By Richard Eric Weigle
How I would have loved to have lived in the Village in the 1950s when Marlon Brando and James Dean were racing their motorcycles through the narrow tree-lined streets of Greenwich Village and Eva Marie Saint and Kim Hunter—both residents of the Village—were winning their Oscars for starring opposite Marlon Brando.
But my turn would come in 1973 when I found a wonderful apartment on Grove Street. I thought that I had died and gone to heaven. Forty-three years later, I am still here as Block Association President and living with my husband, Michael Anastasio.
As a young boy, I was mesmerized by films such as North By Northwest, and Eva Marie Saint soon became my favorite actress—with her fragile beauty and vulnerability paired with inner strength and realistic acting.
I was excited to hear she was returning to New York to play Mary Todd Lincoln on Broadway, and I was able to arrange a back stage visit at The Plymouth Theater after the show. I showed her all the photos and articles I had collected over the years, and she was impressed. Slowly a friendship began to take shape. I became her official archivist, and I am also one of the producers of a documentary series in which she appears entitled Broadway: The Golden Age directed by Rick McKay. In 1993, she even generously volunteered her services to read the poetic text to a piece my chorus, The New York Choral Society, was singing at Carnegie Hall.
I said to Eva Marie once. “Eva, you have had the best life.” And she quipped. “Have, Richard, have!” From her and her husband of 64 years, Jeffrey Hayden, I have learned to live in the present and to stay active.
It was our mutual love of dogs that allowed me to meet Kim Hunter on Commerce St. Over the years, Michael and I became great friends with Kim, eventually taking care of her for the last few years of her life. She asked me to be her official archivist, and she also appeared in Broadway: The Golden Age. In addition, I had the privilege of acting with Kim in her last theatrical production, The Madwoman of Chaillot at The Neighborhood Playhouse.
We went together to and from the theater every night, and I experienced her wit and professionalism first hand. I was regaled with anecdotes about how wonderful Marlon Brando was to work with and how Jessica Tandy was good in The Broadway production of “Streetcar,” but that she didn’t have quite the sex appeal that Vivien Leigh brought to the film version.
She had a front apartment on Grove Street, and after her Academy Award, people used to yell “Stella” up at her windows. When moving, she told her husband, Robert Emmett, “I have three conditions. It must be larger, it must still be in The Village and it must be in the BACK.” She stayed in that “Back” apartment until her untimely death in 2002.
