This episode is a little different, we have a theme going on here - Bank Robberies. We will feature not one, but two Elizabeths from different historical periods, with bank robberies in common.

Part One is about a Gilded Age con woman named Elizabeth Bigley, but she used many different names and personas in order to accomplish some pretty impressive scams. Many scammers take money from regular folk, but Bigley set her sights on tougher targets like Lawyers and Bank Presidents. Bigley's biggest scam was pretending she was the illegitimate daughter of Steel magnate and extremely rich guy, Andrew Carnegie.

If you hate banks and extremely rich people, you will love Elizabeth Bigley, a/k/a Cassie Chadwick, a/k/a Madame Lydia DeVere, a/k/a Madame Marie LaRose.

Part Two of this episode involves a bank robbery and an Elizabeth, but she didn't commit the crime, she inspired it. In 1973, John Wojtowicz, a Viet Nam veteran, attempted to rob a Chase bank in Gravesend, Brooklyn. The robbery went completely off the rails, and turned into a hostage stand-off that lasted hours and became a mass media event. The reason Wojtowicz robbed the bank - he needed the money to pay for his lover's gender reassignment surgery. His lover, Ernest Aron, later became Elizabeth Debbie Eden.

If this story sounds familiar, that's because it was later turned into the blockbuster film "Dog Day Afternoon" starring Al Pacino, John Cazale, and Chris Sarandon. Sarandon - who was nominated for an Oscar for his performance as Al Pacino's love interest - joins Kathy & Gideon as our special guest.

Sarandon tells us what advice director Sidney Lumet gave to him that helped portray this unprecedented - at the time - character for a mainstream film. We also talk to Sarandon about some of his other amazing roles and film experiences, including working with the late Rob Reiner making "The Princess Bride." Sarandon has played so many great roles including the lead of the beloved vampire film "Fright Night," and voicing the character of Jack Skellington for the Tim Burton holiday classic, "The Nightmare Before Christmas."

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Bad Elizabeth - Instagram - YouTube - Substack

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SOURCES:

The Imposter Heiress: Cassie Chadwick, the Greatest Grifter of the Gilded Age by Annie Reed

https://a.co/d/0hzudhMF

The High Priestess of Fraudulent Finance by Abbot Kahler

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-high-priestess-of-fraudulent-finance-45/

Dog Day Afternoon

https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B000GOXGO2/ref=atv_dp_share_cu_r

The Dog (documentary)

https://youtu.be/npe6yTYmTiM?si=nSD4vfIdhxQQd9jA

The Princess Bride

https://youtu.be/JtVRCmWm2lA?si=kdEwlvha6acPqZ5d

Fright Night

https://youtu.be/JtVRCmWm2lA?si=kdEwlvha6acPqZ5d

Nightmare Before Christmas

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0107688/

Jump cut - Real Dog Day hero tells his story

https://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC15folder/RealDogDay.html

The Center - Liz Eden Papers

https://archives.gaycenter.org/repositories/2/resources/18

Welcome to Bad Elizabeth.

I'm your host, Gideon Evans,

and I'm your host Kathy Egan Taylor.

The premise of this show is exactly what it sounds like.

Each episode we profile a different Elizabeth or derivation of that name,

like Eliza

or the.

Or Bess,

who deserves to be called bad.

This episode is actually about two Elizabeths.

It's a twofer.

That's our producer and engineer Will Becton of Jet Road Studios.

Hi guys.

First up, we'll discuss Elizabeth Bigley,

AKA, Cassie Chadwick,

and later we'll talk about Elizabeth Debbie Eden.

Yeah, this is a bit of a theme episode.

Welcome to Battle Elizabeth.

Yes.

I'm Gideon Evans.

And I'm Cathy Egan Taylor.

And that's not a lie.

And lying is a big part of this episode.

Yes.

And I sort of admire this character.

We'll be talking about.

Well, we'll get into it.

And we are here, of course, in Studio City at Jet Road Studios with Will Becton.

Hi guys.

We heard a rumor that Amber Becton might be providing food.

She's

making us lunch.

She's our executive producer, but she has many talents

She might be making ole.

Oh my goodness.

Delicious.

I know.

Will.

As soon as we walked in and you brought that up, that's all

I'm thinking about is lunch.

Excited.

So hopefully you won't hear our stomachs growling.

Exactly.

Fava rig me.

Baba O'Reilly?

No, no.

Papa O'Reilly.

Well, uh, George Carlin used to have a routine about stomach noises.

He, oh, that's the technical word, is ba oig me.

Oh.

Seven stomach noises.

You can't say on tv.

Right?

On tv.

Yeah.

The stomach growling is never a good thing.

No.

And Kathy Scott, your, uh,

my husband is away this weekend.

That is that a nice thing?

He's spending time with his mother, so that's lovely.

But it's unfortunate because he wanted to see you guys, so he's away.

But, uh, no, we

miss him.

He's a good guy.

He's a great guy.

But the problem I have is like, I have to take care of the dog.

Right.

Scott is his master.

See, he loves him.

He'll do anything for Scott, for me.

I'm just like the gal that walks him, feeds him and cleans up after him.

Mm-hmm.

So

I wake up in the morning and he's out in the living room.

He doesn't get up when he sees me.

He's just like, yeah, you

Scott going outta town.

Puts him outta whack a little bit.

Well, yeah, he's looking for him.

Yeah.

He won't walk with me.

He slips out of his collar.

What's the

dog's name?

Oggie.

And is that shore for August?

It's just Augie Augustus, I suppose.

Oh, Augustus, right?

He's Augie doggy doodle all the day.

And was Augie the name that the previous owner gave him?

Yes.

So you kept it?

Yes.

We have a dog named George.

I know.

And that we kept George's name.

I like a good, just straight human name for a dog like Carl.

Like I always get amused by.

My mom grew up on a farm and she had horses and, and I actually rode the

horses she rode when she was growing up.

'cause horses lived for a very long time.

The horses were Eric and she had a dog named Sheila.

Um, so I love human names for dogs.

Well, Jill, my wife, when we met, she had a cat named Joyce.

Joyce.

At some point we met a veterinarian whose name was Joyce Weedman,

which was weird because that was.

The name of my wife's cat, 'cause her last name was Weedman.

Oh.

So we were like,

wow.

Introduce the veterinarian to the other Joyce Weedman.

Kinda odd.

Oh, well let's hope Augie and George are enjoying their time

while we're not with them.

Let's get started.

What's in a name, right guys?

Exactly.

Letters mainly.

But

thank you Sesame Street for reminding us of that.

So this one's a little different, right?

Yeah.

This one's a little different.

'cause we have actually a theme going on here and the theme is bank robberies.

Yeah.

We're starting with a Gilded age con woman, Elizabeth Bigley, who swindled

big banks out of tons of money.

After that, we're gonna talk about the classic film Dog Day Afternoon,

which is about bank robbery, but it has a very interesting twist to it.

Yeah, and there's an Elizabeth involved there too.

This is exciting.

We're gonna be talking to the amazing actor Krista Randan, who

is nominated for an Oscar for his performance in Dog Day Afternoon.

That'll happen later in the show.

So good.

Attica.

So today's episode is about a woman.

We are going to refer to her as Cassie Chadwick.

And I know the audience is gonna be like,

where's the Elizabeth?

That's not an Elizabeth, but Cassie Chadwick is not her

real name or her original name.

She's in Elizabeth.

She was born Elizabeth Bigley, and I think she was even known as Betty Bigley.

This is almost a genre of fake socialite.

Someone who concocts a story about themself to get ahead and to scam people.

It's such an interesting time.

So this is during the Gilded Age, which is the 1870s to the 1890s, and

this is when in Industrialism was booming and the country was very rich.

It came after the Civil War.

The South was kind of suffering, but.

With the rise of department stores, all this type of stuff,

a

lot of wealth rich, like monopolists I guess you can call it, who

got ahead in business and made millions and billions of dollars

at this point in time is like if you dress the part and you look

the part, people believed you.

I was looking up gilded age, I don't know much about it.

I was wondering if it was rich all around, but I think the word gilded, I

know that expression gilding the lily.

It's almost like a fake veneer.

Like yes, there was wealth, but it really was

concentrated.

Yeah, it's like gold plated.

It's not gold all the way through and then all the other people

are, you know, eat and gruel.

It was very rich.

Very few people, I mean, kind of the way we live today.

Yeah, the rich are very rich and those who are not, are not.

Yeah, and most people weren't.

It very much plays into this episode and this particular Elizabeth,

well, Cassie, so let's get into her.

Cassie.

Okay, so we are calling her Cassie.

Let's call her Cassie.

So Cassie Chadwick.

Okay.

She was born Elizabeth Bigley in Canada, in Ontario, in an area that

was known as Eastwood, which is also very close to Woodstock, Canada.

Which, do you remember who else was from that area?

I think Bette Lauer was

from Woodstock.

Yeah.

Be Wet Lauer.

So there's something going on in Woodstock, in the water

Canada or in the poutine.

Oh, in the poutine.

Yes.

I would imagine there's not a lot going on at the times that both of

these women came up that we're talking about Bet Weer and Cassie Chadwick.

You could invent your own story.

Yeah.

I think Idleness sometimes leads to no good.

What is

that?

The devil's work?

Idle hands are the devil's workshop.

Ooh, scary.

I'm a case in point.

Is that right?

Do you get into trouble when you're sitting around?

Give me a purpose.

I'll tell you that much.

Give me purpose and I'm good.

Yeah.

So.

Elizabeth Bigley was born October 10th, 1859.

This is Ontario in a town, Eastwood that is really very small.

It's like about 150 people.

And she didn't come from a household that had money.

They were working class, it was a mill town, but she always did have

kind of these delusions of grandeur.

She would imagine that she had a mansion and jewels.

And so very early in her life, she really did start taking on different personas.

Like she went to a barber shop and she wanted like a boy's haircut, and

also wanted the barber to give her the hair to use as a mustache so she could

transform into something else, you know?

And she was peculiar too.

At school, she kind of talked differently and she had a little bit of a lisp.

She just didn't really fit in that well.

Even at a very early age, she kept trying to do these scams where she

created calling cards, which was a big part of the culture during this time.

Like apparently people would collect calling cards that showed

that you were well connected.

We went to this really neat Hermitage in New Jersey on, on a family trip, and

they were active around this time, and the calling cards, basically, you would

come in and you'd be like in the foyer, the vestibule, and if somebody wasn't

there to receive you, then you would put your calling card into a little bowl.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

And so that, that would be like kind of how you let them know that you stopped by.

Yeah.

And the interesting thing about this woman, Bigley, she put on a business card,

not just her name and her phone number.

She put like Miss Bigley Aris of $18,000 just to tell everybody she gave her.

That's,

that's the thing that was so peculiar when I read up on this.

Yeah.

I mean, I guess why not

a lot of money tied up in real estate will back then.

How are you?

Exactly.

Exactly.

So this was her way of scamming people, even at a very early age,

even in her twenties, she would show this card to people and they felt

like she was good for it and she could borrow things on the spot, even

though she may not have been able to give them money right then and there.

She'd go into like a dried good store and she'd be like, I don't have the money

on me, but you can see I'm worth a lot.

And apparently 18,000 was worth like half a million of today's dollars.

It's a lot of money.

Yeah.

And she'd be like, I want to buy that.

I'd also like to give you more money than the price of that item.

So then they'd be like, sure.

And I guess they could charge interest or whatever.

She'd get the thing she was buying and she'd get extra money on top of it.

And they thought, you know, part of a scam and a con, I remember that movie,

house of Games, which I love so much.

It's like they think they're winning in it.

They think they're gonna come out on top.

And that's what makes people want to do this con, that

they're making money off you.

And they're like, look at this loser.

Well, I mean, it's also an interesting, like, we go out, you could be next to

Steven Spielberg in the supermarket and he's wearing Crocs, right?

Yeah.

We don't know what people, but at this time, if she was well dressed and quaffed

and had, you know, beautiful hair, and of course people are gonna believe her.

She walks in, she's.

Presenting herself as someone with wealth.

They had no means to figure out if she was fake or not, right?

So she just basically walked in with confidence.

You kind of have to be a good actor in a way.

It's almost like a performance.

And you know, you go to the bank today and the first thing you have

to give them is an ID with a hologram on it, and that just didn't exist.

So it was possible to slip in.

There were promising notes.

It's a piece of paper.

That says such and such owes me this much money.

And if you could forge a signature, you could really fool lots of people

and she'd like go to farmers and she tried to buy an organ like

kidneys.

Oh, I'm sorry.

No.

Like the musical instrument.

I do have to say, um, I kind of, I like I was a queen of the forge signature.

Is that right?

Yeah, I could forge anyone's parents.

Oh, like such and such was sick yesterday.

That's why she's not doing her homework.

Anyone who came to me, they needed a for signature from their parents.

I could do it.

And that's a real talent.

Like in high school, every grade had like the go-to person to get a fake id.

Oh yes, of course.

Oh, do you remember that?

Of course.

Do you

course, did you have a fake

id?

Of

course.

There were all these places, like I think there was an arcade where the Chinatown

chicken was, do you know about that?

Where you could play Tic-tac toe with a chicken in Chinatown in New York.

And I think they also did fake IDs.

It's closed now,

so I got a fake id.

And the thing is fake IDs, it was a unisex name.

My fake ID was like, Leslie, oh, funny, funny something.

Whatever.

But literally it was in this kid's basement and it was a

Lifesize driver's license.

God.

And you would stand in front of it.

Oh God.

Oh.

And they took that trip.

Oh

my god.

Way to do it.

That's hilarious.

It cost a hundred dollars.

Small town.

So you have to imagine when you're in this tiny town and you're doing

these scams, you are probably gonna get caught eventually.

And she did.

And she got arrested for forgery in her Ontario, Canada town.

And she went to trial in Woodstock.

And you know, people in the courthouse were like pointing

at her and laughing at her.

And I'm sure she was kind of like, I'll show them someday.

Or,

well, yes, no one like shame.

No, it sucks.

And she was able to claim that she was, uh, legally insane.

Ah,

and back then it was fairly easy for women.

They got sent to like sanitariums.

Well, this is also the time where women weren't able to vote.

A lot of women wrote, you know, like George Sand, like women wrote as men.

Yeah,

of course.

It's very easy to say you're

crazy.

Women couldn't even serve on juries, I don't think, for a long time.

Yeah.

When

did hysterical, I wonder when that term

started to be.

Oh, the yellow wallpaper.

Right.

That was the 18, that's the same year.

It's like the 1850s.

1870s.

Because his hysterical is basically that's like

it's a Ian term, right?

It's hysteria.

The connotation is women are more likely to be crazy.

Right?

Or overreact.

Yes.

Yeah.

Like I'm sure it originated it as like a biological or physiological

thing where the humors and the vapors, they kind of had ways of explaining

all these things and that women were probably just prone to being nut.

Well, yeah, and, and if you're a loud mouth or whatever, I was

always told to shut up or calm down.

Yeah, that was always my thing.

Shut up, calm down.

Well, I would never say that

you never have kid.

Was this her, fuck this, I'm getting out of this small town moment, or

I think that is what happened.

And her sister, who's named Alice, ended up getting married and

Alice and her husband Standish ended up moving to Cleveland and

her father died also in 1879.

So I do think made it a good reason to also, for her to move to, uh, Cleveland,

which also joined the industrial, like that was a booming city

and there were a lot of European immigrants.

There were lots of steel mills and that free masonry was a big thing there.

There were a lot of kind of like these socialite types, like Euclid Avenue I

think it was called, was like millionaires a row, and it felt a little like New York.

I feel like the, the glory days of Cleveland are like, you know, there's that

great Randy Newman song about Cleveland.

Oh, which one?

Cleveland City of like City of Magic.

So she moved in with her sister Alice and Standish, and she kind

of continued to do these scams.

Could she just not help this?

Was it like a condition?

Did she know it was the wrong thing?

It's almost an addiction for her.

So Alice and Standish, Standish York,

Standish is a great name.

Alice's husband, they moved to a pretty nice house.

Mm-hmm.

And they allow the sister to move in.

They have a lot of like beautiful furniture.

And Cassie Chadwick or Elizabeth Bigley, she decides she wants to make money, kind

of the way she knows how to make money.

And so she figures out that you can take a mortgage on furniture

and essentially go to banks and say, here's my living room set.

It's worth X amount of money, so will you give me this much

money against the furniture?

Oh, wow.

I don't understand the mortgage part of it, but that's the word they said.

I wonder if it's almost like that Tom Selleck reverse mortgage thing.

You're taking equity out of your furniture.

That's

it.

So it's almost like a heloc, like alone.

Yeah.

So she would make money this way.

Not her furniture.

It's not her furniture.

So she didn't really, well,

let's hand it to her.

She's very clever.

She's clever, and she was resourceful.

Of course.

Eventually the sister and Standish figure out what's going

on and they're freaking pissed.

So they kick her out.

Well, they didn't wanna be associated with that.

No.

And who wants her to live in their house when she's scamming them?

Well also you said that she had calling cards as we talked about.

Mm-hmm.

That said Aris was the her title.

Yeah, exactly.

And she just made up these stories about herself.

So she was out and they figured she would just go to Canada, go back to Ontario,

but she didn't, she stayed in Cleveland.

She met this guy named Wallace Springsteen, who no

relation to, uh, to Bruce.

Bruce.

Bruce.

Great names all around

though it kind of is Stanis York, Wallace Springsteen.

He was a Civil War veteran and a doctor, and she was like, I

gotta hook up with him because she already started having these deaths.

So she like corded him and was really aggressive and she wanted to

do this quickly 'cause she knew her creditors were all coming to get her.

So she finally got him to propose and he was gonna pay off debts.

And then Alice and Springsteen kind of met at a certain point, and Alice

figured he knows like the sorted history of her, but he didn't know

and he started to learn very quickly like what the hell was going on.

Yeah.

And so she was only married to him for 12 days.

Oh God.

That didn't

take long.

No, no.

But at least she was able to kind of have some of her debts paid off,

pay off some of the furniture mortgages,

and he was kind of so appalled that he even put a notice in a

newspaper in Cleveland, say, I forbid anyone to lend money to my wife.

Oh,

I think my husband's done that.

In the Philadelphia Enquirer.

There's a,

yeah, exactly.

I forbid anyone to lend money to my wife.

It's kind of an amazing thing to like.

Have an ad in a newspaper that says you're a scam artist.

And then to keep scamming,

she's got chutzpah for sure.

Yeah, absolutely.

And all the while she like stayed at Fancy Hotels.

Then she bought nice clothes and she liked the good life.

She was very inventive.

She became, Madam DeVere was a, a character.

One of her names she became was a clairvoyant.

So one of her personas was a clairvoyant.

Exactly.

Madam Lydia DeVere.

And she was actually very good at kind of sizing people up.

Like she could tell by the mood of the person who she was meeting with, like,

oh, she's in relationship problems.

Or This guy is having financial problems.

She had talents.

I mean, some people could say, it depends on if you believe this stuff.

Is that a scam in and of itself or is that an honest living?

Are you putting something over on people?

I don't know.

I mean, I've been to clairvoyance before.

Yeah.

And actually I've, they've been pretty spot on.

But it is, it is a sense of like knowing people's

vulnerabilities and stuff like that.

There is a talent when you can, you know, seek out wounded birds.

Yeah.

And once you gather them and you know exactly what their vulnerabilities are and

people are willing to hear anything you have to offer because you're a solution.

And they're desperate.

A

little.

And they're desperate.

Exactly.

I think it's fair to say too, that like.

In a way, even if the clairvoyant doesn't have these special powers,

it's kind of like entertainment.

Like when you watch a pro wrestling match, most people

know that it's not real staged.

Yeah.

You know, it's kind of staged.

I mean, it is real, you know, they're actually hitting each

other, but it's still fun.

It's a suspension of disbelief

agreement.

Yeah.

I think it becomes more of a scam.

Like I remember when there were all these big like fortune tellers

that were one 900 numbers, and they charge you like $5 a minute.

There was one named Miss Cleo.

Do you remember that?

I remember Miss Cleo.

She was a big scammer.

She was good.

Did she get in trouble?

Uh,

tax evasion.

Oh.

Oh, okay.

Miss Cleo used to have this line in our commercial and she had like a

thick Caribbean or Jamaican accent.

I won't do the accent, but she was like, you came asking about him when

it's you who should be looking after.

Do you remember that?

Yes.

What do

It was very appealing.

It's

like it was a Long Island medium.

Remember

her?

Oh, was that a reality show?

It was a reality show.

The SNL Kate McKinnon did in a impression of her that was hysterical.

She was like in a Long Island Deli and she goes like, I'm feeling someone.

He has father's dead and his name was Al.

And everyone like raises their hand like he wants you to make up with your sister.

So will have you been to a, uh, clairvoyant ever or a fortune teller?

No, I, I guess probably the thing I did the most as a kid was the Ouija board.

That's, that's probably the most, I played around with the super board.

We did the OUI board, supernatural stuff.

I feel like with clairvoyance or with any kind of like tarot card reader, a big

part of it is just gathering information.

Mm-hmm.

You know, it's almost like at the beginning of an improv show, like,

yeah, somebody threw out a suggestion or tell me a story about your

parents, and then you're like, okay.

Now I got enough to act like I know what this person's all about.

Yeah.

I mean I think the thing is it's just like it's your comportment.

As long as you play the game and you look the part and you seem like you're

intuitive, which obviously she was.

Yeah.

She could figure people out and know where to plunge, so to speak.

Gotta know what buttons

to push.

Exactly.

And while she was doing this fortune telling stuff, she did

meet a guy named Joseph Lamb.

Joe Lamb, who is pretty wealthy guy, pretty rich, and he was into this stuff,

the paranormal, and they kind of like bonded, like he was just transfixed by her

and she must have been really good at it.

She decided, Joe was so infatuated with her, and this was back in Cleveland, there

was a rich guy named Richard Brown that had a mill in Toledo and he was like.

A very wealthy guy, Richard Brown, but she kind of told Joe that he

was this horrible man and that he had money that was owed to her.

Madam DeVere, that's who Joe thought she was.

He's a miser and he owes me money and I have so much money somewhere,

but like I can't get my hands on it.

So she got Joe not only to like give her money, but also kind of

help with like forging things.

And

he bought into everything.

She presented him,

he bought in and then he became kind of complicit and she would give him a

diamond for collateral and she always promised like she'd pay people back.

Nobody ever thought they were just handing her money.

They always thought that there'd be a payoff.

This guy Joe Lamb?

Yeah.

Her, they did both get arrested.

They were on trial and then Cassie were calling her Cassie, even

though she was the clairvoyant.

Ended up going to jail and got nine years in jail and she knitted a

lot in jail and was not that happy.

And then she got pardoned later.

She got pardoned,

I think, by McKinley.

Wow.

Did she write him a letter?

How, why?

Why was she deemed a pardonable person?

That's interesting.

I don't know.

I, I think, my thought is that she scammed so many people who

were smart and well respected.

They'd rather like let it go away.

Ah.

Rather than acknowledged, like, oh, she fooled.

You know, like, well, that's true.

That's part of it.

It's just like, let's just sweep it under the rug so I don't look like an ass.

Yeah, definitely.

Well, the whole clairvoyant thing was also embarrassing 'cause I'm sure a

lot of people who don't believe in that would give you shit if you gave

all your money to a clairvoyant.

Yes.

So I think we should talk about Carnegie for a bit.

Andrew Carnegie was from Scotland.

He was born with basically nothing, and he kind of ended up immigrating to the

United States, became like a messenger.

He became involved in the railroad industry and he became

one of the richest people.

What wasn't he a railroad magnet.

When you hear the word magnate, he's one of the first people that comes to mind.

Exactly.

It's like Rockefeller and Carnegie,

right?

Carnegie, yeah,

exactly.

Definitely.

And these people who become these giant, very rich people, they

usually don't invent the thing.

They just figure out a way to scale it.

Like Henry Ford didn't invent the car.

Yeah.

But he figured out how to do the assembly line and how to make them quickly And

similar to Ford, Carnegie didn't invent making steel, but he figured out how

to purify it and how to scale it up.

And he became really rich and really powerful, really quickly.

And one thing about powerful people, they sometimes fool around on the side.

And people did suspect that, and some probably gossiped about it,

that he had mistresses and he had workers that would set up

designations with himself and women.

And Cassie knew she could come up with a plan that kind of fit into that

thing where he might have had some sort of relationship that led to a child.

She saw

an opportunity,

definitely.

And this was her big scam, Cassie.

She did become Cassie pretty soon.

'cause she met a doctor named Leroy Chadwick.

He ended up proposing to her and she became, you know, Mrs. Dr. Chadwick

and Chadwick really was very rich.

He had a mansion.

They lived on Euclid Avenue, which was Millionaires row.

Mm-hmm.

There was a banker.

That they met named Erie Reynolds.

Another great name.

I know there's so many good names here.

And Erie Reynolds came over one time and she was with her husband.

Nobody really knows how involved or how in the know Dr. Chadwick was,

but they presented this banker Erie Reynolds with these notes that you

know, I guess looked convincing.

It basically said that Cassie Chadwick was owed all this money in securities,

like $5 million in securities, 250,000 and $500,000 in just money.

All these dividends would be paid to her.

She had all this money coming to her, and these documents that she

showed this banker were signed in various places by Andrew Carnegie.

The banker was like, how do you know Carnegie Cassie Chadwick was like, I'll

tell you, but you cannot tell anybody.

This was a secret.

Right.

She said, you know, I have this mother and father who brought me up,

but I was actually the illegitimate daughter of like a fling of Andrew

Carnegie, but you cannot tell anybody because it would ruin Carnegie.

It's a huge scandal, but I'm connected to all this money, so believe me.

Totally.

So it looked real and she asked him to lend her money, all these loans,

based on the fact that she would pay them back once she got the money.

This trust from that was waiting

for her.

Yes.

Like I'm good for the money.

So it's just like the furniture mortgage.

Exactly.

Grown up.

So she started getting money from Erie Reynolds, and then

she had this idea, she was like.

I have to get the rumor mill going.

Her scam idea was out there to this one banker, but she said it would

feel more real if there were people whispering about it around town so

that she could scam other people.

And also that it would feel real.

'cause it wouldn't feel real if people aren't like kind of

whispering about it, right?

Mm-hmm.

So she had this other idea where she got a lawyer named

Dylan, who met her in New York.

They took a carriage, took Andrew Carnegie's mansion there, and

she basically was like, I need to pick something up at this mansion.

And the lawyer was like, isn't that Andrew Carnegie's place?

And she was like.

You just can't tell anybody.

But yes, I am the illegitimate daughter.

Just please don't tell anybody, but she was just showing up

there for the first time.

He's waiting on the sidewalk in the carriage.

She gets out, she walks into the mansion.

Somebody answers the door, and she manages to go inside for like 20 minutes, and then

she comes out and she has an envelope.

It really looked convincing that she knew him.

Yeah.

So she knew that this lawyer was gonna not be able to keep it to himself.

And so her plan worked.

So she

picked a good gossipy person.

It was a stage moment person to plan

it with.

She just knew nobody would be able to keep it to themself.

Yeah.

The thing too is like if someone says to you like, can you keep a secret?

Yeah.

You're a Coke conspire.

You're like, oh, you trust me.

And people wanna be involved in stuff like that.

And then the lawyer probably talked to someone and was

like, you can't tell anybody.

And then he told them, and then everybody was talking to somebody who

said, just don't tell anybody else.

Well, so she duped a lawyer.

If she duped a lawyer, then she's good.

So it is super impressive that she's going after people who should know better.

And the other thing too is if they're fooled by her, they discover, they're

fooled by her, they're not gonna talk about it 'cause they look like asses.

Definitely

they look like a smacked ass.

So word got out.

The rumor plan was successful and she took advantage of that guy, eerie Reynolds.

But the big bank that she kind of screwed over was this Citizens Bank

of Oberlin, which we all know about.

Oberlin College.

Good College in Ohio.

There was a guy named Charles Beckwith, and she, again, so many good names

here, you know, she just showed them this documentation and just said, I

will pay you hundreds of thousands of dollars if you lend me all this money.

And one thing that was interesting with how she did it too, she

kind of pretended to be like a flighty, not completely with it.

Like she didn't understand certain things.

So I think the men felt like they were mansplaining to her a little bit.

It's kind of like the Jennifer Coolidge persona and white Lotus, like

a space cadet, but somebody that's been around money all their life.

Yes.

But it's a good ruse.

Definitely.

One of my mentors had an exotic name, very beautiful, and came off

as stupid, but not stupid at all.

And I think it made the men feel like they were in charge and it made them feel

like they were winning this transaction.

Yeah.

So she got loans from Beckwith for like 12,000, 50,000.

30,000. Just so much money.

Did you ever meet anyone that that didn't turn out to be

who you expected them to be?

Like who said they were fancier than they were?

Oh, absolutely.

Yeah.

Half the people we've met in this industry with PR people, all that type of stuff.

Definitely.

You fake it till you make it,

you know, something comes to mind that, um, I had a girlfriend in college and

I was gonna go home for the summer.

I said I was looking forward to playing tennis with my parents

and she was gonna come to visit and she said, oh, I love tennis.

I'm a great tennis player.

I was on the varsity team in high school.

We should have played doubles.

When we visited my parents, we went to the tennis courts and started playing doubles.

And the moment we started just warming up, it was obvious she'd

never played tennis a day in her life.

Oh my God.

She was, she could barely hold onto the racket, can't fake

tennis.

And she told my parents this too, like at dinner the night before, she was like,

oh, I can't wait for tennis tomorrow.

I'm great at tennis.

And, and so we all, three of us just had to basically just

pretend,

muddle our way through.

Did you ever confront her about it?

You know what, I don't think I did.

I think it was just kind of like one of those, well, that happened and then.

I don't know what she thought her out was or if she'd just

be magically be good at tennis.

Tennis is a hard thing to fake.

I don't play tennis 'cause I'm not good.

There might be

some sports you can pull,

but it's also, it's tennis is about society, wasp, but all that type of stuff.

Definitely.

The other thing too is just if, if people present themselves and you've just

met them as someone, then you mm-hmm.

You have to believe it, right?

Yeah.

That's basically their calling card.

Yeah.

Like her calling card is, I'm worth $15,000, you know?

Right.

So why would you doubt it?

And also if you're benefiting from it.

Exactly.

I think sometimes people believe what they want to believe.

Right.

Oh, everyone believes what they wanna believe.

Yeah, we want to reinforce what we already think.

So.

So what was her fate?

You know, things started getting bad and this guy, Charles Beckwith, was

the president of the Oberlin Bank.

He l not only lent the uh, bank's money and he gave her more money

than the law allowed, and he became completely implicated and

he just continued to believe her.

He really didn't have doubt even much later, but he also

gave her like personal loans.

And somebody at the bank was like looking at the financial records

and realized there was a lot of money missing, and it is crazy.

They didn't figure that out until much later.

It was a lot of money.

Like at one point it was almost $800,000.

That's a lot of money.

It was, it was a lot.

And, and Beckwith basically, his life was kind of like, ruined a bit.

Word got out that the bank was suffering and uh, there was a run on the bank.

You don't want bad media like that.

'cause people started coming to the bank to take their money out.

So they didn't trust the bank.

Exactly.

So things were not going well.

There were investigators with the Treasury department and Pinkerton's

and media started following Cassie to the hotels where she was hanging out.

But she kept the scam going.

Like she even went to a bank in Boston at some point who, she met someone through a

minister at a church near where she lived.

So she just couldn't stop.

But ultimately she did get arrested.

There was an investigator named John J. Sullivan, who was a Cleveland investigator

and he was looking at her Miss Deed.

Ultimately, it did catch up with her.

Everything came out in the trial.

The forged paperwork came out.

The newspapers even wrote how things were misspelled in it, and they kind

of made fun of the people who were Duke because they should have known.

Well, this is also an interesting point in time, like when we covered Lizzie Borden,

it was the rise of newspapers and yellow journalism, and people love this stuff.

So she was probably all over the press.

It became a sensation.

They tried to do like an insanity defense like she did in Canada.

But then there was this guy named Allen Hamilton.

He was like a relative of Alexander Hamilton, maybe like a grandson of him.

Yeah.

And he was able to look at photographs.

And decide if someone was legally insane or not.

And he actually did testify at the Lizzie Borden trial.

Oh, interesting.

He also looked at Charles Tau, you know, who was the guy that assassinated?

President Garfield.

And there was that show, death by Lightning.

Death by Lightning, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

So he looked at her photos and he was kind of like, you know, she has asymmetry in

her face and her eyes are not on the same plane, and she's definitely not insane.

So that's how psychology worked back then.

So the expert witness deemed her sane.

Yes.

From a photograph,

because she looked saying Exactly.

And there were big questions about whether Andrew Carnegie was gonna have to

testify.

Yeah,

testify.

Yeah.

And I think the big question was like, was Cassie Chadwick gonna bring up his name?

And if she did.

He would have to testify.

He did come to the trial, Carnegie, but she didn't end up saying his name, and so

Carnegie didn't have to take the stand.

So she didn't double down on the Carnegie story?

No.

During the

trial itself,

I don't think that was part of their attempt to win.

I think she kept claiming she probably was the illegitimate

daughter, which is kind of insane.

Like at one point before Beckwith died, he confronted her in her cell and was like,

I think it's time you kind of fess up.

You're in jail.

Why don't you just tell the truth now?

And she wouldn't do it.

Wow.

Well, this is a really interesting one.

What do you guys think?

Do you think she's bad?

She ruined and hurt a lot of people, so I think that's bad.

But I do judge her at her time and place as a woman and

trying to figure things out.

I respect her that she was smart enough to pull it all off.

But yeah, she's bad.

She hurt people and she ruined lives.

She did, I mean.

I think it's fair to bring up just how awful banks can be.

Yeah.

There's like a shot in Freud type thing.

Yeah.

When you hear her story and you're like, it's kind of awesome that

she took money from the bank.

She kind of turned it around.

It's almost like a. Half baked Robinhood thing.

Definitely.

She robbed from the rich but then just kept it.

Yes.

Oh,

she bought nice furniture and nice outfit.

I'm not, you know, I'm not against that,

but I should say, I don't think we mentioned it.

Just that she was found guilty in this last trial and she went to

jail and she didn't last that long.

I think she died on her 50th birthday.

Hmm.

And they diagnosed her before she died of neuro theia.

It's like a nervous system thing.

One thing about that diagnosis, neuro theia, is that it was kind of

like the rich white person disease.

One thing I was reading was that she pr, even though she died of it,

she probably would've loved that.

Like they said in the newspaper, she died of that disease rather

than like a heart attack.

It's a

high class

disease.

Even up until the end, she wanted to seem fancy.

You only have one time on this earth.

Like she made it pretty colorful.

Definitely, and she's not the only Elizabeth that is associated

with bank robberies or bank fraud.

Bank robbery is the theme of this episode.

We're moving on to another Elizabeth, Elizabeth, Debbie Eden.

She's not a bank robber.

She inspired a bank robbery.

She

inspired a bank robbery.

So she's not even a battle.

Elizabeth, we must be straightforward about that.

Well, I think it's also more interesting when you have someone

who doesn't commit the crime, but inspires someone to commit a crime.

Absolutely.

Well look at Jodie Foster.

Right,

exactly.

I mean, I know for me, I love Dog Day afternoon.

Dog Day Afternoon is just like one of the best films of the

seventies at Sidney Louette.

It's one of those stories that it's like the truth is stranger than fiction.

Like I remember the first time I saw the movie, I didn't know it was based on a

true story, you know about this story.

'cause it was shot in your neighborhood in Brooklyn.

Yeah,

but it really blew my mind that this actually happened.

And for those who haven't seen it, there's a guy that was inspired to rob a bank.

He robs a bank to pay for a sex change

operation, right.

For gender reassignment surgery, which was kind of unheard of at the time.

So Chris Rand's role in Dog Day Afternoon was based on John Vic's

significant other, who is Earnest Aaron and became Elizabeth Eden.

Uh, I know it sounds confusing, but that was one person.

So Al Pacino plays the fictional version of John Voinovich.

This movie's quite incredible.

It's got an amazing cast.

Aside from Chris Sarandon, we have Al Pacino, and then we have Charles Durning.

He plays a cop in it, a young Carol Kane who plays a ditzy bank teller,

and the other bank robber was played by the amazing John Cael.

The

reason why the film is so great, it's like a very concentrated moment of

time of people having to make decisions in real time, and like you're in it.

It's like desperation, the last chance to make something happen.

It was such an interesting time.

There was a lot of gay rights activity and when the story, the real Story

happened, America was really confronted with all these types of characters

that they had never really seen before.

I don't think anyone's ever had a role like that in the

history of film at this point.

You know, later we see like Raw Julia in In Case of the

Spiderwoman and stuff like that.

But it was a really innovative and interesting character to

play that we didn't really see represented positively in films.

Definitely.

They also recently adapted Dog Day afternoon into a play that's

gonna be on Broadway pretty soon with the Stars of The Bear, John

Bernthal and Yon Moss, ACH Buck Rock.

Yeah,

that play looks like it's gonna be great.

Right now we're gonna talk to Chris Sarandon, who was nominated for an

Oscar for his role in Dog Day Afternoon.

As this is a theme episode and people love bank robber stories,

we're gonna talk about a real life bank robbery in Brooklyn, New York

that went completely off the rails.

In 1973, a guy named John Vokovich robbed a bank in order to pay for

his male lover's gender reassignment

surgery.

In 1975, this Wild Story becomes an iconic movie, dog Day Afternoon.

We are delighted that one of the stars of that movie, Chris Sarandon, is

joining us to talk about the role that exploded his career and earned him both

Golden Globes and Oscar nominations.

I'm Gideon Evans, and this is my co-host Kathy Egan.

Hi, nice to meet you.

Thank you so much for doing this.

Oh, it's my pleasure.

Thank you for having me.

Talk a little bit about how you were made aware of the story of Dog

Day Afternoon, the real life story.

Did you know about it when it happened originally,

I recall.

The story because it was front page news everywhere in New York City, certainly

because it was such an ongoing drama.

I remember the tabloids headlines.

I remember some of the television reporting about it as well.

So it was out there, you know, it was a big event in New York City.

It was a big mass media event.

So when you were given a script or heard about an audition, you had somewhat of

an idea of what this was gonna be about?

Yeah, somewhat.

Yeah.

And you were, I mean, very young, right?

Not very

young.

Oh, I'm sorry.

I shouldn't have said that.

Sorry.

That's very flattering.

You looked very young in that movie.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I was, uh, I think 30.

No, we shot it in 70.

The one movie came out in 75.

The story was in 72, so it was probably

73,

74.

Yeah.

I was 30 years old exactly when the event occurred.

Yeah.

And when I auditioned for the movie, I was like 33.

Were you living in New York when the real event happened?

Yes, I was at the time.

I don't remember if I was in a show or not.

I had been in a couple of Broadway shows.

The first show I was in was at the Rothschild.

Ah-huh.

The original production of Two Gentlemen of Verona.

And at the same time I was doing a little bit of television.

I was on a a soap opera for a little while.

It was the Guiding Light.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Which paid the rent.

At the time, 'cause I had basically had a bit part, it was

my first job in New York City.

I think I did a couple of regional theater shows.

I was working in Hartford, I was working New Haven.

I did the Shaw Festival in Canada, and then I did two General Verona

and then auditioned for Dog Day.

Were you trained in theater, like Costella Adler type thing?

My training was primarily in college and graduate school.

I was a quote unquote theater major kind of in college.

There wasn't a theater major at the time when I went to West

Virginia University where I grew up.

And then I ended up matriculating to the Catholic University in Washington DC

which had a master's program in acting.

You know, I toured with the Shakespeare plays when I was at Catholic U.

They had.

Summer theater as well.

Mm. I worked at the summer theater as a driver, kind of gopher, but also

they put me into a couple of shows.

I got to work with actors like, uh, Olympia Dukakis.

Wow.

We did a production of the Rose Tattoo, the Tennessee Williams play.

Oh, wonderful.

She was, she was wonderful.

Oh yeah.

Extraordinary woman.

And it was in a bunch of productions there and got my equity card while I'm

driving these wonderful actors around, including Olympia, George Ard, Roy

Schneider was in the company that summer.

Oh my

goodness.

So I got to work with some great people and watch them, more

importantly, watch what they did.

Oh.

And then I did a season at the Longow Theater.

Oh, I know that place.

And worked with people like John Kaza and Harvey Kittel and the Great Joyce Ebert.

Oh yes.

So that by the time I went to New York, you know, I had a feel for the theater.

Certainly.

I love doing plays.

Yeah.

I worked on a play once.

Just on the crew with Franklin Jella and I, it was Civil War era and I had to pick

up a banjo from the Long Wharf Theater.

It's a beautiful area, but that was a very respected theater.

Yeah, yeah.

Pulling it back into Dog Day afternoon.

Yeah.

Did you audition with Al Pacino and Sidney Lumette?

I did.

The director,

yep.

So tell us about that.

Oh, that was a great experience because Sidney t came from the theater.

He was originally a, a young actor in the Yiddish Theater in New York many, many

years ago, and had acted in plays often.

Sidney was very much a theater guy, and so was Al by the way.

So is Al.

Yes.

So I went to the audition and I felt fairly comfortable because I knew

Sidney slightly because my ex, Susan Sarandon had done a movie with him.

And then I knew Al because Al at the time was going out with Jill Kleberg, who

was the female lead in the Rothschilds.

Mm. You know, I wasn't particularly nervous, except that when I walked into

the waiting room, the room where all the actors congregate before you go in

to do the read, they were all in drag.

Oh wow.

Oh wow.

I walked in in my customary and I'd probably flannel shirt and

jeans or something, you know?

It was a reading.

Yeah.

And then I thought, oh, I've made a big mistake.

I didn't get that note from my agent telling me arrive in drag.

So I went in anyway and I read with Al the telephone scene from Dog Day.

Sidney took me aside and he gave me probably one of the greatest one line

notes I've ever gotten for a character.

Sidney said to me after I finished, because I was playing it sort of at a

very grand kind of gay man, wannabe woman.

Sidney took me aside and he said, we want you to come back, but when you come back.

Less Blanc Dubois, more Queen's housewife.

Oh my God.

Very succinct, very specific.

Brilliant.

I came back, I did it, you know, as Liz or Leon.

Yes.

As I should say.

And I was hired and then we had access to all this material, particularly

interviews from the time there were a lot of television, radio interviews

with the characters, the actual people.

I had listened to these interviews and I thought Sydnee was right on,

'cause this is who this guy was.

Yeah.

And the rest is, as you wanna say, cinematic history.

Amazing.

And I mean, it's interesting to hear about Sidney T's theater past because

so many and including your incredible performance, so many performances in his

movies, it doesn't feel over the top.

No,

it's very controlled and very underplayed, which really helps.

And I do think theater actors can have a tough time with like not

moving your arms or not projecting.

So that must be hard as a theater actor and a movie actor.

Well, but we also had.

Three weeks of rehearsal.

And even though I had a relatively small role in the movie, I was only

on screen for like, I don't know, 10, 12 minutes, something like that.

I think it was 17 actually.

Oh, thank you.

I'm giving you that extra seven minutes, hun.

Mm-hmm.

Thank you for tacking on the time.

Uh, the rehearsal period was a chance to work.

Sydnee had everything taped out on the floor like you do

when you're rehearsing a play.

There was furniture when needed props.

It's not necessarily the props from the movie, but you know, stuff that we could

use and we had a chance to sit and talk things out rather than getting to the set

and trying to figure them out on the set.

Sidney always worked that way with his movies and he always

came in on time and or earlier.

Under budget.

Wow.

As a result, because people weren't standing around talking, they were doing

what they'd done in the rehearsal hall.

Yeah.

So we had a chance to really sit there and sort of chew things

out and work on the scenes

to reset to, to clarify our listeners, we should break down what the robbery,

the actual robbery that was based on.

Definitely.

And sort of linking your character to Elizabeth Eden.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's an interesting distinction because the real life.

Inspiration for your character was Earnest Aaron, who became Elizabeth.

Debbie Eden, right?

Correct.

Our podcast, we kind of deal with Elizabeths and variations of Elizabeth.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

We do have an Elizabeth here.

Yeah.

We don't consider her a bad Elizabeth because she didn't know

that there was gonna be a robbery.

Do you wanna take us through the real story a tiny bit?

Well, the real story is that they had had a very contentious, that is John and Ernie

had had a very contentious relationship.

Little John was paranoid.

He was also very jealous.

Uh, I heard stories from some of the material that we had that Liz

told, for instance, about waking up.

There's this, a slight reference to it in the movie of Waking Up and there's Little

John with a revolver pointed at her in bed, right in her face saying, you know,

oh my God,

it's over.

It's over.

I'm, you know, I can't live like this anymore.

I'm finished.

I'm done.

I'm done.

And their relationship was very combustible one.

So the opportunity to dramatize that was taken by Frank Pearson,

essentially from the headlines, media interviews, photographs, what have you.

Essentially, it's the story of Al Pacino's character robbing a bank in

order to pay for Leon's Liz's conversion, changing from being a woman trapped

in a man's body as he actually said.

To a woman.

Yeah, I, I read some stuff about this that was really interesting in your

approach to it, because this was sort of an unprecedented role for an actor.

Oh, at the time.

Yeah.

You said you related to this character, 'cause there's dual personalities.

IE you were the son of immigrant Greeks, but you were also an American.

How did that inform you with playing this role?

Well, more a dual identity than a dual personality.

Yeah.

In the sense that one is required by circumstance to act out being

somebody else because you're not accepted for what you are.

And that is that when I grew up, both my parents were Greek,

they spoke Greek at home.

Our entire family was Greek.

All the cousins, the relatives, you know, the guys married Greek women.

The women married Greek men.

Hmm.

The atmosphere was very, very ethnic.

In my small hometown in Beckley, West Virginia of 18,000 people.

We were one of the only Greek families there.

I think one of the others was the guy who cooked in the

kitchen in my dad's restaurant.

Oh, interesting.

I was very aware from the time I went to school, actually, from the time I went

to kindergarten, that I was different.

And so I tried very hard to belong.

I, I worked at it when my parents were in public and they spoke Greek.

I moved away from them.

Mm.

Sadly, I mean, I say this regrettably, one of the only real regrets of my life

that I treated my family that way, but I wanted to be just like everybody else.

And that feeling of being the other is always there.

It never goes away.

Mm.

And in a sense, I felt like I understood who this man slash woman was.

Somebody who had been trying to hide all his life and finally

found out who he really was.

Yeah.

And wanted to act on it.

And I had the opportunity as I got older to act on it, to

return to my roots in a way.

And I still do, you know, I have Greek Easter with my kids.

We still do that because it's important for me to pass that on.

Nobody's changing their name now.

My dad changed his name.

Or at least it might've been changed for him.

As far as I know, he might have come off the boat from Ellis Island.

'cause his name was originally Sar Donez.

Yeah.

That happened a lot where they just,

yeah.

Yeah.

And there's a great movie, I don't know if you guys are familiar with

it, even Gaza movie called America.

America.

No.

At the end of the movie, the lead character is coming through Ellis

Island from where he was born.

He was born in a Greek village in Turkey, as my father was by the way.

And he's coming through and they ask him his name and he says he Anish.

The guy who's looking at him, the American immigration officer says, yeah, ya y Yeah.

Joe Ores.

Okay.

Come on Joe, you're in.

Huh?

And that, you know, very well could have happened to my father.

Yeah.

And it's something that I was very aware of when I was growing up and as

I got older and interestingly became an actor that is somebody who's trying

to be somebody else on stage, it's something that stayed with me for a

long time and I felt it very strongly when I read the role of, of Leon.

Yeah.

I guess it was a muscle you developed.

Yeah.

You know, which actually informed you so much as an actor, so.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So you watched a lot of footage of Elizabeth Eden when

you were making the movie?

I didn't see footage of Liz.

I saw still photographs.

Oh, okay.

In fact, we used that critical photograph of when he gets out

of the cab of clutching the robe.

Yeah.

In, you know, defiance and defense of the hospital robe, that

cheap hospital robe that he wore where we, we have the same robe.

In fact, I, I still have that robe interestingly.

Recordings.

We had recordings, yeah.

Interviews.

Oh, nice.

Yep.

The topic of a man who identifies as a woman, this is

part of today's conversation.

Oh yeah.

And there's so much ignorance and hate.

Oh yeah.

And that was 1975.

Yeah.

Like, was that part of your discussion of some people are gonna

be watching this movie and they won't know what to make of it?

I'll tell you, I, my agent at the time was gay.

He recommended that I not do the movie.

Wow.

He said, you know, this could be a career destroyer for you.

'cause he knew what the conversations were behind closed doors in Hollywood.

But it was such a great role and working with those people, I couldn't,

you know, granted I probably wouldn't be cast in that role now, but it was

a wonderful opportunity at the time.

And also I was in the theater.

I worked with so many, uh, gay friends who were very close to me.

And so it had a resonance beyond just the story itself.

But the story itself was just extraordinary.

So there's a bank robbery that Al Pacino's character and Kal try to pull off, and

that turns into a hostage standoff.

Right.

There's the police who kind of are trying to end the standoff.

Yes.

So your scene is the police bringing you in to try to talk down?

Pacino and did they shoot that at the same time?

Were you actually talking to each other on the phone?

Telephone scene?

We were actually talking to each other, but not shot at the same time.

I see.

We shot probably a couple of weeks apart for all I remember because

it had to do with, you know, what location that we were using at the

time if we were in the barbershop.

Then I did my part of it there as well as doing my barbershop

scene with Charlie Durning.

That is the man who was playing the sort of negotiator, at least initially, was

Charles Durning, the wonderful actor.

Amazing

from Tootsie and so many great movies.

So that I shot all of those at the same time.

The barbershop scene with the cops and then the scene on the phone

with Al with him at the other end of the line, but not being filmed.

And then when Al was in the bank, then I was on the other end doing

the scene, the audio for Al.

I grew up in Brooklyn and I live in not far from Windsor Terrace

where the bank stuff was shot.

There's actually a hot dog place now called Dog Day Afternoon in that area.

Kidding?

Isn't that funny?

No idea.

Yeah.

Oh, how great.

One thing that we ran across while we were researching the film

mm-hmm.

It was a letter from the real guy, John

Vokovich.

Mm-hmm.

That he wrote to the New York Times, and they never published it, but

he kind of took the film to task about certain things that he didn't.

Oh, I'm sure feel was accurate.

But the one thing he did say he loved your performance.

Exactly.

Oh,

wow.

Do you know about this?

Haven't,

oh no.

We'll have to send it

to you.

I hope it's, I hope it's real, but let me just read a little bit about it.

Well, knowing him, it probably is.

He's a character.

He said Chris Sarandon, who portrays my male lover in the movie.

Also deserves the Academy Award for best male supporting actor.

It was his film debut.

I don't know if that's true, but

that's true.

Oh, it is.

He was too much for words.

He had to portray the widest range of emotions, but do it in the right way.

I feel he did it perfectly in real life.

Ernie had said those things and done those actions.

He would've done them exactly as Chris did them in the telephone

scene between Pacino and himself.

His performance was unfathomable and attribute to his mastery of

an unbelievably difficult role.

I was moved to tears by it because the realism was there

and so professionally done.

Wow.

It doesn't get better than that, Fred,

at all.

Wow.

I'm sorry that he didn't vote.

Ah,

the Oscars that year, the films that it was that year was amazing in 1975.

Kus Nest.

Yeah.

Yeah.

A lot of great movies that year.

And so getting back to what your agent said, he was initially

reluctant for you to do this role, how did people react to the role?

I mean, obviously wonderful performance and people loved the film, but

were there any repercussions or anything like that after you did it?

Or was it a good gateway or,

well, uh, uh, it, it was a little of both.

Yeah.

First of all, I have to give Sidney credit and Al Credit and Frank Pearson

who wrote it credit in that essentially what you're witnessing in the movie

is a relationship gone wrong, and the character's attempts to try to repair

it and then realizing that it's lost, and the tragedy of that when audiences

saw the movie, I think that there may have been some sort of tittering at the

beginning of the, seeing the character, realizing that it's a, it's a guy, a

man that he's talking about is his wife, whom he's married, but at the same time.

Once the conversation starts, that is you see the guy's

vulnerability in the barbershop and then you see their exchange.

It's just about the stuff that everybody goes through in a relationship.

Yeah.

It's not just because these guys are gay.

Because one wants to be a woman.

That's sort of beside the point.

That's the kind of dramatic fulcrum upon which everything revolves.

But in terms of the audience's reaction to it and the empathy that

an audience has for characters, I think that's what happened.

They go, oh God, yeah.

You know what?

I've been through that.

And just the sadness and the loss of a relationship.

Because it's the loss of a life you were imagining.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

You know?

Yeah.

You don't even know if they're gonna survive.

Right,

exactly.

And you know that the odds are stacked against them from every direction.

Do people ever scream Attica at you, or is that from more for Pacino?

No, not me.

A lot of 'em do.

To al.

The other thing that, I don't know if you're probably aware of

this, that there's a Broadway play coming out of Dog Day Afternoon.

Oh yeah.

I'm aware of it.

I mean, it's Legacy Beyond the Hotdog Place, Nick Gideon, like how

are they gonna do that as a play?

But yeah.

Yeah,

it was directed by a theater director, the original movie, so that's interesting.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Good thought.

Good thought.

I think it'll work well.

We'll see.

You know, it's pretty much two places.

Two locations and the street.

I don't know how they're gonna do it, but they'll figure it out.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Do you think the movie has a legacy on how it has impacted our society?

I know that sounds grandiose, but I think it has.

I would hope so.

If only because it was probably.

One of the first, if not the first big Hollywood movies.

That was a success.

That was a box office hit that dealt with gay characters as being, this is life

as human beings.

Yeah.

This is not something that's unusual or frightening.

This is what relationships are like in the gay community as well as

in the, in the straight community.

I

think it was like a $3 million budget and it yielded like 50 million.

Yeah.

Yeah.

In 1975.

That's a lot of cash.

Yeah.

I guess we also wanna sort of talk about the breadth of your career

and you have some very iconic roles.

I mean, fright Night, I think I've seen maybe 50 times.

Oh wow.

It's a class

act.

You're my favorite vampire.

Oh, thank you.

What's it like to work with Roddy McDowell?

Oh, Roddy became a friend.

Oh, good.

As a result of our, you know, hanging out on the set, he was always a

great source of amazing stories about how Greenwood was my valley.

He was how old?

Seven, eight years old, something like that.

Mm-hmm.

And to shoot your first movie with the great John Ford and

stories about him, and he would have dinners at his house as well.

By the way.

Roddy would, he would often invite my wife and I, Joanna Gleason over.

We always had a cross section of people at dinner.

He only, not only had actors, he had set designers, novelists,

very eclectic kind of group.

The, the food was not always great, but the company was wonderful.

He was an extraordinary guy to work with.

Yeah.

I mean, nice coterie, like a round table of people is always interesting.

Yeah.

The other movie that comes to mind immediately that people will

think of is The Princess Bride.

Oh, so you're doing a bank robbery.

You've done a horror movie and the Princess Bride is

like the eternal fairytale.

Yeah.

You know, and a William Goldman story, I mean, what was that like?

Great.

William Goldman.

That was another joy.

Rob Reiner,

ah,

rest his soul.

We're all in shock, right?

Yeah.

Everybody is.

I think, I think the world is in shock.

Yes.

Um, that was a very, very fun set.

In fact, today, I, I have a text from Carrie Ellis about Rob and Chris guest

and Mandy singing Doop on the set.

Oh, what a memory.

Yeah.

I mean, we're still.

Connected in that way.

It was a fabulous experience.

We had a lot of fun.

It was, you know, a lot of cracking up horseback riding, eating

from Rob's hibachi in his room because the food was terrible in

the hotel up in, uh, Sheffield.

It's a, you know, a memory that I'll always hold dear.

It's an eternal movie.

Everyone's seen it, you know?

Yes.

And quoted all the time.