Final Photos Taken of Celebrities Before They Died

By Ryan Tofil April 12, 2018 at 7:49am

Curly Howard

In 1947, Curly Howard suffered a stroke while filming The Three Stooges’ short movie Half-Wits Holiday. His brother Shemp rejoined the Stooges with the promise that Curly would take his spot back once he had recovered, but Curly’s condition never sufficiently improved. In 1948, Curly filmed what was supposed to be a scene for the short Malice in the Palace, where he played an irate chef. Because of Curly’s condition, his performance was not deemed good enough and the scenes involving Curly were cut. The footage from that scene is considered lost, and this still image is all that remains from Curly’s final performance. Curly is on the left, holding Larry Fine, as Curly’s brothers Moe and Shemp Howard look on. Curly died in 1952 at the age of 48 after suffering several more strokes.

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Ryan Tofil

Director, PatriotDepot.com

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Ryan Tofil lived all of his life in Western New York before graduating college and moving to Arizona in 2014 to work for the nonprofit Western Center for Journalism. In 2015, he became the director of Liftable.com, and soon its sister website ThoughtfulWomen.org. Since 2018, Ryan has been involved with PatriotDepot.com, the exclusive provider of The Western Journal merchandise and other essential patriotic products, moving to the site full-time in early 2019.

@RyTof

Ryan Tofil's experience on The Western Journal goes back to 2014 when he was an intern for the non-profit Western Center for Journalism. In 2015, he became the director of Liftable.com, and soon its sister website ThoughtfulWomen.org. These websites eventually combined and became one of the most popular lifestyle websites in the world, at one point being ranked inside the top 200 websites in America by Alexa.com. Liftable.com lives on today as a section of The Western Journal. Since 2018, Ryan has been involved with PatriotDepot.com, the exclusive provider of The Western Journal merchandise and other essential patriotic products, moving to the site full-time in early 2019.

Outside of work, Ryan loves to play chess, sports, and video games; usually while smoking a cigar. He is a proud bird-owner and aquarium aficionado, and always jokes about needing concealed carry permits for his fists, despite only having been in one fight in his life and losing quite badly. His claim to fame is having possibly been the worst NCAA baseball player in the country, riding the bench for a DIII team that went 3-31. He loved every second of it.

Birthplace

Western New York

Education

A.S., Communication, Jamestown Community College

Location

Phoenix, Arizona

Languages Spoken

English, barely. Even worse at Spanish.

Topics of Expertise

Video Games, Sports, Romance, Chess, E-Commerce, Okay not Romance