Stoogery

                 The Stoogeum in Ambler looks beyond the mayhem for a family view of the classic comedy trio.

                 The truest Three Stooges film never made was a sad tale we'll call "Dewey, Cheatem & Howe."
                 The plot: A group of energetic vaudeville veterans move into motion pictures, work harder than anybody and become wildly popular, only to be manipulated and underpaid by a powerful studio boss.
                 For Moe, Larry, and Shemp and Curly, this was no script.  It was life.
                Then, the sequel ------ which in corny Stooges style could be titled "Glorious Goofballs" ------- sees them keep the act together in the face of death and disabling illness, win even more love as stars of TV and feature films, pull huge crowds to their live shows and, more than a century after the youngest Stooge was born, occupy an unshakeable spot in the world's comedy pantheon.
                Important pieces of this story fill the Stoogeum, opened in 2004 as a repository of thousands of personal and professional artifacts that record the Stooges' long tenure as stars of a live stage act, short and feature-length films, TV, comic books, animated cartoons and novelty recordings.
                The displays are first-rate, with three floors of imaginatively organized, well-furnished galleries, an 85-seat theater and enough interactive exhibits ----- including video and pinball games ----- to keep the youngest Stooge fan happy.
                The Stoogeum also is the least usual of the Philadelphia area's many museums.
                Founder and curator Gary Lassin keeps it as low-key as the Stooges' act was uproarious, installing part of his extensive collection in a semi-anonymous building in a pocket industrial park in Ambler.
               The Stooges shingle goes up outside only when the museum is open to the public, which is one day a week.   So self-effacing is the Stoogeum's style, Philadelphia magazine honored it as the region's best "unknown tourist attraction" in 2008.
               "Really, people don't know what to expect when they come out here, but they don't expect this," says Lassin, whose wife, Robin, is the great-grandniece of Larry, the Stooge with the wild, frizzy hair.
               The attentive visitor will quickly realize the Stooges' story is a family saga ----- not just kinship, but professional collaboration.
              This started when Moses Harry Horwitz and his brother Samuel broke into show biz with Louis Feinberg as part of a vaudeville act run by Lee Nash.  All four became famous under their stage names: Moe Howard, Shemp Howard, Larry Fine and Ted Healy.
              Moe, Shemp and Larry served as comic foils to Healy, a childhood friend of Moe's with whom they eventually parted, somewhat acrimoniously.
              Shemp left to pursue a successful movie career on his own, and Healy approved Moe's idea to bring in the younger Horwitz brother, Jerome, as a replacement.  Fans know him by his stage name, Curly.  This launched the career of the Stooge whose "man-child" persona introduced many to their lifelong love of the group, according to Lassin.
              The Stooges had funny hair ----- except for Curly, who shaved his head for the act ---- and became known for an epic slapstick comedy style of pie-throwing, eye-poking and nose-twisting accompanied by silly jokes and physical antics.
              Some considered the Stooges' uninhibited stage combat a bad example to little kids.  In the 1950s, channels were switched as the first notes of the familiar strings-and-swing version of "Three Blind Mice" opened a Stooges short on TV.
              A framed cartoon at the museum sums up this dichotomy, depicting the reception desk at the pearly gates, behind which are two arches bearing signs:
             "Loved the Stooges."
             "Hated the Stooges."
             Whichever door you plan to walk through, you will find yourself intrigued by the Stooges' private selves as revealed in Lassin's collection.
             Moe, the obstreperous disherout of pretend punishment to his co-stars, clearly had a softer side.  A glass case holds a white ceramic Persian cat with a pink nose and blue eyes that Moe made as a gift for Shemp's wife.
             Shemp, who has his own hallway gallery at the Stoogeum, was mustered out of the Army in 1918 and dutifully registered for the draft in 1942, according to original documents on display.  He also liked to fish, and the museum has his permit from 1936, as well as a picture of Shemp proudly holding a catch.
             Joe Besser (who joined the act after Shemp's death in 1955) crammed his clothes into a surprisingly small traveling trunk, which bears the scars of long tours during which the Stooges played four or five shows a day.
            Given his family connection, surely Stooges memorabilia rained down on Lassin like cream pies in a two-reeler.
            Soitenly not.
            "The family had nothing," he says.  "That was the motivation for me to start."  His wife's grandfather, Morris Feinberg, "wasn't a collector.  He was Larry's brother."
            A well-known set of family heirlooms in a small display case is strickly work-related, but family all the same.  Nate Budnick, who was married to Larry's sister, Lyla, deployed a horn and percussion instruments to produce sound effects for "belly punches, ear twists, hair pulls and head bops," according to the display card.
           Lassin made it his mission over 30 years to find Stooge-related memorabilia, and he was amazingly successful.
           Show-biz memorabilia such as scripts, costumes and joke cards, plus photos of an army of actors who supported the Stooges in their films, pack the walls and cases at the Stoogeum.
           In addition to their movie and stage work, the comic trio was and remains a merchandising juggernaut.
          Starting as far back as the 1930s, companies were eager to put the Stooges' Colorforms, comic books, trading cards, marionettes and hand puppets, rings, pins, Christmas decorations, masks and toilet paper, and, unsurprisingly, inflatable toys designed to be punched.
         Some Stooges memorabilia is refreshingly light on political correctness.  Moe, Larry and Curly appears on cigarette lighters, shot glasses, hip flasks and lottery ticket promotions.  An entire category is devoted to beer, including a light brew named for Curly.
         So durable is the Stooges' brand, their images decorate a recently released line of neckties and cufflinks, which the true fan can buy with a prepaid Stooges debit card.
         Celebrity endorsements are scarcely novel.  More remarkable is how the Stooges inspired an entire school of adulatory artwork.
         Amateur and professional artists have turned three guys known for making funny noises and slapping each other around into murals, cartoons, paintings, statues, mosaics and finely joined cabinetry.
         Lassin's collection includes a number of superior works in pen-and-ink by big names such as caricaturist Al Hirschfeld and Mort Drucker of Mad magazine.  Other artists imagined the comedians as a three-headed Martian, ancient Romans, cows (Moo, Larry & Curly"), stained-glass windows and a totem pole.
        One fan made a sly collage by pasting the Stooges' heads on weightlifters' bodies, with Moe's face attached to what appears to be Nijinsky wearing the famous painted-on costume for the ballet "Afternoon of a Faun."
        This is way over the heads of little kids who still watch the Stooges on TV, if not baby boomers who have loved them since their short films hit the small screen in the 1950s.
        More accessible even to non-fans is the bond among the Howard brothers, and the sheer volume of their output: 220 films, 190 of them shorts still shown on TV, and countless live appearances.
        Shemp rescued Larry and Moe's careers by rejoining the act after Curly, who at 48 had been ailing for years, died in 1952.  When Shemp passed away at 60, Moe recruited, first, Joe Besser, and later, Joe DeRita (Curly Joe), to keep the Stooges going.
        Things changed irrevocably when a stroke disabled Larry in 1970, 45 years after the Stooges got their start with Ted Healy.  As usual, the group was hard at work, this time filming a TV pilot.  Moe was still weighing new movie projects in 1975, when he passed away a few months after Larry.
        "They were workaholics," says Lassin.  "That's what they did.  When they got sick, that didn't matter.  The show went on."  If mothers only knew.