Larry Fine

Comedian, Actor. He was the frizzy-haired star of the legendary comedy team The Three Stooges. Upstaged by the team's angry leader Moe Howard and the scene-stealing Curly Howard, Larry was indeed the comic "glue" between the two. Yet comedian Jerry Seinfeld once said that Larry, like his father, "never did anything but it wasn't the same without him." (Curly's successors, Shemp Howard, Joe Besser and Curly-Joe DeRita also did right by Larry.) In fact, Larry's stroke ended the Stooges for good, underscoring his value. Larry was born Louis Feinberg on Philadelphia's south side, the oldest of four children of watch repair jewelry shop owner Joseph Feinberg and his wife Fanny Lieberman. Larry burned his arm while his father was working with metals, and his doctors recommended he play the violin as therapy. Larry could also play piano, clarinet, and saxophone. He went into vaudeville, playing violin, dancing and doing Jewish dialect. He met Moe Howard in 1925 and joined the Three Stooges with Moe's brother Shemp. When Shemp left and Moe's younger brother Jerome joined the act as Curly in 1934, the Three Stooges began making two-reel shorts for 24 years. Like his screen character, Larry was laid-back, talkative and charitable. (When Shemp replaced the ill Curly, Larry insisted each Stooge give $50 a week to Curly, who couldn't work because of a stroke that eventually killed him.) He gave his money away to down-and-out actors, gambled and threw parties. With disdain for housekeeping, he and wife Mabel lived in hotels and didn't own a house until Larry's late 40s. He was tardy on the set, yet his performing was effortless. "I think Larry was the best actor of three," said Moe's son-in-law and director Norman Maurer. "I used to argue with Moe about giving him more lines because Larry was good, but Moe was against it." When Columbia unceremoniously dumped the Stooges in 1958, their popularity revived when their shorts showed up on TV. They did live shows, made six films, and appeared on TV before the widowed Larry suffered a stroke while making the unfinished 1970 film "Kook's Tour," leaving him partially paralyzed. He lived with his daughter Phyllis until Moe placed him in the Motion Picture Country Home in Woodland Hills, Calif. Larry, despite his illness and being wheelchair-bound, appeared on TV, gave shows at schools, entertained the other patients, and wrote the optimistically titled book, "A Stroke of Luck."