Half Wits Holiday ended the career of Curly Howard, easily one of the most remarkable individuals in Entertainment History. That may sound a little strong to some people, but I don't think it is.
I was working on a television special in Los Angeles just after the Northridge Earthquake in 1994 when we got a phone call saying that Curley's gravestone had suffered some damage from the quake, as had others around it. We took a camera crew over to a small Jewish Cemetery in East L.A. The area is Latino but 80 years ago was home to Jewish families from Brooklyn. I asked the manager of the place what all these people were doing there. She said :"Well we have the second most visited grave in Los Angeles.....people are here to help out..." The cemetery holds movie mogul Louis B. Mayer, Singer Fanny Bryce, Samuel "Shemp" Howard, and the second most visited grave---Jerome "Curly" Howard.
Marilyn Monroe gets the most regular visitors at Forest Lawn, then comes Curly in East L.A.
The grave is marked Horowitz not the later "Howard", and people were putting small stones and coins back on top that had fallen off. There were lines of old, young, middle aged, children, everybody. I could not believe the number of people who were there.
That afternoon we interviewed Joan Howard Maurer, Moe's daughter, who remembered vividly her Uncle Curly's strokes and last performances. And she knew plenty about the years when her father, Uncle Shemp, and Uncle Curly were Vaudeville superstars along with Larry Fineberg. She said Moe scripted the act, but Curly was the trigger that made it work. She remembered hilarious family dinners with her Dad, Uncle Shemp and Uncle Curly. Even the Marx Bros. have a hard time topping that !
And she remembered that it all ended too soon.
I was working on a television special in Los Angeles just after the Northridge Earthquake in 1994 when we got a phone call saying that Curley's gravestone had suffered some damage from the quake, as had others around it. We took a camera crew over to a small Jewish Cemetery in East L.A. The area is Latino but 80 years ago was home to Jewish families from Brooklyn. I asked the manager of the place what all these people were doing there. She said :"Well we have the second most visited grave in Los Angeles.....people are here to help out..." The cemetery holds movie mogul Louis B. Mayer, Singer Fanny Bryce, Samuel "Shemp" Howard, and the second most visited grave---Jerome "Curly" Howard.
Marilyn Monroe gets the most regular visitors at Forest Lawn, then comes Curly in East L.A.
The grave is marked Horowitz not the later "Howard", and people were putting small stones and coins back on top that had fallen off. There were lines of old, young, middle aged, children, everybody. I could not believe the number of people who were there.
That afternoon we interviewed Joan Howard Maurer, Moe's daughter, who remembered vividly her Uncle Curly's strokes and last performances. And she knew plenty about the years when her father, Uncle Shemp, and Uncle Curly were Vaudeville superstars along with Larry Fineberg. She said Moe scripted the act, but Curly was the trigger that made it work. She remembered hilarious family dinners with her Dad, Uncle Shemp and Uncle Curly. Even the Marx Bros. have a hard time topping that !
And she remembered that it all ended too soon.
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