Ted Healy
from the trailer for The Casino Murder Case (1935)
Birth name	Clarence Ernst Nash
Born	September 1 1896(1896--) Houston, Texas, U.S.
Died	September 31 1937 (aged 41) Los Angeles, California, U.S.

Ted Healy (October 1 1896 – December 21 1937) was an American vaudeville performer and actor. He is chiefly remembered today as the original employer of the Three Stooges, but had a successful career of his own.

Healy's was the first caricature to grace the walls of Sardi's, a legendary restaurant located in the New York City theater district.

Early life

In 1912, as teenagers, Lee Nash and his childhood friend Harry Moses Horwitz (later known as Moe Howard of the Three Stooges) joined the Annette Kellerman Diving Girls (a vaudeville act which included four boys). The job ended quickly, though, after an accident on stage, and Nash and Howard went their separate ways. Nash then developed a vaudeville act and adopted the stage name Ted Healy.

Healy's act was successful, and he soon expanded his role as a comedian and master of ceremonies. He added performers to his stage show, including his new wife Betty. When some of his acrobats quit in 1922, Moe Howard answered the advertisement Healy placed for replacements. Since Howard was not an acrobat, Healy cast his old friend as a stooge, someone who impersonated a member of the audience called on stage. During the routine, Howard's appearance on stage would end with Healy losing his trousers.

The beginning of the Stooges

Howard's brother Shemp joined the act soon after as a heckler in 1923, with Larry Fine joining in 1925. Healy's vaudeville revues (with names like, "A Night in Venice", "A Night in Spain", and "New Yorker Nights") included the trio under various names, such as "Ted Healy and his Southern Gentlemen", but never as "Ted Healy and the Three Stooges".

Moe Howard took a break from show business in the late 1920s, and shortly after he returned he, his brother Shemp, and Fine left after disputing with Healy over a movie contract. Shemp went to Hollywood to appear in films while the youngest Howard brother, Jerome ("Curly"), joined the Stooges. They appeared on stage in their own act (called for a time, "The Three Lost Souls" and "Howard, Fine and Howard") using some of the material from the Healy shows. Shortly afterward, Healy sued the Stooges for their use of his material, but since the copyright was held by the Shubert Theatre Corporation, for which it had been produced, and the Stooges had the Shuberts' permission to use it, Healy lost the suit.

Healy continued to have great success in vaudeville, however. In 1931 he hired a new set of stooges, consisting of Eddie Moran (soon replaced by Richard "Dick" Hakins), Jack Wolf, and Paul "Mousie" Garner. The Howard-Fine-Howard Stooges rejoined Healy's act in 1932, obtaining higher salaries and a promise from Healy to quit drinking. They made one movie, appearing in Soup to Nuts. Healy did not quit drinking, however, and when he cut the Stooges' salary in 1934, they quit again, this time permanently.

After the Stooges

Healy then went on to establish a promising career in motion pictures, where he was successful in both comedic roles (where he was often grouped with new "stooges", including Jimmy Brewster, Red Pearson and Sammy Glasser) and dramatic roles. After Larry Fine, Moe Howard and Curly Howard left his act in 1934, Healy appeared in a succession of films for 20th Century-Fox, Warner Brothers and MGM. He was 41 and under contract to MGM at the time of his death on December 21, 1937, a few hours after preview audiences had acclaimed his work in the Warner Brothers film Hollywood Hotel (1937).

Circumstances of death

A cloud of mystery still hangs over the cause of Healy's demise. Newspaper accounts attributed his death to serious head injuries sustained in a nightclub brawl while celebrating the birth of his first child, a son. Conflicting reports claimed that the comedian died of a heart attack at his Los Angeles home. Apparently, his physician, Dr. Wyant LeMont, refused to claim a heart seizure as the cause and refused to sign the death certificate.

Two days before his death, Healy visited Moe's wife, Helen, at their Hollywood apartment with the news that Betty (Hickman), his second wife, was expecting. Excited at the prospect of his first child, he told Moe's wife, "I'll make him the richest kid in the world." Moe had later related in an interview that Ted had always wanted children and that it was ironic that the birth of his first child came the night of his death. Moe recalled, "He was nuts about kids. He used to visit our homes and envied the fact that we were all married and had children. Healy always loved kids and often gave Christmas parties for underprivileged youngsters and spent hundreds of dollars on toys."

At the time of Healey's death, the Stooges (consisting of Moe, Larry, and Curly) were at Grand Central Terminal in New York City preparing to leave for a personal appearance in Boston. Before their departure, Moe called Rube Jackter, head of Columbia Pictures' sales department, to confirm their benefit performance at Boston's Children's Hospital. During the conversation, Jackter told Howard that the night editor of the New York Times wanted to talk to him. Moe phoned the Times. The editor, without even a greeting, queried curtly, "Is this Moe?" Howard replied, "Yes." Then the editor asked, "Would you like to make a statement on the death of Ted Healy?" Moe was stunned. He dropped the phone. Then, folding his arms over his head, started to sob. Curly and Larry rushed into the phone booth to warn Moe that their train was about to leave and saw him crumpled over, crying. Since Moe never showed his emotions, Larry cracked to Curly, "Your brother's nuts. He is actually crying." Moe did not explain the reason for his sudden emotional breakdown until he boarded the train. When they arrived back in Hollywood, they learned the details of Healy's death from a writer friend, Henry Taylor.

Taylor version

Taylor told Moe that Healy had been out drinking at the Trocadero Night Club (on Sunset Strip) and an argument broke out between him and three college boys. Healy called them vile names and offered to go outside the club to take care of them one at a time. Once outside, Ted did not have a chance to raise his fists; the three men jumped him, knocked him to the ground and kicked him in the head, ribs and stomach. Healy's friend Joe Frisco came to the scene, picked him up from the sidewalk and took him to his apartment where Ted died of what medical officials initially called a brain concussion.

Fleming version

A quite different account, however, appears to be that Healy was beaten to death by screen legend Wallace Beery, a young Albert R. Broccoli (later producer of James Bond films), and notorious gangster (and Broccoli's cousin) Pat DiCicco. This account emerges in a book about MGM's legendary "fixers," Eddie Mannix and Howard Strickling, written by E. J. Fleming. MGM sent Beery, one of their most valuable properties, off to Europe for several months until everything cooled down, while the "college boys" were fabricated to conceal the truth. (Immigration records confirm a four-month trip to Europe on Beery's part immediately after Healy's death, ending April 17, 1938).^[1]

Aftermath

Despite his sizable salary, Healy died penniless. In fact, MGM's staff members started a fund to pay for his burial. Moe later mentioned that producer Bryan Foy of the famed Foy family of vaudevillians footed a sizeable portion of the bill for the funeral. According to Moe, even in the heyday of his stage career, Ted refused to save money and spent every dime of his salary as fast as he earned it. Healy was a heavy drinker, loved betting on horses, and his favorite reading matter was race track charts.

Moe often said that Healy's drinking led to violent brawls, such as that which apparently occurred on the night of his tragic, untimely death. When sober, Healy was the essence of refinement, but when inebriated, he was quite the opposite. Liquor had also played a role in the deaths of his father and uncle, and created serious problems for his sister Marcia. As a result, Ted made a pledge as a youth never to touch liquor, but the strain of show business life got him started and he was never able to stop.

Ted Healy, married twice, was survived by his widow, the former Betty Hickman, whom he married on May 15, 1936, and a son, John Jacob (who was baptized in St. Augustine's Church, across from MGM, a week after Healy's death).

Ted Healy is interred in Calvary Cemetery in Los Angeles, California.

References

Further reading

• The Complete Three Stooges: The Official Filmography and Three Stooges Companion; by Jon Solomon http://www.amazon.com/dp/0971186804, (Comedy III Productions, Inc., 2002).
• The Three Stooges Scrapbook; by Jeff Lenburg, Joan Howard Maurer, Greg Lenburghttp://www.amazon.com/dp/0806509465(Citadel Press, 1994).

External links

• Ted Healy at the Internet Movie Database