page_title: The Three Stooges
section_title: Comeback with Joe DeRita (1958–1970)
hierarchical_section_title: The Three Stooges / History / Comeback with Joe DeRita (1958–1970)
caption_attribution_description: Photo of the comedy team The Three Stooges. From left-Joe DeRita (Curly Joe), Moe Howard (Moe), and Larry Fine (Larry). This photo was taken as the Stooges made ready for a second appearance on Steve Allen's talk program (later became the Tonight Show). The Stooges became popular with children beginning in circa 1958-1959, when Columbia Pictures released many of their old short films as packages for television. In 1957, the team was let go by Columbia and suddenly became in demand after the films started airing as children's programming. Howard and Fine had to hire Joe DeRita as Curly Joe; Joe Besser, who had worked with them until the layoff at Columbia. was no longer able to be a part of the trio.
context_page_description: The Three Stooges were an American vaudeville and comedy team active from 1922 until 1970, best known for their 190 short subject films by Columbia Pictures that have been regularly airing on television since 1958. Their hallmark was physical farce and slapstick. Six Stooges appeared over the act's run: Moe Howard and Larry Fine were mainstays throughout the ensemble's nearly 50-year run and the pivotal "third stooge" was played by Shemp Howard, Curly Howard, Shemp Howard again, Joe Besser and "Curly" Joe DeRita.
  The act began in the early 1920s as part of a vaudeville comedy act billed as "Ted Healy and His Stooges", consisting originally of Healy and Moe Howard. Over time, they were joined by Moe's brother Shemp Howard, and then Larry Fine. The four appeared in one feature film, Soup to Nuts, before Shemp left to pursue a solo career. He was replaced by his and Moe's younger brother, Jerome "Curly" Howard, in 1932. Two years later, after appearing in several movies, the trio left Healy and signed on to appear in their own short-subject comedies for Columbia Pictures, now billed as "The Three Stooges".
context_section_description: The early days of television provided movie studios a place to unload a backlog of short films that they thought otherwise unmarketable, and the Stooge films seemed perfect for the burgeoning genre. ABC had even expressed interest as far back as 1949, purchasing exclusive rights to 30 of the trio's shorts and commissioning a pilot for a potential series, Jerks of All Trades. However, the success of television revivals for such names as Laurel and Hardy, Woody Woodpecker, Popeye, Tom and Jerry and the Our Gang series in the late 1950s led Columbia to cash in again on the Stooges. In September 1958, Columbia's television subsidiary Screen Gems offered a package consisting of 78 Stooge shorts (primarily from the Curly era), which were well received. An additional 40 shorts hit the market in April 1959; by September 1959, all 190 Stooge shorts were airing regularly. With so many films available for broadcast, daily television airings provided heavy exposure aimed squarely at children. Parents who had grown up seeing the same films in the theaters began to watch alongside their children and, before long, Howard, Fine and DeRita were in high demand. After it was discovered that the Curly-era shorts were the most popular, Moe suggested that DeRita shave his head to accentuate his slight resemblance to Curly Howard. He adopted first a crew cut and later a completely shaven head, thus becoming "Curly Joe".
  This lineup, now frequently referred to as "Larry, Moe and Curly Joe," starred in six full-length feature films from 1959 to 1965: Have Rocket, Will Travel (1959), Snow White and the Three Stooges (1961), The Three Stooges Meet Hercules (1962), The Three Stooges in Orbit (1962), The Three Stooges Go Around the World in a Daze (1963) and The Outlaws IS Coming! (1965). The films were aimed at the kiddie-matinee market, and most were black-and-white farce outings in the Stooge tradition, with the exception of Snow White and the Three Stooges, a children's fantasy in color. They also appeared in an extremely brief cameo as firemen (a role that Larry, Moe, and Shemp had also played in the pre-"Three Stooges" film Soup to Nuts in 1930) in the film It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963), and in a larger capacity that same year in 4 for Texas starring Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. Throughout the early 1960s, the Stooges were one of the most popular and highest-paid live acts in America.
  The Stooges also tried their hand at another weekly television series in 1960 titled The Three Stooges Scrapbook, filmed in color and with a laugh track. The first episode, "Home Cooking", featured the boys rehearsing for a new television show. Like Jerks of All Trades in 1949, the pilot did not sell. However, Norman Maurer was able to reuse the footage (reprocessed in black and white) for the first ten minutes of The Three Stooges in Orbit.
  The trio also filmed 41 short comedy skits for The New Three Stooges in 1965, which features a series of 156 animated cartoons produced for television. The Stooges appeared in live-action color footage, which preceded and followed each animated adventure in which they voiced their respective characters.
  During this period, The Stooges appeared on numerous television shows including The Steve Allen Show, Here's Hollywood, Masquerade Party, The Ed Sullivan Show, Danny Thomas Meets the Comics, The Joey Bishop Show, Off to See the Wizard and Truth or Consequences.
caption: The Stooges with Curly Joe DeRita (left) in 1959
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