Onscreen from 1938, balding American comedian Joe Palma (sometimes billed Joseph Palma) became a fixture in Columbia Pictures short subjects, earning a reported 55 dollars a day supporting everybody from "Woo-Woo" Hugh Herbert to Vera Vague to the Three Stooges. Along with Johnny Kascier and the veteran Al Thompson, Palma played bit parts and did stunt work in virtually all the Stooges comedies of the 1940s and early '50s. When Shemp Howard died suddenly of a heart attack in November 1955, Palma doubled him in four comedies before producer/director Jules White finally settled on Joe Besser as the third Stooge. The studio kept up the charade by filming Palma, as Shemp, from the back or having him carry heavy loads of props that completely obscured his face. Joe Palma outlasted the Columbia short subject department, retiring from screen work in 1965.