On screen he was the indestructible human cannonball whose head broke saws and hammers. Off screen, Jerome Lester Horwitz was a quiet, deeply insecure man who drank just to feel comfortable in a crowded room and built a human shield out of pure comedy.

This deep dive strips away the manic Curly Howard persona to reveal the complex human underneath, a graceful ballroom dancer whose entire physical style was born from a childhood gunshot wound and the shame of shaving his head. We trace how his greatest insecurities became his most famous gags, how Columbia Pictures worked him like machinery, and how the strokes that ended his career played out tragically on film.

• How a self-inflicted ankle wound and a permanent limp inspired his iconic shuffling, circular walk
• The dressing-room moment he shaved his beautiful hair to become a stooge, and the identity loss it cost him
• Why directors left blank spaces in scripts so he could improvise his woo-woos, nyuks, and spins
• How Harry Cohn trapped the Stooges in short films to suppress their wages and refused Curly medical leave
• The devastating 1946 stroke on the set of Halfwits Holiday and his death at just 48