Beyond the Book
Alan Alda was born Alphonso Joseph D'Abruzzo in 1936. His
Italian-American father, Robert Alda (born Alphonso Giuseppe Giovanni
Roberto D'Abruzzo), was a successful actor who ran a burlesque theatre; his
mother Joan Brown, a former "Miss New York" beauty queen, suffered from
schizophrenia. His parents eventually divorced; Alan has a
half-brother, Anthony, twenty years his junior. The D'Abruzzos adopted
the name Alda by combining the first two letters of Alphonso and D'Abruzzo.
He contracted polio when he was seven years old, which left him bedridden for two years. He graduated from Fordham University in 1956, and joined the US Army Reserve, serving a six-month tour of duty in Korea (3-years after the cease-fire). Shortly after, he...
