Death took the Stooges. Simple as that.
The Three Stooges never actually formally disbanded. They were working as late as 1969, when Moe, Larry and Curly Joe filmed the ill-fated “Kook’s Tour” pilot, during which Larry suffered a massive stroke that confined him to a wheelchair. He eventually entered the Motion Picture Country Home, an assisted living facility for those in the film industry who needed a place to spend their twilight years. Moe would be a constant visitor, checking in on his longtime friend and co-star.
An rare and cool Hollywood picture — Moe Howard and Larry Fine palling around with William “Koloth” Campbell and James “Scotty” Doohan after Larry’s stroke and his entry into the Motion Picture Country House.
The Stooges had been contracted to film scenes for the raunchy comedy “Blazing Stewardesses”, and the screenwriter did try to accommodate Larry’s condition by rewriting the plot so that Larry was going to a health spa run by Moe and Curly Joe. However, his fragile health and subsequent strokes forbade even that, and Larry was retired (becoming something of a “Stooge emeritus”) to be replaced by longtime collaborator Emil Sitka. Sitka would have played under the stage name of “Harry” — some accounts state that this would have been the lineup in “Stewardesses” with Larry in a smaller role, and Harry would have been Larry’s brother in the film. In the final finished film, their role was replaced with two-thirds of the Ritz Brothers, another slapstick comedy team from the Stooges’ period.
Moe, Harry and Curly Joe’s lineup of The Three Stooges never took the stage. By that time, Moe’s lung cancer was progressing, and would take his life in May, 1975, only a few months after Larry’s death, putting a definitive end to the Stooges.
They did take a couple of publicity photos so we can see what the act would have looked like had Moe survived long enough for them to have made a go of it: