Howard Storm - The Imperfect Storm: From Henry Street to Hollywood

My name is Howard Storm. Im an actor, standup comic and director. I was born on December 11, 1931, on the kitchen floor at 252 Madison Street on New Yorks Lower East Side. In those days, during the Depression, they give you an apartment one month free, so everybody moves in for a month and then moves to another apartment. After moving three or four times, our family settles on 172 Henry Street. Its a five-room railroad flat with no doors, so you can see all the way down the hallway. The only sink is in the kitchen; the bathroom doesnt have one.

On the day I am to be born, my mother sends for the doctor. When he shows up, she tells him, Im ready! He tells her, No youre not. She says, Doctor, this is the third child Ive had and I know when Im ready. He says, Im the doctor and youre not ready. He slams the door and leaves. Twenty minutes later, her water breaks. Im delivered by a neighbors son, whos studying to be a doctor. In my standup act, I say, I was delivered by a neighbors son a plumber. My father said he knew I was born on the kitchen floor, because he heard the water running.

My fathers birth name is Zayde Sloboda. My grandmother in Bialystok, Russia, had two healthy daughters, but one son died before he was a year old and the other one was stillborn. So when my father is born, the rabbi says, If you want this boy to live a long life, name him Zayde, which means grandpa in Yiddish. It works: He lives to be ninety-one. My father Grandpa Sloboda is four years old when he comes to America in either 1900 or 1902, along with his mother and two older sisters. He speaks Russian but mostly Yiddish. All the Yiddish kids at school know that Zayde means Grandfather and they tease him, so he changes his name to the all-American Jack.

In those days, everybody leaves school in the 8th grade to help their family. In either 1912 or 1914, my father is called into the office of the principal, who tells him, Youre too dumb to be anything but an actor, so Ive set up an audition for you with a friend of mine named Gus Edwards. Gus Edwards is a major producer in vaudeville. He produces an act called School Days with The Crazy Kids who, at that time, include Eddie Cantor, Georgie Jessel, Fanny Brice and Groucho Marx, among others. Walter Winchell then a tap dancer is part of the group, as is Bert Gordon, who later plays The Mad Russian on The Eddie Cantor Show. My father auditions and gets the job. Hes in the second company, playing what they call The Jew Comic. At the time, it isnt considered rude to say Jew Comic or Wop Comic or Mick Comic.

My father is with Gus Edwards for quite a while and he manages to save two hundred dollars, which is major in those days. He decides to give his parents half of the money a hundred dollars. He walks in, puts the hundred dollars down, and my grandfather slaps it off the table, saying, Nobody but gangsters makes that kind of money! My grandfather figures his son must be a gangster, because my father grew up with those guys. The neighbors are Louis Lepke Buchalter, Nathan Kid Dropper Kaplan, Jacob Gurrah Shapiro and Meyer Lansky! These are his contemporaries. Theyre tough. Very tough. When theyre about fourteen, they stand on the corner with Kid Dropper, who takes bets that he can knock a horse down. He walks up and bang! He punches a horse and down it goes.

One Yom Kippur day, my father and Kid Dropper are standing on a corner with a guy who is a light-heavyweight amateur fighter. Four Irish guys in a horse and buggy come by. Some elderly Orthodox Jews are walking to the river to atone for their sins and the four Irish guys jump off the horse and buggy and start pulling the Jews payos and taking their hats. My father and his friends turn the wagon over, break out the thick wooden spokes, and use them to beat the hell out of the Irish bullies! As I say, these are really tough guys.

Years later, when my father is working as a vaudeville comic at the Loews Delancey, Kid Dropper comes backstage to see him, along with Jacob Little Augie Orgen, who carries a potato peeler with him as his weapon of choice. They come to say hello to my father, but in the alleyway of the theatre, they get into a fight and Augie cuts Dropper with his potato peeler. My father also cut Dropper, but he doesnt mean to. In the winter, when theyre kids, they dont have sleds, so they take the tops off of five-gallon milk cans and go up on a hill in the snow. One kid sits in it and they push him, so he goes sliding down the hill. My father is pushing Dropper and he decides to jump on Droppers shoulders to get an extra ride, but it forces their weight down on the metal milk-can cover and Dropper gets a big cut around his ass. After that, whenever Dropper sees my father, he tells him, Youre the only guy who ever scarred me and got away with it! He calls him Slobbo because of Sloboda. That becomes my fathers nickname to all the guys.

Another tough kid in my fathers neighborhood is Jacob Gurrah Shapiro, a little fat kid who comes over to the States after the others are already here. In the winter, my father and his pals change the tracks for the trolley cars so the driver doesnt have to hop off into the snow. They switch it and the driver throws them a penny or two. One day, this kid comes yelling, Gurrah from here! Gurrah!! With his thick Yiddish accent, thats how Get outta here! comes out, so his nickname becomes Gurrah. Even at five or six, hes chasing the other kids away. They laugh at him, but years later, Gurrah Shapiro becomes Louis Lepkes right-hand man and they form Murder Incorporated!

During the Depression, my father sells ties. He goes to see Lepke. Gurrah greets him in the outer office and Lepke tells him to come in. He asks, Whats goin on, Slobbo? My father says, Im selling these ties and I wondered if you wanted to buy one or two. Lepke asks, How many do you have? My father says, Twenty. He asks, How much are they? My father says, A dollar each. Lepke tells him, Okay, Ill take all twenty, and he peels off a twenty-dollar bill and gives it to him. At that time, a twenty-dollar bill is like a thou.

Thats a nice story. Everybody has a nice story about those guys, but theyre killers: literally bad guys. All the guys in my fathers neighborhood are tough guys. They have to be. Either that or they get beat up. Some of them become professional fighters, some become gangsters. Even my father is a tough guy. One day, he turns a corner and sees my brother, Eddie, surrounded by four guys. A woman is coming out of the store with a bag of groceries and a big Pepsi-Cola, so my father grabs the bottle of Pepsi, walks into the middle of the group and says, Anybody touches him and Ill fracture your skulls! Sure enough, the waters part. Twice, my brother watches him knock a guy out in the street with one punch.