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Stanley Kubrick was born to a middle class family in the Bronx, New York, on July 26, 1928. Originally of Jewish heritage, the young Kubrick was given his first camera at the age of thirteen, by which time he had developed passions for jazz drumming and chess. Quickly photography became his favourite hobby, and whilst still a 17 year-old student at the William Taft high school, he landed a job at LOOK magazine, which today he claims was given to him 'out of pity more than anything else'. He had at first planned to go to college instead of work, but he lost his place to a returning WWII veteran after he failed to pass English. Eventually he graduated from high school with an average of 67, and while still working at LOOK magazine, he began to travel around America in search of inspiration. He quickly developed a thirst for knowledge, at the same time becoming obsessed with filmmaking and learning the fundamentals of the art that was to change his life forever.
After enrolling in Columbia University as a non-matriculating student, he began a regular attendance at the Museum of Modern Art, enjoying the varied program of local and international artists. He bought his love of chess to a new level, playing the game for money at the Marshal and Manhattan clubs in Washington Square park situated in the heart of Greenwich Village. At 23 years of age, in 1951, he used his savings and photgraphy salary, some $3,900, to finance his first film, a 16-minute documentary short about boxer Walter Cartier, who had earlier been the subject of one of his LOOK photo assignments. Entitled Day of the Fight, Kubrick was taught to use the camera by the man who rented it to him, and after a short period of production, RKO bought the film off him for $4,000, more than they had paid for any film of this kind. RKO used it for its This is America series and played it at the Paramount Theatre in New York. Kubrick had netted his very first profit.
He quit his job at LOOK magazine, choosing to pursue filmmaking full time. RKO advanced him money to produce and direct a 9-minute documentary on Father Fred Stadtmueller, a priest who flew around his 400 mile New Mexico parish in a Piper Cub. Flying Padre was used in RKO's Pathe Screenliner series and Kubrick acted as director, cinematograper, editor and sound man on the set. In 1953, he was hired by the Atlantic and Gulf Coast District of the Seafarers International Union to produce and direct a 30 minute industrial documentary titled The Seafarers. It earned some critical acclaim from within circles, and impressed by his own efforts, Kubrick went on to direct his first feature film, Fear and Desire, in 1953. The professional career of one of the greatest post-World War II filmmakers had begun.