Uncle Joe parked right outside the theater. It was no problem in those days; his friend Al the doorman had reserved the space. I got so excited when I got out of the cab and saw the marquee: ANYTHING GOES BY COLE PORTER. STARRING ETHEL MERMAN, WITH WILLIAM GAXTON AND VICTOR MOORE. Wow.
When we finally got to our seats all the way up in the last row of the second balcony I got a little dizzy from the height. I should have known that free seats weren’t fifth row on the aisle. The houselights dimmed and from the orchestra pit came the strains of the overture, a mélange of all the famous Cole Porter hits from the show. One great song after another, not only “I Get a Kick Out of You” but also “You’d Be So Easy to Love,” “You’re the Top,” “It’s De-Lovely,” “All Through the Night,” and, of course, the show’s wonderful title song, “Anything Goes.”
In those days the cast didn’t depend on microphones like Broadway shows do today. When Ethel Merman belted out “You’re the Top” even though Uncle Joe and I were two miles away in the cheap seats, it was thrilling but maybe a little too loud. What a voice! They said she could hold a note longer than the Chase National Bank. I thought she was the greatest thing since chocolate milk. I had goosebumps.
Anything Goes was falling-down funny. When the final curtain fell, I leapt to my feet and cheered my nine-year-old head off clapping my hands till they stung. Way up there at the top of the second balcony, I figured that I was as close to heaven as I’d ever get.
On the way home, still buzzing with the excitement from the show, I made up my mind, and from the floor of the taxi I announced, “Uncle Joe, I am not going to go to work in the Garment Center like everyone else in our neighborhood.” I knew I had bigger fish to fry. I said, “I am going into show business and nothing will stop me!” And, strangely enough, nothing did.
I fell in love forever with Broadway musical comedy that afternoon and also began a lifetime of admiration for the music and lyrics of Cole Porter, who, together with Irving Berlin, is still one of my all-time favorite songwriters. Years later, when I discovered to my amazement that Cole Porter wasn’t Jewish, I was taken aback for a moment but then quickly forgave him. I remember thinking while lying awake in bed that night after seeing “Anything Goes” that when I grew up I would like to be a Broadway writer. Not only creating the characters and the stories, but maybe also writing the songs. 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.
As a family, we were not very religious and did not keep kosher. As a matter of fact, one of my favorite sandwiches was ham and cheese. However, my grandmother, who for a time lived in the same building, was very observant. Thank god for the long hallways in those old railroad apartments. It gave us at least two minutes to clear the kitchen of non-kosher food before my grandmother could get there. She was a pretty good ice box detective, so my mother hid things like ham in a little tray behind the ice.
I grew up in Williamsburg in the 1930s, during the time of the Great Depression. There was just enough money in the majority of households for the basic necessities: rent, food, clothing, etc. When Hanukkah or Christmas came around, kids didn’t get a lot of expensive toys. And even though we were Jewish, we enjoyed the Christmas tradition of hanging up our stockings. Four different-sized stockings were hung up on the bookshelf, which we made believe was the fireplace. And every Christmas morning we were surprised and happy that when we reached into our stockings we found the same wonderful Christmas gift: a box of chocolate snaps. I tried to make mine last for a week, but I always failed. In the magazines we saw pictures of wonderful Christmas toys like beautiful shiny red scooters, but they were way out of reach.
But kids in Brooklyn were inventive. There was no lack of ingenuity. We made our own scooters. We called them push-mobiles. A push-mobile consisted of a flat board around three feet long. We took apart a roller skate, strapped the front end to the front of the board and the back end to the rear of the board. On the front of the board we nailed an empty fruit box. The fruit boxes were discarded from the fruit store after the apples or pears or grapes that they previously had contained had been sold. On top of the box, we nailed two handles made of two-inch wooden struts that came from other places, like egg crates. The push-mobile, like a scooter, was propelled by putting your left foot on top of the board and pushing the ground as hard as you could with your right foot. When you gathered enough speed, you put your right foot up on the board behind your left and merrily traveled along. If you were lucky, you found a long hilly street where you didn’t have to push at all. You just shoved off, put both feet on the board, and sped down at breakneck speeds like five miles an hour. It was absolutely thrilling! I wonder if I’m the only person still around that remembers the amazing invention of the push-mobile?
We were too poor to afford tickets for High Holiday services (Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur), so we hardly ever attended temple. But at age thirteen, like most Jewish boys, I was bar mitzvahed at a tiny synagogue on Keap Street. Learning Hebrew was nigh on impossible, but I got away with the prayers by memorizing the sounds and syllables. The only thing I remember is that when I was finished, all the kids in the synagogue threw hard candies at me to celebrate, some unfortunately finding their mark. I ended up having a black-eye bar mitzvah!
My path to comedy, and eventually to Broadway, started when I became a drummer. Shortly after my bar mitzvah we moved from the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn to the Brighton Beach section. I started high school at Abraham Lincoln. I tried out for the Abraham Lincoln High School band and was assigned second drummer (in case the first drummer couldn’t do it).
In the band was a classmate by the name of Mickey Rich, who played the alto sax. I got to know Mickey and we became pretty good friends. One day, I said, “Rich! Rich? You’re not related in any way to Buddy Rich, are you?”
He said, “I try not to brag about it but yeah, he’s my older brother.”
Wow! Buddy Rich! One of the greatest drummers that ever lived.
I said, “I don’t believe it.”
He said, “Come on. I’ll show you his set of drums.”
Wow, wow! I lived on Brighton Sixth, only four blocks away from Brighton Court on Brighton Tenth Street, where Mickey and Buddy lived. We got to Mickey’s house and he led me to a kind of den or study and there was this incredible set of pearl-covered Gretsch drums. On the big bass drum were the letters A.S. and up in the left-hand corner was a shield with the smaller letters B.R. Oh my god. I said, “It is Buddy Rich! A.S.—that’s Artie Shaw!”