Rising Popularity
The Stooges had a very peculiar ’50s. Moe and Larry were grieving the loss of their friends Curly and Shemp Howard. But in the professional world, the act was riding a wave of newfound popularity as a result of their TV shorts. By 1959, every single one of the 190 Stooge cartoons had made it onto television.
Curly-Joe
Joe DeRita wore his hair in a style similar to Shemp’s when he first joined the Stooges act after his death in the mid-1950s. Due to the group’s TV success, however, DeRita was pressured into buzzing his hair and eventually shaving his head to look like Curly Howard. Even more so, he was referred to as “Curly-Joe.”