Larry Fine Bio

Larry Fine is one of the most underrated comics ever to labor in Hollywood. He is constantly taken for granted, even by the most devout of Stooge fans, who want to argue day after day over whether Shemp or Curly was the greatest 3rd Stooge. Thus Larry is patently ignored, though the Stooges as we know them would never have existed without him as the consummate middleman.

Larry Fine was actually born Louis Feinberg on October the 5^th of 1902 to Joseph Feinberg ad Fanny Leiberman. He was the oldest in his family and was treated like something special from the day he was born. His parents owned a jewelry shop, where there were glass display cases. Before Larry could even talk, his parents had him dancing on top of a glass case, through which he fell. Dancing career ended, Larry next turned to music, after seriously burning his arm with acid. The arm needed a skin graft, and Larry’s physician recommended that the young guy be given violin lessons to strengthen the damaged arm. The exercise worked, and Larry eventually became quite accomplished, leading his parents to consider sending him to Europe for further study.

Larry had long desired a career in show business, whether that be in comedy or on some sort of musical instrument, all of which he demonstrated an affinity for. Any instrument that Larry picked up he could play, and he even made his own, constructing a single stringed instrument out of a cigar box and broom handle. Having discovered a major talent within himself, Larry began to play at local amateur contests, winning most of them. In his middle teens he earned cash singing along with the movies being played at a local theater house. Still, Larry’s talents weren’t limited to the genteel arts of music, he was also, weighing in at less than 115 pounds, a boxer, and a good enough one to earn a few bucks at it.

Before World War I, Larry found that classical music wasn’t really his forte, so he switched over to popular, and began doing "a comedy routine in Jewish dialect" which got him a spot with a touring company. Still, Larry was quite young, and eventually quit due to homesickness. When WWI broke out, he got an another act together with Nancy Decker and toured army camps and hospitals in the US. This ended when a girl named Mabel Haney stole Nancy away from Larry and made her a part of her vaudeville dance act. Larry got himself a new partner named Winona Fine, but this didn’t work out to well.

Larry went back to playing the violin in an orchestra, and entering amateur night contests like he had earlier in the decade. Eventually, he ran into the Haney sisters again, and joined their act, but soon was out again, this time doing a black face routine. Still later, he decided that he would join a "theatrical club", knowing that the association at such a club would bring him a lot of contacts in his desired field. One night, he was sitting at a card table when the star of a show quit, and Larry, after giving a stunning audition, was given a seven year contract to play at nightclub owner Fred Mann’s clubs in Chicago and Havana.

In 1925, Ted Healy, and Moe and Shemp Howard found themselves in Chicago at the Rainbow Gardens. Shemp had decided to leave Healy’s act, and announced it while the three men were taking in the stage show. On the bill that night was Larry Fine, a short, twenty-two year old man with "Hay colored hair", wearing a top hat and tails, and doing a Russian dance while playing the violin. Healy, with his keen eye for talent, approached Larry backstage and offered him a place in his troupe. Larry was so excited to be negotiating with Healy, who was a famous star, that he forgot to towel dry his hair, and it was drying in frizzy curls all over his head. Larry was offered $90 a week to be a Healy Stooge, and $10 to ditch the violin.

Larry was excited about the proposition, but a bit reticent, because he wasn’t at all familiar with Healy’s weird kind of comedy. He asked for a little time to think it over, and Healy granted it. That next day, Larry’s mind was filled with the decision: to be a stooge or not to be? That night though, fate stepped in and took the decision out of Larry’s hands. In 1925, prohibition was in effect, and even though this was Chicago, verily the capitol of illegal boozing, the Rainbow Garden’s was shut down that very night for allowing the consumption of alcohol on the premises. His reputation sullied, Fred Mann committed suicide. Larry’s contract was now void, and he rushed to the Cohan Theatre to give Ted his decision.

On stage at the time, Ted peered into the wings of the stage and spotted Larry, he signaled to someone standing behind Larry, and the man pushed him on stage, where the four men began to ad lib a routine, Ted whispering in Larry’s ear what his replies should be, and Larry parroting them. The audience loved it, and that night, Larry Fine became a stooge. Still, it was a difficult transition from Russian dancing violinist to recipient of slaps and pokes, but Larry eventually settled into his role as the easy going middle man, a role that closely mimicked his off-stage personality.

In 1927, Ted and Shemp went to Broadway to do J.J. Shubert’s "A Night in Spain", and Moe and Larry left the act; Moe to be closer to his expectant wife, and Larry to marry Mabel Haney. Both Moe and Larry returned to the act after just a short time away, to star with Ted and Shemp in "A Night in Venice", which did excellently, touring right up until the Great Depression finally closed it.

In 1930, Healy and the boys went to Hollywood to be in Rube Goldberg’s strange film, "Soup to Nuts", where Moe was billed as Harry Howard. For the occasion, Healy upped the boys pay to $150 a week, up $50 from their standard Vaudeville rates. The performances in this movie were good enough to convince Winnie Sheehan, the head of Fox, to offer the boys a seven-year contract. Angered, Ted went to see Sheehan and raged that the contract would be invalid without his approval. When Sheehan took it out, Healy snatched it from his hands and tore it to bits. Then calming a bit, he said, "You know Mr. Sheehan, you’re ruining my act by signing the boys for a contract. I didn't think one Irishman would do this to another Irishman." Don’t be concerned, Ted." Sheehan assured him, "I’ll take care of this." When the boys found out about his act of duplicity, they left and became Howard, Fine and Howard—Three Lost Souls, meeting success.

Healy found a trio of new stooges and got a booking in New York. After the very first performance, the manager told him "Ted, you’ll ruin yourself working with these three men. They have no sense of timing and don’t understand your act. Play sick, and get out of this date." Ted walked. Meanwhile, the stooges, who in 1931 hired Jack Walsh, who "complemented the trio’s broad, physical style of comedy to perfection" to be their straight man, were making headlines. Healy realized that he had better get his original stooges back.

First he filed a legal suit against the boys, claiming that stooge newspaper ads announcing "Howard, Find and Howard—Former associates of Ted Healy in A Night in Venice" constituted an illegal use of his name. He also claimed that the stooges were in effect stealing his material, since a few of their skits were taken from "A Night in Venice." Fortunately, Moe, having caught wind of Ted’s threats to sue the Hippodrome Theater if the stooges appeared using "his" material, had already gone to J.J. Shubert. Moe knew Shubert would be on his side, because Ted had recently tried to sue him also. Shubert drew up a paper allowing the stooges to "use any jokes, scenes, or material that [they] wished to from the plays A Night in Venice and A Night in Spain." The papers were photocopied, and notarized. Then a stenographer was hired to sit in the audience and copy the "dialogue word for word and describe the action". Those papers were also notarized. The suit was ruled in favor of the Stooges.

Next, Healy tried everything from trying to lure the stooges back one by one to hiring some toughs from Chicago to educate the stooges on "what was good for them". He called Larry first, trying to get him to come back into the Healy fold, but Larry had already signed with Shemp and Moe. The threats and constant stress were starting to get to Shemp, who started thinking about leaving the act, especially after Healy threatened to bomb the boys out of a theater. Even when Healy came back and begged the stooges to return to his act, Shemp was wary, but he allowed his brother and Larry to convince him, and so Ted Healy once again had three stooges—that is, as long as he stopped drinking, the main force behind his freaky moods. "Ted is not the wonderful guy you think he is;" Shemp told his brother. "He’s basically an alcoholic. He’s only one drink from going back to his terrifying benders." Still, Moe just didn’t want to believe it. Healy had been his friend for 20 years. So he and Larry convinced Shemp to come back.

With Moe, Larry and Shemp back with him, Healy was once again on top of the world, and quickly got booked into J.J Shubert’s new show, "The Passing Show of 1932", for which Healy was being paid $2800 a week. Before the show could even open, Healy’s personal manager noticed that Ted’s contract omitted a closing date, making it void. Ted snatched at the chance to leave the Shubert show and take an offer from another Circuit that would pay him $6000 a week. Shemp refused to leave the show, sick of Healy’s duplicity, but Moe and Larry went with Healy, using "Soup to Nuts" co-star Freddie Sandborn as a Shemp replacement temporarily. For a more permanent solution, Moe looked to his younger brother Jerome.

Looking at Moe’s 29-year-old younger brother, Healy at once noted something wrong with his new picture. "Larry, you have a head like a wild porcupine. You, Moe, have a spittoon haircut. But Jerome, with your wavy hair and wax-tipped mustache, you just don’t fit in." Jerome left the meeting, and 20 minutes later he returned, crying, his head shaved "to look like a dirty tennis ball". "If you want me," Jerome said, sobbing. "You can call me Curly." With Curly on board, the team got a contract for a few films at MGM and Curly shaved his mustache. Also, the pay structure within the trio changed, with Moe now earning $140, Larry $125 and Curly just $75 a week. The team did a bunch of shorts for MGM, and a few films, but the boys were unhappy about constantly being in Healy’s long, dark, chiseling shadow. So in 1934, they decided to break with him.

Meanwhile, Moe had been stopped, in the same exact manner, by an agent from Columbia and went through the same process, only at a different studio. Later, when they met up, they found what they’d done, and Moe immediately called Columbia. Columbia’s legal department contacted Universal’s legal department and it turned out that Columbia’s contract had been stamped earlier than Universal’s, so Larry’s contract got voided and the boys belonged to Columbia.

In June of 1934, the boys filmed "Woman Haters", their first for Columbia, and the first of nearly 200 to follow in a 24 year long relationship. The contract with Columbia was just a one-picture deal, with the studio allowed 60 days to decide if they wanted to sign the Stooges to a longer contract. Still, after the short was made, Moe found himself unable to sit on his duff for 60 days, so he wrote a treatment for a story called "Punch Drunks", had a stenographer type it up and then presented it first to his partners, and then to a Columbia exec, who agreed that the story was good, and decided not to wait the 60 days, but to go ahead and not only begin filming the new story right away, but to give the Stooges a 7-year contract with yearly options. They’d have to make 8 2-reelers in 40 weeks, but then they’d have 12 weeks in which they could do whatever they wanted except make films at other studios. They were to make $7500 per film, or $60000 a year—to be split 3 ways. The contract also included a clause saying that Columbia would have the right to use their voices and likeness’ whenever and for whatever they wanted, forever. Do when the boys showed up on TV in the 1950’s, they got no royalties. Still, during the 12 weeks a year they got off, they could make as much money as they wanted, and they did, using the time to make personal appearances all over the world.

Columbia was awful when it came to stressing the Stooges out, an every year, the studio waited till the last minute to pick up their option for the next year. The studio would lie and tell the Stooges that it was becoming difficult to sell their comedies. Each year the Stooges would stress over whether or not they would continue to have work, and this awful game continued for 24 long years. Eventually Moe figured out the psychology the studio was using, but this didn’t help matters, and kept the boys from trying to get a raise. In fact, the Stooges were always in demand, and often theater owners were forced to take crappy B films if they wanted a Stooge short.

With steady employment for the foreseeable future, Larry could live life to the fullest, and he did. Mabel, like any sensible woman, hated housework, so the family lived in hotels for years, not buying an actual house until the forties. Even without a permanent residence, the Fine’s reveled in parties and "lavish midnight suppers", enjoying the company of show biz types and surrounding himself with them. Larry was always "agreeable no matter what the circumstances", even when the circumstances included his gambling away huge sums of money at the racetrack or in a game of gin rummy. His easy going personality was also taken advantage of at times, when he was convinced to give money to people for suspicious reasons, and never asked to be reimbursed for his aid. One time he was even able to convince the cautious Moe to invest in a business that culminated in their partners skipping town.

Often, Larry found it impossible to get himself to work on time, and Moe was forced to cover for him until Larry finally strolled in, sometimes hours late. He was described as a "bit of a goof-off, but not a real goldbricker" and is remembered as something of a whiner—a true accomplishment for a man who worked with Shemp Howard. Larry had something of a wandering eye, though he always returned to his wife, Mabel, and fathered 2 children, Johnny and Phyllis. Propman Stan Dunn remembered Larry being constantly hungry on set, and suffering from hunger pangs. "Fine was always hungry." He said. "he spent his money on wine and women, but not on food." One time, Dunn had set aside dish of dog food for a trained dog that was on set. Larry caught sight of the food and pounced on it, eating it right out of the doggy dish before Dunn could stop him. When Larry found what he’d eaten, he flippantly replied "That was great! What brand was it?" and then turned green.

Moe thought it of the utmost importance to hold meetings with screenwriters and directors to make sure that the Stooges never said or acted in any way out of character. He also felt that the story line of the short should be discussed, and made sure that creative conferences were scheduled so that the Stooges would have their say. Larry invariably strolled in late for these meetings, and then rarely came out with anything, as his suggestions were "usually off-target, but once in a while he would come up with a gem that would get [them] started on something."

By the mid 1940’s, it was obvious that something was physically wrong with Curly Howard, but everyone assumed that his run down appearance and memory problems were related to his excessive drinking. He started to decline in 1945, and the slide continued until he suffered a massive stroke May of 1946, during a break in the filming of "Half-Wits’ Holiday". Curly was sitting in director Jules White’s chair waiting to be called for the last scene. Eventually the assistant director called Curly to come in and finish the picture, but Curly didn’t answer. Moe went out to get him and found him unable to even hold his head up or speak. His mouth was distorted and the words just would not come, even has he sobbed with the effort. Moe immediately knew he’d had a stroke, and put him in a car headed to his house. Moe dried his own tears and went back on set to finish the picture, telling no one but Larry what had happened.

Thinking about it later, Larry supposed that "Curly had many small strokes in 1945, but was afraid to tell us because he was afraid that we would have to break up the act." The Curly seen in the last 10 or so Curly Shorts is, as Larry said, "A shell of a man". Still, Moe and Larry thought that Curly would be able to rally and eventually return to the act. Until that time, they needed to keep the Stooges going, and asked Shemp to rejoin the act. Shemp wasn’t crazy about earning his living by being slapped, especially at the age of 51, but he did it as a favor to Moe and Curly. Columbia wasn’t that crazy about having Shemp, who looked like a taller Moe with bigger ears and a different haircut, but they capitulated when Moe threatened them with not having the Stooges anymore. For a long while, every time Moe smacked or poked Shemp, he saw Curly. As soon as everything was set, Larry made sure that everyone would denote $50 a week and send it to Curly to help him pay for his medical bills.

This second death in just 3 years nearly ended the act, but Helen and Larry encourage Moe to persevere. For 2 years after Shemp’s untimely death, shorts were released that were pieced together out of old stock footage and a double, who’s only resemblance to Shemp Howard was the color of his hair. In 1957, however, Columbia began to pressure Moe to find a replacement for his brother, and Moe geared himself up to do it, finally settling on Joe Besser. It is now thought, however, that Columbia wanted Besser more than Moe did, but contrived to make it appear as though Moe had picked him. Besser, supremely uncomfortable with the Stooges form of broad physical comedy, had a provision in his contract that stated he should never be slapped or otherwise caused bodily harm. Larry told him "Don’t worry. If you don’t want Moe to hit you, I’ll take all the belts", and he did. The stooges did 16 more shorts with Besser and finally called it quits when Columbia did not renew their contract in 1958. The cessation of steady work nearly caused Larry to go bankrupt, as years of free spending and no saving caught up with him.

After the contract was up, Besser went one way, and Larry and Moe another, finally joining up with Joe DeRita on a tour which turned out to be a dismal failure. Their screen career was over, and they ought to have been on Vaudeville, but Vaudeville had been dead for years. Pondering the next phase of their careers, The Stooges heard that old Stooge shorts from the 1930’s had been sold to television, and where they gathered enormous ratings. Sensing the resurgence in Stooge popularity, the boys began touring again, this time toning down their act a bit for children, and lucrative film deals began to pour in. The Stooge made about 10 feature films with Curly-Joe DeRita throughout the 60’s. In 1970, work began on a film called "Kook’s Tour". Moe Howard was 73 years old and he looked it, but the Stooges trudged gamely on, until Larry suffered a stroke on set, and was left paralyzed on the left side of his body. His wife had passed on in 1967, and Larry moved into the Motion Picture Home, where he was the life of the party, participating in the different activities and contests, which he would usually win. "Hell, I can’t lose." He said. "All my friends are judges on the panel. If you ask me, I think it’s fixed." He would also do a routine with Moe at least once a year, but one time Moe was unable to make it, and Larry was obliged to perform by himself. It was the first time in nearly 50 years that Larry had stepped on a stage without Moe beside him. "I was never so scared in all my life. I felt lost without Moe at my side." He said.

Larry could talk, but the stroke had thickened his voice so that it was hard to understand him and he was confined to a wheelchair. Still, Larry went out to high school and colleges, appeared on talk shows and found time to write a book. Moe continued to visit him almost every weekend, though it was very difficult to see his friend of 50 years deteriorating so. Often Moe found it impossible to get through a visit without having to excuse himself and break down in tears in the bathroom.

Larry took up "drawing , painting, and mosaic work, even though one hand was partially paralyzed" and "would tell [Moe] jokes which would very hard to understand because of the thickness of his speech." "I would yock loudly to cover the tears welling in my eyes." Moe said. "He always joked with me. I would laugh uproariously with tears falling at the same time."

Up until October of 1974, Larry’s health had appeared to be on the rise, and he was even able to stand up out of his wheelchair. But one day before his 72^nd birthday, Larry had another stroke and had to be moved to the ICU of the Motion Picture Hospital. He rallied a bit, and was able to talk again, though his speech was even thicker than before. A little while later, he suffered another massive stroke and fell into a coma out of which he never awoke. Larry Fine passed away January the 24^th of 1975. He was 72 years old.