Paul Howard

Paul Howard died in New York on 2 November 2026, aged 91, according to the Three Stooges fan database ThreeStooges.net. Variety reported on 6 November 2026 that he had died earlier that week in Manhattan, without naming a precise date or cause. No cause of death has been made public. He is survived by his wife, Joanne, and daughter, Jennifer. Tributes from fans and relatives remembered his warmth at conventions. His niece Tessa Maurer shared an excerpt from Joan Howard Maurer's Growing Up Stooge recounting the eventful day of Paul's birth in 1935.

Paul Alan Horwitz was born on 8 July 1935 at Doctor's Hospital in New York City, the second child of Moses Harry "Moe" Howard and Helen Schonberger Howard. His older sister, Joan Howard Maurer (1927-2021), later wrote about the family in Growing Up Stooge. Moe was on stage with Larry and Curly in Boston when Helen went into labour and telegrammed the news of an eight-pound boy. Days later Moe crashed a rented car into a Manhattan lamppost while racing to collect mother and baby in a rainstorm, injuring his face; the mishap became family legend. Paul spent much of his childhood in Hollywood. His mother took him to the movies to watch his father's pie fights, and Moe sometimes left the set still in costume to coach or catch at Paul's baseball games. Among neighbourhood children he sometimes claimed his father was a meter reader, preferring an ordinary job description to explaining Stooges fame.

Publicly, Paul Howard was best known as the keeper of Moe Howard's legacy rather than as a conventional Hollywood star. For decades he appeared at Three Stooges conventions and fan gatherings, answering questions and retelling family stories for audiences who had grown up on Columbia shorts and television reruns. He also spoke at civic clubs, including a 2014 Warren Rotary Club talk covered by the Tribune Chronicle. On screen he appeared as himself in The Stoogephile Trivia Movie (1987), The Three Stooges Family Album (1998), and The Three Stooges 75th Anniversary Special (2003). His major production was the 2015 docuseries Hey Moe, Hey Dad!, which he hosted and helped shape with producer Frank Basile for C3 Entertainment. Across nine chapters the series traced the Stooges' personal lives and Columbia filmography through Howard family archives and interviews with relatives and celebrity fans such as Whoopi Goldberg, Billy West, and Leonard Maltin. Parts of the framing were filmed at the Stoogeum in Ambler, Pennsylvania.

Howard made his long-term home in Yorkville on Manhattan's Upper East Side, close to the neighbourhood of his birth. He was married to Joanne Howard, and they had a daughter, Jennifer, who works as a digital designer and animator in California. His sister Joan remained a central chronicler of the Howard family until her death in 2021. Through Rotary visits and convention travel he stayed in touch with fans who treated Stooges comedy as family tradition, and he often emphasised that keeping the Stooges visible for new generations mattered more than any single anecdote.

Howard's lasting contribution was to keep a personal, family voice in The Three Stooges' afterlife on television, home video, and fan culture. As children of the other original Stooges passed away, he became a rare direct link to Moe, Curly, and Shemp's generation for audiences who only knew the act from reruns. Hey Moe, Hey Dad! remains a primary filmed oral history of the troupe from inside the Howard family, and his convention appearances helped introduce younger fans to the people behind the slapstick. He repeatedly said that whatever kept the Stooges in the public eye for new generations was what mattered most.