"As Happy as Larry"

Posted by Victoria S Dennis on June 30, 2005

In Reply to: "As Happy as Larry" posted by Miranda on June 30, 2005

: "As Happy as Larry". I looked up your site to find the origin of this, but despite much debate, no one has mentioned the place I always assumed it came from, which is the Three Stooges. Weren't they happy blokes? And wasn't on of them called Larry?? Could this be a possible origin of the phrase?

Both Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable and Cassell's Dictionary of Slang agree that this is an Australian phrase and that the original Larry was probably (though not certainly) Larry Foley, a celebrated Australian boxer, who lived 1847-1917.