Theatrical producer, educator
(1934– )
I told my father when I was sixteen that I didn’t want to be a doctor. It was traumatic. In the Bronx High School of Science, you had to put things on various applications. I put “premed” because I couldn’t put down “pre-nothing” or “I have no idea.” But at sixteen I finally said, “I don’t want to be a doctor.” There were a lot of kids who went to my school who were going to become doctors whether they wanted to or not.
I joke and tell my students that there were two questions that were asked by my parents when I was a junior and senior in college: 1. What are you gonna do? and 2. When are you getting married? If you woke up at three in the morning there was your mother going, What are you gonna do and when are you getting married? If you didn’t want to be a doctor or lawyer, they’d stick their heads in the oven. My parents struggled financially to send me to college, so it was a big deal.
If you went out on a date with a girl and it cost six or seven dollars, you knew that you had to earn it. You had to earn it. So you had a job. Everybody had a job in the summer. Many of us also had jobs in the winter. If you really wanted to make money during the summer, and if you were diligent, you’d get a construction job. Those guys made real money. And if you had to just make some money, you became a waiter in the Catskills or a busboy or a bellhop there. And if you kind of faked it, like I did, you were a counselor in a camp. So you didn’t make five hundred dollars. You made two hundred dollars. And since everyone had a job the value system of working came with the job. You wound up respectful of work. You put in eight hours you got paid four dollars. If you put in eight hours you went out on a date.
I joined the ROTC in college and went into the army as an officer right after college. I met people there from Arkansas, Kentucky, or whatever. It was then I began to discover what I had taken for granted—my upbringing, my schooling, living where we lived. It was much more valuable than I had realized. I had a bigger adjustment to the discipline, though, in the military. But once I adjusted I knew my way around because I knew my way around the streets from being brought up in the Bronx. When I got back, I knew that I was going to work in the theater, but truth is I found out what work really was while in the army. And I said, I don’t want to do that!
I was drunk two times in my life. One of them was when I was in the army, when we got orders not to go to Korea. We were the first company of young officers at Fort Benning who did not go to Korea. The other time was before that, when I was a teenager. I was seventeen at a party. At age seventeen I had never been drunk in my entire life. I never knew what that was. And the Bronx Science mentality of seeing people drunk and out of control made no sense. How do you allow yourself? So I was going to disprove the theory. I hated the taste of hard liquor—so I had eight doubles of Four Roses in thirty minutes. The first twenty minutes nothing happened, and that’s about all I remember except for lying on the floor. The guys took me home on the bus. I was not very happy. I was throwing up and I was moaning at home. My younger sister was frightened. My father understood and said, “Let him alone.” It was a terrible experience. I didn’t like the taste of it, and I was deathly ill, but I got that out of my system.
My father came from Poland. He had lived in London from 1910 to 1929. Then he immigrated to America. He spoke six or seven languages. He was a very bright man who did what he had to do to make a living.
I went back for the Bronx Walk of Fame thing. They install a street sign with your name on it. It was a Bronx moment. There I was with my son, and I said, “Do you want to see where I grew up?” So we sat at Franz Sigel Park just looking at the building. It was at 760 Grand Concourse, right near Cardinal Hayes High School. When I looked at my old apartment building it seemed so small. Our apartment itself had two bedrooms. My parents were in one and I shared the other with my sister. The whole apartment was tiny. I think the rent was seventy-six dollars a month. The honor itself, being on the Bronx Walk of Fame, has its own ambivalence. The recognition—what does it really mean? And yet the acknowledgment is wonderful.
We were in front of the courthouse when they unveiled my name. And that was two blocks from where I grew up. As part of the ceremony, my seventeen-year-old son was going to hold up the sign with “Manny Azenberg” on it. I couldn’t help but think of my immigrant father, who had lived two blocks away. That thought transcended everything else. There was his grandson, who he never knew, who’s unveiling a sign that has his name on it. Azenberg. All I thought of was if my father could only know that his family name was on the Walk of Fame on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx and that I was there with my son, Charlie Azenberg’s grandson. In Hebrew there’s a name for it. Hemshekh. Continuity. It’s continuity.