Editing Mervyn LeRoy (section)

== Early life ==

LeRoy was born on October 15, 1900, in [[San Francisco, California]], the only child of Edna (née Armer) and Harry LeRoy, a well-to-do department store owner.<ref name=":0">{{Cite news |last=Flint |first=Peter B. |date=September 14, 1987 |title=Mervyn LeRoy, 86, Dies; Director and Producer (Published 1987) |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1987/09/14/obituaries/mervyn-leroy-86-dies-director-and-producer.html |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230412044018/https://www.nytimes.com/1987/09/14/obituaries/mervyn-leroy-86-dies-director-and-producer.html |archive-date=April 12, 2023 |access-date=March 7, 2023 |work=The New York Times |pages=16 Section B |language=en}}</ref> Both his parents' families had fully [[Jewish assimilation|assimilated]], residing in the [[Bay Area]] for several generations. LeRoy described his relatives as "San Franciscans first, Americans second, Jews third."<ref>LeRoy and Kleiner, 1974 p. 4: The Armer family for "three or four generations..." p. 12-13: The LeRoys and Armers "for a couple of generations..." p. 13: LeRoy's parents had "subjugated" their Jewish ethnicity: "My family was assimilated to the point of complete absorption...San Franciscans first, Americans second, Jews third."</ref><ref>Flint, 1987: "...the only child of Harry LeRoy, a department store owner, and the former Edna Armer" And: secular in that they attended synagogue "irregularly" and "many [Jewish relatives] never attended at all...his two female cousins had attended "a Catholic college." And: LeRoy "forever an only child."</ref><ref>Canham, 1976 p. 133: Harry LeRoy, a "prosperous" importer/exporter.</ref>

LeRoy's mother was a frequent attendee at San Francisco's premier [[vaudeville]] venues, the [[Orpheum Theatre (San Francisco)|Orpheum]] and the [[Alcazar Theatre (1976)|Alcazar]], often socializing with the theater's personnel. She arranged for the six-year-old LeRoy to serve as a Native-American [[papoose]] in the 1906 stage production of [[The Squaw Man (play)|''The Squaw Man'']]. LeRoy attributed his early interest in vaudeville to "my mother's fascination with it" and to that of his cousins, [[Jesse L. Lasky]] and Blanche Lasky, vaudevillians during LeRoy's youth.<ref>LeRoy and Kleiner, 1974 p. 14: LeRoy reports in his memoir that he was "about six months old" when he served as "papoose", but the play was not produced until 1905. And p. 43: ""...''The Squaw Man''. which I had appeared in when I was only six months old [1901]..."</ref>

LeRoy's parents separated suddenly in 1905 for reasons that were not divulged to their son. They never reunited and his father Harry raised LeRoy as a single parent. His mother moved to [[Oakland, California]] with Percy Teeple, a travel agent and former journalist, who would later become LeRoy's stepfather after the death of Harry LeRoy in 1916. LeRoy visited his mother as a child, regarding her more as "a grandparent or a favorite aunt."<ref>Flint, 1987: "His mother left her husband when LeRoy was a five-year-old to marry a hotel-reservation salesman."</ref><ref>Whiteley, 2020: "His childhood was troubled as his mother deserted the family when Mervyn was five."</ref><ref>LeRoy and Kleiner, 1974 p. 15-16: "My parents never told me why they separated, and I never asked." And: As a child LeRoy "would frequently visit" his mother and Teeples in Oakland, and his mother and father "curiously, remained good friends..my father and Teeple got along well, too."</ref>
{{quote box|width=30em|bgcolor=cornsilk|fontsize=100%|salign=center|quote="A LeRoy-Armer family legend maintains that the newborn—delivered on the kitchen table and weighing only two-and-half pounds—was placed in a turkey roasting pan and put in a warm oven to improve his chances of survival. The doctor who advised this procedure cautioned LeRoy's parents: "Make sure the flame is real low, however."<ref>LeRoy and Kleiner, 1974 p. 13-14</ref>}}
The [[1906 San Francisco earthquake]] and fire devastated the city when LeRoy was five-and-a-half years old. He was sleeping in his bed on the second floor when the quake struck in the early morning causing the house to collapse. Neither LeRoy nor his father suffered serious physical injury. His father's import-export store was completely destroyed. LeRoy retained vivid mental images of the city's devastation:
[[File:Detail of panorama from Lawrence Captive Airship 1906.jpg|thumb|Aerial view of the aftermath to the 1906 San Francisco earthquake and fire]]{{blockquote|My memory is a kaleidoscope of pictures. I have always thought in visual terms and when I recall that morning of April 18, 1906, I see a mental album of tragic pictures...many years later in [[Quo Vadis (1951 film)|''Quo Vadis'']], I shot the burning of Rome and I drew on my memories of the burning of San Francisco as a grim model.<ref>LeRoy and Kleiner, 1974 p. 6, p. 8 (composite quote) And: p. 4-5: The "solid stone [two-story] house...collapsed" while LeRoy was sleeping in his bed on the second floor, suffering only "scratches." And p. 12: "...minor cuts and bruises." And p. 6 "...the store was a total ruin."</ref><ref>Whiteley, 2020: "A year later, the [[1906 San Francisco earthquake]] destroyed the elder LeRoy's house and import-export business, leaving him in financial ruin [and] reduced to virtual poverty…"And: "The family [LeRoy and his father] suffered poverty and had to live on charity virtually as refugees."</ref>}}

Reduced to virtual penury, father and son lived as displaced persons at the military-run tent city on the [[Presidio of San Francisco|Presidio]] for the next six months. The elder LeRoy obtained work as a salesman for the [[Heinz]] Pickle Company, but his business losses had left him "a beaten man." The young LeRoy emerged from the traumatic event with a sense of pride that he had survived the ordeal and to regard it as fortuitous: "The big thing in my life was the earthquake...it changed my life before I knew I even had one."<ref>LeRoy and Kleiner, 1974 p. 10: LeRoys' father was reduced to penury and working a menial job, "the quake had wiped him out...the bankruptcy of the insurance companies meant that [his] was unreimbursed." And p. 11-12: LeRoy a "survivor" with "a kind of pride...it was as though [San Franciscans] had been reborn...for me...the change was a positive thing." And see p. 18 on the earthquake's shifting his outlook away from his father's business.</ref>

At the age of twelve, with few prospects to acquire a formal education and his father financially strained, LeRoy became a [[Newspaper hawker|newsboy]] and earned his first money. His father supported him in this endeavor.<ref>LeRoy and Kleiner, 1974 p. 21: "I wanted to make some money, to help my poor [father]..."</ref> LeRoy hawked newspapers at iconic locations, including [[Chinatown, San Francisco|Chinatown]], the [[Barbary Coast, San Francisco|Barbary Coast]] red-light district and [[Fisherman's Wharf, San Francisco|Fisherman's Wharf]], where he became educated as to the realities of life in the city:

{{blockquote |I saw life in raw on the streets of San Francisco. I met the cops and the whores and the reporters and the bartenders and the Chinese and the [commercial] fishermen and shopkeepers. I knew them all, knew how they thought and how they loved and how they hated. When it came time for me to make motion pictures, I made movies that were real, because I knew how real people behaved.<ref>LeRoy and Kleiner, 1974 p. 20-21</ref>}}