Jack SmithBelated news, but radio singer, TV host and sometime character actor Jack Smith died on July 3, 2006 at age 92. Mr. Smith was one of the singing bartenders in BEER AND PRETZELS (1933).
In
The Three Stooges Journal # 60 (Winter 1991), Rich Finegan identified the three bartending singers in BEER & PRETZELS (1933) as
The Three Ambassadors. The trio were singers with Gus Arnheim's Orchestra at The Coconut Grove in Hollywood's Ambassador Hotel. The Three Ambassadors were Jack Smith, Martin Sperzel and Al Teeter.
Jack Smith (the bartender in the middle) went on to radio fame as a singer in the 1940s, and host of the television show YOU ASKED FOR IT in the late 1950s. Younger fans may remember him, playing himself, in a two-part 1976 episode of HAPPY DAYS.
Singing partner Martin Sperzel (blonde bartender, on viewers' left) achieved radio and TV fame as one of The Sportsmen Quartet, costars of THE JACK BENNY PROGRAM from the mid-1940s to late-1950s. Al Teeter (bartender on our right), according to imdb became a music editor for Disney and other studios.
John EwaniukA notice in a recent
The Morning Call (Allentown PA) reports that Three Stooges fan John Ewaniuk died on Oct. 10...
http://www.legacy.com/MCall/Obituaries.asp?Page=LifeStory&PersonId=19537500John was a contributor to
The Three Stooges Journal in its earliest 1970s issues, providing news submissions and artwork for editors Ralph Schiller and Moe Feinberg.
Moe Feinberg used John's caricatures of the Stooges as the
Journal's front page banner for a period of time, such as issue # 8 (June 1978) ***; his artwork still makes occasional
Journal appearances.
***
http://threestooges.net/journal.php?action=view&id=8In the early 1990s, John worked for Columbia as a consultant on some of The Three Stooges home videos; his name is credited on the back of the tapes' package sleeves.
