‘It was a beautiful place to grow up’: Danny DeVito shares his Shore memories

Though Danny DeVito has lived in Los Angeles for decades, he’s always called Asbury Park home. The proud Jersey native still prefers watching sunrises on the Shore rather than in California. And the love is reciprocal: In 2018, Asbury Park declared Nov. 17 (the actor’s birthday) as Danny DeVito Day.

Before his unforgettable roles in Taxi, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, and other blockbusters, the 79-year-old actor and director grew up with his mom, dad, and two older sisters on Second Avenue in the center of Asbury Park, where he biked, fished, snuck onto the beach, soaped windows on Mischief Night, and ate cones of french fries on the boardwalk (with malt vinegar and salt, of course). He even recalls catching a performance from then-tween Stevie Wonder: “I remember at the Convention Hall, I saw little Stevie Wonder playing ‘Fingertips.’ He came out on stage, he couldn’t have been more than 11 years old. It was amazing.”

DeVito shared some of his best Shore memories with The Inquirer:

My mom was born [in Asbury Park]. Her family’s from Southern Italy, and my father was born in Brooklyn. My older cousins taught me all the good things and also taught me how to smoke cigarettes. They would come down from Brooklyn in the summer.

My dad had what he called a luncheonette. I just thought it was a candy store. He had a candy counter with penny candy and the more expensive nickel candy. They would serve ice cream sodas and hot dogs, hamburgers, grilled cheese, things like that. And they always had a pinball machine. The [candy store] on the boardwalk, Teddy’s, had a good jukebox. We’d listen to all the doo-wop songs.

We had many cousins and relatives [in the area]. The family would have dinners. I had two Uncle Joes. One was really my uncle, he was from Brooklyn. And the other one was a guy from Long Branch, he was one of my father’s good friends. He always did tricks and little puzzles. He was the first one to show us at a Sunday dinner once that there was such a thing as the fly in the ice cube. It was a joke that he played on my mother.

“Look at this!” He held it up and it looked like a fly got frozen in the ice cube. And my mother’s like, “Oh my God, this is so embarrassing, this is terrible!” It was really a plastic ice cube. I called him Tricky Joe. I played that part a lot. All my relatives I’ve taken from, you know, in my career, whether it was their delivery or whether they were rough around the edges — those idiosyncrasies.

I played Little League baseball, when I barely could swing a bat. The field was near Asbury Park High School. We would also try to hit balls over the fence to hit the train. What are you gonna do down there? We’d put pennies on the rail, wait for the train to come by, and they’d get squashed. But you gotta be really careful. Don’t encourage kids to do that.

We used to do really silly things, like ride on the handlebars of bicycles. Once I was on my cousin’s bike and we crashed. We were at the intersection of Highway 35 and Highway 33 in Neptune. We were coming down the street so fast. I was on the handlebars, holding on for dear life. I guess my shirt blew in his face or something. I don’t know what happened. But he lost control. I don’t think I was unconscious. But we were taken away in an ambulance. We had major bruises on our arms and our knees, but that was it.

My first job was on the boardwalk, it was great. I was 14 and basically ran the kiddie rides, you know, a fire engine or a car. You put the toddlers in and you tell them to ring the bell and turn the wheel. They go around in circles on this little wooden platform.

It was a beautiful place to grow up. I lived 13 blocks from the beach. I’d ride my bike down there every day and wait for the old security guard to look the other way and jump over the rail. I’d stay down at the beach all day and I’d look like a coffee bean.

I’d go off the jetties to fish out there. You could catch flounder, fluke, and kingfish. Various types of fish. My father was always going down to the end of the jetty with a pail, a pack of cigarettes, and a stool. We’d also go to Shark River, it’s more like in Belmar, and we’d go fishing and clamming — we were clam diggers. The New Jersey Clam Diggers.

When you got older, the big thing was the Eatontown Drive-In or the Shore Drive-In. We’d pile the car up. You’d pay per head to get in, and then you’d have two people in the trunk. I remember it was before you could hook the sounds up to the radio. Right around the time that the [1964] Beatles movie was released, they figured out how to tune into a station to get the movie sound coming through your own speakers. I loved the drive-in. It was like magic. The movies are magic, and then you have the open air and stars. It’s really great to look at movies outside.

There were five movie theaters [in Asbury Park] — the Mayfair, the St. James, the Lyric, the Paramount, and the Baronet. The St. James Theatre, when The Bridge on the River Kwai came out [in 1957], they built a big bamboo bridge across the Cookman Avenue. It was amazing. After I started directing, I did a premiere of Throw Momma From The Train [in 1987] on the boardwalk at the Paramount. My mother was still around, my sisters were there, and all my friends came.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.