Ted Healy

In MGM's Ted Healy: Mad About You (1931), Ted Healy takes on the persona of PsychoChef, much to the Stooges's abject terror.

Theodore "Ernie" Healy (AD 1896-1937 AD) was a professional supervaudevillian and anticomedian who, well before his well-deserved death, was most notably known as the Zeroth Stooge. In fact, Ted Healy singlehandedly invented from whole cloth the entire concept of stoogeness, a big idea for which no authentic stooge since his time has ever forgiven him.

Early life

Ted Healy was born in a thatch-covered hospital deep in the heart of Texas; and, within moments of taking his first breath, angrily bitchslapped his own mother. Even the attending obstetrician was not spared from little Ted's psychopathic rage. During his early pre-skool years, young Healy displayed a precocious talent for physically and emotionally abusing children substantially shorter than himself.

Running away from home to join an amateur circus/slash/rodeo/slash/barbecue troupe in the Bronx did little to improve Healy's vicious temperament. In 1903, Healy quit the circus in disgust after running out of innocent animals to torture. He soon became obsessed with founding his own professional team of human recipients of his "tender mercies". Unfortunately, local law enforcement agencies of the time refused to cooperate. Then, in 1927, Ted Healy crossed paths with Moe "Moses" Howard (nee Horowitz), an up-coming Jewish midget wrestler and part-time financial advisor.

The Howard Brothers sell their immortal souls for a pittance

It was beginning of the Era of Offbeat Hairstyles. Moe, resplendent in his distinctive multicolored Afro-Moehawk, attempted to teach Healy the most effective methods of striking an erstwhile verbal opponent with minimum physical impact and maximum visual effect. It was Healy's unparalleled genius that immediately led to a slight yet monumental revision of these time-honored slapstick techniques: striking his erstwhile verbal opponent with minimum visual effect and maximum physical impact. Thoroughly humiliated and somewhat bruised, Moe quickly assumed the submissive feminine role with respect to the domineering Healy in their alpha-beta relationship, and agreed to a life-long association of being Healy's personal human punching bag (technically known in today's modern show-business parlance as a "human punching bag"). A minor and overlooked subclause of the ill-advised contract secretly dragged all of Moe's beloved non-professional siblings into the newly-formed stage act from hell, much to everybody's surprise.

Moe's beloved non-professional siblings

Shemp "Schlemazal" Howard, Moe's somewhat more intelligent brother sporting Jesus-styled dreadlocks, attempted to flee for greener pastures. He failed abysmally, tripping over his own hair. Even so, Shemp eventually had no choice but to unconditionally surrender to Healy's hypnotic charm and a sucker-punch to the mid-section.

Curly "Jeremiah" Howard, who had the wildest hair of them all, initially declined Healy's tempting offer of a lucrative career in idiocy, vehemently refusing to submit to Healy's demands to "get a fucking haircut, lard-ass!". Curly was soon convinced otherwise, in a manner not suitable to be described in polite company. And thus he publicly shaved off his entire supply of body hair solely to satisfy Healy's superior aesthetic tastes. It didn't quite work as planned, however.

And then came Larry.

On stage, in front of a live audience

On stage, in front of a live audience, a typical Healy routine (for which Healy secured all patents and copyrights for all perpetuity) consisted of three (3) distinct parts: an opening, a middle, and an ending. The opening phase featured Healy alternately heaping gratuitous insults upon and violently attacking all three of his hapless underlings in quick succession. Then came a cheesy musical interlude which had absolutely nothing to do with the established primary theme. The concluding phase was just like the opening phase, with the exception of replacing the gratuitous insults with even more violent attacks.

The new-wave stage group went through an exceedingly large number of title changes, sometimes even during a single live performance. Many names invented by Healy were close variations of a singular big idea, such as "Ted Healy and his Inferior yet Charming Colleagues", "Ted Healy and his Southern Confederate Gentlemen", and "Ted Healy and his Human Punching Bags". Shemp's one timid suggestion ("The Fantastic Four") was unanimously rejected by Healy as being kind of lame. Eventually, they settled on "Ted Healy and his Three Stooges", even though nobody in the world of 1928 had the faintest idea of what the word "stooge" was supposed to mean. By 1929, though, everybody in the world was beginning to catch on to the general idea.

After having beaten the living daylights out of his terrified troupelings to the morbid delight of New York City theatre-goers for weeks, months, and years on end, Healy was offered his most tantalizing offer of his short yet pathetic career: a starring role in MGM's rejected film recycling department.

Healy's career at MGM's rejected film recycling department

Ted Healy et al single-handedly revolutionized MGM's rejected film recycling department with such special-effects-bloated blockbusters as Ted Healy and his Three Stooges: The Motion Picture, Ted Healy and his Three Stooges: The Sequel, and Ted Healy, Up Close and Personal. Each 20-minute-long film consisted of three (3) distinct parts: an opening, a middle, and an ending. The opening phase featured Healy alternately heaping gratuitous insults upon and violently attacking all three of his hapless underlings in quick succession. Then came stock footage of a cheesy musical interlude which MGM had previously failed to unload, even on any of their lowest-budget productions. The concluding phase was just like the opening phase, with the exception of replacing the gratuitous insults with even more violent attacks.

Ted Healy's original hairstyle took a turn for the worse in 1935, despite numerous emergency treatments utilizing Minoxidil, Rogaine, Viagra, and state-of-the-art comb-over techniques.

Post-stooge existential existence

In 1934, for reasons unknown to this day, all four of the Three Stooges decided to break their permanent contract with Healy and leave the act in order to embark on a solo career at Columbia's rejected film recycling department. Healy, reportedly, was devastated and bewildered. "Where did I go wrong?", he repeatedly asked himself to no avail. With nobody left to abuse but his wife, his children, his dog, his next-door neighbor, his next-door neighbor's dog, his team of personal-injury lawyers, his well-endowed weekend cleaning woman, his bartender, his vintage Paragon Panther racing-car, his loyal and eternally-forgiving fan-base, and occasionally a passing stranger on the sidewalks, Healy fell into a state of morbid depression and male-pattern baldness.

During his one last hurrah, Healy returned to vaudeville and valiantly attempted to deconstruct his life-long career with lengthy one-man recitations of various Shakespearean plays and sobbing-fits of existential karaoke. His loyal and eternally-forgiving fan-base promptly dumped him like an old worn-out metaphor.

The mysterious and well-deserved death of Ted Healy

Ted Healy died under mysterious circumstances on or near December 21st of 1937, to nobody's great surprise. The only 873 known suspects were cleared of all wrongdoing several weeks earlier.