At the Oceana Apartments, he is inclined to switch off the television when the Three Stooges appear. In part this is because they remind him of Ted Healy, who reminds him in turn of Thelma Todd. Mostly it’s because he does not find the Stooges funny. He sees no beauty in the Stooges. He sees no gentleness. He sees only hatefulness and violence.
He does, though, feel pity for them. Hal Roach might have been careful with a buck, but Hal Roach was no ogre. The Stooges suffered at Columbia under Harry Cohn, who was an ogre, and ran with the kind of men who made Pat DiCicco look like a priest. Harry Cohn would sign the Stooges only to cheap one-year contracts, and kept them in the dark about the level of their success. Harry Cohn also drank with the Stooges’ manager, Harry Romm, and together they fucked the Stooges three ways to Sunday.
Maybe Harry Cohn was not so different from Hal Roach after all.
He meets one of the Stooges, Jerome Horwitz—Curly Howard to the Audience—at a fundraiser for the troops. Jerome Horwitz has a reputation as a womanizer and a drinker, but all this is behind him now. His brother, Moses Horwitz, has hit Jerome Horwitz so often on the head in the course of their routines that Jerome Horwitz’s brain is bleeding into his skull. Jerome Horwitz shuffles as a consequence, and speaks with a slur.
But Jerome Horwitz keeps working, because Harry Cohn orders him to work, and Moses Horwitz continues to hit Jerome Horwitz on the head, because Moses Horwitz is afraid that the Stooges will otherwise be thrown off the lot. Eventually, Jerome Horwitz suffers a massive stroke and—
And returns to work, because Harry Cohn decrees it, and Moses Horwitz resumes hitting Jerome Horwitz on the head, except not so hard now, and Moses Horwitz tries to hit Larry Fine more often instead, just to take some of the pressure off his brother. So Jerome Horwitz shuffles and slurs for another year until a final stroke paralyzes him on the set of Half-Wits Holiday, leaving Jerome Horwitz to spend the rest of his days in a chair.
All because Moses Horwitz couldn’t pull a punch.
In his years with Babe, the only serious injury he suffers comes when he misjudges a step on set and tears a tendon.
Babe would rather have quit than strike him hard.