August 12, 2021 Megan Lamond

ShopKnuckleheads: Birthdays Galore!

🎂 News today from ShopKnuckleheads- We have lots of birthdays to celebrate today!!! 🎂

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Joe Besser, who worked with Larry and Moe in the last group of The Three Stooges Columbia shorts, was born today, August 12th, in 1907 in St. Louis, Missouri.

Besser, along with Joe DeRita, Shemp, Larry and Moe were all under contract with Columbia. Larry and Moe wanted DeRita to join the act after Shemp’s passing but the studio heads decided on Besser.

Besides his work as a member of The Three Stooges, Besser had a very busy career in television. He passed away at age 80 in 1988.

Supporting actor Nat Carr, made one appearance with The Three Stooges among his 100+ screen credits in Pardon My Scotch. He was born in Poltava, Russia today in 1886. He also appeared in 1927’s The Jazz Singer, the first ‘talkie’. Carr was one of the few supporting cast members to receive a title screen credit.

Another supporting player, Douglas Gerrard, from the 1934 feature film Bulldog Drummond Strikes Back (perhaps the best of the Bulldog Drummond films) also made one appearance among his 120+ films with The Three Stooges: Ants In The Pantry from 1936. Gerrard, too, was born today in 1891 in Dublin, Ireland.