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Three Stooges comedy legend died penniless with workers compelled to pay for funeral | Movie star Information | Showbiz & TV

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The roaring 20s was a gold mine for Ted Healy, who at one time was making round $9,000 per week (equivilent to about $166,000 as we speak) because the highest-paid performer in vaudeville. However, by the next decade, when the actor and creator of the Three Stooges died in 1937 — throughout the Nice Melancholy — he was broke.

Ted Healy was born Charles Ernest Lee Nash, or Ernest Lea Nash (in keeping with completely different sources) on October 1, 1896, in Kaufman, Texas. After transferring to New York, Healy initially meant to grow to be a businessman however finally selected the stage and made his first inroads into present enterprise on the age of 15 in 1912, the place he joined the Annette Kellerman Diving Ladies alongside future three stooges actor, Moe Howard. Though Healy is mainly remembered as we speak because the creator of The Three Stooges, he additionally had a profitable stage and movie profession of his personal.

Healy found the Three Stooges act in 1925 as they had been acting on vaudeville, which was billed as a comedy present with out psychological or ethical intentions. The act was initially known as Ted Healy And His Stooges, however the slapstick trio broke away from Healy in 1934 attributable to his mismanagement of them and their funds.

In accordance with the Best Entertainer Archives, after Larry Nice, Moe Howard, and Curly Howard left his act in 1934, Healy appeared in a succession of movies for studios together with twentieth Century Fox, Warner Brothers, and MGM. The actor and creator of some of the extremely acclaimed comedy acts was 41 and beneath contract to MGM on the time of his demise on December 21, 1937.

He died only a few hours after preview audiences had praised his work within the Warner Brothers movie Hollywood Lodge, the place he starred alongside Dick Powell and Rosemary Lane.

A cloud of thriller nonetheless hangs over the reason for Healy’s demise, with conflicting tales and accounts being offered on the time. Media accounts attributed it to severe head accidents sustained in a nightclub brawl whereas celebrating the information of his first baby. Conflicting experiences claimed the comic died of a coronary heart assault at his Los Angeles house. The demise certificates issued by the state of California lists his explanation for demise as nephritis, or irritation of the kidneys, which was believed to be attributed to heavy alcohol consumption.

No matter the reason for demise, it got here as a shock to many, together with the stooges who had been at Grand Central Terminal in New York Metropolis getting ready to go away for a private look in Boston when the information broke. Howard heard about his pal’s demise in a phone name with the editor of The New York Occasions.

Moe Howard reportedly sobbed on the information and was in such shock that he may solely rely the information to the opposite two stooges once they had been all on the practice collectively. Regardless of his sizable wage, Ted Healy died penniless, with MGM’s workers members having to begin 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. In accordance with the well-known stooge, even within the heyday of his stage profession, Ted refused to save cash and spent each dime of his wage as quick as he earned it. Healy cherished 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 Might 15, 1936), and his new child son, John Jacob Nash. The younger child was baptized in St. Augustine’s Church, reverse MGM studios, per week after Healy’s demise.

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