Moe Howard, the "boss Stooge", began his acting career in 1909 by playing bit roles in silent Vitagraph films. At 17, he joined a troupe working on a showboat and also appeared in several two-reel shorts. In 1922, he joined Ted Healy forming the act that would become the Three Stooges. Howard toured Vaudeville and appeared in films with Healy for ten years before the Stooges left Healy to pursue a seperate career. Moe appeared in more than 250 films during his 66-year career, including 190 Three Stooges shorts. Over the act's 50-year history, the Three Stooges went through several personnel changes; when Moe Howard died, the act ended.


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)

Interred at Hillside Memorial Park, Culver City, California, USA. Moe of The Three Stooges. Moe had a legal agreement with his fellow Stooges stating that he reserved the right to choose Stooge replacements (Curly Howard was replaced by Shemp Howard; Shemp was replaced by Joe Besser; Joe was replaced by Joe DeRita). Daughter: Joan Howard. He, Emil Sitka and Joe DeRita ("Curly Joe") were slated to appear in the R-rated film comedy "The Jet Set" (eventually retitled Blazing Stewardesses (1975)). However, because he was suffering from lung cancer, Moe was forced to drop out of the film. The Ritz Brothers replaced Moe, Sitka and De Rita. Was working on his autobiography when he died. Its working title was "I Stooge to Conquer"; it was published posthumously as "Moe Howard and the Three Stooges.". Grandfather of Jeffrey Scott and Michael Maurer. 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 TV, 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. According to Moe, in sixty years, he never missed a performance. He was very protective of his brother Curly Howard, who was in reality quite shy and not known to stand up for himself. Skinned his nose in a fall down the stairs of his home as a child. His nose was rebuilt by a doctor, but when the doctor turned out to be a phony, he had to have his nose rebuilt all over again by another doctor, whom his mother paid by giving him some of her old copper pots. The Stooges' contract with Columbia gave the studio the right to use their likenesses in perpetuity. This means that no one else can legally use the Stooges' likenesses in any form of media without the studio's permission. When he and his brother Shemp put on shows for families and friends as children, they used younger brother Curly in female parts. Curly at seven, had trouble remembering his lines so Moe made cue cards on adhesive tape and stuck them to his forehead for Curly to read. Got the idea for the notorious Stooge gag of eye-gouging one day when, during a game of bridge, Shemp leaned over and poked Larry 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 and considered the eye-gouge the funniest thing he'd ever seen.