Norman Maurer

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Norman Richard Maurer (May 13, 1926 - November 23, 1986) was a comic book artist, and a writer, director and producer of films and TV shows.

His life-long association with the Three Stooges began about the time of his marriage to Joan Howard Maurer, the daughter of the comedy team's Moe Howard on June 29, 1947. In 1949, he produced two Three Stooges comic book issues for Jubilee, based on the short films the team was making for Columbia Pictures. With Joe Kubert, and his brother Leonard Maurer, Norman Maurer created the first 3-D comics-- Three-Dimension Comics featuring Mighty Mouse in 1953. Two three-dimensional Stooge comics were also issued in 1953. He was to return to the Stooges in comic form in 1972 with Gold Key Comics' The Little Stooges, which ran for seven issues over the next two years.

He was associate producer of Space Master X-7 (1958), in which his father-in-law, Moe, had a minor role, and is credited with the creation of the CineMagic process used in the 1960 film The Angry Red Planet.

He became the manager of the Three Stooges after Columbia terminated their employment in 1957, and has credits in most of their later feature films. He wrote and produced The Three Stooges Meet Hercules (1962), The Three Stooges in Orbit (1962), and The Outlaws Is Coming (1965), and produced The Three Stooges Scrapbook (1960), and The Three Stooges Go Around the World in a Daze (1963). His son, Moe's grandson, Jeffrey Alan Scott, can be seen in The Outlaws Is Coming, credited as Jeffrey Alan, and The Three Stooges Go Around the World in a Daze in the role of Timmy, credited as Geoffrey A. Maurer. Maurer himself can also be seen on camera as a TV cameraman in The Three Stooges Scrapbook and as a camper in 1970's Kook's Tour, which he also directed. Kook's Tour was intended to be a comedy-travelogue television series featuring the Stooges, but Larry Fine suffered a stroke during production of the pilot episode and the series was cancelled; several years later, Maurer edited together a 50-minute version of Kook's Tour using available footage from the pilot and released it to the then-booming Super 8 home movie market.

He was executive producer of the thirty-nine live-action segments which were used to introduce and follow Cambria Studios' syndicated The New Three Stooges cartoons (1965-1966).

He later became associated with Hanna-Barbera, working as a writer on their The New Scooby-Doo Movies (1972), Speed Buggy (1973), and The Scooby-Doo/Dynomutt Hour (1976). He also created and executive produced their 1978 series, The Three Robonic Stooges. Maurer's sons, Jeffrey (known professionally as Jeffrey Scott) and Michael also had careers as prolific TV cartoon writers.

Maurer died of cancer on November 23, 1986 in Los Angeles, California). He was 60 years of age.