Top Stooge

I gotta admit. This one surprised me.  Every week I conduct a poll on Facebook to determine who gets profiled here next.  This time it was a Three Stooges poll.  To my shock, Moe was the clear winner.  I never would have guessed that.

Moses Harry Horwitz (Moe Howard) was born in Brooklyn on June 19, 1897.  He was the fourth born of five sons to Lithuanian immigrants.  Two of his older brothers, Benjamin and Irving, were not involved in show business.  But Moe, older brother Shemp and younger brother Curley would all become household names as The Three Stooges.

Moe never had much interest in education, often playing hookey from school.  The truant officer usually found him in the same place - standing outside a local playhouse.  Moe would often ask passersby to give him the ten-cent admission price, so he could spend the day watching live performances.  He formally ended his education by dropping out of high school to pursue acting full time.

Ted Healy and His Three Stooges.

By age 16, Moe was already performing in nightclubs, along with Shemp, until their father put an end to it.  He then joined a traveling minstrel show on a Mississippi riverboat for two seasons.

His big break didn't come until 1921, when he joined his childhood friend Ted Healy in a vaudeville routine.  During one stage performance, Shemp heckled the duo from the audience, and the repartee between the three was so entertaining that Shemp was made a permanent  member of the act.  Violinist Larry Fine would join the act in 1928.  Just one year later, the three would strike out on their own following a disagreement with Healy.

The three traveled the country together over the next four years, until Shemp left the group in 1933.  Moe suggested that they recruit younger brother Curley as the new stooge, and in that moment, history was made.

In 1934, the stooges signed with Columbia Pictures.  There they stayed until 1957, producing a total of 190 short films.  Watch the iconic intros here.  While Moe and Larry would remain constants throughout, Curley left the group midway following a stroke.  They'd see a score of replacement stooges, including former act member Shemp, and comedians Joe Besser and Joe DeRita, none of whom would ever replicate Curley's charm.

The Stooges received no residuals for their work, and sought other avenues of employment when their contracts finally expired.  Moe had some minor, walk-on roles in films and television, but he also sold real estate, a profession he had pursued earlier in his life.  He often appeared as a guest on the talk show The Mike Douglas Show, including this episode from 1973.

By 1975, Moe's lifelong nicotine habit had finally caught up with him.  In April that year, he was admitted to Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, where he died of lung cancer on May 4th, just three months after fellow Stooge Larry Fine.  He was 78.

Moe was interred at Hillside Memorial Cemetery in Culver City, California.

Garden of Memories
Alcove of Love
Wall C

Crypt #233

Rest in peace, knucklehead.

Trivia

• Moe created his distinctive hairstyle when still just a boy, as his mother refused to cut his hair, allowing it to grow down to his shoulders.  He would often retreat to the family woodshed to do the job himself, thus explaining the odd-looking bowl cut that he is always associated with.
  
  
• Moe's wife Helen Schonberger, with whom he had two children, was a cousin of Harry Houdini.
  
  
• Moe was working on his autobiography at the time of his death.  It was posthumously released as Moe Howard and The Three Stooges.  Pick up a copy from Amazon.
  
  
• On August 30, 1983, The Three Stooges were posthumously given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, located at 1560 Vine Street.  Look for it in front of the Camden Apartment Building.
  
  
• Philadelphia is home to the world's only museum devoted to The Three Stooges, the aptly named "Stoogeum."  It's well worth a detour on your next trip, but call ahead, as tours are by appointment only.  You can visit their web site here.

Surely You Can't Be Serious!

Leslie William Nielsen was born in Regina, Saskatchewan on February 11, 1926.  Dude was Canadian.  I had no idea.  He was the second of three boys to his mother, an immigrant from Wales and his father, who was a member of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

Nielsen's uncle was Jean Hersholt, a Danish actor who immigrated to America and had made a respectable name for himself in Hollywood.  It was from his uncle that Nielsen himself would have aspirations of becoming an actor.  In 1994, he told the Boston Globe "I did learn very early that when I would mention my uncle, people would look at me as if I were the biggest liar in the world.  Then I would take them home and show them 8x10 glossies, and things changed quite drastically.  So I began to think that maybe this acting business was not a bad idea."

Jean Hersholt in the 1936 film His Brother's Wife.

Nielsen took up acting after a tour with the Royal Canadian Air Force, enrolling in the Lorne Greene Academy of Radio Arts in Toronto.  Really.  From there, he received a scholarship to the Neighborhood Playhouse, a professional actor's conservatory in New York City.  There he started to land acting jobs.  His first role on television was in a 1950 episode of Studio One, alongside Charlton Heston.

Jobs came easy to Nielsen, who appeared on 46 different television series in 1950 alone.  Much of these roles were undistinguished, but they were building for Nielsen the resume of a handsome leading man.

His big break came in 1955, when he was cast in the starring role of the science-fiction classic Forbidden Planet.  The film was an instant success and led to Nielsen becoming a contract player at MGM Studios. Watch a clip of the film here.

Nielsen spent the next twenty-five years padding his dramatic resume.  He appeared in such films as Hot Summer Night (1957), How to Commit Marriage (1969) and The Poseidon Adventure (1972), in which he played the doomed ocean liner's captain, who dies twenty minutes into the film.  Watch that death scene here.

Oddly, a lot of people I know don't realize that he was anything other than a comedic actor, since he was so well known for it.  But his transition to comedy came at the end of his career, after having spent three decades amassing a series of dramatic roles.  This career shift came in 1980, when he was cast as Dr. Rumack in the comedy classic Airplane!.

Dr. Rumack is always there to help.

The film was a comedic redo of the 1950s Canadian disaster movie Zero Hour!.  Many of the scenes and situations in the film are complete redos, right down to the dialogue.  Watch a scene-by-scene comparison here.

It is in this film that Nielsen uttered the phrase for which he would become famous.  Responding to Robert Hays's line "surely you can't be serious," Nielsen's Rumack replies "I am serious.  And don't call me Shirley."  Watch it here.  When asked about the line years later, Nielsen remarked "I thought it was amusing, but it never occurred to me that it was going to be a trademark.  It's such a surprise...the thing comes out, people say, 'What did he say?!'."

Following the film's success, the producers, brothers David and Jerry Zucker, turned their attention to television, creating the cult-classic comedy series Police Squad.  Impressed by Nielsen's earlier performance, the brothers cast him in the lead role of Lieutenant/Sargant/Detective/Whatever Frank Drebin.  While I can remember watching the episodes when they aired in 1982, apparently not many other folks were.  The series was canceled after just six episodes, a decision that ABC regrets to this day.

Six years later, the brothers brought the franchise back to life with a big-screen adaptation called The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad.  Watch the trailer here.  It was an instant success and spawned two sequels.  It also brought Nielsen a score of similar roles in other big budget Hollywood blockbusters, with such films as Repossessed (1990), Spy Hard (1997) and the Scary Movie franchise of the early 2000s.

During that time, Nielsen and his fourth wife Barbara were shuttling between their two homes in Fort Lauderdale, Florida and Paradise Valley, Arizona.  It was in the former that in November 2010, Nielsen contracted pneumonia, and was admitted to Holy Cross Hospital.  There he passed quite peacefully in his sleep.  I wish I could say the same for George Zip.

Nielsen was interred in Fort Lauderdale's Evergreen Cemetery.  He's the only celebrity there, and his is one of the easiest graves you'll ever find.  Since the entire cemetery is nothing but flat markers, all you have to do is look for his bench.

A jokester to the end, Nielsen's epitaph is a play on the famous "RIP" (Rest in Peace).

Rest in peace, Shirley.

Trivia

• Nielsen's older brother Erik served as Deputy Prime Minister of Canada from 1984 to 1986.  Just like Gerald Ford.
  
  
•  Nielsen was legally deaf and wore hearing aids most of his life.
  
  
• Police Squad's intro, wherein a police car would drive through an urban landscape, was based on the 1950s Lee Marvin series M Squad.  Click on the titles to watch those respective intros.  And just as Airplane! was a comedic redo of the more serious Zero Hour!, Police Squad often lampooned the original source material.  Watch a funny side-by-side comparison of the two series here.
  
  
• Nielsen was a golf enthusiast who made a series of instructional, albeit entertaining how-to videos.  Watch one here.
  
  
• In 1993, Nielsen released his memoir The Naked Truth.  Pick up a copy here.

Elizabeth Short, aka "The Black Dahlia"

Note: This is a particularly disturbing story.  Parental guidance is suggested.

Elizabeth Short was born was born on July 29, 1924 in Hyde Park, Massachusetts.  She was the third of five children, and when she turned three, her family relocated to Portland, Maine.  There, her father owned a series of successful miniature golf courses, but these would disappear, along with the family's savings, in the Stock Market Crash of 1929.  A year later, her father himself disappeared.  Although his body was never found, circumstantial evidence indicated that he had committed suicide.

Fast forward twelve years to 1942.  Short's mother Phoebe received a letter from her supposedly dead husband, who had in fact relocated to San Francisco.  Elizabeth, having already dropped out of high school, moved west to reunite with her father.  There, she had a series of run ins with the law, including an arrest for underage drinking in 1943.

Short's 1943 mug shot.

Following the arrest, Short left California, this time relocating to Florida.  There, she met and fell in love with Matthew Michael Gordon, Jr., a decorated Air Force pilot.  The two were engaged and planned to marry, but it would never come to be.  Gordon's plane went down on August 10, 1945, just one week before Japan surrendered.

Following his death, she returned to California, this time settling in Los Angeles.  She spent the final six months of her life working as a waitress.  By all accounts she had aspirations of becoming a movie star, but this too, would not come to be.

On the morning of January 15, 1947, Short's body was discovered in an undeveloped area of the Leimert Park section of Los Angeles.  She was the victim of a brutal murder.  The body was naked and severed in two pieces at the torso.  These photos can be readily found on the internet if you are curious.

The case remains cold to this day and remains one of the most infamous unsolved murders in the world.  For more information, books, movies and a score of documentaries on the case are all available.

Short was interred at Mountain View Cemetery in Oakland California.  The grave site is on a rather steep hill and can be difficult to find.  Be careful where you step!

Mountain View Cemetery
Section 66
Marker 798

Trivia

• The origin of the Black Dahlia nickname is a subject of debate.  Some claim it came from the LAPD, who noted her preference for sheer black clothing.  Others maintain it was given to her by friends at a Long Beach drug store following release of the 1946 Alan Ladd film noir The Blue Dahlia.
  
  
• Two weeks after Short's murder, Republican state assemblyman C. Don Field introduced a bill calling for the formation of a sex offender registry.  California became the first state to make the registration of sex offenders mandatory.
  
  
• Vlogger (yes, that's a word) Adam the Woo visits the Dahlia murder locations in this video.
  
  
• In 2006, Brian DePalma brought the story to the big screen.  The Black Dahlia starred Josh Hartnett, Scarlett Johansson and Hillary Swank.  The film was a complete disaster and bombed at the box office.  This blogger was dragged to it, kicking and screaming.  Feel free to watch the trailer here.
  
  
• A number of documentaries on the case have been produced over the years.  Here's one by CBS's 48 Hours.  Running time: 1 hour, 5 minutes. 

This One's To Go

Raymond Albert Kroc was born in Oak Park, Illinois on October 5, 1902.  Why this is not celebrated as a national holiday I will never know.

He was the son of Czech immigrants who fulfilled the American dream of striking it rich in the land of opportunity.  Unfortunately, most of the money they made selling real estate would be lost in the Stock Market Crash of 1929.

Kroc suffered a series of business failures through most of his early career.  In 1954, he was a traveling salesman for a milkshake company called Prince Castle, but had very few clients.  Then he got word of a business in San Bernardino, California, that had mysteriously bought six of his milkshake mixers.  This was unheard of at the time, and Kroc went to California to investigate.

There he met the owners of the business, Richard and Maurice McDonald, who had invented what would become the fast food industry.  Kroc was immediately impressed with their business model and wanted in on the company.  The brothers were hesitant however, having had prior franchising difficulties.

Richard and Maurice McDonald.

Kroc persisted, and the brothers ultimately allowed him to open a franchise back in Des Plaines, Illinois.  By all accounts, he was most interested in creating an environment that was safe and clean, one that customers would want to return to.  Employees were to be well groomed and were to treat customers with professionalism and respect.  Yes, we are talking about McDonald's here.

The original location in San Bernardino is today a McDonald's
museum, which this blogger visited in 2008.

The restaurant was a success, and Kroc, defying the brothers, opened additional locations.

The relationship between Kroc and the brothers was tumultuous at best.  He bought them out in 1961 for a mere $2.7 million.  For more information, I highly recommend the 2016 film The Founder, starring Michael Keaton as Kroc.  Watch the trailer here. 

Kroc died of heart failure on January 14, 1984.  He was interred at El Camino Memorial Park in San Diego.

Mausoleum of the Bells Terrace
Sunset Couches
Section D
Bay 1

Trivia

• During World War I, 15-year-old Kroc lied about his age and enlisted in the Army, serving as an ambulance driver with the Red Cross.  One of his fellow drivers was a still-unknown Walt Disney.
  
  
• In 1974, Kroc retired from McDonald's and turned to his other interest, baseball, buying the San Diego Padres.  Watch him throw out the first pitch here.  During his first year as owner, the team lost 102 games.  In 1984, shortly after his passing, the team made it to the World Series, ultimately losing to the Detroit Tigers four games to one.  Kroc was posthumously inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1999.
  
  
• In 1977, Kroc published his autobiography Grinding it Out: The Making of McDonald's.  Pick up a copy here.
  
  
• Kroc gave interviews well into his final years.  Here's one in which he discusses the name McDonald's.
  
  
• One of Kroc's neighbors at El Camino Cemetery is Jonas Salk.

Stow it, Dingy!

Victor Tayback was born in Brooklyn on January 6, 1930.  He was the son of Syrian immigrants who came to America in the 1920s.  By the time he was a teenager, the family decided to move west and eventually settled in Burbank, California, where he completed high school.

After school, Tayback went right into acting.  His first credited role was the 1958 spiritual film The Power of the Resurrection, as Simon the Canaanite.  You can the watch the film in its entirety here.

In 1962, Tayback married his wife Sheila.  The couple welcomed their only child, son Christopher Tayback, shortly thereafter.

Throughout the 1960s, Tayback made several guest appearances on many popular shows of the time, including Get Smart, Bonanza and Rawhide.  One of his more famous guest roles during this period was in the original Star Trek episode "A Piece of the Action."  Watch Tayback chew up the scenery in this clip.

He'd continue to take roles in films, including that of diner owner Mel in the 1974 Martin Scorcese film Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore, the story of a battered wife who takes her son cross country to get away from her abusive husband.  Watch the trailer here.

Two years later, CBS decided to take the controversial film and turn it into a weekly series.  While maintaining the central plot of a mother and her son moving cross country, the series would be much more lighthearted than the parent film had been.  Simply dubbed Alice and starring Linda Lavin, the sit-com depicted a widow and her son leaving New Jersey following the untimely death of her loving husband.

While many of the key roles from the film would be recast for the series, Tayback returned as Mel Sharples, owner of Mel's Diner in Phoenix, Arizona.  The series was a ratings success and ran for ten seasons on the network.  Tayback won two Golden Globe Awards during its run.  Here's a clip from the final episode.

When the series concluded in 1985, Tayback continued acting on television, appearing on such series as T.J. Hooker, Fantasy Island and The Love Boat.  He also did occasional film work, including the 1989 Patrick Dempsey film, Loverboy.

On May 25, 1990, Tayback passed away following a heart attack.  He was only 60 years old.  He was interred at Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills, where he was joined by Sheila in 2001.

Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills
Sheltering Hills Section
Plot #3813

Vic's plot can be very difficult to find.  One tip: It's very close to the road, so don't go too far down the hill before you look for it or you'll walk right by it.

Stow it, Mel!

Trivia

• Butter!  Tayback starred in a 1976 commercial for Parkay Margarine.  Watch it here.
  
  
• Alice attempted a spin-off series in the form of Flo, which featured Polly Holliday reprising her role.  It wasn't as successful, and was dropped after one season.  Catch the intro here, sung by Hoyt Axton no less.
  
  
• In one of the oddest and most ill-conceived TV cross-overs ever, actors Sorrell Booke and Sonny Shroyer from the CBS series The Dukes of Hazzard appeared as their characters Boss Hogg and Enos Strate in the 1983 Alice episode "Mel Gets Hogg-Tied."  Here's a commercial for the episode (at the 2:00 mark) and here's a clip.
  
  
• In 1985, Tayback did a series of commercials for Heinz 57.  Here's one of them.
  
  
• What's the funniest joke you ever heard?  Tayback shares his in this 1984 TV special.

Odd and Amusing Graves in Ohio's Maplewood Cemetery

Six Feet Under Hollywood takes another detour from the famous this week, offering some interesting and unique graves discovered on a recent visit to Ohio.  Our trip takes us to the historic Maplewood Cemetery in New Albany, which was first established back in 1810. 

Maplewood has a rich history, with a large section devoted to Ohio's Civil War dead.  Some of these markers are quite touching, and offer an interesting glimpse into the culture of the time.

More recent internments often offer a sense of humor, a zest for life, and a love of all things Ohio. 

We hope you enjoy.

Does God have cable?

Dedicated to a small child who died accidentally.

Just Dew it.

Shall not be infringed.

The world is not enough.

He loved his music, Part 1.

Wrapped in a terrible towel.

The Bridges of Brown County.

He loved his music, Part 2.

Homeward bound.

Speed demon.

One-track mind.

 

Hef

Hugh Marston Hefner was born in Chicago on April 9, 1926.  He grew up in a conservative, midwestern family, and his mother encouraged him to become a missionary.  Write your own joke.

After high school, Hefner joined the Army and served as a writer for a military newspaper, his first taste of journalism.  He later continued his education at the University of Illinois.  Although he majored in psychology, he minored in creative writing and art, studies that would undoubtedly help him later in life.

By 1952, Hefner was working at Esquire, but he quit when he was refused a $5 raise.  The following year, he took out a mortgage loan of $600 and raised $8,000 from 45 investors to go into business for himself, launching the first magazine for men, Playboy.

He published the first issue in December 1953.  It famously featured Marilyn Monroe from a nude calendar shoot she had done four years earlier.  By 1953, her star had risen considerably, and the issue sold more than 50,000 copies, putting Playboy on the map.

Once the magazine took off, Hefner promoted it through a number of related enterprises, especially television.  The 1960s and 70s featured two series hosted by Hefner himself, Playboy's Penthouse and Playboy After Dark.  Click on the titles to see a complete episode of each series.

In the 60s he also created the first "private-key" club in his hometown of Chicago, with other locations soon to follow.  In 1975, he moved his operation west, headquartering at the now-famous Playboy mansion.

By the 1980s, the hard lifestyle caught up with Hefner, and he suffered a minor stroke at age 59.  He re-evaluated his life, and decided to turn control of his empire over to daughter Christie in 1988.

The following year, he married his second wife and former Playmate of the Year, Kimberly Conrad.  The marriage produced two sons, but ultimately ended in 2010.  Apparently they remained friends, judging by this tongue-in-cheek interview she gave in 2011.

Following his divorce (and most say long before it), Hefner famously dated a number of serious "number one" girlfriends, including Holly Madison, who helped Hefner create the very successful reality series The Girls Next Door.  While Hefner claimed he would never marry again, what he really meant was that he would never marry her.  Instead, he married another playmate, Crystal Harris, aka The Runaway Bride, in 2012.  The couple remained married through Hefner's final years, before he ultimately passed on September 27, 2017, a victim of e. coli.  The more you know.

Years earlier, Hefner purchased the burial crypt next to his first cover girl Marilyn Monroe, at Pierce Brothers Westwood Memorial Village.

In this shot of Marilyn Monroe's crypt, taken in 2016, Hefner's future crypt appears
behind the standing bouquet.

Rest in peace, Hef.

Trivia:

• Despite featuring her in Playboy's premiere issue and buying the burial crypt next to her, Hefner never actually met Marilyn Monroe.
  
  
• One of the 45 investors was Hefner's mother Grace.  Reportedly she did so not believing in the project, but because "she believed in her son."
  
  
• Following publication of the June 1963 issue, which featured Jayne Mansfield, Hefner was arrested for promoting obscene literature, as the pictorial included one photo with a very lucky man.  The case went to trial, but ultimately resulted in a hung jury.  No, that's not a pun.
  
  
•  In 1993, Hefner voiced himself in an episode of The Simpsons entitled "Krusty Gets Kancelled."  Watch a clip here.
  
  
•  ABC's Good Morning America reported on Hef's passing in this segment.
  
  
•  This author's first letter to the editor was published in the June 1998 issue.