Shemp Howard
Shemp was born on March 17, 1895 in Brooklyn, New York under the name Samuel Horowitz.
Shemp attended and graduated from P.S. 163 in Brooklyn the same school that Moe attended. He started high school at New Utrecht High School but did not finish, he followed the example of his older brother Moe. His parents persuaded him to take up a trade at Baron DeHirsch Trade School while there Shemp took up plumbing and moe studied to be an electrician. Shemp was said to be niether intelligent or athletically inclined the only thing he knew was that he wanted to be a comedian.
Shemp and Moe did mostly everything together including neighborhood jobs. They first tries plumbing when that failed they progressed to setting up pins in a bowling alley, and then finally tried newspaper delivery.
Shemp did not like performing in front of audience in fact he hated it he did not act on stage until they decided to enroll in amateur night at Bath Beach Theatre. Although they were thrown out of the theatre due to the fact that they were so terrible, Moe felt it was a success, Shemp had performed on stage.
During World War 1 the boys wrote a blackface act, but it was put off when Shemp was drafted into the army. He was kicked out a short while later due to the fact that he wet the bed. Immediately after he returned they started up the act again. They continued stage performance through 1922.
In 1922 Shemp met up with his old school friend Ted Healy and they formed the Stooge act.
Shemp married Gertrude Frank in 1925, she gave birth to his son Morton in 1927 he died in 1972 of cancer. Later that year the introduced Larry to the stooge act.
In 1930 Shemp went of to costar in the film soup to nuts. After that Moe and Shemp left the stooge act to do their own act Three Lost Soles but that flopped and they found themselves back in the Stooge Act just a year later.
Shemp left the team to start his career as an individual, his departure introduced Curly to the act. He Starred in several comedy shorts for vitaphone, and then went on to play Knobby Walch in the Joe Palooka series.
Shemp had many phobias a fear of heights, a fear of driving and a fear of water. During the filming of Africa Screams in which he starred with Abbot and Costello also it starred a future stooge Joe Besser, his fear of height and water took off.
Shemp died on November 23 1955.
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