Moe Howard

Overview

Born
June 19, 1897 · Bensonhurst, Brooklyn [now in New York City], New York, USA
Died
May 4, 1975 · Los Angeles, California, USA (lung cancer)
Birth name
Moses Horwitz
Height
5′ 3½″ (1.61 m)

Biography

Family

Spouse
Children
Parents
Relatives

Trademarks

He always played the "Boss Stooge", ordering around the others, insulting them and slapping them around and worse when they goofed up, which was often.
Bowl haircut, scarred nose and angry scowl

Trivia

When The Three Stooges shorts began to appear on local children's shows in the late 1950s, there was a wave of kids poking each other in the eyes. When Moe heard about this, it was the Stooges who came to the rescue. They went on many local television shows, as well as national television, and showed how the eye-pokes were done in a way that nobody got hurt. To the kids watching, it was like learning a magic trick.
Moe was the business-minded one of the group. He knew that Curly liked to spend his money on partying and women, and Larry liked to spend his at the racetrack. So, he drew up an agreement where Larry and Curly turned over a certain percentage of their salaries to him. He, in turn, invested it for them. The result was that, while Larry and Curly were not as wealthy as Moe was (he invested far more of his own money and was quite well off), he ensured that their spendthrift habits did not result in their being broke when their careers ended.
At the time their mother, Jennie Horwitz, died in 1936, he and brother Shemp Howard had been keeping secret from her that her son, Irving Horwitz, whom she doted on the most, had died three weeks before she did.
His wife, Helen Schonberger, was a cousin of Harry Houdini.
Got the idea for the notorious Stooge gag of eye-gouging one day when, during a game of bridge, Shemp Howard leaned over and poked Larry Fine in the eyes for not playing well. The result: Larry cried, Shemp apologized, Moe laughed until he fell out of his chair and walked through a glass door. He considered the eye-gouge the funniest thing he'd ever seen and decided to use it in their act.

Quotes

[to complaints about The Three Stooges' violent slapstick comedy] We're not nearly as violent as the Westerns.
[on his former boss, mentor and friend, actor/comedian Ted Healy, who died under mysterious circumstances (according to one theory, after a drunken argument) while in his early 40s] When sober, Ted was the essence of refinement. When under the influence, he became a foul-mouthed, vicious character. Liquor had killed his father and uncle, and destroyed his sister's life. When Ted was young, I remember that he made a pledge never to touch liquor, after having seen the consequences of its effects on his family. The strain of his life in show business got him started, and once he started drinking, he was never able to stop.

Salaries

The Three Stooges in Orbit (1962) - $50,000 +50% of profits (split with Larry Fine and Joe Da Rita)
Have Rocket -- Will Travel (1959) - $30,000 +25% of profits (split with Larry Fine and Joe Da Rita)
Woman Haters (1934) - $1,000 (split with Curly Howard and Larry Fine)