Early Life
Penn was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants Elizabeth (née Melincoff) and Maurice Daniel Penn. Leo Penn may have had distant Sephardic ancestry, as his father's surname was originally "Piñon."
Penn served in the United States Army Air Forces during World War II as a B-24 Liberator bombardier with the 755th Bomb Squadron, 458th Bomb Group, stationed in England as part of the Eighth Air Force.
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