The parents of Phil Silvers came to New York from Russia, where they'd been on the run from the Cossacks, Saul had apparently hit a soldier with a shovel for making a move on his wife, Sarah.
In the year 1960, Phil said; "My father, who had escaped Russia during the pogroms, was a sheet-metal worker and one of the few Jews who worked on the skyscrapers. Because of his associates, he would speak with a Jewish accent and an Irish brogue. He would say 'Vell, I tell you bejabers.'"
Philip Silver, Fischl to his parents (the family name is Silver, but since he was always
called Silvers. Phil adopted the letter 's' for keeps), was born May 11, 1911, at 417
Pennsylvania Avenue in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, he was the youngest
of eight children. Everyone it seemed, except those who had resigned themselves
to living there and were considered prematurely dead, had one idea about
Brownsville - to make enough money to leave it. And anyone it seemed was
desperately trying their hand at any enterprise to do it. Phils' family, with ten mouths
to feed and a family income that never reached thirty dollars a week until he left it,
managed to turn out a lawyer, a chemist, a business executive, an architect, several
bookkeepers and one top banana.
Of his education Phil remembered: "The gnarled old rabbi in the prescribed grey beard and black gabardine gave private lessons in his black cellar tenement. He taught Hebrew by rote and the mumbo jumbo of the ritual made no sense to me. By the second session I hated Hebrew and I hated the old man. He'd slap my palm with a ruler when I refused to recite.............................I ran out and never came back "
He had, however, one solid, theatrical piece of equipment. As hard as it is to believe, he was blessed with a beautiful soprano
voice---and he wasn't afraid to admit it. And sing he would---for hours and hours.
His fame as a singer began to spread, and he started getting calls to sing at political clubs, social groups and in Brooklyn's numerous athletic clubs where no one was ever known to get more exercise than was necessary to propel a cue ball into a pocket or pick up chips from a big pot. At one of his first proper paying engagements, a beer hall party in honour of a just-sprung Murder Incorporated enforcer named Little Doggie, two hoodlums stormed in and carried out a hit on a third; the victim fell dead at Phil's feet as he sang. He was eight at the time. At ten he was singing to the boxers at a gym; and at eleven he was a singer at the Supreme Theatre - he kept the customers amused in case of projection trouble. He would belt out novelty hits like 'Big Boy'.
Aged eleven a theatre manager, named Jack Elliot, teamed him up with Bud and
Buddy, Jr., billing Phil as Brownsville’s Own Sophie Tucker. With a moniker
like that, a guy had to be tough. The act was booked around Brooklyn, and on
ferryboats that still chugged away in and out of Williamsburg every day. When he
was thirteen he tried going to New Utrecht High School but, after having faced his
public, he couldn't stand the boredom.
Edwards was the owner of a big-time vaudeville act called Gus Edward's
School Days which had turned out such big names as Eddie Cantor, Georgie
Jessel, Groucho Marx, Walter Winchell and many others. For the first time in his life
the brashest boy in Brownsville was stunned. He was so frightened he'd flop that it
took him three weeks to get up the nerve to put on his blue serge suit with the
knickerbockers and take the subway across the river to America, as many people
referred to any place outside Brownsville.
Edwards still liked what he'd heard and signed Phil for a salary of forty dollars a
week, twelve more than his father was earning. He was almost afraid to go home
and tell his family about his good fortune. He felt it would embarrass his father.
"I should have known better. The family kept half of the money happily and still told
me I was an idiot to be in show business." Phil later said.
Phil, with the School Days troupe, opened in the fabled Palace in New York,
the mecca of every act and trouper in the world. He did a song and dance act that
no one can quite recall but which must have been adequate vaudeville fare. He
might still have made it as a singer, doing jazzy imitations of Al Jolson in some
seedy night club, except for one thing. After three years with Edwards, Phil woke up
one morning to find that his voice, which had resembled that of a sparrow, now
sounded very like a candy butcher in a low-class strip house.
Mr Edwards pointed to the stage door. "Get out, my boy, for today you are a man."
Centre, aged eleven. With him are Bud and Buddy Junior
Gus Edwards
Later, Phil would say that he had one standout memory of his childhood lodged in the windmill of his mind. This was his father's nasty tobacco chewing and spitting habit. Apparently his mother had to spread newspapers on all the floors,
"We always walked on the headlines and heaven knows what else," said Phil.
Phil Silvers, the great terror of a Brownsville boy was to be labelled a schlemiel.
A schlemiel is like a third banana – the poor dope who always gets the short end of the stick. Only one thing was worse. A schlemiel is the man who buys the soup with his last dime and then proceeds to drop it. The schlematzal is the man whose head it falls on. To prove that a person wasn't a schlemiel, it was a habit, if not necessity, as a form of self-defense, to be fast with the wise crack, the ready quip, the killing crushing joke.
Into this sprawling, bawling, disorganized world, a boy with bright eyes and a quick mind could see more life in an afternoon than the average American boy might see in a year.
As in any community where jobs were poor and competition tough, Brownsville produced its share of shysters, fleecers, con men, wise guys, petty toughs and crooks, horse players, card players, pool-hall bums and amazing successes. People would bet on anything in the hope of clearing a few fast dollars --- including stick-ball games in the street. Phil was an avid stick-ball better until he found out that the games were fixed
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Saul would make a living as an Ironworker on skyscrapers
Sarah hardly spoke any English
Phil at three years of age
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"Bribing eight-year-olds to throw stick-ball games is not my idea of the good life. At least, not when I'm betting on the wrong team." Phil later said.
Everyone was in some kind of business or wanted to get into one. Some of Phil's older classmates found a unique idea for a new enterprise, and it prospered mightily until some of the top executives unfortunately got burned. For a time they really carved out a career for themselves. And I mean carved out. The name of the company was Murder Incorporated.
Young Phil thought it would be more fun, but just as perilous, to try killing people from the stage.
"I don't know why I thought that, but I always did. The only play I ever was in was a Thanksgiving Day pageant and I was supposed to come out on the stage and stand around looking like a Pilgrim. I thought the bit was going slow and needed some life, so I grabbed at my side like I had been struck by an arrow and began shouting. 'Indians! Indians!' They rang down the curtain on me for the first time in my life. I guess I was a born ham." Said Phil.
The boy ham of Brownsville was a worry to his parents, who were great believers in children getting all the education they never had. Phil was admitted to be a bright boy but he couldn't seem to get through his courses. He spent most of his time trying to pass as a smart cracking wisenheimer so that the other lads wouldn't take him for a cluck.
Phil at five
Young Phil Boy Soprano
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His discovery sounds as corny as a grade-B Hollywood script, but it is true. He was on the beach at Coney Island, singing for free and circled by a mob of admirers, when a natty gent leaned over the boardwalk railing and allowed his card to flutter down.
"Look me up," the man said, and left before Phil could launch into another number.
The name on the card read: 'Gus Edwards
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Thirteen and growing up fast!