The Three Stooges, for decades, the most popular slapstick comedy team in America, all hail from Jewish-Lithuanian ancestry.
In 1934, the trio signed on with Columbia Pictures to appear in a series of two-reel, comedy short subjects, and within a year, were one of the biggest box-office hits in America. They were born in Brooklyn, New York at the turn of the last century. Shemp, the oldest, got his nickname from the way their mother pronounced his name Sam in her thick Litvak accent. Moe was the leader of the group, notorious for the way he’d slap and knock funny-man Curly on his infamous indestructible head. Even today their comedy shorts regularly appear on the cable television channel American Movie Classics.