Saturday, May 8, 2010

Me & My Pal Sue



I had one of the weirdest experiences of my life the other night. A total "6 degrees of separation" kind of feeling. Cosmo & I have TiVo'd the NBC show "Who do you Think you Are?" this season. I started to watch the Susan Sarandon episode Tuesday or Wednesday but something came up and I only got 10-15 minutes into it. So, I tried to watch it again Thursday night while Cosmo was up in Huntsville for the evening. O.M.G. What a show! My dad went to high school w/ Susan in Edison, NJ (I think her name back then was Tomlison or something like that). We always joked that my dad going to high school with her was his big claim to fame. I think she even signed his yearbook. Cosmo & I, on the other hand, went to high school with the girl "Flo" from the Geico commercials.


So back to Susan . . . Apparently, she never knew her maternal grandmother. Her mother's mother disappeared when the mother was just a toddler. The family actually thought she was dead. Well, as they investigated, they found out that she had a really tough life. As they tracked her life through birth certificates, death certificates, marriage certificates they discovered the grandmother was pregnant by her 19 year old neighbor when she was 12 years old, married at 13, ultimately ended up being married 3 times, etc. So, the really weird part was they tracked her grandmother down to Rockland County, NY! Not just Rockland County but Garnerville, Cosmo's home town. Doesn't end there. Not just Garnerville, but her house was on the first street as you entered his childhood neighborhood. He had to pass her grandmother's house EVERY day of his life and if it's the house we think it is, he would have even delivered newspapers to her for years before she passed away in 1984. No lie. We have literally driven past this woman's house millions and millions of times! The most amazing part of the show (to me) was the family resemblance Susan and her grandmother shared. Susan's mother only had 2 photos of her mother, one was a laminated, tore up photo from the newspaper or something and another was taken at at the World's Fair in the 30's but the photo was distorted because it was actually a reflection from the fun house mirrors. The grandmother's 3rd husband sketched his wife and when Susan Sarandon held the drawing up to her face, the resemblance was uncanny. She looked so much like her grandmother it was crazy! The grandmother also had a bit of a wild, independent streak (very rare for a woman of her time). She was a bit of a showgirl, hung out in some of the famous New York City night clubs (ie. the Copacabana, etc.) and lied about her age as it suited her. The sad part of the whole show was that her grandmother lived 1 1/2 hours from her growing up and they never even knew each other. So close.

1 comment:

*Yankee Belle* said...

One of the many shows I want to see, but have not. Crazy how close to home it literally hits. I love having lived in NY. Many ties to celebrities...makes hollywood seem more real.

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