1. Joe Palma was well known as a supporting player for The Three Stooges and his brief tenure as a body double to member Shemp Howard for four shorts produced after Shemp's death, which led to the coining of the term "Fake Shemp".
11 Facts About Joe Palma
1. 2.
Joe Palma was born and grew up in New York City, and worked as a mortician in the Provenzano Funeral Home, owned by his parents.
3.
Joe Palma joined the stock company at Columbia Pictures in 1937, and played scores of bit parts over 30 years.
4.
Joe Palma was usually in the background, and at most, he would be given only a few lines of dialogue.
5.
Joe Palma can be glimpsed in a variety of movies, including crime dramas, musical comedies, costume epics, westerns, serials and two-reel comedies, in roles such as:.
6.
Today, Joe Palma is best known as Shemp Howard's posthumous double.
7.
On occasion, Joe Palma was required to add a brief line of dialogue or sound.
8.
The few new shots Joe Palma appeared in were then edited together with the recycled footage containing the real Shemp, and "new" films were born.
9.
Joe Palma spent his last years in the entertainment industry as an assistant to Jack Lemmon.
10.
Joe Palma appears as "Mr Palma", the mailman, in Lemmon's 1964 Columbia comedy Good Neighbor Sam.
11.
Joe Palma died of natural causes on August 14,1994, at age 89.