Pretty, Pretty, Pretty Good: Larry David and the Making of Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm by Josh Levine (ECW Press 2010)

 

An Unfunny Kid

“I never thought I would be involved in anything successful,” Larry David once said. “My plan was to try and get by. Maybe at some point I’d get involved in a bank robbery or something.”

Born on July 2, 1947, he was the second son of Morty David, a Brooklyn clothier who would later retire and become president of his condo association, like Jerry’s dad on Seinfeld. Larry’s mother went to work for the Bureau of Child Guidance. Later she wanted Larry to take the civil service test, figuring that he better get himself a secure job — postal worker, teacher — with good benefits. (On Seinfeld, when George moves back into his parents’ house, his mother has the same idea.) His parents were both Democrats, sharing their values and eventually turning Larry into one too.

Larry shared a room with his older brother, Ken, who would later move to Oregon and give advice on computers and investments. Larry went to P.S. 52 and then Sheepshead Bay High School where his report card was filled with average marks because he didn’t much care. (Later an obnoxious comic in a Seinfeld episode would come from Sheepshead Bay. “We were right on the water. The whole atmosphere stank of fish.”) There was always a lot of yelling — between his aunts and uncles, the families of his friends, and in the apartments next to their own. In just the same way, yelling would be a major form of communication on Curb. Larry liked sports and was considered a good athlete by other kids. His parents also forced him to go to Hebrew school, which he detested. He didn’t much hide his feelings and got kicked out for laughing at the rabbi who was telling him off for some infraction. (Even now, when someone is yelling at Larry on Curb he can barely keep himself from laughing.) But his parents, horrified that he wouldn’t be able to have a bar mitzvah, talked him back in.

“We’re both from kind of middle-earth Brooklyn,” said Larry Charles, who would become a producer, writer, and director on both Seinfeld and Curb. “You know, Brighton Beach, Coney Island, lower middle class, under the train tracks. We both understand that sort of Lord of the Flies sensibility that requires you to be very aware as you grow up. It’s a very savage environment, in a lot of ways a very cruel and sadistic environment.”

He was never known as funny, not by his family and not by his friends. But he liked to laugh, and he was a fan of Abbott and Costello, Bob and Ray, and especially the Jewish comic actor Phil Silvers.