Quotes
 Only fools are positive.Trivia
Got the idea for the notorious Stooge gag of eye-gouging one day when, during a game of bridge, Shemp leaned over and poked Larry in the eyes for not playing well. The result, Larry cried, Shemp apologized, Moe laughed until he fell out of his chair and walked through a glass door and considered the eye-gouge the funniest thing he`d ever seen.
Sold frogs in saloons when he was a child to pay for his fares when he skipped school and instead went to the theater.
When he and his brother Shemp put on shows for families and friends as children, they used younger brother Curly in female parts. Curly at seven, had trouble remembering his lines so Moe made cue cards on adhesive tape and stuck them to his forehead for Curly to read.
Skinned his nose in a fall down the stairs of his home as a child. His nose was rebuilt by a doctor, but when the doctor turned out to be a phony, he had to have his nose rebuilt all over again by another doctor, whom his mother paid by giving him some of her old copper pots.
He was very protective of his brother Curly Howard, who was in reality quite shy and not known to stand up for himself.
His famous "bowl" haircut came by accident. As a child, his mother always wanted a girl, and with Moe being the youngest at the time, she would play dress-up with him, putting him in dresses and bologna curling his long hair. One day, after being picked on for months in school, he and some friends hid in the shed, and he chopped all of the hair off, using a bowl as a guide. After doing so, he was so afraid to face his mother, he hid for hours. Finally coming out, after seeing his hair, she cried out that she was so happy he did so, simply because she couldn`t bring herself to. His hair stuck with him all his life.
Moe was the business-minded one of the group. He knew that Curly liked to spend his money on partying and women, and Larry liked to spend his at the racetrack. So, he drew up an agreement where Larry and Curly turned over a certain percentage of their salaries to him. He, in turn, invested it for them. The result was that, while Larry and Curly were not as wealthy as Moe was (he invested far more of his own money and was quite well off), he ensured that their spendthrift habits did not result in their being broke when their careers ended.
When The Three Stooges shorts began to appear on local children`s shows in the late 1950s, there was a wave of kids poking each other in the eyes. When Moe heard about this, it was The Stooges who came to the rescue. They went on many local television shows, as well as national TV, and showed how the eye-pokes were done in a way that nobody got hurt. To the kids watching, it was like learning a magic trick.
In contrast to his roughneck public persona, Moe was, in private life, a quiet, dedicated family man, whose hobbies included reading, playing bridge and making hooked rugs. The only one of the Stooges who really understood the value of a dollar, investments during his salad days left him a wealthy man at the time of his death.
Grandfather of Jeffrey Scott and Michael Maurer.
Father-in-law of Norman Maurer, with whom he was partnered in Normandie Productions.
Was working on his autobiography when he died. Its working title was "I Stooge to Conquer"; it was published posthumously as "Moe Howard and the Three Stooges.".
Brother of actors Curly Howard, Shemp Howard.
He, Emil Sitka and Joe DeRita ("Curly Joe") were slated to appear in the R-rated film comedy "The Jet Set" (eventually retitled Blazing Stewardesses (1975)). However, because he was suffering from lung cancer, Moe was forced to drop out of the film. The Ritz Brothers replaced Moe, Sitka and De Rita.
His wife, Helen Schonberger, was a cousin of Harry Houdini.
Moe had a legal agreement with his fellow Stooges stating that he reserved the right to choose Stooge replacements (Curly Howard was replaced by Shemp Howard; Shemp was replaced by Joe Besser; Joe was replaced by Joe DeRita).
Determined to get into movies, Moe (then going by his middle name, Harry) went to the Brooklyn-based American Vitagraph studios in May, 1909, and volunteered to run errands for the stars and crews without charging for the service. This impressed Maurice Costello, who brought Moe inside and introduced him to the company. Soon, he was appearing in dramas with Costello and comedies with John Bunny and Flora Finch. At first, he didn`t tell his family about his movie work. But, when they thought he was losing his mind because he was acting like his characters at home, he told them about his extracurricular activities. Most of his films from this period were lost when the Vitagraph film library burned on 2 July 1910.
Interred at Hillside Memorial Park, Culver City, California, USA.
He always played the "Boss Stooge," ordering around the others,insulting them and slapping them around and worse when they goofed up, which was often.
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