Milton Berle
(07/12/1908 - 03/27/2002)
Milton Berle was educated at New York Professional Children's School, and began performing at age 5. His first stage appearance was in "Florodora" in Atlantic City.
Berle appeared as a child actor in silent films, beginning with The Perils of Pauline (1914), filmed in Fort Lee, New Jersey, with Pearl White. The director told Berle that he would portray a little boy who would be thrown from a moving train. In Milton Berle: An Autobiography (1975), he explained, "I was scared shitless, even when he went on to tell me that Pauline would save my life. Which is exactly what happened, except that at the crucial moment they threw a bundle of rags instead of me from the train. I bet there are a lot of comedians around today who are sorry about that."
He appeared at the Palace Theatre in New York in 1931, then in night clubs and theatres. He appeared in the Broadway musicals "Saluta", "See My Lawyer", and "Ziegfeld Follies of 1943". His television debut was on experimental scanning-