The middleman for the comedy trio known as The Three Stooges, Larry Fine (born Louis Feinberg) began his career as a violinist and singer at silent movie shows. In 1922, he joined the Gus Edwards Newsboy Sextette playing the violin, dancing, singing and performing comedy in Jewish dialect, which was popular in the era. He soon married another vaudevillian, Mabel Haney, and together with her sister Loretta formed the trio 'The Haney Sisters and Fine'. A 1925 performance in Chicago was attended by Ted Healy, Moe and Shemp Howard, who had become an act known as Ted Healy and His Stooges. Shemp Howard wanted to go solo, and Fine was asked to join the act which he accepted, with a guarantee of $90 per week, plus $10 if he'd discard the violin. Fine performed with Moe Howard and Healy in a raucous, stunt-filled (some might say violent) routine. Within a few years, Shemp Howard had rejoined the act and they appeared on Broadway in "A Night in Venice" in 1929.

Hollywood soon beckoned, and the quartet made "Soup to Nuts" at Fox in 1930, billed as 'Ted Healy and the Racketeers'. By 1932, however, Healy and Shemp Howard both wanted to pursue solo careers so Fine and Moe Howard were joined by the shaved-headed Jerome Howard, who came to be ironically called Curly. The trio was signed to a contract by poverty row studio Columbia Pictures in 1934 where they spent the next 24 years churning out 190 short films.

Fine and Moe Howard were the constants; ill health force Curly to retire in 1946 and be succeeded by Shemp Howard. After his 1955 death, Joe Besser became a Stooge but he was in turn replaced by Curly Joe DeRita when the trio began making full-length features. The Three Stooges were considered low-brow comics, but their brand of knockabout, violent slapstick endured with a following well into the 90s. While they never had their own original series or made featurettes specifically for television, the Stooges owe their continued popularity to the frequent rebroadcasts of their work. The Stooges did make some guest appearances on other performers' shows, particularly memorable ones on Ed Wynn's pioneering TV show in the late 40s, as well as Eddie Cantor's. During the 1967-68 TV season, two years after they had ceased making films, The Three Stooges played the Three Men in a Tub on an episode of "Off the See the Wizard," a Friday evening ABC series of children's films.