Lyla Budnick can tell you. She was Larry Fine’s sister

THE JEWISH TIMES OF THE GREATER NORTHEAST

Wednesday, April 14, 1976 Stooge’s Sister Safeguards Souvenirs

By Rita Perkin Charleston Special to the Jewish Times

For some, just meandering around the streets of the Northeast can be a pleasant enough diversion in itself. But if you’re ever walking around, peering into shop windows or just enjoying a leisurely stroll, and you see Lyla Budnick nee Feinberg, you might find yourself stopping dead in your tracks with your mouth hanging wide open.

“Now where,” you might well muse, “have I see that face before?”
THE CUPID-DOLL mouth, laughing elfish eyes, a bright flash of fuzzy hair might well remind you of someone you’ve seen before. Someone out of your past, when you were younger; in the old Saturday afternoon matinees, perhaps. Or most recently on television.

But who? Where?

Then suddenly, a sweet smell of yesterday comes sweeping over you the light bulbs go on and you remember.

Of course! Larry Fine, of the Three Stooges. Funny, affable, dear, departed Larry.

Whatever became of Larry Fine and the Three Stooges?

Lyla Budnick can tell you. She was Larry Fine’s sister. Her neat row home in the Northeast area is replete with souvenirs galore, recording the 50-plus years of successes (and sad nesses) of her late brother.

CARTONS AND BOXES line her home. They’re everywhere. In china closets, in the basement, behind the sofa. Lyla will not part with her mementos, or with her memories. But she’ll eagerly and gingerly share them with all who care to know.

Larry Fine at Columbia studios with sister Lyla Budnick and brother in law Nate Budnick. Inscribed To Trent with my love to my dear friend sincerely Lyla Fine Budnick.
Larry Fine was an embryonic little violinist who took to tomfoolery and lovingly as Jews take to the Wailing Wall.
A spirited little munchkin (about 5’4” tall,) Lyla says, “We were built alike, we looked alike, we talked alike, we acted alike.” And when she talks and you peer into her eyes, you know they thought alike, too.

But where baby sister took to a nook in the Northeast with husband Nate and children, now heading the Math department at Olney High School, brother Larry took to stardom to carve a niche for himself in the everlasting province known as nostalgia.

JAUNTILY SPIKED with a savory and salable know-how, spurred on by a need for recognition and bringing laughter to people, Larry the loveable, of soon-to-be “Moe, Larry and Curly” fame, knocked timidly on the Hollywood scene via the backdoor of vaudeville.

Larry, born in South Philadelphia, the oldest of four children of Russian immigrant parents, was studying to be a concert violinist. (One brother, Philip, died early in childhood. A second brother, Morris, still survives and now lives in the Northeast, too.

“But he was a clown. A natural clown,” says Lyla. “He loved to fool around. He used to go to the beach in Atlantic City. There’d be a crowd around him and he would be telling jokes, clowning, dancing and kibitzing. It was just as natural for him as breathing is for us.”

PUSHED BY a frustrated show biz father who never quite made it himself, Larry’s first break came when he joined a local troupe in something called “The School Act” with Jolly Joyce.

“He used to swear my father paid them money to pay him. Just to get him his break in show business.” But it didn’t matter to Larry. The act started in Philadelphia. He was about 16 or 17 at the time and it was here that he met his future wife, also someday-to-be-famous, singer-actress Mabel Haney.

After the school act folded, they went on to form and tour as “The Haney Sisters and Fine.” The talented trio started riding in the vaudeville circuit and by sister’s say-so, “They were a top-notch act!”

“THE HANEY SISTERS sang. My brother played the violin and danced. He tried to work the act straight, but he was always a clown at heart. He did stand-up comedy, playing his violin and telling jokes in between, pre-Henny Youngmen style. Then they’d all sing together. Then he would come out and do the Russian Kazatchka. Get down. Do this. Do that. And play the violin at the same time.”

And as Lyla reminisces, her hands roll in musical momentum, she mimics with her facial expressions, and she points and plays with her hair. And it’s frightening, yet somehow very comforting. For all of a sudden, it’s as if Larry lived again. Right here. Right in a neat little row home in the Northeast. And you somehow feel better inside.

WHILE TRAVELING the vaudeville circuit, Larry met Moe and Shemp Howard, and Ted Healy. The Howard brothers were already working with Healy, but when Larry popped into the picture, they decided to form the now famous trio. At first they called themselves “Ted Healy and His Three Southern Gentlemen,” then “Ted Healy and His Stooges,” and finally the famed moniker of memory, “The Three Stooges.”
Their first movie break came when they were invited to Hollywood to make a full-length film called “From Soup to Nuts.”

“FROM THAT CAME a contract with Columbia Pictures which I think,” sister smiled proudly, “was the longest single contract in the history of motion pictures. Their contract was constantly renewed, from the day they started ‘til the day they finished.”

All in all, the Stooges made 218 movie shorts during 24 years at Columbia.

His flyaway flop of hairstyle was invented by Larry as part of the crazy character he developed. “His hair was naturally very, very curly and would stand out anyway. But then he would tease it to make it even worse. He always said he invented hair teasing.”

And as Lyla speaks, she also imitates his hand fumbling with his hair, and you begin to believe that if Larry had wanted to call forth even Fuller Brush men to attend to his curly crop, he could have done that, too.

“OFFSTAGE,” she blurts out, “he was as crazy as he was on screen. He was a funny, funny man. He saw humor in everything and everyone. He always had a joke and he loved to entertain.”

Seeing Larry stroll the Northeast was not an unnatural sight for any of Lyla’s neighbors, all of whom came to know and love the silly man of madness.

“He lived in my house for months at a time when he came to Philadelphia. He loved to go to the supermarket around the corner. Run to the bakery. Iron shirts. Wash clothes. Wash the dishes. He was always into everything. And he was loved. So loved.

“BUT AROUND HERE,” he was considered just one of the neighbors. There was no catering to him, no celebrity chasing or any of the nonsense. He was just one of the gang!

But poor Larry the loveable. “He never thought he had any talent. He always said it was luck that had gotten him to where he was. He always said he was the only one in the act without any talent.” And suddenly sister Lyla’s smile saddens.

Toward his later years, Larry Fine suffered a series of strokes which left him paralyzed, ending his career and placing him in the Motion Picture Home in Hollywood in 1971.
Confined to a wheelchair, Larry would watch reruns of early Stooges movies, or answer a continuous flood of fan mail, or receive admiring (and remembering) and always welcome visitors.

IN FACT, my own brother, jack, a non-professional needler, with whom I share many a hot bag of popcorn during weekend of marathon matinees at the local cinema, pulled chewing gum out of my hair and raisinettes off my blouse while simultaneously watching the Three Stooges clobber each other with hands, hammer and nails and the like, and thinking, “Things could be worse!” went to visit Larry at the home a couple of years ago. His recollection of the Larry of then are bittersweet:

“He sat in a chair, looking old, much older than I somehow thought he would. But he welcomed me warmly, even though we had never met before. And we talked for hours about my great ‘love’ for him; all my memories as a kid, growing up and watching all his antics, and how my kids watch him today. He pulled out dozens and dozens of old pictures, then showed me some of his films that I had seen as a boy. What a thrill! It was the first and last time I ever saw him, but when I left, I felt I was leaving a old friend; someone whom I’d known all my life. And, in a way, I had.”

YOU SEE, nothing stopped Larry. He performed in the home’s productions. Anything,. Just so he’d never have to stop making people laugh. And, luckily, he never did.

Larry’s gone now. The original Curley (then Shemp) both died in the 1950’s. Larry Fine died a little more then a year ago. The last of the put-on lunatics, Moe, succumbed several months later. They’re all gone now.
But hardly a day passes that you can’t flip on a local TV station and tune in and watch the funny man’s hilarious foibles.

HE’S FAMOUS AGAIN. For a short time on TV, he lives again. But to many Northeast residents, so what’s the big deal? He’s never been, or will he ever be, forgotten.

He’s Larry the loveable. One of the neighbors. A friend.

And, for them at least, Larry Fine, of fast-fleeting fame but long lasting friendship, is immortal.