It's Good to Be the King: The Seriously Funny Life of Mel Brooks (5 page)

If restrictive school life had been a bore before, now that he was nine years old and his teachers were doling out odious homework, he felt compelled to retaliate. When called upon by instructors to recite information he should have absorbed from his daily homework assignments, he deflected their stern gaze by answering with a quip or a brief routine executed at his desk. (Once when asked to hold forth on Christopher Columbus, the boy responded with, “Columbus Cleaning and Pressing, Fifth and Hooper.” Another time when directed by his teacher to read a class composition assignment aloud, he suddenly turned into a whirling dervish. He flailed his arms dramatically as he announced in his high-pitched youngster’s voice, “My Day at Camp,” and launched into his theatrical recitation.)

Such increasingly smart-alecky shenanigans in the classroom made the other youngsters laugh at Melvin’s audacity. It gave him newfound respect of sorts with his mates for being a rebel against the academic Establishment. However, in the 1930s, when mild corporal punishment was an accepted method of dealing with student misbehavior, Kaminsky received a healthy share of physical rebukes. Decades later, he’d recall such reprimands from his teachers with a tinge of pride (and, perhaps, a bit of exaggeration). “The class would laugh and I’d get hit. But by then I’d be laughing so hard I couldn’t stop. Slapped, grabbed by the hair, dragged to the principal’s office, couldn’t stop laughing. Hit by the principal, kicked down the stairs, bleeding in the gutter, couldn’t stop laughing.”

•     •     •

During these early formative years, Melvin found himself falling in love with the movies, an entertainment art form that had largely switched from silents to talkies in the years just after Kaminsky’s birth in 1926. As a tyke, Melvin had joined family members on occasional excursions to Coney Island: “We’d go there, and we’d get a frankfurter, a root beer and a boiled-to-death ear of corn at Feldman’s, which was before Nathan’s Famous Hot Dogs. In the back, they had a silent movie theater [where the admission was free or next-to-nothing if one bought food up front]. The screen was just a white sheet. They had this flickering machine. That was the first time I saw this angel with a white face and these beautiful eyes. I knew this was something special. It was the first time I saw [comedian Buster] Keaton. He wore a flat pancake of a hat, and I just couldn’t believe the man’s grace.”

For Melvin, watching these silent pictures was love at first sight. This special enjoyment expanded over the next years: “I never cared about religion, but I prayed to silent movies. It was my contact with things soulful. I’d go there as often as I could. I’d sneak in, actually and watch the movie without buying the frankfurter or the knish.”

By the time the boy was five, he was joining friends for a visit to the Marcy Theater, a small Williamsburg cinema where they showed talkies. He paid the small admission price with pennies his doting mother scraped together for him. One of his most memorable outings was seeing
Frankenstein
, the horror film starring Boris Karloff. It was first released in late 1931 and, thereafter, was a popular item in reruns, especially for children’s matinees.

The James Whale-directed feature made a stunning impression on the future filmmaker. “I had a recurring dream that he [i.e., Frankenstein’s monster] was climbing up my fire escape. Now, I never really analyzed why Boris Karloff, or why the monster, would pick 365 South Third Street in the Williamsburg area of Brooklyn to climb that particular tenement fire escape. Or why he would stop at apartment 5-B and try to get into my bedroom. I never figured that out. But I knew for sure he was after me.… And that’s one of the reasons I made
Young Frankenstein
[1974], I said, I don’t want this dream anymore. I want him to be a friendly guy. I want to exorcise this dybbuk, this devil, from my system.”

Despite his alarming dream, Melvin, being a prankster who exerted his imagination to uncover the funny side of most everything in life, was able to translate the nightmare-inducing experience of
Frankenstein
into his own brand of comedy. At the time, one of his closest school chums was Eugene Cohen. Kaminsky could launch his loyal pal into hysterics just by singing the Irving Berlin song “Puttin’ on the Ritz” in the manner of Boris Karloff. “It got so bad that… [Eugene] couldn’t hear that song near a window, because he might roll out and fall to his death. I would start to sing and he would collapse. He would have to be dragged to the principal’s office by his feet, with his head banging on the step, still laughing.”

•     •     •

Besides moviegoing, Melvin had another entertainment passion. It was the radio, which brought free, wonderfully varied diversions right into one’s own home. One of his mother’s—and his grandparents’—favorite shows was
The Yiddish Philosopher.
On this offering, the program’s lead player made all sorts of pronouncements on a variety of topics—much in the manner of Melvin’s own grandfather Samuel Kaminsky. (Said Brooks, “It was a way of talking that certain Jews his age had. He offered an expert opinion on any subject, as if he was [the great German philosopher Arthur] Schopenhauer.”)

A particularly popular radio entry with Melvin—especially after he learned about his mother’s girlhood connection to the star—was Eddie Cantors weekly comedy program. “It was very important to me,” the budding entertainer noted years later. “Very influential on my work. Along with his timing was his particular delivery. He took his time, didn’t rush. There was nobody like Eddie Cantor, that’s why he was great.” According to Melvin, listening week after week to
The Eddie Cantor Show
taught him a useful gambit that would come in handy decades later when he was directing film and TV projects where he needed to mesh the cast into a harmonious troupe. “The sketches were fast and furious—and Cantor was great at supporting the other guy in the sketch. He had a special genius for starring his featured players—and then supporting them. You might think the other guy was getting the laugh, but it was Cantor who was making it all work for me.”

•     •     •

Of all Melvin’s relatives he was most encouraged by his mother’s brother, Joe. Like Kitty Kaminsky, Joe was very short of stature (scarcely five feet tall). As such, when he was at work driving a taxi he had to sit on a pile of phone books so he could see over the steering wheel, and he had to rely on specially constructed gas and clutch pedals for his feet to reach them.

Through his cabbie work in and about Brooklyn, the congenial Uncle Joe was acquainted with a wide variety of doormen and concierges in the borough. These were the men who often got tickets to Broadway shows for the tenants in their fancy buildings. One Friday in 1935, Joe rushed over to the Kaminskys’ apartment with exciting news for his youngest nephew. He had done a favor for one of these doormen and, in appreciation, he had been handed two tickets for a Saturday matinee of Cole Porter’s
Anything Goes.
Joe announced that the next day he would take Melvin into Manhattan to see the hit show, which had debuted in November 1934. The two of them went to the Alvin Theater the next afternoon, and there from the balcony they watched and listened to Ethel Merman, William Gaxton, and the other cast members as they performed the musical comedy, which boasted such numbers as “I Get a Kick Out of You,” “You’re the Top,” and “Blow, Gabriel, Blow.” It was the youngster’s first encounter with a live professional stage show.

This exciting theater outing was a monumental experience for young Melvin. “I had goose bumps. I almost fainted.… And oh, the glory of the sound that came from that orchestra pit, led by the brass section, those blaring trumpets and thrilling trombones reaching for the moon.” According to Brooks, “When the final curtain fell, I leaped to my feet and cheered my 9-year-old head off; way up there at the top of the balcony, I figured that I was as close to heaven as I’d ever get.” As the entertainer vividly recounted years later, “I began weeping, just couldn’t contain myself. I said, ‘When I get big, this is what I’m gonna do. I’m gonna write for the theater. The real world stinks. This is the world I want to live in, the world of imagination.’” This decision prompted Mel to conclude that night as he lay awake, too excited to fall asleep, “Being a Broadway songwriter, I decided, would be even better than playing shortstop for the Brooklyn Dodgers, which up until then had been my most fantastic dream.”

•     •     •

Like many other adventurous youths of the time, Melvin went through a phase in which he snitched a few penny candies from the corner candy store. Everyone else seemed to do it, and he thought little about the possible consequences of his delinquency. Later, he and a pal or two developed the habit of hanging out at the local five-and-dime, where a short Filipino man was often present to demonstrate his virtuosity on a yo-yo and induce onlookers to buy the product. Kaminsky and company saw this as a golden occasional opportunity to fill their pockets with yo-yos when the demonstrator’s back was turned. Such petty thievery was undertaken several times without anyone’s seemingly noticing.

One day, Melvin and an accomplice returned to the scene of their repeated crime. Suddenly, stealing yo-yos no longer held its once magical allure. As Kaminsky and his pal wandered up and down the aisles of the store’s game section, Melvin’s eyes fastened on a toy gun. Stealthily checking to see that the coast was clear, he maneuvered the toy weapon into his jacket pocket. Kaminsky and his accomplice began making their escape from the store. Suddenly, a voice said, “Halt!” The boys nervously turned around and found themselves staring into the piercing eyes of the irate store manager. He demanded the return of the stolen toy, promising dire consequences thereafter. Although his frightened friend stood thunderstruck, Melvin sprang into inspired action. Pulling the fake pistol from his pocket, he pointed the “weapon” in the direction of his accuser. Mimicking the manner of cinema gangsters (such as James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson) whom he’d seen many times on the screen, Kaminsky snarled, “Stand back or I’ll plug ya!” His astonished captor recoiled in apparent shock, and Melvin and his confederate used this opportunity to flee the store.

On another occasion, Melvin and his favorite cohort, Eugene Cohen, snuck into the RKO Republic Theater on Keap Street, about a quarter of a mile from where the Kaminskys lived on South Third. In short order, the errant boys were apprehended by eagle-eyed ushers and escorted unceremoniously to the manager’s office. At first the young wrongdoers thought the situation was terribly funny. However, the manager quickly changed their mood when he announced ominously, “You have your choice. I could call the police or give you a beating.” While Cohen shouted, “The police,” Kaminsky simultaneously loudly opted for the beating. (Melvin feared having this misdeed go on his record and disgracing his family’s name.) Taken aback by the offenders’ conflicting choices of punishment, the manager decided to let the boisterous miscreants go, warning them never to do such a thing again.

4
Hello and Good-bye to Brighton Beach

When I was a kid, I was very confused by what the Jew was in the outer world. I knew what he was in Williamsburg. He was a runner and a rat and scared as hell. But Jews in the outside world I heard different, conflicting things about. First of all I heard they were the communists, overthrowing all the governments in the world. When I was in high school, I thought a Jew’s job in life was to throw over every government. The other thing I heard was the Jews were capitalists and had all the gold and the banks and that the Jews’ job was to kill all the socialists and the radicals. So I never really figured out what the Jewish mission was. Should I kill the capitalists and take all their money? No, I’d be killing Jews. Should I stamp out the radicals so that we could keep our money? No, I’d be killing Jews. Very confusing.

–Mel Brooks, 1975

Not too long after Melvins bar mitzvah in mid-1939, the family relocated to Brighton Beach, an area adjacent to Coney Island made famous in Neil Simon’s 1980s’ Broadway play
Brighton Beach Memoirs
, which was later made into a movie. The Kaminskys’ new community was approximately 15 miles away from Williamsburg, but it felt to the adolescent as if he was very much a stranger in a strange land. He missed his old pals and the familiar landmarks in which he had grown up.

The immediate advantages of the move were that the Kaminsky clan now lived much closer to the ocean and its cooling breezes. Then too, residing in Brighton Beach placed Melvin in far closer proximity to his beloved Coney Island and all the wonders that its boardwalks, amusement park, food stands, and beach held for him.

It was while living in Brighton Beach that Melvin matriculated at Abraham Lincoln High School. There the smart-mouthed young man made a new set of friends. One of them was Mickey Rich, who lived down the street from the Kaminskys. One afternoon Melvin and another recently acquired pal, Billy, stopped by the Riches’ home. In the course of the visit, Melvin noticed a set of drums in one of the rooms. Mickey, the son of veteran vaudevillians, explained that the instruments belonged to his older brother, Bernard. With Melvin’s love of music, it was not long before he—uninvited—began tinkering with a snare drum. He liked the attention-getting sounds it made. As he tinkered with the instrument, Mickey’s older brother happened to come home. Bernard stood in the doorway listening to the visitor’s attempt at percussion playing. “Not good. But not too bad,” he judged.

Looking first at Bernard and then at the drum set, which bore the logo “A.S. B.R.,” Melvin quickly figured out who this drummer was. He was the talented Buddy Rich, who was then employed in the band of one of Melvin’s musical favorites (Artie Shaw), and who would soon be joining Tommy Dorsey’s famous group. (Rich was also billed, for some time, as the greatest drummer in the world.) Melvin expressed his great enthusiasm for Shaw’s band, and, in particular, for Buddy’s remarkable percussion work. One thing led to another, and soon the good-natured Buddy suggested that Melvin drop by on weekends and, if Rich was not on the road with Shaw’s band, he would give him drumming lessons.