I like New York in June.....And the rest of the year, too. I also think that it's a hell of town where the Bronx is up and the Battery's down. Not only that, I'm absolutely certain, that if you can make it here you can make it anywhere.

Gad. The cliches abound. The odd thing is, they're all true. But what would I know? My life is a cliche. I was born and brought up on the Lower East Side of New York. The cliche there is that the only way to get out was to steal, box or go into show business. I was too nervous to steal and too chicken to box, so show business it was.

When I was young and there were still wolves in New York and cars that had carburetors and points and white sidewall tires that demanded white sidewall parking. (Close to the curb but not close enough to sully the white.) Phones still had rotary dials and Kennedy Airport was called Idlewild.

For most of my life I was an actor, which makes what I say suspect. Actors don't have a real view of life. I either slept late and went to work in the theatre at eight at night or I dragged myself up at four in the morning to work on a movie way up in the Bronx or down in the Battery.

The New York I want to talk about is the one I grew up in. Back in the forties, btv (before television), the concentric circles of my existence were movies, radio and the funnies, most of all the movies.

America from the twenties to the forties was like Ancient Rome or Greece. Motion pictures were our pantheon, the performers our gods and goddess.

Through the movies I escaped the world. But it was not just the movies. It was the place where the movies were shown.

Movie palaces like the Paramount or Radio City Music Hall were an ambiance invented to transport the working stiff to dreamland and a touch of class...let's say semi-class.

Radio City on 50th and Sixth was like a visit to the land of Oz. I much preferred the Paramount, at Broadway and 43rd Street. It was the epitome of going to the movies, with its flamboyant, gaudy arch of a marquee shining, beckoning. The stars are here; join us.

I was brought up in two neighborhoods. The Lower East Side, which ran from the East River West to Broadway, north to East Houston and south to Worth and Catherine Streets; and Fantasy Land, USA, which had no boundaries. And it wasn't only MGM's or Twentieth Century Fox's fantasies that turned me on. I was just as thrilled with the crap Republic or Monogram pictures sent my way.

When I speak of New York I mean the City, when I speak of the City, I mean Manhattan. I can't tell you what street compares with Mott Street in July. And my Delancey street was not very fancy, but it did have the Loews (pronounced Low-eeze) Delancey movie house, a Woolworth's Five and Dime and Ratners.

After a double feature at the Delancey or a Saturday night girl less carouse we would go next door to Ratners, a kosher dairy restaurant which had been around since 1905.

Almost everything at Ratner's was served with sour cream. Who knew from cholesterol? Potato pancakes. Blintzes. They were good with apple sauce, too. Eggs. Matzo brei. Chopped liver, vegetarian style. Ech.

The back room of Ratner's, a speakeasy during prohibition in 1920, was a favorite hangout of Jewish mob big shots like Bugsy Siegel and Meyer Lansky. In case of trouble a back door opened to tunnel which led to an alley, then to Norfolk Street.

In 1997. a Ratner descendent reopened the back room and called it Lansky's. Go figure.

I went to P.S. 177 on Market Street, in the shadow of the Manhattan Bridge. I think New York is the only place that numbers grade schools instead of naming them.

One of the tourist spots in New York is Orchard Street. When I was growing up it was a mad European place. Vendors speaking mostly Yiddish noisily selling everything from vegetables to tee shirts. Bit by bit merchandise moved from the carts to the shops. We always went there for bargains. As the years went by so did much of New York. So did the tourists. They came on Sundays because Orchard Street was closed on Saturday. We never shopped when the tourists went.

Many Italian feasts are held in New York. But the one we went to was the run by Society for the feast of San Gennaro, the patron Saint of Naples: eleven days, Sept 14-24.

Smokey grilled sausage air. Zeppole. Games of chance. We'd walk along smoking, eating sausage, drinking beer, stopping to toss pennies. An array of cigarette packs in an open box, Camels, Chesterfields, and in the center, Lucky Strikes. The object was to get your penny in the target of a Lucky Strikes pack. I never won.

I was inducted into the army in 1953 and exposed to non-New Yorkers for the first time. In basic training while we were preparing to clean the barracks, the sergeant asked, "Anyone here from Chicago or New York?"

"New York," I said.

"We need brooms and mops. Go steal some."

That was the first time I realized others didn't think we were as wonderful as we thought we were.

Nevertheless, I like New york in June.....And the rest of the year, too. And I know for certain, that if you can make it here you can make it anywhere.