Eddie Laughton

Eddie Laughton (20 June 1903 – 21 March 1952) was a British-American film actor. He appeared in more than 200 films between 1935 and 1952, and is best known for his work with The Three Stooges.

Laughton's family immigrated to the United States in 1909 and settled in Detroit. He started in vaudeville and managed a vaudeville theatre where Larry Fine, later of the Stooges trio, once played.

The pencil-mustached Laughton was placed under contract by Columbia Pictures in 1935, almost certainly thanks to Fine. Laughton worked at Columbia almost exclusively for 10 years, in features, westerns, short subjects, and serials throughout the 1930s and 1940s. Modern viewers will remember Laughton for his role as "Percy Pomeroy, convict 41144" in the Stooge comedies So Long Mr. Chumps and Beer Barrel Polecats, or as the happy drunk in Loco Boy Makes Good. Laughton was an excellent utility player, useful in good-guy and bad-guy roles alike. (He and fellow Columbia stock player John Tyrrell shared many scenes.) Laughton was also a convincing dialect comedian, playing a French nobleman in Buster Keaton's She's Oil Mine, and an English big-game hunter plastered with pies in the Stooges' In the Sweet Pie and Pie.

In addition to his roles in the Stooge shorts, he traveled with the team between filming schedules, acting as their straight man in personal appearances.

Eddie Laughton died of pneumonia on March 21, 1952, just two months after the death of Curly Howard, who died of a massive cerebral hemorrhage. Both he and Curly were born in the same year; 1903, and were both 48 years old when they died within two months of each other in 1952.