Lots of stories to tell regarding the journey that led to LADY IN WHITE. There were two women in my life who played an enormous role in shaping it. One of them was my “Padrina Jeanne.” “Padrina”, in Italian, is the feminine equivalent of “Padrino” (masculine). (“The Godfather”, in Italian, is “Il Padrino.”) So, “Padrina Jeanne” was my godmother. But before that, she was always one of my first cousins on my mother's side of the family. The second born to my Aunt Felice, her mother and my mother's only sister. And I adored her. Jeanne and the rest of her family moved from Rochester to Miami Florida when I was three or four years old. We would drive to Florida to visit them on extended family vacations. The best part of these trips was my being able to be with my “Padrina Jeanne.”
Aside from being, in my eyes, the most beautiful creature that ever walked the earth, Padrina Jeanne rose to eventually become a Trustee of the Florida courts with only a high school degree and having never attended college. And she made me feel that I was the most handsome, special, boy on the planet just by embracing me and being in her presence. We had a special bond, she and I. On one of our trips to Miami, in 1962, Padrina Jeanne invited me to the movies. The film that she took me to see was TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD. I was only eight years old but that film, at such a tender age, made an indelible impression on me. It remains one of my favorites to this day.
In my first year of college at the University of Miami, I remember speaking to my Dad by telephone and telling him that I planned on making my third short film the following summer, GABRIEL. I had already written the script. The only problem was that this time, I needed to raise a significant amount of money to do so. My father asked me how much. I told him it would cost $10,000. He giggled a bit on the other end of the line and asked me how I intended to raise the money. I told him that I didn't know but would figure it out.
Enter Padrina Jeanne to the rescue. She and her significant other, Lou Phillips, who was an attorney, set me up with a corporation: GABRIEL FILMS INCORPORATED. They taught me that in order to be taken seriously by potential backers, I needed to approach them with a structure and a plan that was professional. The corporation would issue shares to them in return for their investment.
On a break from University, I went home to Rochester and gathered everyone I knew in the basement cinema at my parents home and pitched GABRIEL. My investors included friends and relatives. The investors bought shares with whatever they could afford to invest. I remember my girlfriend Susan's Aunt Jenny investing a whopping $2000! (Padrina Jeanne and Lou Phillips were the first to invest, of course.) The money was raised and we shot GABRIEL during the summer break of 1973.
Flash forward to 1987 and LADY IN WHITE. We had already completed the location portion of the shoot in Upstate New York. What was left was approximately six weeks of shooting on stages in Hollywood. Padrina Jeanne and her brother Johnny, his wife, Eileen, along with his two kids, John-John and Denise and their cousin Mark, all flew to Los Angeles to be with me for the remaining six weeks on the schedule.
John-John (who preferred to be called “Clyde”) and Denise had both been born physically and developmentally disabled. They were 21 and 20 at the time and were honored guests on the set of LADY IN WHITE. The first day they came to the set, we were shooting part of the cliff scene against blue screen with a partially constructed “cliff”. It was the scene where Angelo & Phil have their final encounter before Phil lets go of Angelo's hand and falls to his death.
Prior to shooting the scene, my Floridian relatives were introduced to the cast and crew that were on hand. As soon as John-John saw Alex, he jumped for joy and exclaimed “Herbie!! Herbie, Love Bug!!”
He had recognised Alex from his appearance in the film “Herbie Goes Bananas”, his FAVORITE film of all time! Alex, being the beautiful soul that he was, from that moment on paid special attention to John-John always embracing him to make him feel extra special.
John-John never forgot Alex and years later, when asked what he remembered about his days spent on the set of LADY IN WHITE, would respond without missing a beat: “Alex! 'TAKE IT!!” He was referring, of course, to Alex's words to Phil as he extended his hand to him during the scene on the cliff that John-John watched and remembered as it was being filmed.
AN ELEPHANT NEVER FORGETS: THE ONES HE HAS CHERISHED THE MOST
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