Joe Besser (born Jessel Besser, August 12, 1907 – March 1, 1988) was an American actor and comedian known for his impish humor and wimpy characters. He is best known for his brief stint as a member of The Three Stooges in movie short subjects of 1957–1959. He is also remembered for his television roles: Stinky, the bratty man-child on The Abbott and Costello Show, and Jillson, the maintenance man on The Joey Bishop Show.

Besser was born in St. Louis, Missouri, on August 12, 1907. He was the ninth child of Morris and Fanny [Fecht] Besser, Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. He had seven older sisters and an older brother, Manny, who was in show business, primarily as an ethnic Jewish comic. From an early age, Joe was fascinated with show business, especially the magic act of Howard Thurston that visited St. Louis annually. When Joe was 12, Thurston allowed him to be an audience plant. Besser was so excited by this that he sneaked into Thurston's train after the St. Louis run of the show and was discovered the next day in Detroit sleeping on top of the lion's cage.

Thurston informed Besser's parents of the situation and trained him as an assistant. The first act involved pulling a rabbit out of a hat. The trick involved two rabbits, one hidden in a pocket of Thurston's cape. But young Besser was so nervous that he botched it badly, pulling out the rabbit from the cape at the same time the other rabbit was on display, before the trick had been performed. The audience roared with laughter, and Besser from then on was assigned "comic mishap" roles only. Besser was placed by St. Louis juvenile authorities in a "corrective school" (reform school) at age 12.

Besser remained in show business and developed a comic character: an impish but whiny and bratty man who was easily excitable and upset, throwing temper tantrums with little provocation. Besser, with his frequent outbursts of "You crazy, youuuuu!" and "Not so faaaaaast!" or "Not so harrrrd!!" became a vaudeville headliner, and movie and radio appearances soon followed.

The comedy team of Olsen and Johnson, whose Broadway revues were fast-paced collections of songs and blackouts, hired Joe Besser to join their Broadway show Sons o' Fun. He appeared in five sketches, including one as the sissified "Cowboy Joe". Besser's noisy intrusions fit the Olsen & Johnson style perfectly, and Besser's work caught the attention of the Shubert brothers, who signed Besser to a theatrical contract. Columbia Pictures hired Besser away from the Shuberts, and Besser relocated to Hollywood in 1944, where he brought his comic character to feature-length musical comedies like Hey, Rookie and Eadie Was a Lady (1945). On May 9, 1946, Besser appeared on the pioneering NBC television program Hour Glass, performing his "Army Drill" routine with stage partner Jimmy Little. According to an article in the May 27, 1946 issue of Life magazine, the show was seen by about 20,000 people on about 3,500 television sets, mostly in the New York City area. During this period, he appeared on the Jack Benny radio program in the episode entitled "Jack Prepares For Carnegie Hall" in June, 1943. Besser's persona was sufficiently well known that he was frequently caricatured in Looney Tunes animated shorts of the era. He appeared in the action film The Desert Hawk (1950).

Besser had substituted for Lou Costello on radio, opposite Bud Abbott, and by the 1950s he was firmly established as one of the Abbott and Costello regulars. When the duo filmed The Abbott and Costello Show for television, they hired Joe Besser to play Oswald "Stinky" Davis, a bratty, loudmouthed child dressed in an oversized Little Lord Fauntleroy outfit, shorts, and a flat-top hat with an overhanging brim. He appeared during the first season of The Abbott and Costello Show. Besser was cast for the role of Yonkel, a chariot man, in the low-budget biblical film Sins of Jezebel (1953), which starred Paulette Goddard as the titular wicked queen.

In 1949 Jules White, who produced the Three Stooges comedies for Columbia, hired Joe Besser to star in his own two-reel comedies. Ten Besser shorts were released over eight years, four of the films teaming Besser with radio comedian Jim Hawthorne.

On November 22, 1955, Shemp Howard of the Three Stooges died at the age of 60 of a massive cerebral hemorrhage while on his way home from a boxing exhibition. Columbia had promised theater owners eight Stooge comedies into the 1956 season, and only four were completed when Shemp died. To fulfill the contract, producer-director Jules White manufactured four more films with Shemp's surviving partners, Moe Howard and Larry Fine, working as a two-man team (with Shemp seen entirely in older film footage). After the last four films were completed, Larry suggested that he and Moe could continue working as "The Two Stooges." Studio chief Harry Cohn rejected the proposal. Although Moe had legal approval to allow new members into the act, Columbia executives had the final say about any actor who would appear in the studio's films and insisted on a performer already under contract to Columbia. At the time, Joe Besser was one of a few comedians still making comedy shorts at the studio, his last one being released in 1956. He successfully renegotiated his contract and was paid his former feature-film salary, which was more than the other Stooges earned.