Perry Avenue and East 204th Street in the Norwood section of the Bronx, the neighborhood associated with Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein and also the neighborhood where author Brian Kachejian grew up. Photo by Brian Kachejian.
The Bronx has produced an extraordinary number of people who went on to shape American culture, entertainment, fashion, literature, science, public life, and sports. Some were born in the borough and spent their childhoods there. Others were born elsewhere in New York City but became Bronx kids through the neighborhoods, schools, apartment buildings, and streets where they grew up.
Everybody knows some of the obvious names associated with the Bronx, especially the borough’s hip-hop pioneers and stars such as Jennifer Lopez. But the Bronx connections of many other famous people are much less widely known. Fashion designers, filmmakers, actors, novelists, scientists, musicians, television personalities, and national leaders all have stories that run through the borough. Here are 25 famous people whose Bronx roots may surprise you.
1. Ralph Lauren
Bronx Roots: Norwood / Mosholu Parkway
The Background: Ralph Lauren was born Ralph Lifshitz in the Bronx in 1939 and grew up in the Norwood area near Mosholu Parkway. He attended local schools, including P.S. 80, and graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School in 1957. Long before the Polo name became synonymous with an idealized vision of American style, Lauren was a Bronx kid who would go on to build one of the most recognizable fashion brands in the world. This was my neighborhood. I have written about it in depth on this site.
2. Calvin Klein
Bronx Roots: Norwood / Rochambeau Avenue
The Background: Calvin Klein was born in the Bronx in 1942 and grew up in Norwood, only a short distance from Ralph Lauren. Klein lived at 3191 Rochambeau Avenue and attended School 80 before studying at Manhattan’s High School of Industrial Art and later the Fashion Institute of Technology. Calvin Klein actually lived right across from me on Rochambeau Avenue. I lived at 3186 Rochambeau Avenue. P.S. 80 was at the end of the block. It still amazes me that two designers who would become global names came out of the same small section of the Bronx.
3. Stanley Kubrick
Bronx Roots: West Bronx / Grand Concourse area
The Background: Stanley Kubrick is often described as Bronx-born, but the more precise story is that he was born at Lying-In Hospital in Manhattan in 1928 while his family was living at 2160 Clinton Avenue in the Bronx. He grew up in the borough, later living near the Grand Concourse, and attended William Howard Taft High School. As a teenager he became fascinated with photography and eventually joined Look magazine as a staff photographer before becoming the director of films including 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange, Dr. Strangelove, and The Shining.
4. Al Pacino
Bronx Roots: South Bronx
The Background: Al Pacino was born in Manhattan in 1940, but after his parents separated he was raised by his mother and grandparents in the Bronx. He attended Herman Ridder Junior High School and later the High School of Performing Arts before leaving school and pursuing acting. The future star of The Godfather, Serpico, Dog Day Afternoon, and Scarface spent the formative years of his childhood and adolescence in the borough.
5. Colin Powell
Bronx Roots: South Bronx / Kelly Street
The Background: Colin Powell was born in Harlem in 1937 to Jamaican immigrant parents and raised in the South Bronx. He graduated from Morris High School in 1954 and entered the City College of New York, where joining ROTC changed the direction of his life. Powell rose to become a four-star general, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, National Security Advisor, and the first African American to serve as U.S. Secretary of State.
6. Neil deGrasse Tyson
Bronx Roots: Castle Hill / Riverdale
The Background: Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson grew up in the Bronx and attended New York City public schools before graduating from the Bronx High School of Science in 1976. He has often recalled looking at the night sky from the Bronx as a child and visiting the Hayden Planetarium when he was nine years old. Decades later he became the Frederick P. Rose Director of the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History.
7. Billy Joel
Bronx Roots: Bronx birthplace
The Background: Billy Joel is so closely identified with Long Island that many fans do not realize he was born in the Bronx on May 9, 1949. His family moved to the Hicksville area of Long Island when he was very young, and that is where he spent his childhood and developed as a musician. The Bronx connection was brief, but it is real: the future “Piano Man” began his life in New York City’s northernmost borough.
8. Lauren Bacall
Bronx Roots: Bronx birthplace
The Background: Lauren Bacall was born Betty Joan Perske in the Bronx in 1924. Her connection to the borough is primarily her birthplace rather than a long Bronx upbringing; after her parents separated, she was raised largely by her mother and educated elsewhere in New York. Bacall nevertheless belongs to the remarkable list of major Hollywood figures whose lives began in the Bronx before she became one of classic cinema’s most distinctive stars in films such as To Have and Have Not, The Big Sleep, and Key Largo.
9. Carl Reiner
Bronx Roots: Bronx childhood / East Bronx
The Background: Carl Reiner was born in the Bronx in 1922 and graduated from Evander Childs High School. A free acting class connected to the Works Progress Administration helped turn him away from a possible career repairing sewing machines and toward show business. Reiner eventually became one of the giants of American comedy as a performer, writer, director, producer, creator of The Dick Van Dyke Show, and longtime comedy partner of Mel Brooks.
10. Penny Marshall
Bronx Roots: Grand Concourse / Kingsbridge
The Background: Penny Marshall was born in the Bronx in 1943 and grew up at the northern end of the Grand Concourse. She graduated from Walton High School before eventually joining her brother Garry in California. After becoming famous as Laverne DeFazio on Laverne & Shirley, Marshall built an extraordinary directing career that included Big, Awakenings, and A League of Their Own. Big made her the first woman to direct a film that grossed more than $100 million at the domestic box office.
11. Garry Marshall
Bronx Roots: Grand Concourse
The Background: Garry Marshall was born in the Bronx in 1934 and spent most of his childhood on the Grand Concourse. He later remembered the family’s apartment at 3235 Grand Concourse and the mix of Italian and Jewish families that surrounded him. Marshall went on to become one of television and film’s most successful writer-director-producers, creating Happy Days and helping develop Laverne & Shirley before directing films including Pretty Woman and The Princess Diaries.
12. Regis Philbin
Bronx Roots: Van Nest
The Background: Regis Philbin was born in 1931 and raised in the Van Nest neighborhood of the Bronx. He attended Our Lady of Solace and graduated from Cardinal Hayes High School before attending the University of Notre Dame. Philbin became one of the most familiar personalities in American television through Live!, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, and decades of broadcasting work, eventually earning a Guinness World Record for his extraordinary number of hours on television.
13. Don DeLillo
Bronx Roots: Belmont / Arthur Avenue
The Background: Don DeLillo was born in 1936 and grew up in an Italian-American household near Arthur Avenue in the Bronx. He attended Cardinal Hayes High School and later Fordham University. The streets, families, voices, and neighborhood life of the Bronx remained important to his imagination, particularly in Underworld. DeLillo went on to become one of the most influential American novelists of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, with works including White Noise, Libra, and Underworld.
14. Stan Lee
Bronx Roots: University Heights
The Background: Stan Lee was born Stanley Martin Lieber in Manhattan in 1922, but his family later moved to the Bronx. As a teenager he lived at 1720 University Avenue and attended DeWitt Clinton High School. Lee eventually became the most recognizable creative figure associated with Marvel Comics, co-creating or helping develop characters including Spider-Man, the Fantastic Four, the X-Men, Iron Man, Thor, the Hulk, and Black Panther. In 2021, a section of University Avenue was ceremonially renamed in his honor.
15. James Caan
Bronx Roots: Bronx birthplace
The Background: James Caan was born in the Bronx in 1940 to German-Jewish immigrant parents, although he grew up primarily in Sunnyside, Queens. His explosive performance as Sonny Corleone in The Godfather made him one of the defining actors of 1970s American cinema. His later films included Thief, Misery, and Elf. Like Billy Joel and Lauren Bacall, Caan is a reminder that some famous Bronx connections begin with birthplace even when childhood eventually unfolds somewhere else.
16. Carly Simon
Bronx Roots: Riverdale / Fieldston
The Background: Carly Simon grew up in the Riverdale-Fieldston section of the Bronx in a highly musical family. Her father, Richard L. Simon, was a co-founder of Simon & Schuster and a classical pianist, while her mother also sang. Simon struggled with a childhood stutter and discovered that singing gave her a way to express herself without the same difficulty. She eventually became one of America’s most successful singer-songwriters, recording classics including “You’re So Vain,” “Anticipation,” and “Nobody Does It Better.”
17. E. L. Doctorow
Bronx Roots: East Bronx
The Background: Edgar Lawrence Doctorow was born in New York City in 1931 and grew up in the Bronx. He graduated from the Bronx High School of Science in 1948 before attending Kenyon College. Doctorow became one of America’s most acclaimed historical novelists, repeatedly blending fictional characters with real people and events in books such as Ragtime, Billy Bathgate, The Book of Daniel, and The March.
18. Chazz Palminteri
Bronx Roots: Belmont / East 187th Street
The Background: Chazz Palminteri was born and raised in the Bronx, growing up in the Belmont neighborhood that would later inspire his most famous work. His one-man play A Bronx Tale drew on memories of neighborhood life and was eventually adapted into the 1993 film directed by Robert De Niro. Palminteri’s career went far beyond that story, including an Academy Award-nominated performance in Bullets Over Broadway, but the Bronx has always remained central to his public identity and work.
19. Jake LaMotta
Bronx Roots: Bronx childhood
The Background: Jake LaMotta was born in New York City and spent much of his difficult childhood in the Bronx. He learned to fight in the streets and later developed his boxing skills while confined to a reform school. Known as the “Bronx Bull,” LaMotta became world middleweight champion in 1949 and fought Sugar Ray Robinson six times. His autobiography became the basis for Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull, with Robert De Niro portraying LaMotta in one of the most celebrated performances in film history.
20. Mary Higgins Clark
Bronx Roots: East Bronx
The Background: Mary Higgins Clark was born and raised in the Bronx and graduated from Villa Maria Academy. After her father’s death placed financial pressure on the family, she attended secretarial school and went to work before eventually becoming one of the world’s most successful suspense writers. Her breakthrough novel Where Are the Children? launched a publishing career that earned her the enduring nickname “Queen of Suspense.”
21. Anne Bancroft
Bronx Roots: Belmont / East Bronx
The Background: Anne Bancroft was born Anna Maria Louisa Italiano in the Bronx in 1931 and grew up in an Italian-American family in the borough. She attended P.S. 12 and Christopher Columbus High School before studying acting in Manhattan. Bancroft became one of the most accomplished actresses of her generation, winning the Academy Award for The Miracle Worker and earning another of her most famous roles as Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate. She later married another New York comedy legend, Mel Brooks.
22. Jonas Salk
Bronx Roots: Crotona / Bronx childhood
The Background: Jonas Salk was born in New York City in 1914 and spent part of his youth in the Bronx. He was an exceptional student who entered the City College of New York at only 15 and later earned his medical degree from New York University. At the University of Pittsburgh, Salk led the work that produced the first successful inactivated polio vaccine. The results of the massive national field trial were announced in 1955, turning Salk into one of the most celebrated medical researchers of the 20th century.
23. Neil Simon
Bronx Roots: Bronx birthplace / DeWitt Clinton High School
The Background: Marvin Neil Simon was born in the Bronx in 1927, although much of his childhood was spent in Washington Heights in Manhattan. His Bronx connection continued through DeWitt Clinton High School, from which he graduated in 1944. Simon became one of Broadway’s most commercially successful playwrights, creating an extraordinary run of plays that included The Odd Couple, Barefoot in the Park, Brighton Beach Memoirs, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning Lost in Yonkers.
24. Ace Frehley
Bronx Roots: Bedford Park
The Background: Paul “Ace” Frehley was born and raised in the Bronx and grew up around Marion Avenue and East 201st Street in Bedford Park. He attended several Bronx schools, including DeWitt Clinton and Theodore Roosevelt High School, before ultimately earning a diploma elsewhere. Music pulled him away from the street gangs of his adolescence. In 1973 he joined Gene Simmons, Paul Stanley, and Peter Criss in the original lineup of KISS, creating the “Spaceman” persona and becoming one of the most recognizable lead guitarists in rock history.
25. Sonia Sotomayor
Bronx Roots: Bronxdale Houses / Soundview
The Background: Sonia Sotomayor was born in the Bronx in 1954 to Puerto Rican parents and spent part of her childhood in the Bronxdale Houses in Soundview, a development later renamed in her honor. She graduated as valedictorian of Cardinal Spellman High School in 1972, attended Princeton University, and earned her law degree from Yale. In 2009 she became the first Latina and first Hispanic justice to serve on the Supreme Court of the United States.
Readers who enjoy stories about the people and neighborhoods that shaped the Bronx can continue with our look back at life on Bainbridge Avenue and 204th Street, our memories of life along Mosholu Parkway, and our features on essential New York film actors and essential New York film actresses.
Sources
- Ralph Lauren Corporation — Ralph Lauren biography
- Biography — Calvin Klein
- Stanley Kubrick Exhibition — Biography
- Biography — Al Pacino
- Joint Chiefs of Staff — General Colin L. Powell
- American Museum of Natural History — Neil deGrasse Tyson
- Billy Joel Official Site — Timeline
- Hollywood Walk of Fame — Penny Marshall
- Bronx Walk of Fame — Garry Marshall
- Bronx Walk of Fame — Regis Philbin
- Oxford Academic — Don DeLillo
- Bronx Times — Stan Lee’s University Avenue connection
- Bronx High School of Science — E. L. Doctorow
- Chazz Palminteri Official Biography
- Fordham University — Mary Higgins Clark
- Turner Classic Movies — Anne Bancroft
- Salk Institute — Jonas Salk
- Library of Congress — Neil Simon Papers biographical note
- Bronx Walk of Fame — Bronx natives and residents
- National Women’s History Museum — Sonia Sotomayor
