An unforgettable meeting between the American First Lady and the chatty Stan.

As a sixteen-year-old, Stan Lee, then still named Stanley Lieber, worked as a doorman at the Rivoli Theater in midtown Manhattan. There he once had a memorable meeting with the first lady, Mrs. Roosevelt.

Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt came to see a theater performance. All the young men who worked at the premiere at that time hoped that the first lady would pass right through their door so that they could show her her seat.

Stanley was so lucky. He was very proud. He walked through the hall with a flashlight pointed at the feet of an exclusive guest. Stretching out and raising his head, he directed her: - This way, Madam President! – which, of course, was a completely wrong way of addressing the first lady. And at the moment when it seemed that this exclusive task would be carried out smoothly and without any problems, the worst happened.

Excited Stanley did not see the extended leg extended by a careless spectator. He jumped and fell as wide and long as he was. He couldn't manage it, and "Mrs. President" helped him get up by wrapping her arms around his shoulders. - Are you okay, young man? – she asked him, and at that moment Stanley regretted out of shame that he couldn't fall into the ancient parquet floor of a fancy theater.

Stan and the first lady

Stan

Dino

About a red bicycle, hot Spanish women and painting the ceiling.

Stan Lee was born Stanley Martin Lieber to a family of Romanian Jews who immigrated to the US in the early 20th century. At first they lived in a nice apartment on New York's Seventh Avenue, but after their father Jack lost his job as a worker in the textile industry, money problems caught up with them. He and his nine-year-younger brother, Larry, watched their parents struggle to make ends meet during the Great Depression. The family began to move frequently in poor New York apartments, and Stan almost always slept in the living room with a view of the brick wall of the neighboring building. In later years, he recalled how his father was not resourceful and how he could never find a job. Perhaps because of this, out of defiance of his father, but also out of financial need, Stan did all kinds of jobs from early childhood. He sold subscriptions to the New York Herald Tribune. he delivered gablecs to the pharmacy in the neighborhood and many other things. He was an average student. He didn't like school and couldn't wait to get rid of it.

One of his fondest childhood memories was when his parents (with the help of his grandmother's loan) bought him a red bicycle. Then he felt truly free. He enjoyed day and night drives along the long streets of New York. One of his favorite activities was reading. His favorite reading was then popular works for children: Hardy Boys, The Boy Allies, Terry and The Pirates and Tom Swift, and he especially liked the Jerry Todd and Poppy Otto series because they were extremely humorous. He also liked the fact that letters from readers and responses from the author appeared at the end of Jerry Todd. Because of this, he felt like he could be a part of the series. Lee was very well read. He also liked to read Mark Twain, H. G. Wells, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, E. A. Poe, Charles Dickens, and he considered Shakespeare the greatest writer.

As a boy, he also tried his hand at acting in a Jewish theater group. But the main motivation for this feat was not that he wanted to become an actor. The occasion was one Martha. For the rest of his life, he remembered the blonde Spanish girl who entertained him at rehearsals. Acting was not the only activity he did as a child. He was a member of the school's prestigious Club of Future Lawyers and the "publisher" of the school magazine The Magpie. The title of publisher made him very proud, and his self-confidence, which made him one of the most important people in American pop culture, is best reflected in a crime he committed as a child.

Namely, the classroom where The Magpie magazine was written and published was called The Tower. She had an extremely high ceiling that even the highest professors could not reach. One day the school hired painters to paint some classrooms, including the "editorial" among others. Stan hid nearby and waited for the worker in charge of painting to leave for lunch. Then he stole his ladder, climbed it and wrote in large letters on the high ceiling of the "editorial office": - STANLEY LIEBER IS GOD! - Of course, the inscription was discovered only after the painter left school. It stayed there for a long time, and then when Stan really became the "God of Comics", there was no longer any reason to hide the inscription.

The hero of his comic book

Stanley got his first job at Timely magazine no less than – through a connection. Namely, at that time, Martin Goodman, Lee's cousin, started the Marvel line of comics. At first, authors from other newsrooms wrote for them, but Goodman soon wanted to have his own writers, so he hired two young and talented authors – Joe Simon and Jack Kirby.

Goodman had a full editorial staff of his relatives. From janitors to writers and cleaners, everyone was somehow related to Martin. It was therefore natural that Martin Goodman was not thrilled about Stan working in his office. He enlisted one of his assistants to take him to Joe Simon's office. They told Simon: - Martin is only telling you to keep him away from him. Give him something to do. - Unfortunately, on the first day Stanley came to work, he saw Martin in the corridor of the building.

The latter asked him in surprise: "Little one, what are you doing here?" - It seemed as if he didn't even remember hiring him. Lee never found out if Martin was joking or serious at that moment. Anyway, his job was to erase the pencil from the works that have already been crossed out with ink and, of course, to bring coffee. When he didn't have work, he would follow Simon and Kirby to lunch and try to make friends with them. Simon used to recall how, when he was extremely bored, Stanley would sit in the corner and play the flute. – That especially got on Kirby's nerves. - he emphasized. It was a small miracle how he got to the position of writer at all...

American swag

How the "boy from the deck" became a writer.

Stanley Lee, the most famous and for some, the only famous person from the world of comics, entered this unusual genre through a relationship. The family employed him with his cousin Martin Goodman, who was just launching the Marvel comic book series. There, Stanley brought coffee and bored the real authors. But one day, it happened to be his time to shine.

Namely, in order for comics to be delivered by postal service, each work had to have at least two pages of prose text. It was assumed that readers would not bother with the text, but would just skip over it. That's why Simon hired an office nuisance - Stanley, to write a prose introduction for Captain America. And so Stanley Liber, under the pseudonym Stan Lee, wrote his first story called "Captain America thwarted the traitor's revenge". The story was nothing special.

But the self-proclaimed Stan continued to write. After a series of writings, Simon and Kirby allowed him to write comic book scripts as well. Soon he created the characters of Jack Frost and Black Marvel for the world of comics. After success with them, they allowed him to write his first comic. It was a story in a Marvel series called Headline Hunter, Foreign Correspondent, and with that Stan's career took off. But it was strange why this author, who is just at the beginning of his career, refuses to write under his own name.

No, it wasn't just because Stan Lee sounds more exotic. All his life, Stan dreamed of writing a great and successful novel, a masterpiece of literature. For him, writing comics was just a prelude to "the real thing". Those dreams of Stan did not come true. Despite this, the name Stan Lee will forever remain synonymous with comics.

Stan and the first lady

An unforgettable meeting between the American First Lady and the chatty Stan.

Tributes Wall

Share this Memorial

Share Memories

Memory Guardian

Remind me

Read more stories

The hero of his comic book

American swag

Two pages