Trivia: After a stint as a delivery boy, roly-poly Joe Besser worked his way up the show business ladder as a song plugger and magician's assistant. A vaudeville headliner in his mid-twenties, the bilious, balding Besser usually appeared as a member of a team. On his own, he contributed to the general merriment of Olsen and Johnson's Sons O' Fun, playing his patented stage character as a whining, overweight sissy. Besser's trademarked "I'll HAAAARM you" and "Oh, you NAAAASTY, you!" could be heard throughout the 1940s in such radio shows as The Jack Benny Program and such Columbia feature films as Hey, Rookie! A close friend of comedian Lou Costello, Besser was amusingly cast as an effete gunman in Abbott & Costello's Africa Screams (1949) and as the bratty little boy (!) Stinky in TV's The Abbott and Costello Show (1951-1952). He also starred in his own series of Columbia two-reelers, usually playing a misfit G.I., and from 1956 to 1958 he was a member of the Three Stooges. Flourishing into the 1960s and 1970s, Besser was a regular on The Joey Bishop Show (1962-1965), played supporting roles (sometimes surprisingly dramatic in nature) in films and on TV, and provided voice-overs for such cartoon series as Jeannie (1972) and Yogi's Space Race (1977). One of Joe Besser's last public appearances came about when the Three Stooges at long last received their star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

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: Beginning his stage career in his native Holland in 1927, Phil Van Zandt moved to America shortly afterward, continuing to make theatrical appearances into the late '30s. From his first film (Those High Gray Walls [1939]) onward, the versatile Van Zandt was typed as "everyday" characters whenever he chose not to wear his mustache; with the 'stache, however, his face took on a sinister shade, and he found himself playing such cinematic reprobates as evil caliphs, shady attorneys, and heartless Nazis. Because of deliberately shadowy photography, the audience barely saw Van Zandt's face at all in one of his best roles, as the Henry Luce-like magazine editor Rawlston in Orson Welles' Citizen Kane (1941). Though many of his feature-film assignments were bits, Van Zandt was permitted generous screen time in his many appearances in two-reel comedies. Beginning with the Gus Schilling/Dick Lane vehicle Pardon My Terror (1946), Van Zandt was a fixture at the Columbia Pictures short subjects unit, usually playing crooks and mad scientists at odds with the Three Stooges. He established his own acting school in Hollywood in the 1950s, though this and other ventures ultimately failed. Philip Van Zandt died of a drug overdose at the age of 54.

Trivia: Onscreen from 1938, balding American comedian Joe Palma (sometimes billed Joseph Palma) became a fixture in Columbia Pictures short subjects, earning a reported 55 dollars a day supporting everybody from "Woo-Woo" Hugh Herbert to Vera Vague to the Three Stooges. Along with Johnny Kascier and the veteran Al Thompson, Palma played bit parts and did stunt work in virtually all the Stooges comedies of the 1940s and early '50s. When Shemp Howard died suddenly of a heart attack in November 1955, Palma doubled him in four comedies before producer/director Jules White finally settled on Joe Besser as the third Stooge. The studio kept up the charade by filming Palma, as Shemp, from the back or having him carry heavy loads of props that completely obscured his face. Joe Palma outlasted the Columbia short subject department, retiring from screen work in 1965.

Trivia: Although she starred in scores of B-Westerns opposite the likes of Buck Jones, Buster Crabbe, and Johnny Mack Brown, blonde American actress/singer Christine McIntyre is almost solely remembered for her energetic appearances opposite that zaniest of comedy teams, the Three Stooges. With a Bachelor of Music degree from the Chicago Musical College, McIntyre began her professional career on radio. She entered films around 1937, graduating to leading roles the following year opposite singing cowboy Fred Scott. Appearances in a large number of B-Westerns followed and McIntyre would probably have remained just another prairie flower had she not caught the eye of Columbia producer Hugh McCollom. Not so different at first from the host of pretty girls who decorated the Columbia comedy shorts, McIntyre soon developed into a first-rate comedienne, with an operatic voice to boot. The erudite McCollum persuaded Stooges director Edward Bernds to create Micro-Phonies (1945) for her, with McIntyre was perfectly cast as an aspiring vocalist whose rendition of "The Voice of Spring" is spoiled by the irreverent trio. Micro-Phonies proved one of the year's best Stooges shorts and the die was cast. Alternately playing ingenues and femme fatales, Christine McIntyre was almost regarded as the fourth Stooge and stayed with the department until 1954, longer if one counts her many subsequent appearances via stock footage. "Of all the people I worked with, Christine was one of my favorites," Stooges veteran Emil Sitka said, not long before his death in 1998. Director Edward Bernds concurred: "She was so nice, so sweet; a real joy. She had the rare ability of indulging in the zany antics and still remaining a real lady, which is what she was." The seemingly indefatigable McIntyre also managed to squeeze a series of Johnny Mack Brown Westerns into her busy schedule, but mainstream stardom eluded her and she retired in the mid-'50s to marry J. Donald Wilson, a radio director/producer. Although she relished talking about her many B-Westerns, McIntyre flatly refused to discuss her work with the Stooges.