Moe Howard

Moe Howard, real name Moses Horwitz, was born on June 19, 1897 in Brooklyn, New York. He was the fourth of fuve brothers. Moe excelled in school where he discovered his ability to quickly memorize anything. However, Moe soon developed an interest in acting and his school work suffered. He began skipping school in order to go to the theater. Moe graduated from public school, but dropped out of high school after only two months. To appease his parent's, Moe enrolled in a class in electric shop, but quit after a few months to pursue a career in acting.

He started by running errands for free at Vitagraph Studios in Midwood, Brooklyn and was rewarded with bit parts in movies being made there. However a fire in 1910 destroyed most of the footage Moe was in. It wasn't untill 1921 that he caught his big break. Moe joined his friend Lee Nash, who was in business with Ted Healy, in a vaudeville routine. In 1923, Moe spotted his older brother Shemp (Samuel Horwitz) in the audience and yelled at him from the stage. The two began to heckle each other, much to the delight of the audience. Healy then hired Shemp as a part of the act. In 1925, Healy hired Larry Fine to complete the act.

On June 7th, 1925 Moe married Helen Schonberger, one of Harry Houdini's cousins. The next year, Helen wanted Moe to quit acting because she was pregnant and wanted Moe closer to home. Moe tried to earn a living outside of show business, but was unsuccessful and returned to Healy.

After the Stooge's departure from Healy, Moe became the leader of the Stooges, and invested his money from his career wisely. Moe's personality in the shorts was the exact opposite of his normal personality; in real life Moe was quiet, loving, and generous to his friends and family.

On May 4th, 1975 Moe died of lung cancer. His wife died of a heart attack in October of the same year. They had two children, Joan, born in 1927, and Paul, born in 1935.

Moe's famous hair style:

Moe got his famus bowl cut as a child. When he was younger, his mother refused to let him cut it, making him grow it to his shoulders so she could curl it. One day, after beeing fed up with the teasing from his classmates, Moe snuck off to his parents shed and, with a friend, put a mixing bowl over his head and cut the hair around it, resulting in his famous bowl cut. Afterwords, Moe, afraid of getting in trouble by his parents, hid under the house for several hours, causing a mass panic. When Moe finally came out from under the house his mother was so releived to see him, she didn't get mad about the haircut and let him keep it.

(photo from http://www.nndb.com/people/972/000047831/)