In the latest Comic Book Legends Revealed“>Comic Book Legends Revealed, learn how the Three Stooges and pie fights nearly got a Marvel editor fired.
Welcome to Comic Book Legends Revealed! This is the eight hundred and thirty-second installment where we examine three comic book legends and determine whether they are true or false. As usual, there will be three posts, one for each of the three legends. Click here for the first part of this installment’s legends. Click here for the second part of this installment’s legends.
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COMIC LEGEND:
A visit to see Moe Howard throwing pies at a college event indirectly almost led to a Marvel staffer getting fired in the mid-1970s.
STATUS:
True Enough (qualifier only because things like “almost” or “nearly” are somewhat abstract ideas, right?)
The Three Stooges had one of the most unusual careers when it comes to famous entertainers. They were big successes in the days of short films that would air before other movies at theaters, but their career actually stretched from 1934-1957, when the short film industry finally collapsed (The Stooges were one of the very last short film celebrities still going then). However, here’s the thing, right when the short film industry collapsed, you know what blew up, right? Yep, the television industry and hey, what do you know, Columbia/Screen Gems now had 190 short films starring The Three Stooges that could EASILY be turned into TV episodes.
But the other thing about The Three Stooges is that while they started out with brothers Moe Howard and Shemp Howard working with Larry Fine, when Shemp went solo, the Stooges brough in the Howard’s younger brother, Curly Howard, and Moe, Larry and Curly were the original short film Three Stooges. Curly became a sensation and the others geared the films around his cartoonish quality of comedy that little kids LOVED. Sadly, about 11 years in, Curly suffered a debilitating stroke. Not wanting to return, but also not wanting to let the group fall apart while his younger brother was sick, Shemp agreed to fill in for his younger brother and return to the Stooges. Tragically, Curly soon passed away and Shemp ended up sticking with the team for another decade before he, too, tragically passed away. They had a fill-in third Stooge, Joe Besser, through the end of their film contract and for a little bit after that, but then Besser quit and Howard and Fine were ready to call it quits. Then Fine saw comedian Joe DeRita do a show and he found him perfect as the third Stooge.
So they re-formed the act, but things were slow until, well, the aforementioned TV revolution. Now, the Three Stooges were somehow more popular than ever before, but for stuff that was filmed DECADES earlier! Moe noticed that the Curly films were much more popular than the Shemp films and since DeRita bore a passing resemblance to Curly, they renamed Joe “Curly Joe” and the last version of the Three Stooges was born!
They even got their own recurring Dell comic book in the 1960s (that’s where the featured image is from)…
Sadly, in 1970, Larry Fine also passed away and the Stooges were done.
Moe Howard, however, lived another five years and he kept busy. He became a recurring guest on The Mike Douglas Show…
He would also do college engagements. One of his regular bits, as you can see from The Mike Douglas Show, was pie fights. I just recently did a bit about the first time that The Three Stooges did a pie fight in one of their films.
It was soon a regular part of their act.
Howard would do them at his college engagements, as well. In any event, recently, the great Scott Edelman shared a story on his TikTok channel (click here to follow Scott and hear more stories about his days as a Marvel staffer) about how he went to one of the Moe Howard shows circa 1974-75 and kept complaining about how he never got hit by a pie. Well, sure enough, Edelamn’s future wife, fellow staffer, Irene Vartanoff, decided to make his dream come true. She and fellow staffer Michelle Wolfman distracted Edelman and then smashed a pie in his face. Another staffer, Roger Slifer, was unamused and noted that if HE ever got hit in the face with a pie like that, he’d sue!
Well, of course, Edelman then went off and bought a Mrs. Smith pie, heated it up and went the opportunity came, smashed it in Slifer’s face. Even LESS amused than before, Slifer complained and asked for Edelman to be fired. Instead, Editors-in-Chief Len Wein and Marv Wolfman basically told Edelman to never do anything like that again, and he didn’t.
Edelman’s story made its way into Alex Segura’s excellent new mystery novel, set in the comic book industry in the 1970s, called Secret Identity. Go check it out!
Thanks for the cool story, Scott!
CHECK OUT A MOVIE LEGENDS REVEALED!
In the latest Movie Legends Revealed – Was a real horse seriously killed for the iconic “horse head” scene in The Godfather?
MORE LEGENDS STUFF!
OK, that’s it for this installment!
Thanks to Brandon Hanvey for the Comic Book Legends Revealed logo, which I don’t even actually anymore, but I used it for years and you still see it when you see my old columns, so it’s fair enough to still thank him, I think.
Feel free (heck, I implore you!) to write in with your suggestions for future installments! My e-mail address is [email protected]. And my Twitter feed is http://twitter.com/brian_cronin, so you can ask me legends there, as well! Also, if you have a correction or a comment, feel free to also e-mail me. CBR sometimes e-mails me with e-mails they get about CBLR and that’s fair enough, but the quickest way to get a correction through is to just e-mail me directly, honest. I don’t mind corrections. Always best to get things accurate!
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