Sidney Joseph Perelman was born in Brooklyn, New York, to immigrant Joseph and Sophia Perelman. When Perelman was still a child his family moved to Providence, Rhode Island, where his father worked as a machinist, a dry goods merchant, and a would-be poultry farmer. Young Perelman, whose ambition was to become a cartoonist, practiced his drawing on cardboard from his father's dry goods store and spent many hours reading popular novels and going to movies; these books and motion pictures later helped influence his satiric style and his choice of subject matter.

From 1921 to 1925 Perelman attended Brown University as a premedical student. One of his classmates was Nathanael West, who's sister Perelman married. While in school, he began contributing cartoons to the campus humor magazine Brown Jug; he later became its editor. After graduation he became a regular contributor to the humor weekly Judge, and it was for...