It's Good to Be the King: The Seriously Funny Life of Mel Brooks (6 page)

Melvin was ecstatic at this fortuitous turn of events. Over the next several months, whenever he learned that Buddy was home, he would come by the Riches’ for a free drumming session. With the boy’s innate sense of rhythm, he was soon mastering the basic licks. (He was elated to realize that with his enthusiastic, loud drum playing he now had an option for holding people’s attention other than just his patter of jokes and stories.) Weeks later, Buddy kindly arranged with Artie Shaw for Melvin to attend some of the band’s recording sessions in Manhattan. Kaminsky would sit very quietly in the studio watching, listening, and thrilling at his brush with musical greats. It was another memorable event in his life to date. (Several years later when Melvin, now established in the entertainment field, encountered Artie Shaw, he talked enthusiastically and reverently with the band leader of those long-ago halcyon days.)

Being a very practical soul, Mrs. Kaminsky did not share her beloved youngest son’s enthusiasm for show business—let alone his growing penchant for drumming. (Eventually, Melvin wangled a set of drums for himself and his constant, noisy practicing nearly drove her to distraction.) To his mother, Mel’s banging away was a lot of crazy, useless noise that would lead nowhere, certainly not provide her last-born with a useful career. Her three eldest boys had all proved to be diligent students, who, between their work at the knitting mills and in other jobs, still found the time and energy to complete high school. They even went on to college (albeit night classes). In fact, Irving would become a chemist, a fact that made Kitty Kaminsky very proud.

However, the self-willed Melvin was another story. He just could not, or would not, settle down in the classrooms, and his poor grades reflected his continued lack of interest in the curriculum. Even on those rare occasions when he applied himself to academics, he demonstrated that, unlike his siblings, he had no real aptitude for math. This failing soon ruled out Melvin’s occasional thoughts of doing something “sensible” with his life, like becoming a chemist, or even something more exciting, such as a pilot.

•     •     •

Despite her family’s improved living situation in less crowded, less rundown Brighton Beach, Kitty greatly missed the old neighborhood—especially her dear friends from the ghetto. So a year or so after they had left Williamsburg, the Kaminskys returned to their former Brooklyn neighborhood. Their new address was 111 Lee Avenue, a five-story brick building located a bit north of Hooper Street and less than three-quarters of a mile from their old residence on South 3rd Street.

By now, Kitty was fully convinced that something must be done—at once—to put Melvin on the right, practical path to ensure his future. Her decision was that the boy should go to the Harren High School of Aviation Trade, where he could, God willing, learn a practical craft as an airplane mechanic. When his older brother Irving heard of this, he put his foot down. He insisted that Melvin should and would go to regular high school like the rest of the Kaminsky boys had done and that, later, he would go on to college. Irving had a great belief in Melvin’s intelligence, even if, so far, the undisciplined teenager had been a conspicuously poor student. Eventually, Mrs. Kaminsky acceded to Irving’s demand.

So instead of going to a trade school, Melvin transferred to Brooklyn’s Eastern District High School, which was situated several blocks from the Kaminskys’ Lee Avenue apartment. However, old habits stuck with Melvin in his new environment: he remained an unrepentant poor student and a dedicated classroom clown. He just would not (or could not) take academics seriously, and most of his teachers concluded that this persistent troublemaker did not have a bright future. One exception was Mr. Rubenstein, his French teacher. Although Melvin was failing the language class, the instructor was impressed by his “impeccable accent” and thought that, with application, Kaminsky could actually make something of himself. (Many years later, the world-famous comedian and filmmaker would characterize this classroom mentor as “my first fan.”)

If Melvin, now 14, did not have a reputation as a scholar in high school, he had further cemented his standing on neighborhood street corners in front of the local drug store or candy shop. According to his Eastern District classmate Mark Nelson, Melvin “was always on. Mel really commanded an audience. He mesmerized all the boys. But it was only the boys, the girls never paid him much attention.… He always had a great wit. He was funny in his way and I in mine and we’d always try and outwit each other.… We’d hang out at the candy store on Lott Street. Sometimes we’d talk about the girls we never could date.… We tried making time with women—but we both struck out.”

5
Swimming in the Borscht Belt

In the Catskills, Jews could become Americanized while preserving much of their Jewishness. The resort area was the vacationland and workplace of Jews, mostly from Eastern Europe, starting at the turn of the twentieth century.… Jews could have a proper vacation like regular Americans, but they could do it in Yiddish if they wished, and with kosher food, varying degrees of religious observance, and a vibrant Jewish culture of humor, theater, and song. Jewish-American humor grew up in the Catskills, where any Jewish comedian worth a laugh got his or her start.

–Phil Brown,
In the Catskills
(2002)

Even at the height of the 1930s Great Depression, many Jews from the New York City area still found the requisite funds to make their annual pilgrimage to the Catskills. To staff these institutions (particularly the more upscale operations), the Catskills lodgings relied on teenagers (preferably college students) who would work for next to no wages for the privilege of a summer in the mountains, where they received free room and board and could, one way or another, socialize with the patrons. Usually when such staff members left the Catskills in September, they were exhausted from a nonstop work routine that had seen them do double or triple duty (as cooks, waiters, maids, lifeguards, social hosts, and/or performers) to meet the exacting requirements of their bosses and the guests.

With so much demand for nightly entertainment (above and beyond bingo games, movie nights, and charade evenings), there was a great call for talent of all kinds. Some of this was provided by amateurs commandeered from the establishment’s workforce. Other performers were fledgling comedians, actors, and other types of entertainers, drawn from the ranks of radio, nightclubs, and (the now dying) vaudeville. The better of these performers were in such demand that they developed a strong following among Catskills guests who looked forward to seeing them perform during their mountain stay. To accommodate so many potential audiences throughout the summer months, bookers developed a “Borscht Belt Circuit” in which various acts played one-night engagements at a string of venues in the greater area. If a bigger establishment booked a particularly popular entertainer, word would soon get out, and guests from surrounding hotels would walk, canoe, or drive over, hoping to see the talent perform. (These interlopers often snuck into the entertainment halls to get for free what the hotel’s guests were paying for.)

Such was the situation in the early 1940s when young Melvin Kaminsky first abandoned the summer heat of Brooklyn in exchange for a stay in the legendary Jewish Catskills.

•     •     •

Melvin’s escalating interest in the glamorous world of entertainment had been fostered by his love of movies and radio, by attending the occasional Broadway play, and by his playing the drums. In the early 1940s, all of this prompted the teenager to apply for summer work of any sort in the Catskills, hoping against hope to rub shoulders with amateur and professional entertainers and, in the process, learn more about his dream profession. Like many others starting out in this resort training ground, Melvin’s initial work duties cast him as a jack-of-all-trades. Part of the time he was a lowly busboy, schlepping endless heavy loads of dishes back and forth to the kitchen. Sometimes he filled in as a waiter, and learned how difficult it was to cater to the many demands of the paying clientele. At other times, he was in charge of renting out the hotel’s rowboats; acted as a pool boy, fetching towels and snacks for impatient guests; or was tasked with keeping the poolside area clean. Eventually, such humble duties led to his becoming a pool tummler.

A tummler was a modern counterpart to the medieval court jester, one who entertained guests—no matter what it took—to ensure that these highly critical paying customers remained content and preoccupied throughout their stay at the resort. It was reasoned that if the tummler kept patrons in a continuously jovial frame of mind, the coddled guests would be too distracted to contemplate what other entertainment amenities might be missing from the lodging’s lineup, or just were not being offered to them.

Poolside, Melvin quickly developed several routines to amuse the guests. For example, he might announce suddenly to the sun-soaking clientele, “I’m a man of a 1,000 Faces.” He would then start his dramatic countdown: “Face number one” (and he would make a crazy grimace that distorted his already unique face), “face number two” (and he would contort his face into another wacky expression) … This gambit would continue until either the guests grew bored or Melvin was worn to a frazzle from his do-or-die-trying routines. Years later, when he kidded about this amateurish act, he said that, typically, one elderly Jewish woman in the crowd would say at some point, “Enough already with the funny faces.… You know Melb’n, I think I liked face number 612 the best.”

On other occasions, the novice laughmaker would come running out to the pool wearing a heavy overcoat (despite the sunny, hot weather). The short young man struggled to front-and-center lugging a big valise in each hand. Upon catching the crowd’s momentary attention he would scamper onto the diving board and announce gravely, “I can’t take it anymore. I’m going to kill myself.” With that, the fully clothed prankster would leap into the swimming pool, where he quickly sank to the bottom, weighed down by his waterlogged clothing and the heavy suitcases he clutched. It was prearranged that the resort’s lifeguard (often a tall, blond Gentile) would then jump in and rescue the drowning Kaminsky, who was by no means a swimmer of any sort. Once in a while the helper forgot or ignored his crucial part in the skit, and a half-drowned Melvin barely struggled to the surface of the pool and to eventual safety. The generally blase onlookers thought all this was pretty funny, at least for a few fleeting seconds.

On a rare occasion, Kaminsky was conscripted into performing in the evening dramatics. (As was then the custom in the Catskills, he, like other employees, received no extra pay for such extra chores.) Usually, these makeshift productions would be bowdlerized versions of current Broadway shows. One such time, the 14-year-old Melvin found himself playing an elderly district attorney in a tabloid version of
Uncle Harry
, a new thriller then on the New York stage. Kaminsky had been given a wig, a mustache, and makeup to make him look much older. He had only one line of dialogue to recite. Anxious to expand his moment in the limelight, he decided on his own to add a little stage business to his part. He chose to bring a glass of water with him onto the stage. When it came time to speak his few onstage words, stage fright got the best of him and he lost his grasp of the tumbler. It fell to the ground and broke into many pieces. The audience sat in stony silence.

Not letting matters go, the young amateur strode front and center and, taking the offensive, pulled off his wig and mustache. He yelled to the crowd, “Whaddaya want from me? I’m 14 years old.” According to the culprit, “Everyone burst out laughing, but I took off with the owner running right after me.… The audience couldn’t stop laughing. They never did finish the play, but probably no one ever forgot it either. I knew I had to go onstage after that.”

The errant resort worker did not get sacked for his brazen stage speech because, as he explained years later, “What was good about the Catskills is, you never got fired. You had a chance to do a lot of different things, and you performed all the time. But you had to work your way up.”

•     •     •

Surviving his ordeal under fire in the Catskills, Melvin hoped to work at more prominent venues in coming vacation seasons. Taking note of Melvin’s ambition, his brother Lenny introduced him to Don Appell, a Brooklyn-based friend of one of the older Kaminsky boys. Appell (who went on to write the book for such Broadway shows as the 1961 musical
Milk and Honey
) was then a young actor who had performed in such stage offerings as Orson Welles’s 1941 production of
Native Son.
Through Don’s show business contacts in the Jewish Catskills, Melvin negotiated a summer job at Butler’s Lodge in Ellenville, New York.

At this more prestigious site, Melvin was officially hired as a member of the house band. As the drummer, Kaminsky’s chore during the routine was to punctuate the comic’s punch lines with a rim shot. (As a result, he had great opportunities to observe the house comedian do his nightly business on stage and to learn more about the pacing needed to make a comic’s routine resonate with the audience.)

One evening, an agitated Pincus Cantor, the veteran manager at Butler’s Lodge, rushed backstage to speak to Melvin. The resort’s staff comic suddenly had fallen ill. This dire situation required an instant solution. Cantor needed an immediate replacement and decided that the meshugge Kaminsky would make a good substitute. The manager—who had a heavy, old-world accent—told “Melbmnnn” (as he called Kaminsky), “We know you’re cute and funny so jump on the stage and amuse the guests.”

Always best under pressure, the surprised employee readily agreed to the task.

That pivotal night, Kaminsky struggled through the ordeal of his comedy debut on stage by repeating pretty much the same stale jokes and anecdotes that his predecessor had been using all season long to amuse the hotel’s guests. Somehow, Melvin survived the highly stressful evening. Best of all, the audience had not booed him, which boosted his confidence tremendously. Thus, the next day, when the house comedian continued to be incapacitated, Pincus decreed that Kaminsky should go on again that night.