Curly Howard

***Jerome Lester Horwitz*** (Hebrew: יהודה לייב בר שלמה נתן הלוי, romanized: Yehudah Leib bar Shlomo Natan HaLevi; October 22, 1903, Brooklyn, New York, USA – January 18, 1952, San Gabriel, California, USA), better known by his stage name Curly Howard, was an American comedian and actor. He was best known as a member of the American comedy team the Three Stooges, which also featured his elder brothers Moe and Shemp Howard and actor Larry Fine. In early shorts, he was billed as Curley. Curly Howard was generally considered the most popular and recognizable of the Stooges.

He was well known for his high-pitched voice and vocal expressions ("nyuk-nyuk-nyuk!", "woo-woo-woo!", "soitenly!" [certainly], "I'm a victim of soikemstance" [circumstance], and barking like a dog), as well as his physical comedy (e.g., falling on the ground and pivoting on his shoulder as he "walked" in circular motion), improvisations, and athleticism. An untrained actor, Curly borrowed (and significantly exaggerated) the "woo woo" from "nervous" comedian Hugh Herbert. Curly's unique version of "woo-woo-woo" was firmly established by the time of the Stooges' second Columbia film, Punch Drunks (1934).

Howard had to leave the Three Stooges act in May 1946 when a massive stroke ended his show business career. He suffered serious health problems and several more strokes until his death in 1952 at age 48.

Curly Howard was born Jerome Lester Horwitz in the Bensonhurst section of the Brooklyn borough of New York City, on October 22, 1903. Of Lithuanian Jewish ancestry, he was the youngest of the five sons of Jennie (Gorovitz) and Solomon Horwitz. Because he was the youngest, his brothers called him "Babe" to tease him. The name "Babe" stuck with him all his life. However, when his elder brother Shemp Howard married Gertrude Frank, who was also nicknamed "Babe", the brothers called him "Curly" to avoid confusion. His full formal Hebrew name was "Yehudah Leib bar Shlomo Natan HaLevi".

A quiet child, Howard rarely caused problems for his parents (something in which older brothers Moe and Shemp excelled). He was a mediocre student, but excelled as an athlete on the school basketball team. He did not graduate high school; instead, he kept himself busy with odd jobs and constantly following his older brothers, whom he idolized. He was also an accomplished ballroom dancer and singer and regularly turned up at the Triangle Ballroom in Brooklyn, occasionally bumping into actor George Raft.

When Howard was 12, he accidentally shot himself in the left ankle while cleaning a rifle. Moe rushed him to the hospital, saving his life, but the wound resulted in a noticeably thinner left leg and a slight limp. Curly was so afraid of surgery that he never had the limp corrected. While with the Stooges, he developed his famous exaggerated walk to conceal the limp on screen.

Howard was interested in music and comedy, and watched his brothers Shemp and Moe perform as stooges in Ted Healy's vaudeville act. He also liked to hang around backstage, although he never participated in any of the routines.

Howard married his first wife, Julia Rosenthal, on August 5, 1930, but the marriage was annulled shortly afterward. Howard's first on-stage break was as a comedy musical conductor in 1928 for the Orville Knapp orchestra; Howard would conduct the ensemble with his arms flailing, unaware that he was losing his pants. Moe later recalled that his performances usually overshadowed those of the band. Though he enjoyed the gig, he watched as brothers Moe and Shemp with partner Larry Fine made it big as some of Ted Healy's "Stooges". Vaudeville star Healy had a very popular stage act, in which he would try to tell jokes or sing, only to have his noisy assistants (or "stooges," in show-business parlance) wander on stage and interrupt or heckle him and cause disturbances from the audience. Meanwhile, Healy and company appeared in their first feature film, Rube Goldberg's Soup to Nuts (1930).

Shemp Howard, however, soon tired of Healy's abrasiveness, bad temper, and alcoholism. In 1932, he was offered a contract at the Vitaphone Studios in Brooklyn. With Shemp gone, Moe suggested that his kid brother Jerry could fill the third-stooge role, and Jerry ran through his Orville Knapp act but Healy was unimpressed: "Is that all he can do? Let his pants fall down? Get me a real comedian, not this amateur. He doesn't even look right!" Healy felt that Jerry, with his thick, chestnut hair and elegant waxed mustache, looked too good for a low comedian. Howard left the room and returned minutes later with his head shaven (the mustache remained very briefly).

That exchange sold the act to Healy, and Jerry Horwitz became Curly Howard. In one of the few interviews Curly Howard gave in his lifetime, he complained about the loss of his hair: "I had to shave it off right down to the skin." In 1934, MGM was building Healy up as a solo comedian in feature films, and Moe saw the writing on the wall. Healy alone was under contract to the studio; his Stooges answered to Healy, who paid each of them only $100 a week. When Healy's lucrative MGM contract was up for renewal on March 6, 1934, Moe proposed that Healy and his stooges should split: "Let's just break up. No hard feelings, no sneaking around. Just a good, clean split." Healy agreed, and left to pursue his own career. That same year, with "The Three Stooges" as the act's new name, they signed to appear in two-reel comedy short subjects for Columbia Pictures. Their third short, Men in Black, was nominated for the "Best Short Subject" Academy Award. It lost to the pioneer Technicolor featurette La Cucaracha, but it did establish The Three Stooges as new comedy stars. It also won the Stooges movie-star salaries: Columbia paid each of them $2500 per short subject (an exceptional sum; Columbia usually paid $500 to $1000 per short). The Stooges soon became the studio's most popular short-subject attraction, with Curly playing an integral part in the trio's work.

Howard's childlike mannerisms and natural comedic charm made him a hit with audiences, particularly children. He was known in the act for having an "indestructible" head, which always won out by breaking anything that assaulted it, including saws (resulting in his characteristic quip, "Oh, look!"). Although Howard had no formal acting training, his comedic skills were exceptional. Often, directors let the camera roll freely and let Howard improvise. Jules White, in particular, left gaps in the Stooge scripts where he could improvise for several minutes. In later years, White commented: "If we wrote a scene and needed a little something extra, I'd say to Curly, 'Look, we've got a gap to fill this in with a "woo-woo" or some other bit of business', and he never disappointed us.

By 1944, Howard's energy began to wane. Films such as Idle Roomers (1944) and Booby Dupes (1945) present a Curly whose voice was deeper and his actions slower. He may have suffered the first of many strokes between the filming of Idiots Deluxe (October 1944) and If a Body Meets a Body (March 1945). After the filming of the feature-length Rockin' in the Rockies (December 1944), he finally checked himself (at Moe Howard's insistence) into Cottage Hospital in Santa Barbara, California, on January 23, 1945, and was diagnosed with extreme hypertension, a retinal hemorrhage, and obesity. His ill health imposed a rest, leading to only five shorts being released in 1945 (the normal output was six to eight per year).