SHEMP!: The Biography of The Three Stooges* Shemp Howard, The Face of Film Comedy By: Burt Kearns

Author: Burt Kearns

Shemp Howard not only had one of the most distinctive faces of the twentieth century. He was also one of the most influential comic actors of Old Hollywood. An original member of the Three Stooges, Shemp—along with his brother Moe and actor-violinist Larry Fine—perfected a brand of raucous, lowbrow, slapstick comedy that had audiences rolling in the aisles of vaudeville houses, Broadway theaters, and movie palaces, and left an indelible imprint on the face of popular entertainment. Then he walked away… and the new Three Stooges—Moe, Larry, and brother Curly—made history.

But Shemp didn’t disappear. He made Hollywood history on his own, in a successful and until now unexplored career in more than a hundred movie shorts and features. He appeared in comedies, dramas, mysteries, Westerns, and musicals alongside the biggest stars of the Golden Age, including W.C. Fields, John Wayne, James Stewart, William Powell, Lon Chaney, Jr., Myrna Loy, and Marlene Dietrich.

SHEMP! is the first book to challenge the “official” version of Three Stooges history that’s been repeated for decades, shattering myths as it uncovers the surprising and often unsettling facts behind the man’s unlikely how the child of Jewish immigrants, racked with severe anxiety and phobias could conquer vaudeville, Broadway, and Hollywood. And it’s more than a author Burt Kearns digs into the shorts and feature films Shemp did on his own—more than a hundred of them—and, through interviews with fans, family members, scholars, experts, filmmakers, and celebrities, examines the “cult of Shemp” that thrives today.