I.e., Curly as the "holy goof", as Kerouac would've put it.....
Have to agree w/Rita: there's too much emphasis placed on psychoanalyzing the comedic impulse. I've never bought into the whole concept of the jolly slapstick practitioner using his skills to conceal a broken heart or sense of grievance against an unfair world. Rather, it's their essence to create comedy: I think of Stan Laurel still crafting gags for himself and Babe long after Hardy's demise, just as a way of keeping his own comedy skills honed. Much as I try to attribute certain of Curly's mannerisms to one influence or another, what it often comes down to is: it was just Curly's nature or Platonic essence (I'm an essentialist but not necessarily a Platonist) to do what he did, to woo woo, spin on floors, go "Hmmmm!", etc. What combination of factors coalesced to produce Curly is just too indefinite to sort out, otherwise.
A couple years ago on this site I did a timeline using the shooting dates of the 45-46 Stooge shorts to give some idea of Curly's working schedule the last 2 years he spent as part of the team. In 1946 he did either 7 or 8 shorts back to back between January and the time of his stroke (May), and this after coming off a number of live shows, coping w/a divorce, etc. When I put together the timeline (it was on one of the former threads of this site, no longer extant) I became sadly aware that, in the 6-8 months preceding Curly's stroke he was terribly overworked (filming 8 shorts in a row would be brutal for anyone in great health). I'll muss around a bit and maybe I can reconstruct the research I did then, if Dunrobin promises not to lose the bloody thing again!