In an interview with the New York Post, comedian Jerry Stiller (“Seinfeld”) talked about his experience growing up in New York’s Lower East Side, and talked about his experience as a Jewish kid in New York of the 1930s and beyond.
Stiller talked about his neighborhood, saying it “was like something out of a Mickey Rooney movie, with all these Irish and Jewish kids mixed in. It was like ‘Boys Town’ on the streets.”
And in addition, he revealed an interesting role he did in high school, which turns out to be pretty legendary
“Tony Curtis, Zero Mostel and Estelle Getty came out of there. It was a wonderful school in its own way. We were not the most brilliant people in the world. Those who were really smart went to Stuyvesant up the street. We just turned out comedians.
“I was a very staid guy. My luck of the draw was that I had an English teacher named Mrs. Stiller. She was my father’s aunt, and she cast me in a play called ‘Hitler Goes to Heaven,’ in which I played Adolf Hitler. It got a huge response from everybody in the school. We had to do it twice. My God! It made me aware of the audience.”
Read the rest of the interview here.
