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Rating: - This Is The Best Stooge History Ever Written - And I Should Know!
The Three Stooges: The Triumphs and Tragedies of The Most Popular Comedy Team of All Time by Jeff and Tom Forrester is the most accurate (and therefore the best) biography of The Three Stooges ever written - I should know, because not only am I a lifelong fan of The Three Stooges, but I also had the pleasure of working at Columbia for just over nine years, and was lucky enough to become personal friends with not only Shemp Howard, Larry Fine and Joe Besser, but also Emil Sitka, Jules White and Edward Bernds, as well as a variety of other film industry professionals who also knew and worked with the Stooges during their lengthy career in short-subjects. I feel that because today I am one of the remaining few who had the pleasure of working with the boys, I have some rare insight into the life and times of this most underrated comedy team, and so I was very excited to read a book which finally addresses both the triumphs and tragedies of their illustrious career.

Yes, believe it or not, the Stooges were never given the respect or remuneration they undeniably deserved (from their studio - or their public) until long after their deaths, when they had already become a very popular, money-making mainstay for Columbia and Screen Gems on syndicated television. This book does an amiable job in accurately reporting many of the negatives the Stooges had to overcome throughout their unprecedented career at Columbia, and factually represents how, and more importantly why, the Stooges continued to even bother with their struggle to keep working from decade to decade, right up until their deaths. Great homage is also paid to the Stooges and their unyielding dedication to their individual families as well as their own comedic success throughout each and every page of this very captivating and image-packed testament to the team.

What your average Stooge fan does not already know about the Stooges could fill a book, and that's exactly what we have here thanks to the authors. In the past I have read every Stooge book available, and always felt slighted when it came to a comprehensive overview of the team's lengthy history which began back east on the vaudeville and Broadway stage. I was also very interested to learn more about how the team began in the roaring `20s while under the wing of their creator, Ted Healy (who incidentally was the highest paid entertainer in the history of vaudeville). This book is a goldmine of information about Healy, perhaps the most misunderstood comedian of the last century. Most other books about the Stooges have given Healy the undeserved short-shrift over the years, and have never given this great showman the respect he deserves for his solo work on stage and in film and radio, not to mention his uncanny forethought and comedic instincts in single handedly assembling the most popular American comedy trio of all time - The Three Stooges (at that time known as Ted Healy's Three Stooges).

Unfortunately, other books like Moe Howard's own Moe Howard and the 3 Stooges: The Pictorial Biography of the Wildest Trio in the History of American Entertainment have purposely given Ted Healy a decidedly bad name throughout the years due in part to the fact that Moe never finished (or for that matter ever really started) this book - it was his inept cartoonist of a son-in-law Norman Mauer who simply assembled some of Moe's original hand-written notes and filled in the rest of the team's whole story as he inaccurately saw fit, actually writing Moe's autobiography for him after Moe's death in the mid-1970s! This is where I feel a majority of the Healy-bashing began some 40 years after his untimely death (or murder?) in 1937 and continues, unfairly, to breed in popular Stooge culture even today.

The Three Stooges: The Triumphs and Tragedies of The Most Popular Comedy Team of All Time does a fantastic job in digging up the past with documented accounts of the final demise of Stooge boss Ted Healy. From first-hand witness accounts of Healy's fatal beating in the back alley of Hollywood's swanky Trocadero Night Club at the hands of MGM superstar Wallace Beery, gangster Pat DiCicco and his shifty young punk of a cousin Cubby Broccoli (long before his cousin Pat helped muscle him into Tinsel Town where he eventually made a name for himself as producer of the James Bond film series), this book finally puts forth the truth about Healy's death - which has only been whispered about on Hollywood backlots by industry insiders and other people in-the-know for the past seven decades (a story which was originally told to me in the early 1960s by one of Healy's biggest fans, comedian Milton Berle).

The authors also examine the subsequent cover-up of Healy's death by everyone from the Los Angeles press and police department, to the only man powerful enough to make it all go away for his own studio's sake - Louis B. Mayer of MGM. This book, therefore, represents final journalistic justice for the very cold case of Ted Healy's murder - or at least manslaughter - which may help to bring a sense of closure to the remaining family members of one of the most important, and until now historically underrated, comedians ever to grace the American vaudeville stage and silver screen.

The same might even be said for the family of Ted Healy's former girlfriend, the lovely and talented comedienne Thelma Todd, who, for the very first time, this book reports may have also died at the hands of her one-time jealous husband and the same ruthless mobster also connected to Healy's death, Pat DiCicco - just another mobbed-up murder cover-up (this time a staged carbon monoxide suicide) and another of Hollywood's most celebrated unsolved mysteries brought into a better light by this captivating book about none other than The Three Stooges.

It was also heartbreaking to find out that several of the Stooges may have died due to complications arising from the fact that they were punched, slapped and struck in the head on a daily basis for most of their career on stage and in film. It seems an unlikely coincidence that Curly Howard, Shemp Howard, and Larry Fine (whom received the brunt of both Ted Healy and Moe Howard's physical punishment throughout the decades) were the only ones to suffer debilitating strokes at very young ages, eventually dying of complications arising from cerebral hemorrhages. These great comedians, not unlike punch-drunk prize fighters, were also in effect comic gladiators who unknowingly may have died from work-sustained injuries, all in a very successful effort to make people laugh. It is now difficult for me to watch some of these men's later work in short-subjects since the enlightened viewer can actually see each of their comedic pacing change and their performance energy decrease due to their unchecked failing health. Readers of this book will continually be reminded that slapstick comedy always was, and still is, a very serious business, hence, it is no wonder that nobody (except for the likes of Jim Carrey) is really doing slapstick comedy in film today.

Equally fascinating in this book is the unprecedented discussion of all 18 men whom played the role of one of the Three Stooges since the team's inception on the beaches of Coney Island and the vaudeville stage way back in the 1920s. Many so-called Stooge fans have been put off by the mere mention of anyone but the six most famous members of the Three Stooges (i.e., Shemp, Moe and Curly Howard, Larry Fine, Joe Besser and Curly-Joe DeRita) throughout the team's career. Many unenlightened Stooge fans feel that since these dozen other men did not make short-subjects at Columbia, and therefore never reached the heights of fame as the other six did, their names should never be mentioned in a discussion of Stooge comedy. But to not mention the other twelve men whom contributed to the rich history of the Stooges is like a sports fan professing that only Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Yogi Berra, Whitey Ford and Mickey Mantel were "actual" members of the New York Yankees baseball team throughout that franchise's very long and successful history in American sports. And just as in team sports, the comedy team known as The Three Stooges has had a wide variety of participants throughout the years. Therefore, exactly whom is it that has the right to say which members are worthy of discussion in a comprehensive text of this kind? Thankfully for the reader, the authors agree that each and every participant throughout the history of the Stooges deserves at least a mention in this fact-filled book.

The Three Stooges: The Triumphs and Tragedies of The Most Popular Comedy Team of All Time represents an intelligent and thoughtful look at the entire history of a very complex comedy team, not just the same old chronological re-hash of the short-subject and feature-length film career lists of six men whom happened to all work for Columbia between the 1930s and 1960s - believe me, we've seen that same book-of-lists treatment of the Stooges time and time again. Here the authors have done a remarkable job in helping to recreate the Stooges' complete history by using the entire team roster of Ted Healy's most popular, as well as lesser-known, members of The Three Stooges, including the likes of Mousie Garner (whom wrote the book's introduction, was the first comedian ever to appear on television, and was also a founding member of the Gentlemaniacs), Jack Wolf (whom was father of New York sports caster Warner Wolf, was the second comedian ever to appear on television, and was also Mousie Garner's cousin), Dick Hakins (popular comedian, songwriter, musician and member of the Gentlemaniacs), Jimmy Brewster (originally a sidekick to Charlie Foy), Red Pearson (another Charlie Foy sidekick and Ted Healy impersonator), Freddie Sanborn (a sidekick to Healy, also known as Stooge to the Stooges or The Fourth Stooge), Dave Chasen (of Hollywood's own Chasen's Night Club fame), Frank Mitchell (a Columbia and Universal bit-player and talented comedic acrobat), Bobby Pinkus (a popular comedian and song-and-dance man who also worked with Spike Jones and his City Slickers), Lou Warren (a longtime Healy sidekick, comedian and acrobat), Kenny Lackey (Healy's onetime personal valet, comedian and acrobat), and Sammy Wolfe (another Healy Stooge and member of the Gentlemaniacs). The amount of newly uncovered Stooge trivia and entertainment history related to these twelve men is staggering!

Comedy fans in general will be glad to learn that woven throughout this book is also a very interesting who's who of legendary comedians whom were friends with (and sometimes even directly influenced by the comedy of) Ted Healy and/or The Stooges throughout the years, including the likes of Charlie Chaplin, The Marx Brothers, The Ritz Brothers, W.C. Fields, Abbott & Costello, Martin & Lewis, The Bowery Boys, Jackie Gleason, Danny Kaye, Red Skelton, Buddy Hackett and many more. Stooge fans in particular will also be glad to find a complete filmography including all of the Stooges' short-subject and feature-length releases, as well as a complete, never-before-published listing of their short-subject and feature-length re-releases.

Unfortunately, this book is not for kids, and may be written far above the heads of many less-educated (and more juvenile) trivia-hacks and so-called Stooge fans - like the kind who would rather spend their time re-examining a list of how many times Curly gets slapped in "Cookoo Cavaliers," how many pies were thrown in "Half Wits Holiday," or looking at the same old photos of Stooge bubblegum cards, comic books and hand puppets. These fans may some day be able to handle a book of this magnitude when they grow up, but in the meantime, they may want to ease into this newer material by first viewing a copy of the authors' "Ted Healy And His Stooges" DVD Documentary which is a marvelous encapsulation of much of their latest book, including extremely rare footage of Ted Healy and the Stooges actually developing their now-classic material on stage and screen - the documentary even includes a special supplemental section introducing the viewer to all 18 of Healy's Stooges.

Fortunately, The Three Stooges: The Triumphs and Tragedies of The Most Popular Comedy Team of All Time represents the very best and most accurate reference book available when it comes to The Three Stooges and their comedy - I should know, because I was right there at Columbia in the very beginning of my career, paying very close attention to everything around me as it happened between the years of 1949 and 1958. Now that I'm retired, I especially love this book because it gives me the opportunity to re-examine the very long and often times difficult career of my favorite comedy team, and to reflect on and re-visit with my very funny friends, The Three Stooges - including all of their triumphs - and their tragedies.

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