Half-Wits Holiday

Half Wits Holiday ended the career of Curly Howard, easily one of the most remarkable individuals in Entertainment History. That may sound a little strong to some people, but I don't think it is.

I was working on a television special in Los Angeles just after the Northridge Earthquake in 1994 when we got a phone call saying that Curley's gravestone had suffered some damage from the quake, as had others around it. We took a camera crew over to a small Jewish Cemetery in East L.A. The area is Latino but 80 years ago was home to Jewish families from Brooklyn. I asked the manager of the place what all these people were doing there. She said :"Well we have the second most visited grave in Los Angeles.....people are here to help out..." The cemetery holds movie mogul Louis B. Mayer, Singer Fanny Bryce, Samuel "Shemp" Howard, and the second most visited grave---Jerome "Curly" Howard.

Marilyn Monroe gets the most regular visitors at Forest Lawn, then comes Curly in East L.A.

The grave is marked Horowitz not the later "Howard", and people were putting small stones and coins back on top that had fallen off. There were lines of old, young, middle aged, children, everybody. I could not believe the number of people who were there.

That afternoon we interviewed Joan Howard Maurer, Moe's daughter, who remembered vividly her Uncle Curly's strokes and last performances. And she knew plenty about the years when her father, Uncle Shemp, and Uncle Curly were Vaudeville superstars along with Larry Fineberg. She said Moe scripted the act, but Curly was the trigger that made it work. She remembered hilarious family dinners with her Dad, Uncle Shemp and Uncle Curly. Even the Marx Bros. have a hard time topping that !

And she remembered that it all ended too soon.

This short is most memorable for two reasons, one is that this is Curly's last official stooge short (despite his cameo in Hold That Lion) due to a major stroke while filming and it's also the debut of long-time stooge foil Emil Sitka who plays Sappington the butler, Curly was obviously very sick throughout the short although at the scenes when the stooges were pretending to eat Curly shows little signs of his oldself which is a big plus and the reading scenes were funny, but at the party is the sad point of the short although when I watched this short the first couple times, I was wondering what happened to Curly (that was before I knew that he suffered a stroke) and when we get to the pie fight is when Curly suffers a stroke and Moe and Larry had to finish the scene without Curly.

Overall, at least that this short was Curly's last stooge short instead of Three Loan Wolves which was recorded a few months earlier and Curly's health was so bad that he and Larry had to switch roles although unfortunately they had to do a remake of this short with Joe Besser in 1958 called Pies and Guys which was filmed almost exactly 11 years later.

Excluding a cameo appearance he has in "Hold That Lion", this is really the last 3 Stooges film ever to feature Curly. It is a satisfying swan song... if Curly had to end his acting career with a film, I'm glad it was this one. The premise is basically re-used from an earlier Stooges short "Hoi Polloi" (i.e. two professors bet whether environment or heredity determines social behavior and use the Stooges to settle their wager) but this film is, in my opinion at least, superior to "Hoi Polloi" thanks largely to Moe's acting contributions (he seems to be at his most vicious here; among other things, he dumps his cigar ashes down Curly's throat) and some new gags (the memorable dining table scene). Curly does not appear in the film's final moments (he suffered a stroke before those scenes were filmed) and the film suffers a little from that but this is still one of my very favorite Stooge flicks... historical aspects aside. RECOMMENDED

Curly of The Three Stooges sat down in Jules White's chair while the director was instructing the film crew where to set up for the climatic pie fight scene in January 1947's "Half-Wits Holiday." The comedian, who had suffered a series of minor strokes in the past year, just finished three and a half days of filming. A few minutes later the assistant director called the actors, including the Stooges, to take their places. Moe noticed Curly was sitting with his head drooped, his mouth noticeably distorted. Curly couldn't speak, and was crying. Quietly, White and a few others helped Curly to a studio back room where he was transported to the local hospital, with Moe and Larry accompanying him. Unfortunately for Curly, he suffered a major stroke, which ended his acting career on May 6, 1946, the day the incident took place. Jerome Lester Horwitz (Curly Howard) would live another five years, marry his fourth wife and have a second daughter, Janie. But he was in no shape to perform before the camera after the May stroke, something not quite understood at the time.

Very few people on the set were aware of the extent of Curly's situation. Actor Emil Sitka, in his Stooges debut, remembers the day, writing in his diary, "It wasn't announced to the rest of the cast; nobody knew what happened. No one - including Moe, Larry and Jules - ever told us how serious his condition was. It was only after the picture had been completed that I found out he took ill." Although Curly appeared briefly in the Stooges 1947's "Hold That Lion!" he was in too bad of shape to return. His brother Shemp filled in for him on a temporary basis, which turned out to be permanent. Director White, Moe and Larry quickly reworked the concluding scene with additional cutaways of several other actors getting pies thrown in their faces, footage which came in handy in later Stooges' films. Curly's last scene he appeared in was when he was about to eat a pie at the party before Moe catches him, grabs the pie and says, "Now sit down before I crown you." Curly walks off camera, an end to an illustrious career.

Just before Curly's major stroke on the Columbia Pictures' set that week, a clearly ailing Curly had Moe by his side nudging him when it was his turn to speak. White had a difficult time directing Curly in "Half-Wit Holidays," especially the scene where the three were introduced to party guests after two professors, Prof. Quackenbush (Vernon Dent) and Prof. Sedietz (Ted Lorch), had made a bet one of them could make gentlemen out of them. White said of filming Curly's part, "I had a devil of a time getting that scene. Curly just couldn't get the hang of it. I should have realized then that he was deteriorating even further." It had been 14 years since Curly was brought on board to play the third Stooge in 1932 after his sibling Shemp left in disgust after he got tired of manager Ted Healy's constant harping. Curly emerged as the favorite for many Stooges' fans over the years, and his trademark reactions and expressions are forever imprinted in the lexicon of future comedy. Film critic David Lobosco wrote, "By the end of the 1930s, Curly Howard was clearly the star of the Three Stooges. His childlike mannerisms and natural comedic charm made him a hit with audiences, particularly children. Having no formal acting training, his comedic skill was entirely spontaneous." The irony of Curly's previous movie, December 1946, "Three Little Pirates," filmed a month earlier before his final film, was that his performance was a throwback to the days where his health was vibrant. Curly was flawless in the Stooges' film when he played the Marharaja of Cararsie, delivering some of the most complex dialogue in the Stooges' repertoire. Director Edward Bernds, who had experience dealing with Curly's deteriorating health, remarked, "I guess I should be thankful that Curly was in one of his 'up' periods, because it was strange the way he went up and down. In 'Three Little Pirates,' he was terrific. It was the last flash of the old Curly." Actor Emil Sitka wrote a diary of his first days with the Stooges in "Half-Wits Holiday." He described the three comics, labeling Moe as the "brains" of the trio, "Curly, the shaven-head, is the younger brother (huskiest, but most ailing); and Larry is the most argumentative but most sure of line delivery. All in all, they have perfect timing in scenes, especially where they all three participate. They're all the same size - very short, a head shorter than I am. I must admit their entire bodies are almost perfect 'clown-machines.'' Unfortunately for Curly, his machine finally wore down, eventually dying in 1952 at 48.

This short is indeed, like all the shorts, a classic. I couldn't help but see at the end, after watching, Moe was noticeably not himself. I've read many times about the stroke that poor Curly suffered during the making of this, and you can see in Moe's delivery of his lines that this event's eating away at his heart. I can't imagine how he must have felt when just minutes earlier his brother was being rushed away to the nearby emergency room. Moe did say in an interview,despite his inner heartbreak and not knowing if Curly was alive or dead, that "The show still must go on". And being the professionals they were, Larry and Moe finished the short without Curly. The Three Stooges were without a doubt the most amazing and groundbreaking actor/comedians of all time. And just like the old saying goes, "People like this come once every thousand years". God Bless Them, and may They Rest in Peace.