Warning: Stooges Ahead : A New Wave of Visibility Planned in Wake of Court Settlement : STOOGES: Settlement Clears Way for Revival

Jean De Rita smiles as she recalls her privileged place watching one of movies’ most enduring comedy teams--the Three Stooges--reinvent itself in the 1960s for a new generation of fans.

“Moe would say, ‘Be sure and bring Jean now--she’s our best audience,’ ” De Rita recalls. “They got along so well, and I loved all three of them.”

But two decades later, De Rita--who was married to Stooge member “Curly” Joe De Rita--found laughter in short supply as her husband’s health failed and the royalty checks they lived on suddenly stopped, despite rising profits in Stooge merchandising.

“I’d just sit in my car and cry,” De Rita recalls. “I didn’t know what to do.”

Now, after 2 1/2 years, the ultimate Three Stooges battle--pitting heirs of De Rita and LarryFine against the heirs of Moe Howard--has been settled in a Los Angeles courtroom. The ultimate winner may be Stooge fans, as the victorious Fine and De Rita team plans a new wave of merchandising, TV shows, computer software and even a live-action film.

“We want to go forward on positive things--no animosity,” says attorney Robert Benjamin, who is Jean De Rita’s son and initiated the suit with his brother, attorney Earl Benjamin.

Last month, a U.S. bankruptcy judge approved an agreement putting future licensing of the Stooge image solely in the hands of Comedy III Productions, the company formed in 1959 by Fine, De Rita and Howard.

That decision was the final victory in the lawsuit filed in 1993 by heirs of Fine and De Rita, who accused Howard’s heirs--including grandson Jeffrey Scott, then in charge of distributing royalties--of owing them more than $5 million in merchandising profits. The plaintiffs won a jury trial in 1994; now, a settlement has been reached between the two camps, paving the way to launch new Stooge projects under the Comedy III banner.

“The mission is to keep their humor going into the future,” Earl Benjamin says. “It’s an exciting time for all the heirs to see the Stooges rejuvenated.”

The resolution is especially bittersweet for Jean De Rita, whose husband spent his final years fighting strokes, an ulcer, dementia and other ailments while trying to understand why he was no longer receiving income from his work. De Rita--the last surviving member--died in 1993.

“Joe was such a trusting person,” she recalls. “When Joan [Maurer, Howard’s daughter] sent us a letter saying she didn’t think Joe deserved money, he was very hurt; he’d say, ‘She doesn’t mean that.’

“I didn’t have any money when he had to go into the Motion Picture Country Home hospital. They were going to put him out. When Joe died, my boys had to pay for his funeral. I didn’t have money for the marker for his grave--but a man he worked with years ago in burlesque called. He makes monuments for cemeteries, and he made a marker for Joe with his picture on it.”

These days, a much happier Jean De Rita is serving as president of Comedy III. Maurer remains a shareholder; perhaps the best-known relative of the team thanks to her several books and convention appearances, Maurer now hopes to “leave all the negativity behind and get back to my creativity.”

“It was interesting during the trial finding bits of humor that helped me keep an even keel,” she says. “There were times I wanted to cry out [a la Curly], ‘I’m a victim of coi-cum-stance!’--but I didn’t know if the judge had a sense of humor.”

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Heading the list of Comedy III projects are a Stooges TV special, a repackaging of their original movies and even a new feature film--to star look-alikes--with Columbia Pictures. (A live Stooges stage show has been running for three years at Las Vegas’ MGM Grand Theme Park and may be done elsewhere.)

Comedy III has also signed a deal with Sony Signatures, a Columbia merchandising partner that has developed 70 Stooge products in the last year, including boxer shorts, cards, watches, ties, dolls, chess sets and screen savers.

“We expect the Stooges to do about $30 million in 1996,” says Sony Signatures President Dell Furano. “Our goal is to grow that to $75 million.” (Among the unauthorized products Comedy III recently blocked: a three-headed Stooge condom.)

The rising marketability of the Stooge image is just the latest comeback of a comedy troupe that specialized in reinventing itself over four decades. The team’s most successful incarnation--Howard, Fine and Howard’s brother “Curly”--spanned the early 1930s to 1946, when Curly suffered a stroke and was replaced by another Howard brother, “Shemp.”

After Shemp’s death in 1955, comic Joe Besser joined the team. De Rita replaced him in 1959, months after Columbia Pictures ended a 25-year association with the trio that produced about 190 short films.

The new agreement among Stooge relatives has even transformed the lives of family members less involved in the lawsuit. Christy Clark was in high school when her grandfather Larry Fine died in 1974; a former office manager in Ramona, she’s decided to “make it a full-time venture catering to Stooge fans everywhere.”

“We didn’t watch the films very often, because it was Pop-Pop getting beat up all the time--it wasn’t funny to us,” Clark recalls. “Now, we’ve been renewing family ties and getting closer to the memory of my grandfather and grandmother.”

For several De Rita and Fine heirs, that renewal includes a planned rapprochement with Maurer (if not with her son, Jeffrey Scott, who is not a Comedy III shareholder).

“It’s not easy to go through,” says Kris Cutler, a granddaughter of Fine whose comments echoed several family members’. “You wonder if you’re doing the right thing at times. You’ve known these people all your life. But you have to do what you feel is right. My grandfather would want me to, I think.”