Meet the Bronx Boys

BOYS BEING BOYS: The Bronx Boys at a bachelor party for Sammy Lewis in October 1951

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They'd meet in the schoolyard, candy stores, pool halls and restaurants. "We weren't really a gang," says Greenberg. "We didn't all go at the same time to the same places. You went down to the schoolyard, and three other guys were there. The next day, there were five different guys."

Many of their wives too are from the neighborhood. Only two of the 15 boys have been divorced, including Shapiro, who says that aside from widowers who remarried, the rest remain wedded to the women they courted decades ago. West has been married for 43 years to his wife Marlene, a Bronx girl. Shapiro's current wife, Diane Barnett-Shapiro, is another New Yorker. The secret? Familiarity. "After I told Jerry [Seinfeld] that the more common ground you have, the better chance of a successful marriage," says Shapiro, "he dubbed that 'the Shapiro law of common culture.'"

What West calls "a splintering" occurred as they grew up, got driver's licenses, married and moved away. Then in 1991 West was the host of a 60th birthday party at his house in Los Angeles for one of the boys, New York City based brick salesman Elliott Liss. Half a dozen local Bronx Boys showed up, and, says West, they had such a good time, "it was the trigger to reunite and get close once again. We said let's do a bigger one in five years, and that became the first East-West reunion."

That celebration in turn served as a dress rehearsal for their 70th birthday party, which was filmed for the documentary. Shapiro and West organized both weekend reunions, which featured gatherings at their homes and assorted childhood games re-created at a Los Angeles schoolyard rented for that purpose. Wives joined their husbands for meals and mingling but moved to the sidelines as the men played stickball, basketball and touch football. In their navy Bronx Boys T shirts and with their once dark hair gray or nearly gone, the men remained competitive, disagreeing loudly over fouls. Here, though, a player scoring a basket was cheered by both sides.

Shapiro says The Bronx Boys started as "a record for our kids and grandkids to show them who we were, where we came from and what we valued." But when Shapiro's client and uncle Reiner heard about it, "he said he had to come," says Shapiro. "They gave him a mike, and he spontaneously interviewed everyone."

Becoming boys again as they describe their first kisses, crushes on schoolteachers and schoolyard games, they vividly retell stories like how Greenberg took apart a TV set so it would fit through a small doorway and then reassembled it on the other side.

As the film shows, these men have put together what amounts to an informal extended family, available in good times and bad. When Shapiro and West were in New York City last spring for Seinfeld's 50th birthday, they hired a car and driver, loaded up on deli goodies and went to visit the ailing Liss in the Bronx's Riverdale section. Liss died in May, and the PBS telecast is dedicated to "the life and laughter of Elliott Liss." Much as the boys came up with some of the money a few years ago for Los Angeles based actor and screenwriter John Herman (Heshy) Shaner to produce his new play, so they rallied this time to contribute money toward a New York City playground in Liss's name.

The West Coast contingent lunches together every few months, and on the East Coast, many live within driving distance of one another. Heywood (Woody) Broad and Leonard (Lenny) Kulick live with their families in neighboring communities in Florida, where many of the others head in winter. Several get together each New Year's Eve in Boca Raton, and when widower Broad, a supplier for nursing homes, remarried in 2002, Bronx Boys flew in from all over the country for the wedding.

Ten other Bronx classmates have already contacted Shapiro and West, asking to be included in the group's 75th reunion, in 2006. They have some good incentives. "When we went out to Los Angeles for our 70th, people had aches and pains," recalls Lauren. "But all of a sudden, they were gone. It was like getting a tonic. Just speaking about the Bronx Boys gives me a high."