Part I : Childhood Tidbits from Bronx Raised Celebrities

Photo by Robert Pernett

Regis Philbin was born on August 25, 1931, but his name dates back further. As a boy, his father Frank got into a fist fight with a priest at his Manhattan Catholic school. The impact of the dust up affected Frank so much that he named his son after the school, Regis High School. In 1932, the family moved in with Regis’ Aunt Victoria on Cruger Avenue in the Bronx. She owned a full acre and grew tomatoes and corn. If that sounds unbelievable, Regis himself is still unsure of another aspect of family history that his father often boasted. Frank joined the marines in 1930, and the elder claimed he flew one of the planes that buzzed King Kong on the Empire State building in 1933. “I was never sure if he was kidding.” he told The Wall Street Journal in 2016.

Nonetheless, Regis was the QB of his high school football team at Cardinal Hayes High School, hung out at Max’s Candy store on Morris Park Ave and swum at the Bronxdale Swimming Pool for 35 cents admission. Regis also had a paper route and delivered The Bronx Home News. Jake LaMotta was a customer, and he would often see the boxing great playing stickball in his underwear with the neighborhood kids. Regis left NYC to attend Notre Dame, but had an in to make his way to South Bend. Dad served in the same platoon with Moose Krause, who was the football and basketball coach for the Fighting Irish. Confessing that he would love to send Regis, Frank Philbin’s plea didn’t fall on deaf ears. Moose encouraged Frank to contact him when Regis came of age. “Years later my father did call, and that’s how I got into Notre Dame,” Regis told Back in the Bronx.

And Philbin took it from there.

Stanley Kubrick

Stanley Kubrick was born on July 26, 1928 in the Lying-In Hospital at 307 Second Avenue in Manhattan. His father Jack was a homeopathic doctor and raised his family at 2160 Clinton Avenue. Kubrick initially went to PS3 and later moved onto PS 90. He developed an interest in chess and joined the Marshall Chess Club on West 10th Street. Not a frivolous pursuit, the student used his mastery of the game to "develop patience and discipline" in all his future endeavors, according to Alexander Walker.

Otherwise, the young boy seemed bookish and somewhat ill prepared on the social scene, according to the reporting of Jonas Bronck of The Bronx Daily. “When we were teenagers hanging around the Bronx, he was just another bright, neurotic, talented guy—just another guy trying to get into a game with my softball club and mess around with girls”

Still, Kubrick wasn’t a very good student and actually had to retake English in summer school one year. The prodigy just did not like the academic approach. “Most of English courses consisted of the teacher telling you to read about characters like Silas Marner. Then on the next day, he’d have you get up in class to describe what Silas saw when walking into the room. And if you didn’t know, you got a zero,” Kubrick told Geekytyrant.

Clearly too advanced for school, Kubrick found photography around the age of 12, and was eventually able discard the rut of being a “school misfit.” The new camera in tow, the teenager learned the necessary technical aspects such as how to take pictures, build a darkroom and develop film. Then the task of figuring out how to sell pictures emerged, and all told, the entire process served as the education that made the difference in his life. “You might say, going through step by step without anyone really helping me - this was the problem solving of becoming a photographer,” reflected Kubrick.

A skill that schools still do not teach in his estimation. The 67 final average accrued at William Howard Taft High Schoo is quite the indictment, and the same goes for the fact that the future legend was not accepted into any university.

So much for the college try, but Kubrick obviously had the last laugh.

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