On This Day in History, February 1: Responsible for Lots of ‘Monkey Business’
Sidney Joseph (S.J.) Perelman was born at 168 Seventh Ave. in Brooklyn on Feb. 1, 1904, to Joseph Perelman, who had immigrated to the U.S. 12 years before, and Sophia (Charra) Perelman. He grew up in Providence, Rhode Island, where his father, an engineer, worked as a machinist and ran a dry goods store.
“My chief interest always was to be a cartoonist,” Perelman revealed in an interview for The New York Times Magazine in 1969, “and I began very early to draw cartoons in my father’s store on the long cardboard strips around which the bolts of Amoskeag cotton and ginghams were stored.” He had a reputation for sarcasm and rarely had a good word for anyone.
Perelman became one of America’s greatest humorists and satirists. He wrote 21 books, as well as plays. His screenplays included two hilarious early Marx Brothers comedies: Monkey Business (’31) and Horse Feathers (’32).