Larry Fine

Larry began performing as a violinist at a young age. During his teenage years, he earned his living as a singer and boxer. At 18, Larry began working vaudeville with "The Haney Sisters and Fine" and in 1925, he joined Ted Healy and Moe Howard in the act that would eventually become The Three Stooges.

During his 40-year film career, Larry appeared only in one film that did not also feature fellow Stooge Moe Howard. That film is Stage Mother (1933).

Larry originally had a larger role with the Stooges. He was the central character in "Woman Haters", their first starring short, and had most of the lines in the 1934 Columbia feature "The Captain Hates the Sea".

Father-in-law of Don Lamond, who appeared in several Three Stooges full-length features and also hosted the local Three Stooges television show in Los Angeles, California in the late 1950s and early 1960s (which helped give The Three Stooges careers a renaissance).

Larry was the second member of the Three Stooges act to die of complications from a stroke, the first being Curly Howard, in 1952.

With their Columbia contract canceled and Joe DeRita replacing Joe Besser The Three Stooges did a lot of personal appearance tours and in 1959 signed back with Columbia for a series of feature length movies. They also filmed a television pilot entitled "The Three Stooges Scrapbook". This was a combination of live action and animation filmed in color. It eventually played as a featurette in cinemas for a short while then disappeared. Pieces of it were later used in their feature The Three Stooges in Orbit.

His son John died in a car accident on November 17, 1961. He was 24 years old. His daughter Phyllis died of cancer on April 3, 1989. She was 60 years old.

His wife, Mabel Haney, died of a sudden heart attack on May 30, 1967. Larry was on the road and about to take the stage for a live show when he heard the bad news. He immediately flew home to Woodland Hills, California.

The Three Stooges' final film "Kook's Tour" has an odd history. Conceived in 1969 as a series of comedy travelogues showing the now retired Stooges hitting the road, finally taking vacation trips they were always too busy for during their careers. The production was halted when Larry Fine had a stroke in January of 1970. The unfinished pilot was padded out to sixty minutes with scenic shots of Yellowstone Park then shelved for nearly 10 years. It was finally released for home use on Super 8 film. Shorter versions, such as one running 15 minutes, in black & white were also released.

In 1973, Fine appeared in an infomercial promoting a book, "A Stroke of Luck", presented as his memoir. In fact, Fine later disavowed this book; the later authorized biography, "One Fine Stooge" (2006), goes into considerable detail of how the book's author/publisher took advantage of Fine in its preface.

Larry's final concert appearance was at Loara High School in Anaheim, California on March 2, 1974.

On August 30, 1983 Moe Howard, Larry Fine and Curly Howard were awarded a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1560 Vine Street in Hollywood, California where former Stooge Joe Besser and 2 thousands fans showed up for the unveiling.

Billy West based the voice of Stimpy on The Ren & Stimpy Show (1991) on Larry.