Background
Bloch was born in Chicago, the son of Raphael "Ray" Bloch (1884–1952), a bank cashier, and his wife Stella Loeb (1880–1944), a social worker, both of German-Jewish descent. Bloch's family moved to Maywood, a Chicago suburb, when he was five. He attended the Methodist Church there despite his parents' Jewish heritage. At eight or nine years of age, living in Maywood, he attended a screening of Lon Chaney, Sr.'s Phantom of the Opera late at night on his own. The scene of Chaney removing his mask terrified the young Bloch and sparked his interest in horror.
In 1929 Ray Bloch lost his bank job, and the family moved to Milwaukee, where Stella worked at the Milwaukee Jewish Settlement settlement house. Robert attended Washington, then Lincoln High School, where he met lifelong friend Harold Gauer. Gauer was editor of The Quill, Lincoln's literary magazine, and accepted Bloch's first published short story, a horror story titled "The Thing" (the "thing" of the title was Death). Both Bloch and Gauer graduated from Lincoln in 1932 during the height of the Great Depression. Bloch was involved in the drama department at Lincoln and wrote and performed in school vaudeville skits.
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