Larry Fine

Larry Fine, born Louis Feinberg on October 4, 1902, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was an American actor, comedian, and musician best known as a member of the Three Stooges comedy act. He was the eldest of four children born to Joseph Feinberg and Fanny Lieberman, who operated a watch repair and jewelry shop. An acid burn to his forearm in early childhood, caused when his father knocked a bottle of hydrochloric acid from his hand, led his parents to enroll him in violin lessons as a means of rehabilitating the damaged muscles. Fine became sufficiently skilled that his parents considered sending him to a European music conservatory, a plan interrupted by the outbreak of World War I. As a teenager he also took up boxing to further strengthen the injured arm, winning one professional bout before his father put an end to the pursuit.

Fine entered show business as a violinist in vaudeville. In 1928, while working as master of ceremonies at Rainbo Gardens in Chicago, he encountered comedian Ted Healy and Shemp Howard, who were performing in the Shubert Brothers production A Night in Spain. With Howard temporarily departing the show, Fine was recruited as a replacement stooge alongside Bobby Pinkus and Sam Braun. Howard returned in September 1928 to complete the national tour.

Fine's Broadway career spanned 1929 to 1939 and included the musical A Night in Venice and the revue George White's Scandals. In early 1929, Healy signed on with the Shuberts for A Night in Venice and assembled Fine, Shemp Howard, and Moe Howard together as a trio for the first time. Fine, the Howard brothers, and Fred Sanborn performed in Venice from 1929 through March 1930. The group subsequently toured under several names, including Ted Healy and His Racketeers, Ted Healy and His Southern Gentlemen, and Ted Healy and His Three Lost Souls, before traveling to Hollywood in the summer of 1930 to film Fox Studio's Soup to Nuts.

Following a break with Healy after Soup to Nuts, Fine and the Howard brothers toured independently as Howard, Fine, and Howard: Three Lost Soles from the fall of 1930 through the summer of 1932. In July 1932, Fine and Moe Howard rejoined Healy, this time adding Moe's youngest brother Jerome, known as Curly Howard, to the lineup. The new configuration debuted at the RKO Palace Theatre in Cleveland on August 27, 1932, with Shemp Howard departing to pursue a solo career. Fine and the Howard brothers permanently severed ties with Healy in 1934, at which point the Three Stooges began their most prolific period, ultimately producing 206 short films and several features.

Within the act, Fine occupied the middle position between Moe Howard's domineering persona and Curly Howard's childlike one. His character frequently served as a voice of reason while also proposing illogical solutions, making him a target of Moe's physical and verbal rebukes. During the Curly era Fine was largely confined to a background role, but his onscreen presence expanded after Shemp Howard rejoined the act following Curly's debilitating stroke in May 1946. Fine became the focus of several films during the Shemp era, including Fuelin' Around in 1949 and He Cooked His Goose in 1952. After Shemp's death on November 22, 1955, Joe Besser succeeded him in 1956, and Joe DeRita replaced Besser after Columbia Pictures closed its comedy-shorts department at the end of 1957. The Three Stooges experienced a significant career revival in 1959 when Columbia released their short films to television, bringing the act to a new generation of viewers.

Fine was recognizable by his distinctive hairstyle, a large bald spot on top surrounded by thick, bushy, curly auburn hair on the sides and back. In a 1960 interview, Fine attributed the origin of the style to J. J. Shubert, who had encountered Fine just after he had shampooed his hair and encouraged him to keep the look.

Fine met his wife, Mabel Haney, in 1922 while both were working in vaudeville, and the two married in 1926. Because of Fine's free-spending habits and Mabel's dislike of housekeeping, the family lived in hotels for many years, first at the President Hotel in Atlantic City, New Jersey, where their daughter Phyllis was raised, and later at the Hollywood Knickerbocker Hotel. Fine did not purchase a house until the late 1940s, when he acquired one in the Los Feliz area of Los Angeles, California. He maintained a significant gambling habit, wagering at racetracks and in high-stakes gin rummy games, and was nearly forced into bankruptcy when Columbia ceased production of Three Stooges shorts in December 1957. Mabel Fine died of a sudden heart attack on May 30, 1967, at the age of 63. Larry Fine died on January 24, 1975.