(Dec. 18, 1938 - May 6, 2025)
Daughter of The Three Stooges'
Curly Howard, dies at 86
Story by Mike Barnes
Marilyn Howard Ellman, the youngest daughter of The Three Stooges star Curly Howard, died May 6 in Simi Valley of heart failure, her son Bradley Server told The Hollywood Reporter. She was 86.
With her parents divorced and her father often on the road at the height of his career in the early 1940s, Ellman only got to visit him maybe two weekends a month, her son noted. Later, she would spend time with him in the hospital after he had suffered a series of strokes, one of which forced him to leave The Three Stooges in 1946. Â
"My mom vividly remembers how much he loved animals," Server said in a 2020 interview. "She would always play with a dog he had. And he absolutely adored this dog that stood by him until the end. You know, despite my grandfather's big personality onscreen, I learned he was actually a shy, quiet man in private."
Ellman was just 13 when her dad died at age 48 on Jan. 18, 1952, in San Gabriel, California. Curly had been replaced in the act by brother Shemp Howard, who joined another brother, Moe Howard, and Larry Fine.
Marilyn Howard was born in Los Angeles on Dec. 18, 1938. Her dad - birth name Jerome Lester Horwitz - and mom, Elaine Julia Ackerman, were married for three years before they divorced in 1940. (Curly would have a second daughter named Janie with his fourth wife.)
After Curly's death, she was adopted by her mother's second husband, Moe Diamond, when she was 14.