It's Good to Be the King

by James Robert Parish

  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.

  What could he use to fill his time more effectively on stage? All day the teenager pondered and worried about his creative options. However, he refused to fall back on tried and true routines.

  As the time drew near for Melvin to step out on stage to entertain the crowd, he still had not resolved his creative dilemma, and his fretting had turned to desperation. His dread of failing both the audience and himself had pushed him into an adrenalin overdrive that left him in a cold sweat. Suddenly, Kaminsky hit upon a linchpin for his opening gambit with the hotel guests. Earlier that day, a Butler’s Lodge chambermaid had, somehow, locked herself in a linen closet. Her repeated banging on the door failed to rouse anyone and the increasingly upset worker began screaming in Yiddish “Los mir aroys!” (“Let me out!”) Her desperate cries for help soon led to her liberation, and her rescue plea became an instant catchphrase at Butler’s.

  So that night Kaminsky launched onto the stage with a mighty cry: “Los mir aroys!” The familiar phrase brought instant laughter and applause. Melvin was emboldened by his “success” and followed up with a series of ad-libbed, humorous observations on the latest goings-on at the resort establishment. The crowd gave the novice comic an enthusiastic send-off when he ended his stand-up act. Melvin was jubilant when he left the stage. This gig for a paying audience had given him far more of a rush than he had experienced when he did his chatter on a Brooklyn street corner for his peers.

  Despite this well-received stage turn, Kaminsky vowed to himself that he would further hone his material on coming nights. (The house comic showed no signs of making a recovery anytime soon.) Much later, Melvin explained his instinctive compunction to improve the caliber of his act: “Look, I had to take chances or it wasn’t fun being funny. And you know, there was a lot of great material lying around in the Catskills, waiting to be noticed.”

  In subsequent turns before the lodge’s guests, Kaminsky did not always enjoy the same beginner’s luck. Through trial and error he discovered that some of his latest wild, irreverent, and often desperate bits would never succeed with this tough crowd. It caused him to reach out in every direction to find something—anything!—that might appeal to the guests. Sometimes, drenched in sweat from fear of flopping, he’d grab at any straw to keep his act moving along. He might say, “And here’s my impression of Thomas Jefferson.” He’d then stand there in a stately pose, hoping it might catch the onlookers off guard and prompt a sympathetic chuckle. That would give him a moment’s reprieve to think of something new to do to amuse the clientele.

  As Melvin gained more self-assurance in his stand-up comedy performances during the course of the summer, he grew more bold and inventive in his onstage gambits. One evening, Kaminsky organized a brief blackout skit, using a female staff member as his assistant. He called the spot “S. and M.” Melvin recounted, “The girl and I walked out from the wings and met in the center of the stage. I said, ‘I am a masochist.’ She said, ‘I am a sadist.’ I said, ‘Hit me,’ and she hit me, very hard right in the face. And I said, ‘Wait a minute, wait a minute, hold it. I think I’m a sadist.’ Blackout. That was the first sketch I ever wrote.”

  Despite the frequent occasions when Kaminsky’s material failed to interest his audience, he never gave up the creative challenge of entertaining them, somehow. Occasionally, after the young man had completed his energetic gig and was walking among the guests, he might hear one of the little old women shout out, “Melb’n, we love you, but you stink!” (Another time, he allowed of his haphazard apprenticeship as a comedian, “But I wasn’t a big hit, not at first. The Jews in the rear [of the] room, the Jewish ladies with blue hair, would call me over and say, ‘Melvin, we enjoyed certain parts of your show, but a trade would be better for you. Anything with your hands would be good. Aviation mechanics are very well paid.”) Even such negative responses did not greatly discourage him. He smiled at the naysayers and determined to do better at the next performance.

  Performing a two-hour show every night, week after week should have been exhausting, even to the overenergized Melvin. However, that was not the case. Years later, by which time he had gone on to international success, he described this grueling summer schedule: “We thought nothing of it. We thought that’s the way it is in show business. After that, the big time was a cream puff. One show a week on television, one picture a year in the movies. Are you kidding? I’ve spent the last 20 years catching up on my sleep.”

  The summer over, Melvin returned to Brooklyn and to his family and friends and life at Eastern District High School. By now he’d stockpiled plenty of stories to tell his Brooklyn cronies about his Catskills adventures. As he reflected on his many successes (why think of the moments of misfire?), he told himself that he could never go back to “just” being a drummer. His heart and soul now belonged to the world of comedy, where his wit, personality, and physical being could all be a vital part of his self-created act.

  6

  Off to War

  Even when I went into the Army I should have had a nervous breakdown, because you are not the baby of the family in the U.S. Army. When D-Day happened they just took us all out and sent us overseas. So now I was a combat engineer and I wasn’t trained for that kinda thing. It was very scary and there were mortar shells. It was a lotta noise, you know.

  –Mel Brooks, 1977

  Now in his mid-to-late teens, Kaminsky’s constant goal was to score with the girls. However, with his less-than-average height and his unconventional looks, “crazy” Melvin met with little success, despite being a quasi-experienced laughmaker in front of resort audiences.

  By now, he had already adopted a more American-sounding name for professional purposes. He called himself Melvin Brooks. Variously, the future celebrity has said that he made the name change because he decided Melvin Kaminsky would not fit easily on a personalized set of drums or on a marquee. Another time he suggested that he altered his name so he would not be confused with the celebrated cornet player Max Kaminsky.

  In actuality, Melvin was following the tradition of many entertainers who had abandoned their ethnic-sounding original names in favor of a moniker that sounded more American and less Jewish. Thus, he joined the ranks of Benjamin Kubelsky, Emanuel Goldenberg, Milton Berlinger, Joseph Abramowitz, and David Kaminski, who, respectively, transformed themselves into Jack Benny, Edward G. Robinson, Milton Berle, Joey Adams, and Danny Kaye. Melvin’s altered name came from his mother’s surname of Brookman, which he shortened/adapted into Brooks. (Later, Melvin would further simplify his moniker by shortening his first name to the less formal Mel.)

  As Melvin grew comfortable with his show business alter ego, he wove his stage name into a rhyme that he used as a performance opener. He hoped the ditty would ingratiate him with audienc
es even before he launched into his comedy act, which now included his crooning songs (especially those of A1 Jolson and Eddie Cantor) that would be familiar to audiences in the Catskills. The verses began with:

  Here I am, I’m Melvin Brooks

  I’ve come to stop the show.

  Just a ham who’s minus looks

  But in your heart I’ll grow.

  The next refrain set forth what his audience could expect from his solo act:

  I’ll tell you gags, I’ll sing you songs,

  Just happy little snappy songs that roll along.

  Out of my mind

  Won’t you be kind?

  And please love Melvin Brooks.

  Typically, Melvin ended his beseeching introduction on one knee, sporting a big toothy smile, with his arms spread wide in the tradition of the great Jolson. Young and still naïve, Brooks was so enthralled with this “showstopping” routine that it did not dawn on him for a long time that this gambit was quite derivative and threadbare.

  • • •

  In the spring of 1944, 17-year-old Melvin Kaminsky graduated from Eastern District High School. In the class yearbook, Melvin’s school activities were listed beneath his photo: “Class Day Committee, Senior Council, Dean’s Assistant, Fencing Team.” A few of these extracurricular activities seemed unlikely for this particular student. However, Kaminsky’s stated ambition in life was more true to the actual Melvin: facetious, comical, but with an oversized belief in his potential for the future. He gave as his career goal: “To be President of the U.S.”

  • • •

  After graduating, he enlisted in the army (as part of the Army Reserve Specialized Training Program) and was dispatched to the Virginia Military Institute (founded in 1939) in Lexington, Virginia. He and other new recruits were put through basic training, which included such arcane activities as riding and learning to use a saber. “They had us ride horses and cut down flags on bamboo poles.… I was trained to become a Confederate officer.”