Early Life
Healy was born Ernest Lea Nash on October 1, 1896 in Houston, Texas, and was known as Lee. In 1912, as teenagers, Nash and his childhood friend Moses Harry Horwitz (later known as Moe Howard of the Three Stooges) joined the Annette Kellerman Diving Girls, a vaudeville act which included four boys. The work ended quickly, however, after an accident on stage. Nash and Howard then went their separate ways. Nash developed a vaudeville act and adopted the stage name Ted Healy.
Healy's act was a hit, and he soon expanded his role as a comedian and master of ceremonies. He added performers to his stage show, including his new wife Betty Brown (a.k.a. Betty Braun). When some of his acrobats quit in 1922, Moe Howard answered the advertisement for replacements. Since Howard was no acrobat, Healy cast his old friend as a stooge (someone who impersonated a member of the audience who is called on stage). In the routine, Howard's appearance on stage would end with Healy losing his trousers.
Read more about this topic: Ted Healy
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“Long before I wrote stories, I listened for stories. Listening for them is something more acute than listening to them. I suppose it’s an early form of participation in what goes on. Listening children know stories are there. When their elders sit and begin, children are just waiting and hoping for one to come out, like a mouse from its hole.”
—Eudora Welty (b. 1909)
“In time, after a dozen years of centering their lives around the games boys play with one another, the boys’ bodies change and that changes everything else. But the memories are not erased of that safest time in the lives of men, when their prime concern was playing games with guys who just wanted to be their friendly competitors. Life never again gets so simple.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)