Larry Fine of The Three Stooges

All hail the Porcupine.

Stooges come and Stooges go. Curly was replaced by Shemp, who was replaced by Joe Besser, who was replaced by Curly Joe DeRita. But Larry Fine – the second Stooge, the one from Philadelphia, the one whose disheveled likeness appears in a giant outdoor mural above Jon’s Bar & Grille at the corner of 3rd and South (purportedly Larry’s exact birthplace) – was our constant companion and comfort, like a Schuylkill River running through our lives. The lamebrain whose brain was always lame. The numbskull whose skull was always numb. The knucklehead who never knuckled under. The nitwit who could match wits with any nit. He was a Stooge’s Stooge, a porcupine’s porcupine. He was the keystone that supported the great masonry arch of Stoogedom.

Credit Larry with keeping the Stooges’ careers alive. Moe Howard invested his movie earnings wisely and could easily have retired in comfort. But Larry – continuing Philadelphia’s odd relationship with horses that began with Old Baldy and has continued in recent times with Smarty Jones and Barbaro – blew his life savings at the racetrack, forcing the Three Stooges to go on tour and make more movies to bail him out. Thus did they adorn their already prodigious body of work with further cinematic gems.

No doubt about it, Moe was the leader. But being the leader is meaningless unless you have followers. An aggressor cannot be an aggressor unless there is a victim. Somebody must offer up his nose to the pliers. Somebody’s head must be crushed in a vise like a cantaloupe. Somebody’s eyeballs must be poked in perfect unison, his face slapped, his hair ripped.

Larry was that somebody. He was always there to take one for the team. Hats off to Larry.