from MGM. Enticed to Hollywood with the as yet unfulfilled promise of achieving genuine stardom, Eddy signed a studio contract in earnest, only to be wasted in several cameo appearances in films like Dancing Lady (1932) that were not primarily showcases for his talents.

Ironically, with this downturn in Eddy’s prospects came a proportionate upswing in MacDonald’s career. By 1934, MacDonald had garnered sufficient reviews to warrant her own contract at MGM. The move from Paramount was decidedly a step up. On the Paramount lot rumors abounded that Jeanette had been obstinate to the point of defiant. Though she left Paramount of her own accord, it has been suggested that the decision was a relief to her bosses.

MGM’s Vice President in Charge of Production, Irving Thalberg, attempted to rekindle the old MacDonald/Chevalier in his home court. But when tempers flared between the two on the set of The Merry Widow (1934) Chevalier vowed to never again work with her in the movies – and regrettably, never did. Casually assessing the damage in their professional working relationship years later, MacDonald politely quipped “I've been told I have an Irish temper. I know I have Scottish thrift, and, like the English, I love a good show.”

In a stroke of marketing genius and perfect timing, MGM’s fastidious and sentimental mogul, Louis B. Mayer paired Eddy and MacDonald in their first grandiose screen operetta, Naughty Marietta (1935). Only a year earlier, the showbiz publication Daily Variety had declared the screen operetta maudlin and dead. But under Mayer’s affinity for schmaltz and froth, Eddy and MacDonald debunked that assessment. Naughty Marietta was a thunderous critical and financial success.

MGM christened their new duo ‘America’s Singing Sweethearts’ and promptly set to work crafting an impressive slate of like-minded projects beginning with Rose Marie (1936), the bittersweet tale of a young operatic singer, Marie DeFlor’s (MacDonald) and her growing love for a Canadian Mounted Policeman, Sgt. Bruce (Eddy) who is, in fact, out to capture her fugitive brother (James Stewart).

The film capitalized on MacDonald’s ability to exude ample quantities of haughty exclusivity beneath which lurked the heart of a girl next door yearning for homespun intimacy. Justly famous for its fresh outdoorsy bravado, Rose Marie forever cemented Eddy and MacDonald’s association and their place in film history by introducing the ‘Indian Love Call.’

Perhaps because Eddy’s personality was not prone to delusions of self-grandeur, his association with MacDonald seems to have been one based in mutual respect. MacDonald secretly admired Eddy’s prior stage career and he allowed her to have more than her share of close ups in their duets.

Eddy’s first debut in a role apart from MacDonald was in the ravishingly extravagant musical, Rosalie (1936) in which he costarred opposite the studio’s top tap dancing star, Eleanor Powell. Although he may have been ill suited to play the varsity heart throb that falls in love with a Ruritanian princess the film afforded Eddy the opportunity to introduce Cole Porter’s hauntingly beautiful, “In the Still of the Night” as well as the film’s galvanic title song.

After soprano Grace Moore fell ill, Jeanette MacDonald returned to Eddy’s side in Maytime (1937) a tragic love story dripping with kitsch and foam. Once again, the team of Eddy and MacDonald could do no wrong. Maytime was a box office hit and it prompted L.B. Mayer to begin thinking of the pair in the same exclusive reverence previously afforded only Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers at RKO. Like Astaire and Rogers, this deliberate association forced Eddy and MacDonald into an awkward artistic corner. Henceforth they infrequently departed their on screen coupling for independent projects and increasingly none of their work apart performed up to standard.

Of their subsequent re-teaming, no film came near to recapturing the afterglow of success embodied in Maytime. On the overwhelming popularity of this film, MGM rushed Eddy and MacDonald into two more operettas, The Girl of the Golden West and Sweethearts (both in 1938).

Although quite successful, neither performed as well as Mayer had anticipated. Hoping to diversify his investment, Mayer split the team up and cast Eddy opposite Iona Massey in Balalaika (1939). But the Russian fantasy seemed to illustrate that Eddy apart from MacDonald was simply not enough of a talent to carry an entire film. Pitted against the more gregarious Massey, Eddy seemed stultified and rigid.

MacDonald reunited with Eddy for two of their least successful endeavors; New Moon and Bittersweet (both in 1940). Though each film managed to make a tidy profit, it was now becoming obvious to Mayer that his verve for a new cycle of screen operettas had run its course. Split from MacDonald again, Eddy was given the melodic though placid singing sensation, Rise Stevens for his costar in The Chocolate Soldier (1941), a film in which he haplessly attempted something of a fractured Russian accent to lure his wife’s affections away from an American lothario that he presumes to be her boyfriend.

On the whole, MacDonald faired better in her work away from Eddy. Her costar billing with Clark Gable in San Francisco (1936) was a colossal hit, and even such convivial drivel as The Firefly(1937) and Broadway Serenade (1939) generated respectable returns and reviews. That same year, a New York Daily News Survey crowned MacDonald was crowned “Queen of the movies.” It was the height of her popularity as a movie star.

But with America’s entry into WWII, Hollywood’s genuine fascination for gay ol’ Europe and its lilting waltzes seemed to suddenly cool, and, tepid attempts to rekindle that past – as in Smiling Through (1941) with Brian Adhere standing in for Eddy – were abysmal flops.

MGM made one last valiant attempt to unite Eddy and MacDonald, this time in the contemporary fantasy, I Married An Angel (1942), in which a man born of the earth finds eternal romance with a woman literally sent down from heaven. Neither the premise nor the plot clicked with audiences.

Disenchanted with her waning career, MacDonald made one more film for MGM at the start of the new decade – Cairo (1942) before effectively disappearing from the screen entirely until 1948. But her temperament, as well as that of her costar, Ethel Waters, clashed both on and off the set.

As for Eddy, he departed MGM all together to appear in Universal Pictures’ most costly production of 1943 – the lavishly mounted remake of The Phantom of the Opera. But Universal had made an egregious error in refocusing the film’s narrative on Eddy’s operatic baritone and his romance with a young Parisian chanteuse. Though the film looked and sounded great it was decidedly heavy on opera and short on terror.

As the decade wore on it became clear to Eddy that his prime in motion pictures had passed. He provided the narrative and singing voice for Willie the Whale in a poignant segment from Walt Disney’s animated feature Make Mine Music (1946) before appearing in his last film, the wholly forgettable and non-musical Northwest Outpost (1947). An era had come to its end.

MacDonald was perhaps more reluctant to leave movies than Eddy, for her success in front of the camera had been the only she had ever known. After appearing in a minor role in Three Darling Daughters (1948) and an equally token offering in The Sun Comes Up (1949), MacDonald had to admit – if only to herself - that she too was no longer equal to the material being offered.

As a team, Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald never sang again on celluloid. However, as the dawn of television grew more prominent, the duo enjoyed a minor resurrection in their careers. MacDonald was given an honorary doctorate in music from Ithaca College in New York on May 30th, 1953.

Although the accolade must have been gratifying, it paled in comparison to the resurgence of popularity that came from reruns of the Eddy/MacDonald films run on late night TV. Record companies began soliciting the pair for re-recordings of their greatest love duets in stereo. Still in fine voice and with their mutual respect untarnished – though perhaps mellowed – Eddy and MacDonald appeared together on several albums for Capitol Records, the last of these cut in 1959. Occasionally each provided cameo reminiscences of their career together and life apart for television variety shows.

Apart, Nelson Eddy spent most of his time indulging his hobby as a gifted sculptor. He continued to perform for live audiences – which had been his first love prior to becoming a movie star, and most notably did a duet with Gale Sherwood in a successful nightclub act that ran from 1953 until his death from a stroke in 1967. As for MacDonald, she quietly and completely retired from the fray of performing, content to be the wife of actor Gene Raymond, whom she had married in 1937. On January 14, 1965 Jeanette MacDonald died of a heart attack in Texas with her husband by her side.

Frequently, both MacDonald and Eddy were asked to clarify the simple fact that despite having been paired as man and wife in their films, the two never entertained romantic longs for one another off the set. MacDonald set the tone for clarity first.

“I can't believe how blessed I am. I'm married to the most wonderful man, Gene Raymond, whom I'm deeply in love with, and, my career is right where I want it to be. I can live like this forever!”

Eddy was somewhat more frank about the misconception.

“I don't know why people still want to believe that Jeanette MacDonald and I were a couple off the set,” he once told a reporter, “There's no truth to that rumor, at all. She's happly married to Gene Raymond and I'm happily married to Anne (Denitz Franklin). I guess people want to believe that what they see on the screen is reality while in actuality, it's just a movie.”

@Nick Zegarac 2006 (all rights reserved).

LET'S HEAR IT FOR THE BOYS

A stooge in the head is worth three cheers from the heart

by Nick Zegarac

The Three Stooges are today regarded as cinematic icons; as American as apple pie, the undisputed masters of slapstick, and, as zanily unhinged as anything ever seen on the screen. If Laurel and Hardy were sublime punsters, the stooges were punch drunks. Pitted against the Marx Bros. leftist anti-establishment witty barbs, geared toward the anarchist intellectual, the stooges are low brow chuckleheads for the every man. Yet, the stooges have remained eternal – and arguably, have surpassed – their contemporary comedic legends. The endurance of one “nyuk-nyuk-nyuk” for example has managed to outlive almost all other filmed comedic bits of business put forth by rival acts, save radio hams cum film comedians Bud Abbott and Lou Costello’s ‘Who’s on First?’

Who can forget the riotous boxing tournament, when Curly (the troupe’s most popular numb skull), after hearing ‘Pop Goes the Weasel’ manages to decimate not only his opponent in the ring but also his managers, Larry and Moe; or the moment when Curly, attempting to ‘fix’ a leaky bathtub, inadvertently builds a cage around himself from plumber’s tubing. Or Curly, with a large couch coil stuck to his rump, (the other end still attached to the couch), is pulled from his oafish female dancing partner at a society party.

Curly: If her husband kills me, I'm comin' back to haunt you.

Moe: Haunt that house.

Curly: How many rooms?

Moe: Seven.

Curly: With bath?

Better still, the vignette in which Curly discovers a very feisty live oyster spewing projectile soup at him from his bowl of oyster stew. These, and many other moments, once seen are seared into the memory. Not bad for three guys with limited education who spent the bulk of their career appearing in two reel short subjects – rather than feature length films.

Woman - "I'm in a terrible dilemma."
Moe - "Yeah, I don't care much for these foreign cars either."

Professionally, it all began in 1908, when a feisty Moses (Moe) Harry Horwitz (then eleven) decided he had had enough with school and wanted to become an actor. There was one problem. Moses lacked even a glint of matinee idol good looks.

“Seeing my face in the mirror,” he would later recount, “covered with large jagged freckles…I would end up the ugly duckling of the Horwitz family.”

Still, he managed to finagle a gofer’s position at Brooklyn’s Vitagraph Studio on Avenue M in New York City. When asked by head of production Maurice Costello why he had consistently refused remuneration for his menial services Moses replied, “Because I’m looking for a job in films.” The ploy worked. Moses was cast in a string of bit parts for Vitagraph, including Van Dyke Brooks We Must Do Our Best (1909).

That same year, Moses (newly rechristened as ‘Moe’) met Ted Healy, the man who would amalgamate the stooges trademark humor before departing on other ventures. Healy was a bit of a drifter with greater aspirations for becoming a businessman than an entertainer. However, by 1912 Healy’s ambitions had shifted to Vaudeville and a modestly successful traveling troupe that included Moe and his brother Sam (Shemp).

The men appeared briefly in Annette Kellerman’s Diving Girls. Previously, Kellerman had made headlines for defying the odds of being stricken by polio at an early age, yet swimming the English Channel as a youth. Currently she was the star of an acquacade. But the Healy/Kellerman association ended abruptly after only one season when a contract diver fell to her death from the diver’s platform.

Still, Moe was determined. At sixteen, he lied his way into a stint aboard a traveling riverboat, The Sunflower for two seasons at a then plumb salary of $65 dollars a week. With his newfound strength as an actor, Moe reunited with Shemp for a blackface comedy relief routine: Howard & Howard – a study in black. Shemp’s draft into the armed forces briefly interrupted this lucrative venture, though afterward the two worked circuits for Loew’s and RKO until 1922. That was the year both men decided to marry; Moe to Helen Schonberger (the cousin of Harry Houdini) and Shemp to Gertrude Frank. But there was precious little time for romance.

A reunion with Ted Healy (and his wife Betty), paved the way for a new Vaudeville act – one that included aspiring comedian Larry Fine. The troupe also included the Haney Sisters – of which Larry would court and later marry the eldest, Mabel in 1927. At the outbreak of World War I, the act traveled the ardent route of playing small town venues. Larry attempted something of a breakout sketch ‘Fine and Dandy’ with a woman ironically named Winona Fine. The venture was extremely short lived. Back in the Healy fold, the act reopened as Ted Healy and his Three Southern Gentlemen, then later as Ted Healy and the Racketeers.

However, in 1927 Moe resigned himself to an official retirement from showbiz. His decision had been predicated on a deep seeded desire to prove his wife’s family – who had insisted that any marriage to an actor would never make for a stable home – wrong. After the birth of his daughter, Joan, Moe ventured into real estate.

The shift in profession proved disastrous. In an instant, his investment of $22,000 had dwindled to a meager $200.00. Another attempt at respectability, this time as the proprietor of a dried goods store, did little than to further strain the family’s financial status. Finally, Moe resigned himself to a reunion with Ted Healy – who had by this time become a rather prominent figure on the stage. The reunited group debuted in A Night In Venice (1929) – a comedic musical staged by Busby Berkeley.

A Night In Venice was a colossal success and paved the road to Hollywood in 1930 with a film offer from Fox Studios (then a precursor to 20th Century Fox). The film, Soup to Nuts (1930) was enough to convince Winnie Sheehan that the stooges were ready for the big time. However, a mere four days later the offer of a seven year contract was revoked, prompting Moe to make inquiries. What he discovered was that the contract had not included Ted Healy. Fearful that he was losing his own chance to score in films, Healy had confronted Sheehan with an impassioned plea not to sign the stooges as a solo. The rift generated between Moe and Healy was sufficient enough for the stooges to strike out on their own.

For the next several years, Healy and the new independent act of The Three Stooges (Moe, Shemp and Larry) struggled separately to find their niche. Both toured the theater circuit with their quiet animosity building. Another rupture occurred when Healy – ever more becoming a cynical drunk and embittered recluse – threatened to sue the stooges if they incorporated any bits of business from A Night in Venice into their new Vaudeville act. This pending lawsuit was settled quietly, but it did leave a bitter aftertaste for all concerned.

It was at this junction in their career that the success of Soup to Nuts began to pay off – with one caveat. It prompted more film offers to pour in but as the act Ted Healy and His Stooges. Reluctantly, the troupe reunited. However, while on tour for a live engagement at The Triangle Ball Room, Shemp received a solo film offer which Moe encouraged him to pursue. Outraged, Healy lamented that Shemp’s departure would ruin the act. But Moe had a winning replacement – his brother Jerome ‘Curly’ Howard.

With Curly in tow, Healy and the Stooges reunited on screen for Meet The Baron, Plane Nuts and Dancing Lady (all in 1933) but the partnership was from the start impossibly strained. After 1934’s cameo in Hollywood Party, Moe cornered Healy and his agent Paul Dempsey and officially broke their contract. Henceforth the new act would be known simply as ‘The Three Stooges.’

INSANITY UNHINGED

The Golden Age of Stooge-dom

by Nick Zegarac

Moe – “Are you kidding? We’re the best in the city!”
Larry – “But how are you in the country?”

The break between Ted Healy and The Three Stooges proved the beginning of one of the most successful comedy acts in film history. It also became the focus of a minor snafu in contract disputes. Signed by agent Walter Kane for Columbia Studios, studio president Harry Cohn agreed to produce one two-reel comedy featuring the stooges for which they would be paid a poultry sum of $1500.00. Under Healy’s control the boys had barely collected$100.00 per week. If the results proved a success with audiences, Cohn would sign the trio to a long term contract.

Moe signed the Columbia deal on behalf of the act. Unfortunately, across town at Universal, Larry was signing a similar deal with agent, Joe Rivkin. The wrangling between Carle Leammle Jr. (Universal’s president) and Harry Cohn was amicably resolved when Cohn discovered that he had signed their contract by only a few hours advance of the Universal deal. “You boys belong to Columbia,” Cohn told Moe.

Man - "This bed goes back to Henry the 8th."
Curly - "That's nuthin'. We had a bed that went back to Sears Roebuck the 3rd."

In June of 1934 The Three Stooges debuted in their first Columbia two-reel comedy; the musically rhymed Woman Haters written and directed by Archie Gottler.


On the strength of that short subject, Harry Cohn agreed to a long-term contract at seventy-five hundred per film and also to produce a pet project of Moe’s: ‘Punch Drunks.’ However, the Columbia deal did come with stipulations.

The first, allowed the studio to re-release the Stooges shorts without royalties paid to them. This did not mean much to the trio in 1934, but with the advent of their loan out two decades later to television a vast amount of potential earnings was denied for years to come.

Also, the Columbia deal came with a yearly renewal clause at which time the studio could simply decided to cancel their option. Columbia used this clause as a means of keeping demands for salary increases down. Every time a request came around Cohn would lament how difficult it was becoming to sell two-reelers to theaters. In reality, Columbia was exploiting the popularity of the trio to market inferior B-movies to theater owners. It would be 24 years, 194 short subjects and 5 feature films later, before Columbia would allow their option on the act to lapse.

Woman - “Do you know of the Great Wall of China?”
Curly - “No. But I know of a big fence in Chicago.”

The Columbia contract also allowed the stooges a yearly twelve week hiatus during which time they could freelance. It was during their 1935 Children’s Hospital benefit performance in Boston that the trio learned of Ted Healy’s untimely death. According to reports of the day, after lashing out in a drunken brawl and being beaten by four men outside of a nightclub, Healy was taken back to his apartment by friend and comedian Joe Frisco where he died a few days later of a brain concussion.

During the next few years The Three Stooges became an intercontinental rage, playing sold out performances at London’s Palladium, The Royal Theater and appearing in the 1939 run of George White’s Scandals on Broadway. They also toured the army/navy circuit during the war, entertaining the troupes on behalf of the Coca-Cola Company and signed a deal to appear in Harold Minsky’s new Vaudeville revival – a short lived venture made all the more brief by the advent of television.

Executioner - “You may either have your head cut off or be burned at the stake.”
Larry – “Cut my head off.”
Curly – “Not me! I wanna be burned at the stake.”
Larry – “Why?”
Curly – “A warm stake is better than a cold chop.”



All The World’s A Stooge...or Three


To say that the late thirties and early forties were a time of prosperity for The Three Stooges is contextualizing their popularity without a sincere grasp on just how wildly popular the trio had become.

They had weathered a rough series of misfires to become the most celebrated of slapstick artists and the upswing of that career had yet to plateau. For a while, this endless tenure of revolving workload proved lucrative and satisfying. But on May 4, 1946, while relaxing between takes in a very humid soundstage, Curly Howard suffered a debilitating stroke.

Confined to the Motion Picture Country Home in Woodland Hills for care and treatment, Moe Howard regrouped the act with Shemp Howard replacing Curly. Since the early thirties, Shemp had had a modestly successful film career playing a cameo comic foil. Still, with Curly’s reputation so heavily ingrained in the act, many in the industry, including Columbia president Harry Cohn and Moe feared that audiences would never accept anyone as Curly’s replacement. Debuting the new stooges with the modestly budgeted Fright Night (1946) Moe and Columbia soon discovered that Shemp’s own brand of comedic genius was more than adequate to sustain the laughter and repartee with audiences.

The fifties was a lucrative period for The Three Stooges professionally– but a decade marred by two tragic losses that devastated the act and the artistic community. Curly Howard, who had never fully recovered from his initial stroke, suffered a series of additional strokes and suddenly passed away on January 1952 at the age of forty-nine. However, an even more disheartening blow followed a scant three years later. On Nov. 23, 1955, Shemp Howard was returning from an outing at the races and the fights with several friends when he suddenly slumped over, and with a queer sort of peaceful smile on his face, inexplicably died.

Shemp’s replacement in the act was Joe Besser, a main staple comedian on Milton Berle’s television show. But the association between Besser and the stooges proved all too brief. After only 16 short subjects, the Columbia contract was fulfilled and Besser, unable to go on tour because of his ailing spouse, was exchanged for Joe DeRita – ironically Moe’s first choice after Shemp’s death who had been under contract to Harold Minsky all along.

Unfortunately, by this time in his career, the determination that had fueled Moe’s earlier aspirations for the act had begun to fizzle. A nightclub debut of the new stooge proved an unqualified disaster. However, at roughly this same interval, Columbia Pictures had managed a minor coup in repackaging the old Stooges shorts for general release on television. These shorts created a minor sensation for children and teens who had never seen them in their original theatrical engagements and helped to revitalize interest in the act. During the summer of 1958, the stooges proved a star attraction at John Bertera’s Pittsburgh nightclub and restaurant.

This revitalization continued with three guest appearances on the Ed Sullivan and Steve Allen shows. Almost overnight, the stooges were in vogue once more, appearing as a cameo bit of comic relief for Francis Langford and even starring in their own Three Stooges Scrapbook (1960) for Columbia’s Screen Gems. Columbia also cast the stooges in their first feature length film, Have Rocket Will Travel (1961).

Their final feature, The Outlaws Is Coming (1965) ended on a bitter note. Larry suffered a stroke and was hospitalized at the Motion Picture Home. Though he made valiant attempts to regain his mobility, his recovery was never complete and on New Years day 1975 he slipped into a coma. He died one week later. Officially retired, Moe allowed Joe DeRita to pursue the idea of recasting his part and Larry’s in a ‘new’ ‘new’ stooges act that never materialized beyond the preliminary stages.

Tired and seemingly with his best days behind him, an invitation from Salem College in West Virginia afforded Moe Howard the opportunity to present reminiscences about the act to a live audience; one that proved so popular that he repeated it at New York State University to a packed 1,600 auditorium that had oversold the venue by at least 400 seats. In his seventies, Moe Howard discovered that he was more popular than ever. He appeared on Mike Douglas’ talk show three times and ambitiously pursued the college lecture circuit throughout 1974. On May 4, 1975, Moe Howard quietly passed away at his home, officially ending one of America’s most legendary comedy acts.

Since that time, The Three Stooges popularity has continued to thrive. The trio’s body of work has weathered attempts at censuring its ‘crass’ treatment of women by liberal feminism and it has withstood repeated onslaughts of censorship from civic minded groups who continue to find the stooges brand of comedy too violent yet at the same instance do not mind if their children watched the evening news.

From television revivals, through changing audience tastes and with the advent of home video and garish colorizations, the comedic legacy of The Three Stooges continues to delight old and new audiences with their rambunctious blend of raw energy and good spirited craziness. The legends have gone, but their laughter lives on.

Not bad for the ugliest duckling in the Howard house…not bad at all.

@Nick Zegarac 2006 (all rights reserved).