Shemp Howard’s Anecdotal Biography
Shemp Howard- The Greatest Man Who Ever Lived
March 17, 1895 – November 23, 1955
People will tell you about Ghandi, they’ll talk about Martin Luther King Jr., they’ll praise Stone Phillips, but do any of these men really fit the definition of great? For our answer, lets turn to Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary and look there under the word "great". To quote this great dictionary "great (grate) adj. 1.Shemp Howard". Can there be any doubt then, of the identity of the greatest man who ever lived?
Shemp Howard was born March 17 of 1895, just one and a half years before his short, bossy younger brother Moe, and eight before Curly. He was the 3rd boy to be born to Solomon and Jennie Horwitz (The first two, Irving and Jack, did not enter the biz) and lived the highly enjoyable life of a brat for his first few years.
Moe, who referred to Shemp as " . . . an impossible crybaby, a stocking and pants destroyer, a general creator of disturbances", appears to have been the foil for a lot of Shemp’s mischief. Even after Shemp accidentally allowed his brother of 2 years to fall and hurt his nose so badly that a doctor was required to "stitch [it] back on" and out of this same incident, said brother temporarily lost vision "due to ruptured eye nerves", Shemp did not let up, telling his parents that Moe was faking his blindness and using it as a cover to spy on him. The truth was that Shemp had discovered the fun of stuffing things down toilets, like "pages out of brother Irving's history book".
Shemp was a genius at getting out of household chores, always developing some sort of ache to get himself out of doing his share of the work, and earning himself the right to refer to Moe as the family maid. Even so, his schoolwork has been described as "nil", as he seemed unable to concentrate in class and therefore barely scraped by each year.
Even outside of the house Shemp seemed hell bent on wreaking havoc. On a family outing, Shemp took it upon himself to clobber some poor guy in the face with a handful of tomatoes, causing a melee that left no one unharmed, and a few members of the party bloody.
In 1903, Curly was born, and growing up with Shemp and Moe, the poor guy had a rough time of it from the start. When he was just a baby, his 2 older brothers took him and his "brand new carriage, removed the wheels, made a pair of axles from two by fours" and dragged the poor kid all over town in their makeshift racer.
Eventually though, Shemp either grew out of his badness, or got better at it. With his jet-black hair and striking aquamarine eyes, along with his gregarious personality, Shemp had grown quite popular at school, despite his academic failings. He and Moe stopped harassing each other, and Shemp started invited Moe to go places with him. On one such occasion, the two brothers, one other male friend and their 3 dates found themselves at a beach. Right in the middle of trying to finesse his date into skinny-dipping, Shemp found that he had to go to the bathroom. He excuses himself and then disappears for over 45 minutes. Worried, Moe and their friend go in search of Shemp, and find him, knocked out cold under the boardwalk. When he came to, Shemp explained that once he’d finished up, he’d looked around for a scrap of paper to wipe himself with. He saw a likely scrap, but when he tugged at it, he found that it was a handkerchief, and that it had a hand and arm attached to it. In true Shemp fashion, he stood up quickly, not thinking, and knocked himself out on the low hanging boardwalk.
Both Moe and Shemp dropped out of school once they’d gotten to the High School level, much to the dismay of their parents. In 1911, however, they both agreed to go to trade school, mostly because their mother asked them to. Shemp studied the plumbing trade, and the trade of Electricians. They never completed the course, but combined their skills in a practical manner—constructing "The Push-button Door Latch", which allowed the boys to sneak back into house after hours by means of a concealed button.
By 1913, Shemp was 18 years old, and Moe 16. Moe heard that a guy was selling a car for $90, and convinced Shemp to go in for it with him. The car turned out to be a horrible old clunker that made a terrible racket and had no brakes. To stop, the brakes had to be applied some 400ft in advance. Shemp couldn’t drive, but Moe was all set to teach him, and Shemp was a quick study, that is until he saw a little girl roller skating about a block away and panicked. Moe tried to calm him down, telling him that he’d let him know when to brake and blow the horn, but Shemp continued to panic, constantly shrieking "Now, Moe, now?" in a complete terror. Finally Moe gives him the go ahead, at which time Shemp jams on the brakes and lets go of the wheel to blow the horn. The car careens wildly and crashed into a fortunately empty barbershop with a nearly faint Shemp at the wheel. He never drove a car again.
After a series of odd jobs, Shemp and Moe broke into Vaudeville doing a gawdawful black face routine and changing their surnames to Howard. Shemp was drafted for WWI, but was quickly discharged after just a few months and the act continued on.
In 1916, the older Horwitzes acquired a farm, and Shemp and Moe worked on it in between theater engagements-—rather Moe did. Shemp helped out a bit, but mostly enjoyed playing the horse-less cowboy in a cornfield. Wearing "a pair of red flannels, a Continental army coat . . . a cocked hat" and tying an alarm clock to his belt, Shemp would strike a pose, whip in hand, in the middle of the field, while the cows fed.
Also around this time Moe and Shemp discovered the joys of growing "really full and bushy" beards, shaving just half of their faces, and then strolling through town. People would scurry across the street upon site of them.
In 1917 Shemp and Moe began to work 2 Vaudeville circuits, violating an unwritten gentleman’s agreement between the two circuits not to share workers. Apparently the Howards did it with impunity and continued to do it until 1922, when they met up with one Ted Healy and found themselves compelled to come on stage and ad lib an entire routine. They were a smashing success. Still in 1925, both Shemp married Gertrude (Babe) Frank, and decided that it was time for a change. He told Healy he had an opportunity to start a new act with an old friend, breaking the news at a club in Chicago, where a young man named Larry Fine happened to be performing. Through a series of morbidly fortuitous events, Larry became a Stooge. Shemp returned a little while later, and stayed with Healy for some time, even as he grew more and more frustrated over Healy’s drinking problem and the mood changes that accompanied the it.
In 1930, the Stooges and Healy appeared in Rube Goldberg’s oddly entertaining movie "Soup to Nuts", which led to offers from other studios to put the Stooges under contract. Each of these overtures met with resistance from Healy, who was accustomed to taking a huge chunk of the pay, then giving the Stooges a mere pittance. When Shemp, Larry, and Moe received definitive proof of Healy’s duplicity, they split from him and tried to make it on their own, with some success. Healy was incensed, but recognized the Stooges for the cash cow they were, and so was determined to have them back. He tried various ways to lure them back in ranging from the benign "divide and conquer" routine to more insidious routes before finally capitulating and penitently approaching Moe. Moe promised that the Stooges would return if Healy cut the drinking, but Shemp was wary. "Moe, Ted is not the wonderful guy you think he is; he’s basically an alcoholic. He’s only one drink away from going back on one of his terrifying benders". Shemp was fed up with Healy and he had an offer to play the part of Knobbly Walsh in the Joe Palooka shorts for Vitaphone.
Shemp Howard was ready to embark on a long and profitable solo career. (6/18/00)
. . . to be continued . . .