Milton Berle (born Mendel Berlinger; Yiddish: מענדעל בערלינגער; July 12, 1908 – March 27, 2002) was an American actor and comedian. His career as an entertainer spanned over eight decades, first in silent films and on stage as a child actor, then in radio, movies and television. As the host of NBC's Texaco Star Theatre (1948–1953), he was the first major American television star and was known to millions of viewers as "Uncle Miltie" and "Mr. Television" during the first Golden Age of Television. He was honored with two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his work in both radio and TV.
Milton Berle was born into a Jewish family in a five-story walkup in the Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan. His given name was Mendel Berlinger, but he chose Milton Berle as his professional name when he was 16. His father, Moses Berlinger (1872–1938), was of German-Jewish descent and worked as a paint and varnish salesman. His mother, Sarah (Sadie) Glantz Berlinger (1877–1954), who was of Polish-Jewish ancestry, changed her name to Sandra Berle when Milton became famous. He had three older brothers. For many years, two of the brothers worked on Berle's TV production staff while Phil was a programming executive at NBC.
Berle entered show business in 1913 at the age of five when he won a children's Charlie Chaplin contest. He also worked as a child model and was "Buster Brown" for Buster Brown shoes. He appeared as a child actor in silent films. He claimed The Perils of Pauline as his first film appearance, playing the character of a young boy, although this has never been independently verified. In Milton Berle: An Autobiography, he explained that the director told him that he would portray a little boy who would be thrown from a moving train. He said, "I was scared shitless, even when he went on to tell me that Pauline would save my life. This 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."
By Berle's account, he continued to play child roles in other films: Bunny's Little Brother, Tess of the Storm Country, Birthright, Love's Penalty, Divorce Coupons and Ruth of the Range. Berle recalled, "There were even trips out to Hollywood—the studios paid—where I got parts in Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, with Mary Pickford; The Mark of Zorro, with Douglas Fairbanks, Sr.; and Tillie's Punctured Romance, with Charlie Chaplin, Mabel Normand and Marie Dressler." Berle's claim to have appeared in Tillie's Punctured Romance has been disputed by film historians including Glenn Mitchell, who in his book, The Chaplin Encyclopedia, writes that Berle's alleged role was most likely played by child actor Gordon Griffith.
In 1916, Berle enrolled in the Professional Children's School.
Around 1920 at age 12, Berle made his stage debut in a revival of the musical comedy Florodora in Atlantic City, New Jersey, which later moved to Broadway. By the time he was 16, he was working as a master of ceremonies in vaudeville. He is also known to have played small bit parts in several silent films in the 1910s and 1920s, although his presence in some is disputed (see Filmography, below). In 1932, he starred in Earl Carrol's Vanities, a Broadway musical. By the early 1930s, he was a successful stand-up comedian, patterning himself after one of vaudeville's top comics, Ted Healy.
In 1933, Berle was hired by producer Jack White to star in the theatrical featurette Poppin' the Cork, a topical musical comedy concerning the repealing of Prohibition. Berle also co-wrote the score for this film, which was released by Educational Pictures. Berle continued to dabble in songwriting: with Ben Oakland and Milton Drake, he wrote the title song for the RKO Radio Pictures release Li'l Abner (1940), an adaptation of Al Capp's comic strip, featuring Buster Keaton as Lonesome Polecat. Berle co-wrote a Spike Jones B-side, "Leave the Dishes in the Sink, Ma".
From 1934 to 1936, Berle appeared frequently on The Rudy Vallee Hour and attracted publicity as a regular on The Gillette Original Community Sing, a Sunday night comedy-variety program broadcast on CBS from September 6, 1936, to August 29, 1937. In 1939, he was the host of Stop Me If You've Heard This One with panelists spontaneously finishing jokes sent in by listeners.
In the late 1940s, he canceled well-paying nightclub appearances to expand his radio career. Three Ring Time, a comedy-variety show sponsored by Ballantine Ale, was followed by a 1943 program sponsored by Campbell's Soups. The audience participation show Let Yourself Go (1944–1945) could best be described as "slapstick radio", with studio audience members acting out long-suppressed urges—often directed at host Berle. Kiss and Make Up on CBS in 1946 featured the problems of contestants decided by a jury from the studio audience with Berle as the judge. Berle also made guest appearances on many comedy-variety radio programs during the 1930s and 1940s.
Scripted by Nat Hiken and Aaron Ruben, The Milton Berle Show also featured Arnold Stang, later a familiar face as Berle's TV sidekick. Others in the cast were Pert Kelton, Mary Schipp, Jack Albertson, Arthur Q. Bryan, Ed Begley, Brazilian singer Dick Farney and announcer Frank Gallop. Sponsored by Philip Morris, it aired on NBC from March 11, 1947, until April 13, 1948. It ran for an additional season (with new sponsor Texaco), keeping the same format but running concurrently with Berle's better known TV series, from September 22, 1948, to June 15, 1949.
Berle later described this series as "the best radio show I ever did ... a hell of a funny variety show". It served as a springboard for Berle's emergence as television's first major star.
Berle first appeared on television in 1929 in an experimental broadcast in Chicago which he hosted in front of 129 people. He would return to television 20 years later.
Berle would revive the structure and routines of his vaudeville act for his debut on commercial TV, hosting The Texaco Star Theatre on June 8, 1948, over the NBC Television Network. They did not settle on Berle as the permanent host right away; he was originally part of a rotation of hosts (Berle himself had only a four-week contract). Jack Carter was the host for August. Berle was named the permanent host that fall. Berle's highly visual style, characterized by vaudeville slapstick and outlandish costumes, proved ideal for the new medium. Berle modeled the show's structure and skits directly from his vaudeville shows and hired writer Hal Collins to revive his old routines.
Berle dominated Tuesday night television for the next several years, reaching the number one slot in the Nielsen ratings with as much as a 97% share of the viewing audience. Berle and the show each won Emmy Awards after the first season. Fewer movie tickets were sold on Tuesdays. Some theaters, restaurants, and other businesses shut down for the hour or closed for the evening so their customers would not miss Berle's antics. Berle's autobiography notes that in Detroit, "an investigation took place when the water levels took a drastic drop in the reservoirs on Tuesday nights between 9 and 9:05. It turned out that everyone waited until the end of the Texaco Star Theatre before going to the bathroom."
Television sales more than doubled after Texaco Star Theatre's debut, reaching two million in 1949. Berle's stature as the medium's first superstar earned him the sobriquet "Mr. Television". He also earned another nickname after ending a 1949 broadcast with a brief ad-libbed remark to children watching the show: "Listen to your Uncle Miltie and go to bed". Francis Craig and Kermit Goell's "Near You" became the theme song that closed Berle's TV shows.
Berle risked his newfound TV stardom at its zenith to challenge Texaco when the sponsor tried to prevent black performers from appearing on his show:
I remember clashing with the advertising agency and the sponsor over my signing the Four Step Brothers for an appearance on the show. The only thing I could figure out was that there was an objection to black performers on the show, but I couldn't even find out who was objecting. "We just don't like them," I was told, but who the hell was "we?" Because I was riding high in 1950, I sent out the word: "If they don't go on, I don't go on." At ten minutes of eight—minutes before showtime—I got permission for the Step Brothers to appear. If I broke the color-line policy or not, I don't know, but later on, I had no trouble booking Bill Robinson or Lena Horne.