Wentworth spent most of his youthfulness in the very select and desirable neighborhood of Park Slope in Brooklyn, New York.

After getting his law diploma in England, Wentworth's father decided to go back in the United States. So all the Miller family, included young Wentworth who was born in England, moved to Brooklyn.

Park Slope is a neighborhood in the western section of Brooklyn, New York City's most populous borough. Park Slope is roughly bounded by Prospect Park West to the east, Fourth Avenue to the west, Flatbush Avenue to the north, and 15th Street to the south. It takes its name from its location on the western slope of neighboring Prospect Park, we already told its history in a previous «stroll».

 

 

Seventh Avenue and Fifth Avenue are its primary commercial streets, while its east-west side streets are populated by many historic brownstones that make it famous. To concoct you this article, I hanged out in those streets. When you get there, after leaving the skycrapers of Manhattan, you feel like sinking into the heart of Boston, the brownstones city. All those parallel small streets get to the park. They are populated by charming and pretty houses or typical architecture buildings, all of which highlighted by well-kept gardens that remind you of Old-England and make you feel well. You want to stay there for a while.

 

Park Slope is characterized by its historic buildings, top-rated restaurants, bars, and shops, as well as close access to Prospect Park, the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, the Brooklyn Museum, the Brooklyn Conservatory of Music, and the Central Library (as well as the Park Slope branch) of the Brooklyn Public Library system.

Park Slope is considered one of New York City's most desirable neighborhoods. It was named one of the "Greatest Neighborhoods in America" by the American Planning Association in 2007, "for its architectural and historical features and its diverse mix of residents and businesses, all of which are supported and preserved by its active and involved citizenry."

In December 2006, Natural Home magazine named Park Slope one of America's ten best neighborhoods based on criteria including parks, green spaces and neighborhood gathering spaces; farmer’s markets and community gardens; public transportation and locally-owned businesses; and environmental and social policy.

It is no wonder that when he arrived in Los Angeles, Wentworth felt well in Larchmont neighborhood. In many parts, Larchmont reminds you of Park Slope in Brooklyn. The small streets where beautiful houses with well-kept garden line up, a lot of shops where you can find anything at any time and the close access to the Wilshire Country Club that looks like Prospect Park even if it is a golf country club. Besides, here and there, only the palms, so typical of Los Angeles, can tell you where the picture was taken.

 

From 1986 to 1989, when he was between 14 to 17 years old, Wentworth went to the Midwood High School. This public high school, with beautiful new age architecture is on the other side of Prospect Park from Park Slope.

 

Midwood High School offers three programmes:

- Humanities : where you must learn two foreign languages, including Latin.
- Medical science
- Liberal Arts and Social Sciences

 

When reading these three programmes, it is easy to find out which one our erudite in Latin and English literature followed. Here is an extract of the Humanities Newsletter where we can see a picture of Wentworth when he was a teenager.

 

Besides Wentworth, many artists went to this high school which is top-rated. Here is an article that I managed to find on line in the website « Ephemeral New York » :

The famous alumni of Midwood High School : « What do Woody Allen, Marvin Hamlisch, and Emmanuel Lewis all have in common? All three graduated from Brooklyn’s Midwood High School. Woody got his diploma in 1953, Hamlisch in the early 1960s, and Webster in the ’80s.Other famous Midwood students include Grease‘s Didi Conn, poet June Jordan, and Prison Break star Wentworth Miller (though Miller transferred elsewhere before graduating).For a school known for its math and science brainiacs, Midwood seems to produce a lot of actors and musicians too.Midwood was built in 1940 on Bedford Avenue and Glenwood Road; construction costs ran to $2 million. Looks like the board of education got a good deal. It’s a lovely looking school building, with its six columns and cupola crowning the top ».

Indeed, as the article says, Wentworth was not a senior at the Midwood High School since his parents moved to Pittsburgh that year.

Since he was very young, Wentworth has felt attracted to the artistic world, and above all to acting. He has a lovely baritone voice, so naturally, he took part in SING! musical production in 1988 when he was 16.

 

SING! is an annual student-run musical production put on by some high schools in the Greater New York City area. It was started by Bella Tillis, a music teacher at Midwood High School in Brooklyn, New York in 1947. A Library of Congress archive of the papers of entertainer Danny Kaye contains playbills of SING! performances at Midwood High School from the years 1953-1957.


It is a theater competition between the various grades, with the setup between grades differing from school to school (such as sophomore-freshman vs. seniors vs. juniors, senior-sophomore vs. junior-freshman or freshman-senior vs. sophomore-junior).

This production is so well-known and well-established in New York that it was adapted for the cinema. The movie SING!, that tells the story of the production, was made in 1989 by Richard J.Baskin. According to The New York Times review of the movie, the film's production notes say that Paul Simon, Neil Diamond, Barbra Streisand, Carole King and Neil Sedaka, who attended various Brooklyn and Queens high schools in the mid to late 1950s, took part in SING! Productions. Even at that time, Wentworth followed in footsteps of great actors and musicians.

Finally, here is a musical idea of what I have been talking to you about. All those films and pictures were taken in April 2010 during an unforgettable trip to New York. Good stroll in Brooklyn...