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As a child, Larry Fine spilled a bottle of a powerful acid, badly burning his left arm. Doctors recommended that he take violin lessons as therapy to strengthen the damaged muscles. At age ten, he played a solo piece, backed by the Howard Lanin Orchestra. His parents even considered sending him to Europe to study music, but they decided against this when World War I began. When Larry joined the Three Stooges, Ted Healy, who founded the act, offered him a salary of $90 a week and an extra $10 if he threw away the violin. Fine always played the middle stooge with a receding hairline and bushy, unkempt hair. While he was not as dominating as Moe or as distinctive as Curly or his replacements, his relative normality allowed him to play the necessary straight man to the others. According to Fine, the Three Stooges were favorites of Harry Cohn, the boss of Columbia Pictures. Larry recalled that in the late 1950s, when other Hollywood studios were phasing out theatrical short-subjects, Cohn reassured them with these words: "You guys are good luck to me. As long as I'm alive, you've got a job here." Cohn died in 1958 and Columbia immediately shut down its shorts department, putting the Stooges out of work. After Columbia shut down its shorts department, the Stooges took their act on the road. What they did not know was that they had found a renewed popularity thanks to television. Larry's sister said when the train pulled into some town, there was a mob of people waiting. Larry wondered who the V.I.P. was; they had no idea the crowd of people waiting was for them. Offstage, Larry was a social butterfly. He liked a good time and surrounded himself with friends. He and his wife, Mabel Haney, loved to party, and every Christmas served lavish midnight meals. Some of his friends called him a "yes man," since he was so agreeable, no matter what the circumstances. Owing to his wife's dislike of housekeeping, the Fines spent years living in hotels until they finally purchased a home in Los Angeles after World War II. Happy Birthday, Larry Fine!