He was born in San Francisco in 1880 to Sarah (Platt) and Isaac Lasky. The family moved to San Jose, where Jesse attended high school and learned to play the cornet. He acquired some business skills by helping out in his father's store.
As a young man, Lasky dipped his toes in several possible careers. He learned show business by being an assistant in a traveling medicine show, the popular western U.S. entertainment of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. For awhile he was a newspaper reporter.
After his father's death, his destitute family raised $3,000 to send Lasky to join the gold rush in Alaska. But instead of gaining a fortune, he lost all his money. He paid his return fare by playing cornet at a nightclub where miners threw coins and sacks of gold dust at dancing women. Lasky next moved to Hawaii, where he became a popular bandleader.
Returning to the U.S. mainland, he teamed up with his sister Blanche, who also played cornet, and they formed a touring vaudeville act. Lasky eventually turned from performing to promoting short plays and other vaudeville acts.
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