We laughed hard at real stories of tragedy. It had to be real and it had to be funny. Somebody getting hurt was wonderful. Later, as the 2000 Year Old Man with Carl Reiner I explained the difference between comedy and tragedy: If I cut my finger, that’s tragedy. Comedy is if you walk into an open sewer and die.
Comedy is a very powerful component of life. It has the most to say about the human condition because if you laugh you can get by. You can struggle when things are bad if you have a sense of humor. Laughter is a protest scream against death, against the long goodbye. It’s a defense against unhappiness and depression.
Words were my equalizer. In our gang, I was the undisputed champ at corner shtick. We drank egg creams, watched girls, and riffed on one another. My wit is often characterized as being Jewish comedy. Occasionally, that’s true. But for the most part to characterize my humor as purely Jewish humor is not accurate. It’s really New York humor. New York humor is not just Jewish humor. It has a certain rhythm. It has a certain intensity and a certain pulse. Lenny Bruce, Rodney Dangerfield, Jackie Mason, and stand-up comedians like me were not simply Jewish. They were New York—there is a big difference.
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My mom got homesick for the old neighborhood and we moved back to Williamsburg to 111 Lee Avenue. I transferred from Abraham Lincoln High School in Coney Island to Eastern District High School in Williamsburg. I was on the senior council and the fencing team. Under “goal” in the yearbook I put “To be President of the U.S.” No lack of chutzpah there.
My yearbook photo at Eastern District High School in Brooklyn.
Just to be clear, I never really became president. When I am asked, “Why did you become a comedian?”—there is no way to psychologically explain and say it’s this or it’s that. A lot of people think that comedy and getting laughs and applause is making up for an unhappy childhood. Au contraire! I think it’s just the opposite. All I can say is that in my case comedy was keeping the joy of a happy childhood going strong. I definitely wanted a continuum of the love that I got from my mother, brothers, and aunts and uncles. Laughter is a concrete response to your actions, a way to let you know that people are responding to your efforts. You do get the spotlight when you’re the baby of the family. Somewhere around sixteen or seventeen you don’t get that anymore. I wasn’t getting kissed for just being Melvin anymore. Now I had to go out and earn it. I needed to be kissed for being somebody.
So I sought the spotlight.
Chapter 2
The Mountains
Early on, one of my only connections to show business was an actor, writer, and director by the name of Don Appell. He was one of the few people in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn that actually was working in show business. My buddy Joe Gevanter wanted to be an actor and I wanted to be a comedian. Somehow, Joe found out that this actor Don Appell lived off Keap Street and was in a Broadway play directed by Orson Welles called Native Son, which was playing at the St. James Theatre.
（Strangely enough, many years later, The Producers made its debut at the very same theater, the St. James on Forty-fourth Street.）
Anyway, Joe said we should wait for Don Appell at the stoop of his apartment building so that when he got back from the theater, we could ply him with questions about how to break into the business. Starting at eleven p.m. we waited outside his building hoping to get lucky. A week went by, but we never seemed to be there at the right time to catch him. But one night when we were just about to quit and go home, BAM! There he was, Don Appell in person, wearing a camel’s hair overcoat with a belt and a white fedora. When we approached him, he was surprised, but not particularly angry. The actor’s ego in him flowered when Joe and I peppered him with praise and questions. He told us he’d be glad to meet with us and gave us some times and dates when he’d be free. We eagerly met with him every chance we could. Unfortunately, my friend Joe moved away from Williamsburg, so I then became Don Appell’s only loyal fan.
Later in life, in addition to being an actor, Don Appell wrote the book for Milk and Honey, a hit Broadway musical with songs by Jerry Herman. He also went on to write a successful drama about anti-Semitism called This, Too, Shall Pass. He spread his wings into television where he wrote, produced, and directed many productions in both New York and Hollywood.
I couldn’t wait to meet up with Don and show him my latest display of comic ideas. Once in a while he laughed out loud when I came up with different concepts for impressions like Susan Cagney, James Cagney’s sister. I would be doing Cagney, but with lines like: “Where did I put my curlers? Somebody must have taken them! You dirty rats!” He thought I was pretty good for a fourteen-and-a-half-year-old wannabe.