The Life and Legacy of Ted Healy: Vaudeville Pioneer and Three Stooges Originator (1896–1937)

Ted Healy, born Ernest Lea (later changed to Lee) Nash in Kaufman, Texas, on October 1, 1896, to Mary Eugenia (McGinty) Nash and Charles McKinney “Black Charley” Nash, was a vaudeville headliner best-known for originating the act that became the Three Stooges. He was descended from John Dempsey Nash, who took part in the battle of San Jacinto and eventually moved to Kaufman County, where his descendants led colorful if less than upright lives. By 1897 Healy and his family moved to Houston. Their Prairie Avenue neighborhood was considered a slum, and Black Charley, a morphine addict, listed his occupation as “gambler.” In 1900 Healy’s parents split up. His mother took Healy and his sister Marcia to relatives in Madison, Ohio, then moved to New York to pursue a career in show business. His father remained in Houston and died in 1907.

Around 1908 Healy and his sister rejoined their mother in New York. She had prospered enough to lease a decent apartment and to send Healy to the De La Salle Institute, a private Catholic school. One of his classmates was Bryan Foy, son of Broadway star Eddie Foy. Joining his father in vaudeville, Foy later became a Hollywood producer and maintained a lifelong relationship with Healy. The Nash family resided in Manhattan but were regular summer visitors to Bath Beach in Brooklyn. It was on this beach around 1909 that Healy first met Moses Horwitz, later better known as Moe Howard, who lived nearby. Because both young men had shown business aspirations, they became fast friends, along with Moses’s older brother Samuel, who would one day establish a comic persona as Shemp Howard.

In 1913 Healy and Moses Horwitz joined the cast of an Annette Kellerman-imitation ”diving girls” show. Performing in drag, they would leap from high platforms into a small pool. After a diver named Gladys Kelly was killed falling from her board, the show disbanded, and Healy and Horwitz went their separate ways. Healy adopted his stage name and found initial success as a blackface comedian—he was heavily influenced by Al Jolson. Horwitz also found steady work in vaudeville, but Healy enjoyed greater success. Reportedly earning $8,500 per week ($9,000 according to some sources), Healy was the highest-paid performer in vaudeville in the 1920s. By 1928 he was living in a twelve-bedroom house in Darien, Connecticut. He lived lavishly, indulged in gambling (he was a horse racing aficionado), and drank heavily.

On June 5, 1922, Healy married Elizabeth “Betty” Braun (also billed as Brown) in Indianapolis. The couple formed a successful vaudeville duo. In 1923 Moe and Shemp Howard joined the Healys’ act. In 1927 Shemp joined Healy in Lee J. J. Shubert’s Broadway musical comedy revue A Night in Spain. He was replaced by Larry Fine in 1928. Healy, Fine, and the Howards were featured in Shubert’s 1929 revue A Night in Venice. The following year they launched their act, known as Ted Healy and His Racketeers, Ted Healy and His Southern Gentlemen, and later as Ted Healy and His Stooges. The slaps, pokes, jabs, and other simulated abuse that Healy heaped on the Stooges were an integral part of the vaudeville routines.

Healy, who had made his film debut in the 1926 Hal Roach short Wise Guys Prefer Brunettes, appeared alongside the Stooges in the Fox Film production Soup to Nuts (1930). It was the first appearance of the Stooges on film. In 1931 Healy was elected president of the National Vaudeville Artists. He reunited with the Stooges the following year. Shemp soon left the act and was replaced by another brother, Jerome “Jerry,” the youngest of the Horwitz brothers, who went on to become a legendary comic after he adopted the name Curly. From 1933 to 1934 Healy and the Stooges starred in a series of shorts for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). Healy and the Stooges’ act was a natural fit for movie comedy.

The Stooges had spats with Healy throughout the years, but the final split came in 1934. That year they signed a contract with Columbia, for which they filmed comedy shorts through 1957. Their international popularity was based almost entirely on the Columbia shorts; their pre-Columbia films with Healy were rarely screened. Healy worked steadily as a character actor for MGM, most notably in Mad Love (1935) with Peter Lorre and San Francisco (1936) with Clark Gable. His first wife divorced him in 1932. She alleged adultery with heiress Mary Brown Warburton, the granddaughter of Philadelphia department store magnate John Wanamaker. In truth, Warburton was the latest in a string of Healy’s infidelities.

Healy remarried on May 15, 1936. His second wife, Almo Elizaeth “Betty” Hickman, was a University of California, Los Angeles student, half his age, whom he had recently met. After a whirlwind courtship, Healy and his young bride eloped in Yuma, Arizona. The marriage was rocky from the start, as Healy’s new wife was less than enthusiastic about Healy’s show business lifestyle and his frequent entertaining of his colorful cast of colleagues. Nevertheless, after his new wife was granted a divorce later that year, the couple reconciled. On December 17, 1937, she gave birth to John Jacob Nash, who later changed his name to Theodore John Healy. Healy was enthusiastic about the birth of his first child. As Moe Howard observed, “He loved kids and often gave Christmas parties for underprivileged youngsters and spent hundreds of dollars on toys.” Ironically, the birth of Healy’s son led indirectly to his death.

A few days after his son’s birth, Healy celebrated at the Trocadero, a renowned nightclub on the Sunset Strip. Another motivation for his celebratory visit was that his latest movie, Hollywood Hotel (1937), a Busby Berkeley musical, had done well at a preview. Healy was imbibing heavily and got into an altercation. The details of who and why are murky. According to one account Healy was accosted by a trio of “college boys.” Another story had him getting into a fight with a trio composed of Wallace Beery, Albert “Cubby” Broccoli (later renowned as the producer of many James Bond films), and Broccoli’s cousin, agent Pasquale “Pat” DiCicco.

Healy returned home and died on December 21, 1937. The abruptness of his death invited speculation, much of it centered around the altercation at the Trocadero. According to Los Angeles County coroner Frank Nance, Healy died of nephritis as a consequence of alcoholism. The autopsy was controversial, however, as Healy’s body had been prematurely released to a mortuary. Because the blood had been drained from his body, a full analysis as to his cause of death was impossible. Nevertheless, Nance examined the body as best he could and remarked that the physical marks on Healy as a result of his Trocadero altercation were superficial. Therefore, Los Angeles County Sheriff Eugene Biscailuz did not stage an investigation. If the authorities chose not to look into the matter, this was not true of the media, which dwelled on Healy’s demise. Over the years numerous alternate explanations and conspiracy theories surrounding Healy’s death emerged. One persistent theory was that MGM executive Eddie Mannix, a well-known “fixer,” had initiated a cover-up to protect Wallace Beery.

Though Healy had been making good money in Hollywood, his finances were in arrears when he died. Consequently, his young widow was left to face Christmas with a fatherless newborn and Healy’s debts. MGM employees took up a collection to help pay the funeral bills. Bryan Foy was a major contributor. A few days after the funeral, held at St. Augustine Catholic Church across the street from MGM Studios in Culver City, John Jacob Healy was baptized at the same house of worship. Healy was interred at Calvary Cemetery in Los Angeles. In addition to the Three Stooges, a number of former vaudevillians, including Milton Berle, Peter Lind Hayes, Bob Hope, and Red Skelton, cited Healy as influential in their careers.