As might be said for the late and great comedians Harvey Korman and Madeline Kahn, it seems that Mel Brooks was the only director on the planet who knew how to best utilize this funnyman's talents on film. Brooks once quipped that, whenever he hired Dom DeLuise for one of his films, he would instinctively add another two days to the schedule because of the constant laughter Dom provided on the set -- especially when the camera started rolling. The lovable, butterball comedian was a mainstay on 1960s and '70s TV variety as a "second banana" or comedy relief player. While his harsher critics believed his schtick was better served in smaller doses, Dom nevertheless went on to find some range in a few moving, more restrained projects. Those few glimpses behind all the mirth and merriment revealed a dramatic actor waiting to be unleashed. As they say, behind every clown's smile, one can find a few tears. He was born Dominick DeLuise on August 1, 1933, in Brooklyn, New York, to parents John, a sanitation engineer, and Vicenza (DeStefano) DeLuise, both Italian immigrants. A natural class clown, it helped Dom fit in at school, and he started drawing belly laughs fairly young on stage. His very first school play had him portraying an inert copper penny! He later attended New York's High School of Performing Arts, but when it came to college, he decided to major in biology at Tufts University near Boston. He never got the idea of being a comedian out of his head, however, and the obsession eventually won out. Dom's formative years as an actor were spent apprenticing at the Cleveland Playhouse in which he gamely played roles in everything from "Guys and Dolls" and "Stalag 17" to "The School for Scandal" and "Hamlet." He earned his first professional paycheck playing Bernie the dog in a production called "Bernie's Last Wish." Dom also got a taste of the camera in Cleveland appearing on the local TV kiddie's show "Tip Top Clubhouse.