Bob Saget

Early life

Robert Lane Saget was born into a Jewish family in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on May 17, 1956,^[3] the son of hospital administrator Rosalyn^[4] and supermarket chain executive Benjamin Saget.^[5] Early in his life, his family moved to Norfolk, Virginia, where he briefly attended Lake Taylor High School. He would later say that his sense of humor developed while he was a rebellious student at the Conservative synagogue Temple Israel in Norfolk.^[6][7] Due to a lack of family in Norfolk, he returned to Philadelphia for his bar mitzvah.^[8] The family later moved from Norfolk to the Encino neighborhood of Los Angeles, California, where Saget met Larry Fine of The Three Stooges and listened to him tell stories.^[9] The family then moved back to the Philadelphia area prior to his senior year,^[8][10][11] and he graduated from Abington Senior High School.^[12][13][14] Saget originally intended to become a doctor, but his Honors English teacher saw his creative potential and urged him to pursue an acting career.^[1][15]


Saget attended Temple University's film school, where he created Through Adam's Eyes, a black-and-white film about a boy who received reconstructive facial surgery; he received an award of merit in the Student Academy Awards. While attending university, he would take the train to New York City and perform at comedy clubs such as The Improv and Catch a Rising Star; his act included a section where he would play the Beatles song "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", using a water bottle to make his guitar appear to actually weep.^[9][11] He graduated from Temple with a BA in 1978.^[16] He intended to take graduate courses at the University of Southern California, but quit after only a few days. He later described himself at that time as a "cocky, overweight 22-year-old" who "had a gangrenous appendix taken out, almost died, [and] got over being cocky or overweight".^[17] He further discussed his burst appendix on Anytime with Bob Kushell, revealing that it happened on the Fourth of July at the UCLA Medical Center, and that surgeons put ice on the area for seven hours before taking his appendix out and finding that it had become gangrenous.^[18]