Not many actors keep working after they’ve died. Shemp Howard managed four more movies.
When Shemp — the eldest Howard brother and, at various points, both the original and the returning third Stooge — died suddenly of a heart attack in November 1955, Columbia Pictures still owed theaters four more Three Stooges shorts under contract.
Rather than lose the money, the studio’s producers got resourceful: They stitched together old footage of Shemp with newly shot scenes featuring a supporting actor, Joe Palma, made up to resemble him and filmed carefully from behind, in shadow, or with something conveniently blocking his face. All four “new” Shemp shorts were completed and released through 1956, more than a year after his death.
Confidence: Well-documented — corroborated by studio records, Columbia release history, and Moe Howard’s own account.
The trick became famous enough in film circles that decades later, director Sam Raimi borrowed the term “Fake Shemp” for stand-ins used on his own productions — a strange little afterlife for a Stooge who never got to see the last films with his name on them.
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Mongolia was one of the “postage stamp nations” that issued stamps featuring The Three Stooges. It even went to the extent of turning it into a souvenir sheet.
