Trivia: Accidentally shot himself in the left ankle at age 12. Had his first marriage annulled because his mother disapproved of the union. Modeled famous "woo-woo-woo" sound on a similar gimmick used by comic Hugh Herbert Hated shaving his head because he thought it made him less appealing to women. His last film appearance, Hold That Lion, is the only Three Stooges short to co-star Curly along with his two brothers, Moe and Shemp. Was an avid dog lover, often picking up strays while the Stooges traveled and taking them with him from town to town.

Trivia: See "Three Stooges"

Trivia: The "middle stooge" in the various incarnations of the Three Stooges, Larry Fine was most recognizable across his four decades in show business by his eccentric frizzed out hair. He occupied the awkward and often ill-defined position of "middle man," his presence necessary to give a gag body and a boost of action, and to keep it going to its conclusion. As an actor in the group's sketches, he was most often characterized as the wide-eyed nebbish, often nearly as surprised as any by-stander character by the physical comedy (and mayhem) taking place. His most memorable catch-phrases included "Moe, I didn't mean it" (usually followed by a slap from Moe), and "I'm a victim of circumstance" (which was used by Curly on occasion as well).And "victim of circumstance" might define his whole entre to the world of performing. He was born Louis Feinberg in Philadelphia, the son of a jeweler. One day while at his father's shop, an accident took place that resulted in his forearm being badly burned with aqua regia, the acid used to test the purity of gold. The doctor who treated him warned his parents that he would have to do something to strengthen the arm or he would lose it. That led to his taking up the violin, an instrument at which he became so proficient that the family considered sending him to Europe for advanced study, a plan that fell apart with the advent of the First World War He began playing the violin in vaudeville under the name Larry Fine, developing a routine in which he would play from a nearly sitting, knees-bent position, kicking his legs alternately. In 1925, he crossed paths with Moe Howard, who was already working, in tandem with his brother Shemp Howard as part of a comedy act with Ted Healy. He became part of the act and remained when Shemp left, to be replaced by another Howard brother, Curly (aka Jerome). The trio eventually left Healy's employ and struck out on their own as the Three Stooges. Over the course of 25 years and 190 short films at Columbia Pictures, they became one of the longest running movie comedy acts (if not always the most respected or beloved, especially by women) in history. Larry Fine's contribution was a mix of violin virtuosity (on display at various times across their history, from Punch Drunks, Disorder In The Court, and "Violent Is The Word For Curly" in the early/middle 1930s to Sweet And Hot in the late 1950s) and zany cluelessness, mixed with an occasional out-of-left-field ad-lib. Larry usually played the wide-eyed middle-stooge, but occasionally the plots of the trio's movies would allow him some variation on this characterization. In "Sweet And Hot," he plays a small-town boy who has made good as a stage producer, and whose intervention sets the plot (focused on characters played by Muriel Landers and Joe Besser) in motion; and in Rockin' In The Rockies, a full-length feature, as a result of a plot that split Moe Howard's character off from the trio, Larry plays the aggressive "head stooge," and is surprisingly good at it. But he was best known as the clueless middle stooge, often referred to by Moe as "porcupine" because of his hair-style. He kept on with the Stooges into the 1960s, but was forced to retire as his health -- damaged by a series of strokes -- deteriorated later in the decade. He passed away in 1975. He was so familiar, that in 1980, five years after his death, his name still turned up in popular culture. In episode two of the sitcom Bosom Buddies, when women's hotel manager Lucille Benson finds Tom Hanks' Kip Wilson in a female tenant's room, she pulls him by the ear down the hall, causing him to exclaim, "Who am I -- Larry Fine?" And in 1983, SCTV presented "Give 'Em Hell, Larry," a short bit (done as a TV promo spot) in which Joe Flaherty portrays James Whitmore (who had previously enjoyed major success playing President Harry Truman in the one-man show "Give 'Em Hell, Harry") performing the one-man show as Larry Fine -- it was among the funniest 60 seconds of television that season.

Trivia: Left fatherless at the age of four, American actress Lucille Ball developed a strong work ethic in childhood; among her more unusual jobs was as a "seeing eye kid" for a blind soap peddler. Ball's mother sent the girl to the Chautauqua Institution for piano lessons, but she was determined to pursue an acting career after watching the positive audience reaction given to vaudeville monologist Julius Tannen. Young Ball performed in amateur plays for the Elks club and at her high school, at one point starring, staging, and publicizing a production of Charley's Aunt. In 1926, Ball enrolled in the John Murray Anderson American Academy of Dramatic Art in Manhattan (where Bette Davis was the star pupil), but was discouraged by her teachers to continue due to her shyness. Her reticence notwithstanding, Ball kept trying until she got chorus-girl work and modeling jobs; but even then she received little encouragement from her peers, and the combination of a serious auto accident and recurring stomach ailments seemed to bode ill for her theatrical future. Still, Ball was no quitter, and, in 1933, she managed to become one of the singing/dancing Goldwyn Girls for movie producer Samuel Goldwyn; her first picture was Eddie Cantor's Roman Scandals (1933). Working her way up from bit roles at both Columbia Pictures (where one of her assignments was in a Three Stooges short) and RKO Radio, Ball finally attained featured billing in 1935, and stardom in 1938 -- albeit mostly in B-movies. Throughout the late 1930s and '40s, Ball's movie career moved steadily, if not spectacularly; even when she got a good role like the nasty-tempered nightclub star in The Big Street (1942), it was usually because the "bigger" RKO contract actresses had turned it down. By the time she finished a contract at MGM (she was dubbed "Technicolor Tessie" at the studio because of her photogenic red hair and bright smile) and returned to Columbia in 1947, she was considered washed up. Ball's home life was none too secure, either. She'd married Cuban bandleader Desi Arnaz in 1940, but, despite an obvious strong affection for one another, they had separated and considered divorce numerous times during the war years. Hoping to keep her household together, Ball sought out professional work in which she could work with her husband. Offered her own TV series in 1950, she refused unless Arnaz would co-star. Television was a godsend for the couple; and Arnaz discovered he had a natural executive ability, and was soon calling all the shots for what would become I Love Lucy. From 1951 through 1957, it was the most popular sitcom on television, and Ball, after years of career stops and starts, was firmly established as a megastar in her role of zany, disaster-prone Lucy Ricardo. When her much-publicized baby was born in January 1953, the story received more press coverage than President Eisenhower's inauguration. With their new Hollywood prestige, Ball and Arnaz were able to set up the powerful Desilu Studios production complex, ultimately purchasing the facilities of RKO, where both performers had once been contract players. But professional pressures and personal problems began eroding the marriage, and Ball and Arnaz divorced in 1960, although both continued to operate Desilu. Ball gave Broadway a try in the 1960 musical Wildcat, which was successful but no hit, and, in 1962, returned to TV to solo as Lucy Carmichael on The Lucy Show. She'd already bought out Arnaz's interest in Desilu, and, before selling the studio to Gulf and Western in 1969, Ball had become a powerful executive in her own right, determinedly guiding the destinies of such fondly remembered TV series as Star Trek and Mission: Impossible. The Lucy Show ended in the spring of 1968, but Ball was back that fall with Here's Lucy, in which she played "odd job" specialist Lucy Carter and co-starred with her real-life children, Desi Jr. and Lucie. Here's Lucy lasted until 1974, at which time her career took some odd directions. She poured a lot of her own money in a film version of the Broadway musical Mame (1974), which can charitably be labeled an embarrassment. Her later attempts to resume TV production, and her benighted TV comeback in the 1986 sitcom Life With Lucy, were unsuccessful, although Ball, herself, continued to be lionized as the First Lady of Television, accumulating numerous awards and honorariums. Despite her many latter-day attempts to change her image -- in addition to her blunt, commandeering off-stage personality -- Ball would forever remain the wacky "Lucy" that Americans had loved intensely in the '50s. She died in 1989.

Trivia: A veteran of vaudeville from the age of seven, Canadian-born starlet Phyllis Crane (née Phyllis Francis) signed with Columbia Pictures in 1934. Mainly seen in bit parts as chorus girls and maids in the studio's mainstream fare, the brunette Crane was much better served by the busy short subject department. As one of the scores of pretty girls used as foils for the unit's slapstick comics, Crane appeared in most of the early Three Stooges comedies, from Men in Black (1934) to A Pain in the Pullman (1936). Providing a bit of cheesecake to the anarchic proceedings Crane in effect served the same purpose as the later and much more appreciated Christine McIntyre. But while fellow Stooge starlet Lucille Ball went on to bigger and better things, Crane continued to toil in the rough-and-tumble shorts department. She left films for good in 1937.

Trivia: Brutish-looking actor Walter Long entered films in 1909 after brief stage experience. He became a valued member of D.W. Griffith's stock company, excelling in roles calling for strong-arm villainy and glowering menace. In Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915), Long played Gus, the renegade Negro whose lustful pursuit of virginal Mae Marsh results in the girl's suicidal leap from a precipice; while in the same director's Intolerance, Long was "the musketeer of the slums," a gangster boss whose murder motivates the climactic race to the rescue. He persisted in villainy into the 1920s, providing a formidable foe to such silent heroes as Rudolph Valentino and William Boyd. Despite his on-screen skullduggery, Long enjoyed a reputation as a prince of a fellow; his courtesy and good manners were particularly prized by the leading ladies whom Long's screen characters frequently imperiled. In talkies, Long proved to have a low, guttural voice that matched his movie image perfectly, and he continued unabated to portray thugs, pluguglies and lowlifes. Though many of his talkie roles were bit parts, he was well served in the films of Laurel and Hardy, playing a prison cell-block leader in Pardon Us (1931), a drink-sodden prizefighter in Any Old Port (1932), a vengeful gangster ("I'll break off yer legs and wrap 'em around yer neck") in Going Bye Bye (1934), a shanghaiing sea captain in The Live Ghost (1934), and a Mexican bandido in Pick a Star (1937). During World War II, the fifty-plus Walter Long served as a lieutenant colonel in the Army; upon his discharge, he returned to the stage, where he remained active until his retirement in 1950.

Trivia: A dignified-looking young character actor, Lynton Brent began his career on the stage, appearing in plays such as The Student Prince, Paid in Full, and as Laertes in Hamlet before entering films in 1930. Handsome enough in an average kind of way, Brent played such supporting roles as reporters (King Kong [1933]), radio operators (Streamline Express [1935]), and again Laertes, in the play-within-the-film I'll Love You Always ([1935], Garbo's interpreter Sven Hugo Borg was Hamlet!). Today, however, Brent is mainly remembered for his many roles in Columbia short subjects opposite the Three Stooges. His dignity always in shambles by the denouement, Brent was a welcome addition to the stock company, which at the time also included such comparative (and battle scarred) veterans as Bud Jamison and Vernon Dent. Leaving the short subject department in the early '40s, Brent played everyone from henchmen to lawmen in scores of B-Westerns and action melodramas, more often than not unbilled. He worked well into the television era, retiring in the late '60s. Offscreen, Brent was an accomplished architect and painter.

Trivia: There probably are actors who appeared in more movies than Bud Jamison did, but there can't be too many -- depending upon whose list one's using, Jamison appeared in anywhere from 253 to 284 pictures between 1915 and 1944, working alongside such screen legends as Charles Chaplin, Ginger Rogers, James Stewart, and Edward G. Robinson. Most of his performances in more-than-bit roles, however, were in short films, and it was his work as a foil in more than 50 two-reelers made by the Three Stooges that has immortalized Jamison's face and acting for generations. Born William Jamison in California, he entered vaudeville in his teens, and by 1915 was appearing in movies with Chaplin. Jamison's big-boned, beefy appearance -- which hid a surprising degree of agility -- and pugnacious expression made him an ideal antagonist for the lanky, diminutive Chaplin, and Jamison was one of his three favorite heavies, along with Eric Campbell and Mack Swain. He was Edna Purviance's beau in In the Park, the sinister hobo in The Tramp, and the chief bank robber in The Bank, among numerous other roles. Jamison remained busy throughout the 1920s, barely breaking stride for the coming of sound, although in a change of pace he did appear in some serious features, including the 1930 version of Moby Dick. He continued this pattern of working in comic short subjects, interspersed with occasional full-length features (in which he usually played bit parts) for the rest of his career. In 1934, Jamison began the association that was to keep his memory alive into the 21st century, when he appeared with the Three Stooges in their first Columbia Pictures short, Woman Haters. The Stooges and their producers obviously liked Jamison's work, because the actor subsequently performed in more than 50 additional Stooges films, usually playing belligerent cops, stuffy butlers, impatient customers, aggravated employers, and any number of other roles that placed him in opposition to the three inept protagonists. As likely to threaten the trio with mayhem as to have it worked on him, he had a beautifully expressive over-the-top voice that greatly enhanced the humor of his performances -- sometimes he was just the Stooges hapless employer, as in Violent Is the Word for Curly, portraying the service station owner giving them a pep talk ("Use a little elbow grease!") before leaving them to their own devices, whereupon they manage to destroy the first car that pulls in; or, in one of their greatest films, Disorder In the Court, he cut a memorable figure as the enthusiastic defense attorney, relying on the Stooges' testimony to get his client acquitted of murder charges; and in yet another short, as a butler faced with assigning serving tasks to Moe, Larry, and Curly, he expresses his impatience with their antics by insulting them: "Why, you remind me of the Three Stooges!" His career went far beyond the boundaries of the Stooges shorts, however, and Jamison was one of the busiest comic character men in Hollywood during the early '40s, appearing in more than 20 pictures in 1941 alone, and also one of the most energetic -- he showed off his boisterous side to great effect in the jail cell scene in George Marshall's Pot O' Gold, in which he manages to dominate a group of a dozen loudly singing actors (including James Stewart and Charles Winninger). He added Bud Abbott and Lou Costello to the long list of comic stars with whom he worked and seemed destined to be busy for years to come when tragedy struck. Jamison collapsed at home shortly after finishing his work on the musical comedy Nob Hill, late in September of 1944. He died the following day, although he had so much work in the can awaiting release that his movie appearances easily ran into 1945. The Three Stooges evidently loved working with Jamison, and used his image on a prop poster in a short that they made years after his death.

Trivia: Although not popularly known, the Three Stooges did in fact employ stunt-doubles for their more strenuous antics. Al Thompson doubled all three Stooges (Moe, Curly, and Larry), plus a host of other Columbia short subject clowns, but the team's best-known stunt man was former vaudevillian Johnny Kascier, a rotund comedian who had doubled for Moe Howard as far back as 1933 and for Peter Lorre in the Mr. Moto series at 20th Century-Fox. In addition to taking prattfalls for the Stooges, Kascier played a host of bit roles himself, often appearing as the unlucky waiter with a heaping tray held high above his head, who slips on the inevitable banana peel. Kascier continued to appear with the Stooges and other Columbia clowns well into the late '50s, mainly courtesy of stock footage.

Trivia: A former circus and vaudeville performer, American comic actor Charles Dorety enjoyed some success as a Chaplin-imitator for the Fox Sunshine Comedies in the late 1910s. He also worked for other also-ran comedy producers such as Bull's Eye, L-KO, Universal's Rainbow and Century Comedies, and appeared opposite Gene "Fatty" Laymon in a series of two-reel Two Star Comedies produced in the mid-'20s by Mack Sennett. In a screen career that lasted until 1955, Dorety worked with almost all the reigning comedy teams, from Laurel and Hardy (The Hoose-Gow [1929]) to the Three Stooges to Abbott and Costello. With the last, he was one of the title "Kops" in Abbott and Costello Meet the Keystone Kops (1955), despite the fact that he was never a member of the original Sennett corps. Rather appropriately, this nostalgic comedy was to be Dorety's final film.