Stanley Kubrick was born on July 26, 1928, at the Lying-In Hospital in Manhattan, New York, the first of two children born to Jewish parents, Jacques (Jacob) Leonard Kubrick (1901–85) and his wife Sadie Gertrude (née Perveler; 1903–85). His sister, Barbara Mary Kubrick, was born in 1934. Jacques Kubrick, whose parents and paternal grandparents were Jewish of Austrian, Romanian and Polish origin, was a doctor. At Stanley's birth, the Kubricks lived in an apartment at 2160 Clinton Avenue in The Bronx.
Kubrick biographer, Geoffrey Cocks, writes that although Kubrick descended from eastern European Jews, and was raised in a Jewish neighborhood in New York City, his family was not religious, although his parents had been married in a Jewish ceremony. When critic Michel Ciment asked him in 1980 whether he had a religious upbringing, Kubrick replied "No, not at all." He had no bar mitzvah and apparently did not attend synagogue. Although after his death, both his daughter and wife stated that "He did not deny his Jewishness, not at all." His daughter noted that he wanted to make a film about the Holocaust, to have been called Aryan Paper; and spent years researching the subject. Most of his friends and early photography and film collaborators were Jewish, and his first two marriages were to daughters of recent Jewish immigrants from Europe.
A friend of Kubrick's family notes that although his father was a prominent doctor, "Stanley and his mom were such regular people. They had no airs about them. . . . His mother was so down to earth, she was lovely." As a boy, he was considered "bookish" and generally uninterested in activities in his Bronx neighborhood. According to a friend, "When we were teenagers hanging around the Bronx, he was just another bright, neurotic, talented guy just another guy trying to get into a game with my softball club and mess around with girls . . "Many of his friends from his "close knit neighborhood" would become involved with his early films, including writing music scores and scripts.
Kubrick's father taught him chess at age twelve, and the game remained a lifelong obsession. Kubrick later recalled the significance of his chess hobby to his career:
I used to play chess twelve hours a day. You sit at theboard and suddenly your heart leaps. Your hand trembles to pick up the piece and move it. But what chess teaches you is that you must sit there calmly and think about whether it's really a good idea and whether there are other, better ideas.
He also bought his son a Graflex camera when he was thirteen, triggering a fascination with still photography. As a teenager, Kubrick was interested in jazz, and briefly attempted a career as a drummer. However, his father was disappointed in his failure to achieve excellence in school, which he felt Stanley was capable of. His father encouraged him to read from his large library at home while at the same time permitting him to take up photography as a serious hobby. These additional interests outside of school may have ironically contributed to his poor performance as a student.
