Three Stooges comedy legend died penniless with staff | UK News

The roaring 20s was a gold mine for Ted Healy, who at one time was making around $9,000 a week (equivilent to about $166,000 today) as the highest-paid performer in vaudeville. But, by the next decade, when the actor and creator of the Three Stooges died in 1937 — during the Great Depression — he was broke.

Ted Healy was born Charles Ernest Lee Nash, or Ernest Lea Nash (according to different sources) on October 1, 1896, in Kaufman, Texas. After transferring to New York, Healy initially meant to change into a businessman but ultimately determined on the stage and made his first inroads into show business at the age of 15 in 1912, where he joined the Annette Kellerman Diving Girls alongside future three stooges actor, Moe Howard. Although Healy is mainly remembered today as the creator of The Three Stooges, he also had a profitable stage and movie profession of his own.

Healy found the Three Stooges act in 1925 as they had been performing on vaudeville, which was billed as a comedy show without psychological or ethical intentions. The act was initially called Ted Healy And His Stooges, but the slapstick trio broke away from Healy in 1934 due to his mismanagement of them and their funds.

According to the Greatest Entertainer Archives, after Larry Fine, Moe Howard, and Curly Howard left his act in 1934, Healy appeared in a succession of movies for studios including twentieth Century Fox, Warner Brothers, and MGM. The actor and creator of one of the most extremely acclaimed comedy acts was 41 and under contract to MGM at the time of his death on December 21, 1937.

He died just a few hours after preview audiences had praised his work in the Warner Brothers movie Hollywood Hotel, where he starred alongside Dick Powell and Rosemary Lane.

A cloud of thriller still hangs over the trigger of Healy’s death, with conflicting tales and accounts being offered at the time. Media accounts attributed it to severe head accidents sustained in a nightclub brawl while celebrating the news of his first youngster. Conflicting stories claimed the comic died of a coronary heart assault at his Los Angeles home. The death certificates issued by the state of California lists his trigger of death as nephritis, or inflammation of the kidneys, which was believed to be attributed to heavy alcohol consumption.

Regardless of the trigger of death, it got here as a shock to many, including the stooges who had been at Grand Central Terminal in New York City making ready to go away for a personal look in Boston when the news broke. Howard heard about his buddy’s death in a phone call with the editor of The New York Times.

Moe Howard reportedly sobbed at the news and was in such shock that he may only rely the news to the other two stooges when they had been all on the prepare together. Despite his sizable wage, Ted Healy died penniless, with MGM’s staff members having to start a fund to pay for his burial.

Howard later talked about that producer Bryan Foy of the famed Foy household of vaudevillians footed a sizeable portion of the invoice for the funeral. According to the well-known stooge, even in the heyday of his stage profession, Ted refused to save money and spent every dime of his wage as fast as he earned it. Healy beloved betting on horses, and his favourite studying materials was race observe charts.

Healy was survived by his widow, Betty Healy (née Hickman, whom he married on May 15, 1936), and his new child son, John Jacob Nash. The younger child was baptized in St. Augustine’s Church, reverse MGM studios, a week after Healy’s death.