It's Good to Be the King

by James Robert Parish

  Max’s parents, Shlaimie (later Samuel) and Basha Kaminsky, grew up in Grodno, Russia. In the late 19th century, they emigrated to the United States with their young boy, Max, and settled in Manhattan’s Jewish ghetto on the Lower East Side. Back in Russia Samuel had peddled sewing equipment for a living. In the new country, the enterprising Samuel soon became a herring merchant. To ensure that he made good deals with the Norwegian fishermen, he focused on learning their language rather than on mastering English. Soon, Samuel became one of the herring barons of the Lower East Side. Back then they had herring barons, and Mr. Kaminsky was one of them.

  By the mid-1910s, Kitty and Max, a process server, had married and were living in Brownsville, often struggling to make ends meet. Their firstborn, Irving, came in 1916, followed a few years later by Leonard, and then Bernard, born in 1922. On June 27, 1926, Brooklyn and the surrounding areas were suffering a sweltering heat wave. The oppressive weather had induced a crowd of over 500,000 to jam the beaches and boardwalks of Coney Island. However, Kitty Kaminsky was confined to her sweltering, overcrowded apartment, because she was expecting her fourth child any time. The next day, Thursday, Kitty went into labor. As was customary in her blue-collar neighborhood, she gave birth to the new baby at home. The family’s kitchen table was used for the delivery of their latest offspring, Melvin.

  The next two years were comparatively happy times in the Kaminsky household. Relatives, friends, and neighbors were constantly coming by the flat to see Kitty, Max, and their quartet of children, especially darling little Melvin, who quickly became the apple of everyone’s eyes. This tiny bundle of energy and joy was constantly “oohed” and “aahed” over, whether by his parents and siblings or by visitors. The precocious infant had an instinctive ability to respond to the constant affection lavished on him, basking in the bright spotlight of people’s interest. (Brooks has reminisced of this joyous time, “I was the baby in the family, so I just assumed I was adorable. Everybody threw me up in the air, punched my feet and told me I was terrific.”) Being the pampered center of attention quickly became an important aspect of Melvin’s life. This strong need to be coddled became an ingrained craving that never left Melvin, even as he grew older. It prompted the boy to do whatever came to his mind to keep people’s focus on him, no matter how coy, outrageous, or humorous.

  • • •

  For the Kaminskys, the future seemed bright with promise. Even in the harsh slums of Brownsville, the general optimism of the Roaring Twenties made its positive mark. Max was doing quite well in his job as process server for the court system. An outgoing, congenial soul, he was often assigned special tasks, such as serving legal notices upon rather famous individuals.

  He soon became known as the “process server to the stars.” Better or worse than being a herring baron? Hard to say.

  However, life for the Kaminskys took a sudden turn for the worse during 1928. Max became seriously ill, with what was eventually diagnosed as tuberculosis of the kidney. At the time there was no known cure for the debilitating illness and he soon became bedridden. Many grueling weeks thereafter, on January 14, 1929, the 34-year-old head of the household succumbed to the then-fatal ailment.

  • • •

  Everything changed for the Kaminskys in the wake of Max’s death.

  As Mel Brooks’s longtime friend, the acclaimed novelist Joseph Heller, observed years later, “There’s a side of Mel that will never be fulfilled, no matter how hard he drives himself, and it all goes back to his fathers death.”

  Soon after Max’s passing, Kitty and the four boys moved from Brownsville to a dreary tenement in the Williamsburg area of Brooklyn. Relatives, especially Max’s parents (who lived a subway ride away on Seventy-sixth Street in Bensonhurst), helped to subsidize the grieving widow and her brood until they could get back on their feet financially.

  Samuel Kaminsky was especially generous in supplying his daughter-in-law and his grandchildren with a seemingly endless supply of herring and, sometimes, with much-needed cash. Kitty’s less well-off parents and her sister’s family also contributed funds.

  At first, with Melvin and his next oldest brother, Bernard, too young to be left with either relatives or friends, Kitty could not accept full-time work outside the home. (Making matters worse, the jobs open to women in this period were severely limited, with options even narrower for Jewish women, who had to cope with anti-Semitism.) In desperation, the determined Mrs. Kaminsky found a part-time job in Brooklyn’s (sweatshop) garment district. Because the pay was so low, she carted home additional work to do in the afternoon and late into the night. Seated at the kitchen table for hours on end, Kitty was a whirlwind of constant activity as she sewed bathing suit sashes with ornamental rhinestones, accomplishing the tedious, detailed work without benefit of proper lighting. Of this difficult period, Brooks remembers, “One night I woke up, I was four years old and on the table was a mountain of diamonds. I said, ‘Ma, we’re rich!’ She said, ‘No, they’re rhinestones.”’

  Since Kitty was paid by the piece for her toil, she moved at an impressive speed, anxious to earn as much as she could at this wearying handwork both at the factory and at home. Despite her seemingly nonstop labor, which went on six days a week, the resilient little woman always managed to nurture her sons, making sure they were fed, their clothes mended, and the cramped apartment kept spotlessly clean. Mrs. Kaminsky also made time to devote special attention to her beloved “Melb’n” (as Kitty always pronounced Melvin’s name). Her youngest child, in particular, gave her life great meaning, and she pampered him as much as the family’s adverse financial conditions allowed. Melvin’s older brothers spoiled him, too, with the two eldest acting as surrogate fathers to the pampered tyke. (As Brooks assessed in retrospect, “I was the baby and I always expected to be the king of France because I was treated like the king of France. I’m still waiting for my crown.”)

  This lavishing of affection compensated greatly for the persistent grief the youngest Kaminsky felt over the loss of his father. Reflecting back many years later on his father’s death, Brooks, then a moviemaker, acknowledged, “I can’t tell you what sadness, what pain it is to me never to have known my own father.… All I know is what they’ve told me. He was lively, peppy, sang well. Isn’t it sad that that’s all a son should know about his father? If only I could look at him, touch his face, see if he had eyebrows! Maybe in having the male characters in my movies find each other, I’m expressing the longing I feel to find my father and be close to him.”

  Unlike other individuals in similar circumstances, Melvin never felt overwhelmed by his doting, extremely overprotective mama. Years later, he insisted, “I could not mount a successful attack against my mother. In psychoanalysis, you can always find something bad about your mother.… I could not. All I could say is, ‘She was swell.’” In fact, according to Brooks, since he spent so much quality time as a child in the company of his devoted, spunky, and optimistic mother (who also happened to be a terrific cook), “She really was responsible for the growth of my imagination.”

  • • •

  By the start of the 1930s, the Great Depression had enveloped the United States. Kitty and the oldest Kaminsky boys were working part- or full-time at the Rosenthal and Slotnick knitting mills in Brooklyn, barely scraping together enough funds to keep the family going.

  Meanwhile, Melvin continued to be especially bright in intuitively guessing how to prompt a laugh from his mother, brothers, or whoever else was around. He would provide a funny gesture or cutely crinkle his nose and, immediately, he had his audience in the palm of his hand.

  Melvin began the first grade at the local public school, where he quickly discovered that (1) he did not enjoy being confined in the stuffy classroom, (2) he was not overly thrilled by any aspect of the educational process, and (3) he missed being in settings in which he was the center of attention. Despite such drawbacks, attending school did expand his circle of pals. Said Brooks, “There was always a gang of kids, and
we were always playing one game or another. At Jewish holidays, we’d send hazelnuts spinning after walnuts, and if you hit the walnut, you got it, you owned it. We played all these wonderful games: we filled the tops of bottle caps with either orange peel or banana skin to give them weight, and used them as checkers. We didn’t have enough money to play pennies against the wall.”

  However, not everything was halcyon for little Melvin. There were bumpy moments along the way. For example, one evening when he was out and about in the neighborhood, there was great excitement. A distraught woman had jumped off the top of a building not far from where the Kaminskys lived. When curiosity got the better of Melvin and he went to investigate, he peeked through the growing crowd and spotted a bloody corpse covered by a sheet. As the body was being loaded into an ambulance, the boy happened to notice the dead woman’s shoes. His heart nearly stopped beating because the footwear very closely resembled the exact type worn by his mother. Engulfed by a mounting panic, the child raced home. His fears only increased when he let himself into the apartment to find that it was still empty.

  Overcome with apprehension and fears of a new parental loss, he sat for hours waiting—and hoping against slim hope—to hear the telltale footsteps on the stairs that would alert him that his dreadful conclusion was miraculously unfounded. Time crept slowly by. Eventually, a key turned in the lock and in walked an unsuspecting Kitty. She was greeted by a highly distraught Melvin. After she comforted the still-shaking child, she explained soothingly that she had been asked to work overtime at her job. No matter how much she calmed and reassured him then or later, those torturous hours waiting for his “dead” mother were some of the worst Melvin Kaminsky had ever experienced.

  • • •

  As the continued efforts of the Kaminskys brought more money into the household, the family moved from a $16-a-month rear apartment (which faced the bleak, clothesline-laced backyard) at 365 South 3rd Street to a front unit (which cost $2 to $3 more per month). In their new tenement quarters, a fifth-floor walkup that boasted two bedrooms, Mrs. Kaminsky had one bedroom, and her four boys shared a single bed in the other. Looking back, Brooks found virtue in this close proximity with his beloved siblings. (“We slept across the mattress. I loved it because I loved my brothers and I loved all the action, and I loved being warm. You know, being poor was good! It was a good thing for me.”)

  One evening, several women from the building, including Kitty, were congregated on the front stoop chatting about the day’s events. Meanwhile, up in the Kaminsky apartment, young Melvin—then about five years old—had the sudden, urgent need to urinate. Unfortunately, his brother Bernie was then using the apartment’s only bathroom and he had locked the door. Whatever Bernie was doing in there, he was not responding to his brother’s increasingly frantic knocks and pleas to let him in to use the toilet.

  The next likely option for the panicked Melvin was to use the sink to pee in. However, it was full of dishes that Mrs. Kaminsky planned to wash after her stoop-side socializing. Desperate to solve his pressing problem, Melvin found his own solution. He rushed over to the open window facing the street and relieved himself. Downstairs, the housewives scattered from the unexpected precipitation. Already some of the rained-upon ladies were insisting loudly that the drenching had come from the Kaminskys’ window.

  Little Melvin could hear the racket below and ran to hide under the bedroom covers. He knew his angry mother soon would be galloping up the stairs to investigate. As Kitty charged into the apartment, Bernie was just exiting the bathroom. Unaware of what all the commotion was about, he innocently greeted his mom with a cheery hello. She responded with heavy slaps, the sounds punctuated by the surprised boy imploring, “What did I do?” (Years later, Brooks confessed that he could not recall if he ever had explained to his brother why, on that long-ago evening, he had received the sudden, inexplicable pummeling from his furious mother.)

  3

  The King of the Street Corner

  To be Jewish, Brooklyn-born, fatherless, impoverished, and below average stature—no more classic recipe could be imagined for an American comedian. Or, one might suppose, for an American suicide.

  –Mel Brooks, 1978

  Unlike his three older brothers, who were always diligent students, Melvin Kaminsky did not settle down to his studies as he progressed through his first few years in the public school system. He felt confined and restless in the classrooms at P.S. 19. “I wasn’t an avid reader, I was always an avid talker and doer,” the reluctant student disclosed later in life, explaining that he found it hard to “sit still.”

  Instead, Melvin lived for the hours after classes, when he was free to hang out with his friends and play in the nearby streets. However, unlike his brothers Lenny and Bernie, who were especially adept at stickball, the youngest Kaminsky was not agile at this sport, or at punchball (a variation of baseball that did not require a bat), or even at the ghetto version of football (where the inventive, impoverished youngsters compressed a few brown bags together with string to make their ball). The one neighborhood game in which Melvin excelled—at least, until his interest wore thin—was ringalevio (a form of hide-and-seek played by teams). The diminutive Melvin was very quick on his feet, and this nimbleness led to his becoming, briefly, a local champion in 1932, when he was six years old.

  He really shone, though, with the gift of gab. Melvin had a highly imaginative mind, which inspired his funny, quirky observations. He honed these skills in the all-important neighborhood meeting spot for children—the street corner. There, buoyed by the congenial company of his peers, he made snappy observations about individuals who passed by, including cute girls, or did amusing reconstructions of events that were the current talk of the town.

  To be quick on your comedic feet was the core requirement, and he was the quickest.

  Assessing his status as the “king of the corner shtick,” he later said, “The corner was tough. You had to score on the corner—no bullshit routines no slick laminated crap.… And you really had to be good on your feet.… Real stories of tragedy we screamed at. The story had to be real and it had to be funny. Somebody getting hurt was wonderful.”

  Best of all, Kaminsky’s capacity to express his unique outlook on life in an amusing, nonsensical fashion gave him what he craved most—attention.

  His conscious preoccupation with a dread of dying began when Melvin was about nine years old. His pal Arnold casually announced that they were both going to die one day in the future. Taken aback by this blunt observation, the panicked Kaminsky responded, “You’re obviously not right, you can’t be right. We’re not going to die, because why were we born? It wouldn’t make any sense.” His friend countered with, “What about your [maternal] grandfather? He died. And what about fish?” Melvin refused to be convinced. He reasoned that his granddad had been very elderly and, as to fish, they “had nothing to do with us.” That ended the disagreeable topic of discussion for the time being. However, it was just the start of morbid ruminations on Kaminsky’s part. (“That was the first time I knew I was going to die.”) This excessive preoccupation with his own mortality would escalate over the coming years. He began to worry that he likely would die at the same young age (34) as his father unless he watched his health very carefully—and even then the fates would probably still win out and snatch him prematurely from life on Earth.

  Melvin’s constant focus on the state of his physical well-being as it pertained to his mortality led him to take an avid interest not only in his own health but also that of everyone around him. “I always thought it was great to be able to make people feel better. It was a little like being God. So I started to take charge when anybody got hurt playing ball. ‘Get the Mercurochrome. Put a Band-Aid on. Quick! Flappy fainted. Bring an egg cream!’” In later life, it would impel the celebrity to become a devoted reader of medical journals and dictionaries and a man always ready to provide free consultations (and follow-up discussions) regarding any acquaintance’s latest health p
roblem.

  • • •

  Melvin the kibitzer and jokester soon learned that, like any sensible performer, he needed constantly to freshen his material or risk losing his audience. He became more adventurous in his verbal jests, in his array of imitations of Williamsburg characters, and in his brave stunts. He might have been short of stature with an inborn dislike of heights, but Kaminsky knew the crowd constantly expected—and demanded—bigger and better feats from him. If that meant walking perilously on a fence, or deftly swinging from a fire escape, then so be it. The approval of his mates more than compensated for the fear such exploits engendered within him.

  This esteem from the local kids also served another useful purpose for Melvin. His reputation as an impressive purveyor of gags, verbal thrusts and barbs, and daring deeds led those in his social circle to feel duty-bound to protect him from the neighborhood’s older boys (Jews or Gentiles) who might find it amusing to pick on, or beat up, that puny Melvin with the funny-looking face. Sometimes Melvin was able to ward off abuse from his adversaries on his own—with a few jokes, quips, and lots of bravado. As Melvin later articulated, “If your enemy is laughing, how can he bludgeon you to death?”

  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.)