Early Life
Born to Jewish parents in San Francisco, his family was financially ruined by the 1906 earthquake. (His paternal grandfather owned a successful San Francisco department store that was destroyed in the quake; the store was heavily insured, but the insurance company went bankrupt in the aftermath of the earthquake.) To make money, young Mervyn sold newspapers and entered talent shows as a singer. Through this he worked his way into vaudeville. When his act broke up, he and his cousin, Jesse Lasky, went to Hollywood.
Read more about this topic: Mervyn LeRoy
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“Betwixt the black fronts long-withdrawn
A light-blue lane of early dawn,”
—Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892)
“Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery, like the idle, curved tunnels of leaf miners on the face of a leaf. We must somehow take a wider view, look at the whole landscape, really see it, and describe what’s going on here. Then we can at least wail the right question into the swaddling band of darkness, or, if it comes to that, choir the proper praise.”
—Annie Dillard (b. 1945)