I quit school at 16 and worked as a busboy, a night watchman, a drill-press operator’s assistant, all the while picking up odd jobs singing and clowning at local banquets.Įventually I went to Detroit and sang for a while on a radio program. I always had my heart set on being an entertainer, and during the seven years I spent at the burlesque theater I studied some of the best comedians in the business and grew all the more determined to be one too. “I’ve given him into the care of the Blessed Mother.” She knew that I was in good hands, and so did L One day I heard a neighbor asking my mother if she wasn’t worried about the things that might happen to her little boy, but my mother’s reply rang with certainty. When I was ten years old, I landed a job hawking soda pop in the old Columbia burlesque theater in Toledo, which meant that I wouldn’t get home until 2:30 in the morning. To her, despair was a tool of the devil-it was doubting God, and that was a sin.Īs each of us children was born, she turned us over to God and after that she would not let herself, or us, forget that we had Him to turn to. My mother’s faith in God was so strong that she could not possibly give in to fear or hopelessness. She went to her knees in prayer, promising God that if her baby’s life were saved she’d beg alms for the poor for a year.ĭanny got well, and every day for 12 months my mother, herself one of the poorest of the poor, living in shabby, cramped quarters over a pool hall, went out and begged pennies from door to door. He screamed and went into convulsions.Īt the hospital the doctors told my mother that Danny was dying, but she wouldn’t accept that. When the first Danny was a few months old, he was badly bitten by a rat that jumped into his crib.
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