Born into a Jewish family in a small town Iowa, the only boy among six sisters, Mose Sharp couldn't leave home soon enough. By sixteen, Mose had already joined the vaudeville circuit. But he knew one thing from the start: I needed a partner, he recalls. I had always needed a partner. Then, an ebullient, self destructive comedian named Rocky Carter came crashing into his life and a thirty year partnership was born. But as the comedy team of Carter and Sharp thrived from the vaudeville backwaters to Broadway to Hollywood, a funny thing happened amid the laughter: it was Mose who had all the best lines offstage. Rocky would go through money, women, and wives in his restless search for love; Mose would settle down to a family life marked by fragile joy and wrenching tragedy. And soon, cracks were appearing in their complex relationship until one unforgivable act leads to another and a partnership begins to unravel.