When I was only two years old my father died. Max, like so many others at that time, was swept away by tuberculosis. It wasn’t very traumatic to me at that age, but it was to my older brothers. I was probably six years old when I realized that other kids had fathers and I didn’t. It was a brushstroke of depression that really never left me, not having a father, another great wellspring source of love that every child is entitled to. My father’s absence caused a lingering frustration in my life. I felt cheated because he never got to enjoy being a proud father. It was a shame that he never got to see me succeed in my career.
The eldest of my brothers, Irving, kind of took over as a surrogate dad to us. We didn’t have much money, so during the winter, Irving would find a broken sled that somebody had thrown out and make a big present of it for me. Then he would pull me around the block on it in the snow. I’d say, “One more time, Irv, please!” and even though he had already done it twenty times and his hands were frozen, he still gave me one more ride around the block. Nothing quite like having an older brother.
Even though my brother Bernie wasn’t very tall (he was only five feet five), he was a great underhand softball pitcher and a great hitter too. Lenny used to catch for him. Bernie became one of the best-known pitchers in the schoolyard. I was so proud of him. Unfortunately, he peaked at fourteen.
My brother Lenny was especially good to me on Saturday nights. When he left the house, god bless him, he would flip me a half a buck. (A small fortune to a little kid!) For half a buck in Brooklyn in those years I could go out with my friends and get a salami sandwich and a Dr. Brown’s Cel-Ray tonic. And then I still had money left over for joining my friends at the movie house for a Saturday night double feature. And after that I still had fifteen cents left so I’d end up in an ice cream parlor and I’d have a frappe—two scoops of vanilla ice cream smothered in chocolate syrup with a cherry on top. Half a buck. It covered all of it!
Lenny also got me hooked on swing music. He was madly in love with Larry Clinton and his vocalist, Bea Wain, and with Shep Fields and his Rippling Rhythm, which sounded like somebody blowing bubbles into a glass of seltzer water. Lenny spent all his money on clothes; especially on a fedora hat he bought from Moe Penn’s, a hat store in Williamsburg. For twenty minutes he just worked the brim to get it exactly right. I used to sit on the toilet seat, cover down, and watch Lenny as he adjusted his Moe Penn hat in the medicine chest mirror. He would try the brim up and then shake his head no. Put the brim down front and back and shake his head no. Put the back up, put the brim down in front, and then with a broad smile on his face nod his head yes. He was happy. A private moment that I’ll always be grateful to him for allowing me to share.
My brothers were all wonderful. And even though they didn’t have a father of their own, they made sure that this little half-orphan, Melvy, who would never get to know his father, was cared for and looked after.
Not by choice, my mother became both parents. After my brothers were old enough to work, Kitty was able to stay home with her youngest son, me, “Melvy.” We got to know each other. She was my first comic foil, and enabler, and nurtured my imagination. On a Saturday morning she would give me three empty milk deposit bottles, which, upon return to the grocer, got me three cents each. Nine cents, I was short one penny to get into the movie house for a matinee. And believe it or not, during the Depression sometimes we didn’t have that extra penny in the household. So my mother would go next door to borrow a penny from a neighbor so that I could make the dime for the movie ticket.
I couldn’t wait for Saturday morning. The movie theaters opened at ten o’clock and we’d all be there. It was the beginning of a lifelong love affair. For one thin dime, you got two feature films, serials, a race, a newsreel, an animated cartoon, and coming attractions. Movies were magic. You stepped out of the real world (which had terrible things in it, like homework) and into a land of happy endings where dreams came true. There was nothing like the movies. My mother would send me to the theater with a salmon and tomato sandwich, wrapped in wax paper—“?’cause it’s a long day, you know?”
My mother was a true heroine. Losing her husband when she was only thirty, and then having four little kids to raise without a father. She was busy from morning to night: getting breakfast, washing dishes, doing laundry, scrubbing floors, cooking dinner, and finally getting her children to sleep. Everybody assumed my mother had a Yiddish or Jewish accent, probably because of my being the 2000 Year Old Man with Carl Reiner, which I performed with a decidedly Jewish accent. Actually, strangely enough if my mother had any accent at all it was Irish. As a little kid she went to public school in New York City on the Lower East Side and practically all the teachers in the city at that time were Irish. So when she learned how to speak English, she spoke it with a bit of an Irish brogue. Instead of “Thirty-third Street” she’d say, “Tirdy-tird Street.” And instead of “Flush the toilet!” She’d say, “Flush the terlet!”
My mother was definitely short. So short in fact that I think she could walk under a coffee table with a high hat on. I loved her to pieces. She was particularly sweet and loving to me, her darling baby boy. I suspect I inherited my love for music from my mother’s wake-up songs. She used to wake me at eight o’clock every morning to get me ready for kindergarten. She always was singing along with Bing Crosby, who had a radio broadcast between eight and eight-fifteen every weekday morning. I still remember her sunny voice singing a Crosby hit, “I Found a Million Dollar Baby (in a Five and Ten Cent Store).”
“If you should run into a shower,
Well step inside my cottage door,
And meet the million dollar baby
From the five and ten cent store.”