Topic: Moe Howard's Autobiography Republished, July 2013

[BeAStooge]

Moe Howard's 1977 autobiography "Moe Howard and The Three Stooges" will be re-released July 2013 by Chicago Review Press.  It will be retitled "I Stooged to Conquer".  The updated title was the intended, original title of the book, but changed by the publisher shortly before it went to press 35+ years ago.  Moe Howard had worked on-and-off on the book since 1959, and focused on it in the months leading up to his death in May 1975; the book was finished by his daughter Joan. and her husband Norman Maurer.

Amazon is now taking pre-orders...

The Amazon listing for this softcover shows 208 pages, the same as the original hardcover & softcover editions, so no revisions/updates are expected.

From the 1977 edition's dust cover...

In the '30s and '40s one of the most popular film comedy teams in show business was the trio variously known as "Larry, Curly and Moe," "Howard, Fine and Howard" and, more universally, "The Three Stooges." Their slapstick comedy brought howls of laughter to audiences all over the world. And their poplarity, which zoomed and slipped and then zoomed again over four decades, is today undergoing a startling resurgence not only on television but in college screenings all over the country.

This book tells the story of The Three Stooges as remembered by Moe Howard, the chief stooge and mentor of the trio as long as it existed. As boss of the team, with his bowl-shaped haircut and manic rages, Moe was a one-man laugh factory. Here he remembers his more than half-century in show business... his youth as a general all-around actor in a riverboat stock company; his days in vaudeville, where he experimented with routines ranging from blackface to blackouts; and his fortuitous meeting with Ted Healy, who inspired him to enlist his brother Shemp and the wild-haired Larry Fine, in the trio which became The Three Stooges.

The Stooges did not invent slapstick but they certainly established such trademarks of American humor as cream pies in the face, pratfalls on banana peels, and the fast slap across two faces.

It is all here in Moe Howard's reminiscences... a glance backward at vaudeville, musical comedy, feature films and, most important, the myriad of short movies made for Columbia Pictures. The Stooges starred in more than 70 short films. In many of them inventiveness was stretched to the utmost, since often the studio did not bother to furnish a plot but merely allowed the imagination of the stars to develop the pratfalls and mayhem constituting the action.

For this book Mr. Howard's family made available family albums containing thousands of photographs. From this wealth of material we have selected hundreds of illustrations --- pictures showing the Stooges in action in every phase of their career. Over the decades Moe Howard and Larry Fine continued with the act, though the middle stooge role was assumed at various times by Shemp and Curly Howard, Joe Besser and Joe DeRita.

[archiezappa]

I still have the original book.  A very interesting and enjoyable read.

[Bum]

Still my favorite Stooge book, because it was my first [I bought mine around 1980]. I wish the re-released edition would correct some of Moe's errors [such as stating that filming of KOOKS TOUR began in early 1971] and the dozens of mis-ID'd publicity stills.

[Mark The Shark]

http://www.amazon.com/Stooged-Conquer-Autobiography-Leader-Stooges/dp/1613747667/ref=sr_1_14?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1359849148&sr=1-14&keywords=three+stooges

Forgive me if this is old news -- I just stumbled on this today and did a search of this forum for any reference to it -- I thought there's no way you guys don't already know about this.

Few details as yet, but from what description there is, it looks to me like just a re-release of Moe Howard & The 3 Stooges. According to an article in (IIRC) the very first issue of The Three Stooges Journal back in 1975, I Stooged To Conquer was Moe's originally-intended title for his autobiography.

Can Stroke Of Luck be far behind? (I've always wanted to license the rights to Stroke Of Luck and do a properly-punctuated reissue of it. Someone once told me the crazy punctuation in that book was intended to reflect Larry's post-stroke speech patterns!)

[Mark The Shark]

Moe Howard's 1977 autobiography "Moe Howard and The Three Stooges" will be re-released July 2013 by Chicago Review Press.  It will be retitled "I Stooged to Conquer".  The updated title was the intended, original title of the book, but changed by the publisher shortly before it went to press 35+ years ago.  Moe Howard had worked on-and-off on the book since 1959, and focused on it in the months leading up to his death in May 1975; the book was finished by his daughter Joan. and her husband Norman Maurer.

Amazon is now taking pre-orders...

The Amazon listing for this softcover shows 208 pages, the same as the original hardcover & softcover editions, so no revisions/updates are expected.

From the 1977 edition's dust cover...

D'oh! How on Earth did I miss this? I even searched the forums, figuring Brent CERTAINLY was on top of this way before me. And guess what, he was! I wonder why I didn't find this thread. Never mind, you guys are ahead of me.

[BeAStooge]

The new edition shipped early.  Amazon began mailing them out late last week.

I Stooged to Conquer does have an additional page count @ 241 (vs. the original @ 208), due to...

• Joan Maurer's new foreword, which she read to us at the Fan Club Meeting, "spread out!" over 5 pages.
• An expanded typsetting and layout; photo reproductions are larger.

I haven't done a content comparison, edition vs. edition... but, it appears to be the same.  Except for the foreword, Joan mentioned last month that she was not aware of any editorial changes.

Over the past 36 years, via The Three Stooges Journal and other publications/projects, some factual errors (dates, names, etc.) in Moe's book have been uncovered.  Although these have not been corrected, Joan addresses this in a post-script to her Foreword...

My father was right about the difficulty of trying to recall hundres of events and dates over the course of 65 years, two-hundred-plus films, and countless personal appearances.  Thus, we'll have to forgive him for an inaccuracy or two.  To wit... Shubert archival records and recently discovered handwritten notes by Moe reveal that Ted Healy asked Larry to join the team in the Rainbo Gardens nightclub, not Marigold Gardens.  And the year was 1928, not 1925.

[Kopfy2013]

Is there anyway to read the Foreword that Joan wrote?  Is it in a Stooge Journal or somewhere else?