After 24 years and 190 comedy shorts for Columbia Pictures, the Three Stooges were fired in December 1957 without ceremony, and weeks later Moe Howard was turned away at the studio gate because he no longer had a pass. This episode goes behind the slapstick to reconstruct the trio's history, starting in 1922 vaudeville when Moe joined comedian Ted Healy as an on-stage stooge, followed by Shemp Howard and Larry Fine. We cover Healy's alcoholism and manipulation, his sabotage of a Fox contract offer after Soup to Nuts, his threats to bomb theaters, Shemp's departure, and the day Jerry Howard shaved his head and was misheard muttering a word that became Curly.

We then examine the 23-year Columbia contract under Harry Cohn, who used one-year renewals and claims that comedy shorts were dying to keep the Stooges from ever asking for a raise while ...