The prize-winning documentaries The Bronx Boys and The Bronx Boys Still Playing at 80 are both about the reunions of a group of fifteen men who grew up in the same neighborhood in the Bronx and who kept their close friendships with one another, mostly from kindergarten. Two of the Bronx Boys are George Shapiro and Howard West. They were interviewed separately but because they told one continuous narrative their two stories are combined as one.
(1931– )
(1931– )
Agents, producers, personal managers
George Shapiro: I met Howard West, who was a new kid to our school, when we were both eight years old, in third grade. Maybe the reason why we bonded so much was because out of fifteen of us just Howie and I, at eight, nine, ten years old, became Brooklyn Dodger fans. The Yankees were so dominant and the Dodgers were like colorful guys. The underdogs. We both rooted for the underdog. Our other friends were kind of cocky, walking around saying, Go suffer with the Bums. They weren’t wrong. We suffered a lot with them. Then when Jackie Robinson came along it was so emotional. The Brooklyn Dodgers were the first all-white team to hire a black ballplayer. We were rooting for them when they broke the racial barrier. I may have gotten that from my mother, who talked about racial equality and instilled it in my brother and me. Pee Wee Reese, the shortstop, was my favorite player, and when Jackie Robinson came along in the late 1940s he was Howie’s favorite. One of the most emotional times was when the Dodgers were playing in Cincinnati, where they were so racist at that time, and Pee Wee put his arm around Robinson. Howie and I, we followed our hearts. Recently there was this movie, 42, which was the Jackie Robinson story. I must’ve cried seven or eight times watching that movie.
Howard West: Here’s the deal. I got to be a Dodger fan because of my dad. He always rooted for the underdog. Georgie and I were the two Dodger fans surrounded by friends who for the most part were Yankee fans and Giant fans. There were three great ball clubs in New York. Great players. We’d stand in front of a building called 75 West Mosholu Parkway and fight and argue about who was the better player, which was the better team. We’d argue, and we’d have baseball cards. It was a great time. Jackie Robinson, to this day, is my favorite all-time player, although not in skill. There were better all-around players, but in that era he was an exciting player. Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays could hit well and field well, but with Robinson it was emotional. We grew up on radio. So we were listening to the old-time announcers, Mel Allen and Red Barber. And then when baseball was televised we’d look at some of the stuff in black-and-white.
My grandmother lived in the Amalgamated houses and across the street was a golf course. One day when I’m about twelve years old, I’m looking around and I find a golf ball. A couple of guys come around beating the bushes on their side of the fence, looking for their lost golf ball. I say, “Is this yours?” And the guys say, “It looks like it.” And I throw the ball over so they can see it. “Yup. Thanks, kid.” That happened to me one more time, and then a lightbulb went off. I’m in business! I couldn’t wait to go see my grandmother, because I’d hang out and collect the golf balls, hold them up, and make the golfers’ fingers come through the fence. Then I’d turn the ball and let them look at it, and almost without failure, when it was theirs, Yup, that’s fine. Throw it over. Well, this is ten cents. Give me the money first. Then I’d throw the ball over. I’d make a couple of dollars. I told nobody. I just kept the money hidden and then I’d buy ice cream or comic books, like Batman or Marvel comics.
GS: Our local movie theater was originally the Tuxedo Theater. Those were the days, my friend. We went to movies at ten a.m. and saw two complete double features, cartoons, short subjects, Pathé news, and the great serials the Green Hornet and the Lone Ranger, which were cliff-hangers. Then we’d get out of the theater at four.
My dad gave me an allowance, like twenty-five cents a week. It cost a dime to go to the movies. For six hours of movie pleasure it was ten cents. Eventually, it went up to twelve cents and then it went up to a quarter. Thinking back, we were noisy. In the kissing scenes, the love scenes, we would all boo. During the comedy, whether it was Abbott and Costello or the Marx Brothers, we would just laugh loudly and applaud, but if there was a romantic kissing scene we’d go “Booooo.” When the bad guy got shot in a Western we’d yell “Yay, yahoo” and clap. “Serves you right, you bastard.” That wasn’t such a bad word. We used bad language but “bastard” is as bad as it’s going to get for now. After six hours in the theater, when we went out, we were blinded by the daylight and brought back to reality. No complaints.
HW: We’d go into the Tuxedo Theater and we were talkative. Sitting there, waiting, we’d make spitballs to throw at the girls in front of us. And when we talked too much, the matron would come with a flashlight and then we’d shit in our pants, Matron coming. We’d duck down, and she’d leave, and we’d do the same thing all over again. The matron, fear, the spitballs, the girls—we were unruly, as they would say. Unruly! We had a great time.
So we’re older now and we’re dating. And we’re on a double blind date. Someone fixed us up. Neither one of us ever met the dates before. And you’re going to recognize the name of this theater—the Loew’s Paradise, this magnificent theater with the stars in the ceiling where they gave away dishes and stuff. Now this was not a very good double blind date. Georgie and I said to the girls, “We gotta go to the men’s room,” whatever. And we went and never came back. That’s not nice. We never came back. We left. All because we didn’t like the looks of the girls.
GS: There was this metal railing on Mosholu Parkway, where all the kids used to sit. It was better than any singles bar today. People would just come and go. It was the park and you were meeting girls. It was a gathering place where we talked and flirted, even at night when we were out of P.S. 80. We also had parties. Pot wasn’t in, but if it were available then, I’m sure we would’ve been smoking it. We had delicatessen and drinks. We all drank and then some of us would throw up, rest a little, and walk home. We always found places to have a party. No one had a car so we all walked. That was one of the beauties of growing up in the Bronx. You were so mobile. You walked to schools and to the parties or you took the subway or the bus.
HW: We drank a lot at the parties. Whose parents aren’t home? Who has an empty house? Whose parents are away? Whose parents don’t come back until midnight? We drank and ate and tried to have sex, mostly unsuccessfully. You’d find a bedroom. Someone would stand guard.
GS: When we were seventeen years old, Howie and I stole a car. You’re asking embarrassing questions, but I say to that, “No tengo miedo.” I am not afraid, in Spanish. I speak Spanish because in southern California es muy importante hablar español. Porque todos personas hablan español.
Before we could officially drive, Howie and I used to dream about having a car. People who had parked their cars on the street would often leave the doors open, so we’d go in and sit and talk about when we could drive and go out on dates with girls, or to be able to go up to Yonkers Raceway. Places that were hard to get to without a car. So one time we were in a parked car and we saw there was like this little switch. It wasn’t a key. We turned the switch and it started. We knew a little bit about driving because one of my uncles had taught me to drive in his car. So we drove around up and down streets, you know, not far—but it was stolen. We stole it—and then we brought it back. We had our joy ride and then we parked it again a block or two from Howie’s house on Kossuth Avenue.
HW: When we saw the car, it was parked close to one of our favorite candy stores, Mr. Baum’s. I lived a block and a half away from there. There’s a car—and I opened the door. We got in and challenged each other. We didn’t know it could start. We turned a knob in the car and it started. Let’s go for a ride. So we did, and then we started to crap in our pants. That we’d be in a stolen car, we’d get stopped, we’d get locked up, we’d be in jail—and we’d better go back. We went back and parked the car exactly the way we found it, including turning the tires the way they were.
We both lusted to drive so we both decided to buy a car together. I’m checkin’ the New York Times and I find an ad. A Mr. Levitt. I still remember his name. A 1940 Oldsmobile and he said, “It’s a cream puff.” Five hundred dollars. It was 1949 so that was a chunk of change for us, but we bought the car. For two working kids in college earning their own money—we put over two thousand dollars into that car. By comparison, a new Ford was twenty-six hundred dollars. We were just pouring it in. So I have the car on my weekend and it’s one of those snowy days where there’s ice on the road. I’m going down a hill around the corner from my house near Montefiore Hospital, and I hit the brakes to slow down, but there was the ice and I crash into another car that’s parked. We get it repaired—we always split everything—and now I’m warning Georgie, “Don’t do what I did. It’s icy. Tap the brakes lightly.” A whole repeat. He has to see if I’m right. He does the same thing I did and smashes up the car.
GS: We worked in the Catskills on the weekends and on holidays, at Grossinger’s and a place called the Flagler Hotel. There was an agency where you could sign up to work and get tips, and that helped pay my tuition to NYU. So we borrowed our friend Elliott’s car, which was a 1937 Plymouth. The car was fourteen years old. A creaky little car. We were heading down a hill when we hit a bump and all of a sudden we saw that the engine of the car got dislodged and bounced out of the car. So we’re at the top of the hill, rolling down, and we’re watching this engine rolling down the hill in front of us. I was driving. I guess we’ll coast down to the bottom of the hill, and I steered over to the side of the road. There was no way that the engine was gonna work again since it was all battered and beat-up. I think that the car is still there to this day.
We didn’t have suitcases, so we had our stuff in bags, like big laundry bags. We looked like refugees. We hitchhiked to the Flagler Hotel and called Elliott. “Elliott, your engine fell out and the car’s on the side of the road and I don’t think it’s ever gonna work again.” I must say he was pretty gracious about it. Another reason I love the boys from the Bronx. He understood that the car was old.
HW: Waiters, busboys—we worked all over the place and we didn’t have a car for some reason, so we borrowed Elliott Liss’s old beat-up car. That car was called The Poop, it was so bad. It’s huffing and puffing when the engine falls out. We abandon the car and decide to take the license plate off so they can’t trace us.
Did Georgie tell you what happened at the Flagler? Did he tell you where we slept?
The place was full, and they had nowhere for us to sleep except across the road in a barbershop. The only thing available to us were barber chairs. So we slept in the barber chairs. That’s what happened to us when we went to the Catskills. We slept in the barbershop in the chairs.
GS: Howie and I, we went to school together, we bought our first car together, we became lifeguards together, we worked at William Morris Agency together, and when I came to LA I brought him out to work at William Morris in California, and then we formed this partnership together, Shapiro/West Productions.
HW: Georgie and I are like glue.
GS: I always felt lucky, happy, and so nourished in the Bronx. For the time I had my mother and my father, they just showered me with love. I carried that with me and I passed this essence on to my own kids. The other guys from the Bronx had similar experiences. And don’t forget the freedom we had. Those reasons are why you see the joy in The Bronx Boys Still Playing at 80. A lot of the guys who live on the East Coast ended up in Florida, so I’m going there for New Year’s. We’ll go to a Thai restaurant for dinner, then we’ll go to Lenny Kulick’s house to celebrate with champagne.