Shemp Howard (March 11, 1895-Nov. 22, 1955) was born in Brooklyn as Samuel Horwitz to Lithuanian Jewish parents Solomon and Jenny Horwitz. The nicknamed “Shemp” came from the way his mother mispronounced his first name.
As a youngster, with his brother Moe, Shemp did a blackface act at one vaudeville house, and an act without make up at a rival establishment. The Howard Brothers later became part of an act with Ted Healy called “Ted Healy and His Stooges,” involving a lot of physical comedy. The Howard Brothers were joined by Larry Fine in 1928 and became known as the Three Stooges. They split from Healy in 1930, but rejoined him in 1932 for a revue at Shubert’s Broadway. Shemp left Healy’s act in 1932 and was replaced in the act by his brother Jerry Howard, known as Curly.
On his own, Shemp worked alongside Vitaphone studio comics Jack Haley, Ben Blue and Gus Shy. In Vitaphone short comedies based on the “Joe Palooka” comic strip, Shemp played “Knobby Walsh” and became the comic focus of seven of the films. Later he moved to Hollywood, and worked alongside such comics as W.C. Fields, Abbott and Costello, and Olsen and Johnson. He was the comic relief in such murder mysteries as Charlie Chan, and The Thin Man. Known for his improvisational skills, he was paired with Lon Chaney Jr. in San Antonio Rose as a faux Abbott and Costello act.
When Curly was felled by a stroke in 1946, Moe and Larry asked Shemp to fill in temporarily. But Curly’s health did not improve and in 1948 Shemp agreed to remain as the third Stooge permanently. His high pitched “bee-bee-bee-bee-bee-bee’ sound, produced by inhaling, became his trademark, emitted when scared, sleeping, overtly happy, or dazed.
In 1948, The Three Stooges appeared on the Texaco Star Theatre television program hosted by Milton Berle. In all, Shemp, Moe, and Larry appearedd in 77 short subjects, four produced posthumously utilizing stock footage.
Shemp married Gertrude Frank in 1925, and they had a son Morton. Following an automobile accident as a teenager, Shemp developed a fear of automobiles and never obtained a driver’s license. He also had phobias about airplanes, dogs, and water. While coming home from watching a boxing match, Shemp died of a massive heart attack. He was interred at the Indoor Mausoleum of the Home of Peace Cemetery in East Los Angeles, near his brothers Benjamin and Curly and his parents.
Tomorrow, March 12: Jake Tapper
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SDJW condensation of a Wikipedia article.