The Central New Jersey Home News from New Brunswick, New Jersey • 72

72 EoaeStan KTW BRUNSWICK. THURSDAY. MC M. ltW Sex-change operation at stake auli roouery comes to screen ten out of the script. Task Force, was allowed to Elfand himself met with the read the script.

He said he break. "We're going to be in big trouble." hostages, with Wojtowicz's and found it "sensitive and taste nut nf Mmora rantyo a court-appointed movie cop arid a real life cop Westenberg attorneys and with the families jiast 0f the people involved to negotiate for their releases. jn tne incident have had no stood side by side watching the shot. The real-life cop, Police Officer Frank Clifford, was telling the actor in uniform he had been among the first police on the scene of the robbery. Clif He found "hostility mis- contact with the movie people trust" on all sides.

sjnce they signed releases more "Everyone was suspicious," tnan a year ag0, some of them he said, "and I don't really are a little lled about that, blame them. There was this Th -vnectine to ford, who pronounced Pacino's performance realistic, said he feeling of the little guys 1561112 called in as technical advisers had been assigned along with a exploited by the giant corpora- or at the very least, to get a tion. I understand that. chance to meet Al Pacino. Elfand pointed out at the time releases were obtained, however, he and Bregman were independent producers still shopping for a motion picture number of fellow officers to an adjacent rooftop during the long night's siege.

They all watched with amazement that night, when FBI agents escorted a thin, animated young man to the door of "I have the feeling," Terry Wojtowicz, Little John's Anna Magnani-like mother, said the other day, "that they got what they wanted from us and that's it." company to finance and distn- Vint a thoir film Cororal wimna. Shirley Ball, the hostage who the bank and stood by while he V7'ih nmW and Wojtowicz embraced and fi s'1 9 1 i I i 1 va'1 I 6 vvf. 1 kkserf "That's whpn nn rpal. wnen me Jio-year-om was snoi, homosexual angle of the story is the only one still working at Clifford Yaid it ah broke the befr-e Br0S" the bank' 'Tm fine-" she saii Llitard said. It, ah, broke the to take it 0IL ljke ft nfiver happenei Each of the hostages, except Mrs.

Josephine Tutino, anoth-That scene, which involved a for the sole holdout, received er of the hostages, said she was friend of Wojtowicz's named $600. Westenberg, who helped deeply affected by the experi. Pat Coppola, is not in the plan the robbery but walked ence. "I got very sick emotion-script. A scene in which a out of the bank almost the mo- ally." she said, "and my blood group of gay liberationism and ment he walked in because he pressure shot way up." She ev-a group of hardhats exchange saw a police car cruise by, entually asked to be transferred punches behind the police bar- eventually settled for $750.

On to another bank branch be- offices on the first floor of the century-old tenements are for real and which were movie facades. Behind the sign that reads "Kay's School of Dancing" lies makeup and wardrobe. Behind the Central Brooklyn Democratic Club is the commissary. Behind the First Brooklyn Savings Bank sign is a completely authentic and completely fictional modern bank standing in for Chase Manhattan. Although virtually every character in the cast has a real-life counterpart, names have been changed to protect the guilty as well as the innocent.

Pacino, who figures in practically every scene, is called Sonny in the film but he is Little John Wojtowicz through and through. Even while on-the-scene news accounts of the holdup were holding New Yorkers enthralled on that afternoon in 1972, many people remarked on the physical similarity of Wojtowicz and Pacino, the young star of "The Godfather" and "Serpico." The other night, Pacino filmed a scene in which he emerged from the bank to inspect an airport limousine he had ordered to take robbers and bostagej to John F. Kennedy Airport. Pushing his way out through the glass doors, swaggering into the street, bawling profane orders to police on the sidewalk opposite, the diminutive actor looked very much as if he had emerged from a two-year-old news film. If Pacino appeared to be handling the role of Little John with ease, however, he was having some difficulty maintaining the illusion this particular nippy autumn night was a sultry evening in August.

The temperature hovered at 40 and there was a sharp wind. Between scenes, Pacino huddled in the parka. When director Sidney Lumet called "action," Pacino discarded the-coat, paused while Lumet spritzed his face and T-shirt with water, then sprang into sweat-soaked character. "The star is catching pneumonia," Pacino said during a Washington Post-LA Times News Service NEW YORK Even Hollywood could not have thought up a bank robbery like this one: Three homosexual desperadoes rob a Chase Manhattan Bank branch of $213,000. They hold bank employes hostage for hours, and it is all for the avowed purpose of financing a sex-chanpe operation for th6 transvestite "wife" of one of them.

It was Warner Bros, who gave us Bogey and Lorre. Cag-ney and Robinson, Garfield and Greenstreet; but probably not all of the brothers Warner with their heads together could have come up with celluloid criminals like little John Wojtowicz, Sal Naturile and Bobby Westen-berg. That is one reason why this particular Warner Bros, cops and robbers movie is being shot in Brooklyn instead of Hollywood. It had to happen in Brooklyn. Brooklyn is where it actually did happen, on a sweltering August afternoon in 1972 at a small Chase Manhattan branch at Avenue and E.

3rd Street. The three robbers, friends who plotted the robbery in the back room of a Greenwich Village gay bar, entered the bank at closing time. All of the high drama was over by 5 a.m. the next day, with Wojtowicz in custody, a police dragnet closing in on Westenberg, Naturile shot dead by an FBI agent's bullet, and all the hostages safe. The whole bizarre incident currently is being recreated a mile or so from the scene of the crime.

The movie, called "Dog Day Afternoon," has a cast headed by AI Pacino, a budget and a script that has undergone the scrutiny of the image-conscious National Gay Task Force. The filmmakers have leased a big warehouse and converted it into a complete sound stage, and they have arranged to have the entire block sealed off for filming street scenes. You to look closely to determine which of the shops and ncades which really never his lawyer's advice, he turned cause of "too many memories" happened is in the script down a $2,000 offer while he and she has recently written a was still in jail serving a two- song describing her feelings "There are no major depar tures," producer Martin Breg- year sentence for conspiracy to during the ordeal. man said, "but we have taken commit bank robbery. He took The song is called "Lollipops the lesser amount after he was and Shotguns," taking its title The script does include the released from prison last April, from the fact that for several dramatic appearance outside after serving 19 months.

"I was hours there was nothing to eat bank of Little John's so broke," he said recently, "i but the lollipops the tellers cus. "wife," Ernie Aron, a transves- would have taken $20." tomarily hand out to children, tite who was brought by police Wojtowicz received $7,500 for and those had to be eaten un-from the psychiatric ward of the motion picture rights to his der the gun. She and her bus-Kings County Hospital, to which story. He also will receive 1 band have invested about $2,500 he had been taken after a sui- per cent of any net. in having the song privately cide attempt.

Wojtowicz, who is serving a recorded and they are distribut- It also contains the lamenta- 20-year sentence in the federal ing copies to disc jockeys and tions of Little John's legal wife, penitentiary at Lewisburg, trying to interest the movie heavy-set, neterosexuai tarmen, directed his attorney to give producers in using the sone. who looked upon the loss of her $2,500 of his movie money to After two years, the pnnci- remain curiously husband affections to a man Ernie Aron. Aron took the mon- pals' lives as "a slap in the face." ey and, as Little John had intertwined. Mrs. Tutino, for It contains elements of the wanted him to do.

proceeded instance, reeentlv read nf Wm. uneasy camaraderie developed with the sex change operation tenberg's plight. The 23-year-old Detween me gunmen ana weir that he had been 'planning. Er- is out of work, in poor health nosiages as ine nours wore on, nie Aron now calls herself Liz and has tried to commit sui "I told every Henny Young- Eden. cide since his release from jail Naturile and Westernberg had and she appeared at his man story I ever heard," said Robert Barrett, the bank motives of teir own for the Chelsea apartment with a box robbery.

We were standing of clothing for him. And it contains the, violent around the bar, talkin' with Lit- Westenberff stavs in tmieh OPERATION CHANGED HIM Liz have paid for. Ernie was a homosexual Eden wai Erne Aron before a sax-ehange "wife." operation which the bank robbery was to end, when an FBI man coolly tie John about how poor we all with Liz Eden and Terry shot and killed Sal Naturile as were and how sick of New Wojtowicz. Recently he re- ne sac in a limousine at jv.enne- York," Westenberg said. "Sal ceived a letter from John in which John claimed he still dy Airport, waiting for an air and me were going to take the plane to fly him to freedom.

money, drive to California and loves both Liz (Ernie) and Car Bregman's co-producer, Martin open a boutiaue." urn men, his heterosexual wife. Elfand, was the first to see a The Life reoorters' resparrh Liz Eden is also financially potential feature film in the was fashioned into a screenplay distressed. Lately, she says. robbery, attempt. He was in by Frank Pierson, the award- she has turned to streetwalking to make ends meet and hopes she can sell her memoirs.

She spirea not Dy me inciaem useu winning screenwriter of "Cool out Dy a long account ot it mat Hand Luke" and "Cat appeared in Life magazine a tew Pierson did some additional re- said she also borrowed $300 Z3 a from Carmen to further finance lit ll a weeKs later. search of his own. He came to The article, called "The Boys New Yrok from his Venice, in the Bank," was a painstak- home and asked Ran- ing reconstruction of the event, dolfe Wicker, a freelancer who It also was much the personal had written extensively of the saga of Wojtowicz, a 27-year- robbery for several eav nnhli- the series of silicone and electrolysis treatments that she needs to complete her sexual transformation. rn Not that there is any affec- 1 1 i i -n oio. iormer Dans icuer ana cations, to de tion between the two wives nf Ljj Vietnam veteran who, the the netherworld of Manhattan's John Wojtowicz.

"John told months preceding the robbery, gay hangouts. her to give me the money," Liz had left his wife and two chil- The families of alll three rnh- explained the nther evening dren in Brooklyn and "mar- bers seem more embarrassed "and he is a verv dnmineerin Must sell present inventory at drastic reductions to make room for 1975 sh ipments. Look at the unbelievable savings on room ried" Aron in an elaborate by the homosexuality than the person." size and oversize carpet remnants, some large enough to cover more than one room one room: wag ceremony in ureenwicn armed robbery. Mrs. Wojtowicz Everyone, naturally, wants to Village.

still cannot bring herself to use see "Dog Day Afternoon" when Elfand hired the Life writers, the term, but talks instead it is released, which orobablv $49 BUYS 79 BUY BUYS IMI IMI IMI I Will IM 11 Tim Moore and P.F. Kluge, to about "that life" and "those will be next summer. "I just 79 Li interview tne two aozen or so people in the Village." Western- hope it a good account of gay IMI persons whose lives had been di oergs younger brother keeps a life," Westenberg said. "That's scrapbook of all his press clip- all I care about." rectly affected by the crime: hostages, the robbers' families, the FBI men in charge. Before they could proceed pings and carefully crosses out all references to "homosexual" or "gay." Naturile's 89 89 89 89 89 89 89 83 89 89 89 89 89 83 89 89 89 89 89 89 89 89 Ill ISI in IIS i'l ui in iii IM Ill Ill IIS IIS US HI ISI im in 1S9 ll SU Ml t'n Ml ll.ll Lett hwUf "wl Sw li Ml St ltl ll.ll llS Mil Hit ll S'lt Il'lllllr l.l SW Sl Mi I'iRl Ml llUBI Nrlni Shjf mi sm tCvtl Hi! Ml I'll! Ml ll.ll USI Ml USI I il Ml U.U U) hitw FIIC9CI tin oi VI Isil Itii III (.

It'll ti kill tot Clltlll Miiti Im Will I'll Unlit (Cl III 'ttmil I (in tint i HI "I'd like to go to the premiere," Liz Eden said, "but I doubt if they'll invite me. I'll probably have to go with the common folk." Little John may not eet to with the film script, the produ- uncle is outraged the film will cers felt it necessary to obtain refer to his nephew as gay and SALE l'3 fcSti'K-W ti, 29 I'M! 'mi ki v-i ti fe" 23 I-m Urn IK) 9 13 fll't tl'Ml hi l.t I'M t-S 9 IM i-'K-iv. 23 lii'l tl'-lti r.i I'S '9 23 I "I cm 'S! 49 -i 29 Till It I-1 Mi ll. l-'i '9 'ft, 23 1M1 Hirt I'si S-ii OT '9 lili'H Jri Ha 23 "fca 5i It '9 iii 29 IHilll to! 13 3 "Ss ii 29 liiis fccaa Hv tw in 9 imji ihi 23 l-m M. IS 9 29 i.V.I ttin lw- 'Jl 9 29 Vill a 9 tn 29 1MH 'in 5" i9 k-i 23 S-v Vii 9 23 '1! 9 Dins 29 Mi 1-s fl5 fri'i! 29 i.i i-: IS 9 'S Hi 29 twn i.n ims 9 i 29 IJi'l (ii' Ml S'lS 49 Hr 29 I Ki 1 "9 ih 29 Wl 't'" 49 lj.lt ja nm vxtr a 1M I Iff iiit' 'in IM.

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S'lf vV lH- i 5:. Su ton S'n Mi SMJ Siij Mi Si screen. "They all had to be con will publish a novelized version film might eliminate it from vinced," Bregman said, "that of Pierson's screenplay, also ti- we would tell it pretty much tied "Dog Day Afternoon," by the way it happened." 99 BUYS Patrick Mann, the psuedonym of the prison's film program. Wojtowicz will be eligible for parole in June 1979. Of course, Sal Naturile will not see it.

He is buried next to his father in an Elizabeth, N.J., cemetery. Warner Bros, paid for the funeral. S'it trill iisrimmt win sale Everyone involved did sip a a well-known crime reporter release and received a payment who was commissioned to write from Warner except for the 256-page volume, one woman hostage who wanted Ronald Gold, communications too much money and was writ- director for the National Gay 79 79 79 79 79 79 79 79 79 lltil I Mi Swi S'ii ill 99 IMS! trl kilM SM Sl 99 llilll )l ii Siltt Ssit Il 99 IMI I liii iim SMtl S'lt Il 99 Mi I'M I'll Ill 99 lli'S I Dim Mi SWI Stij Ill 99 IMI kinul Kill HI 99 ISiH luiii ti'l Wiisiii Stulitin 99 I f.i h'miii Inm IIS 99 IMI I i UiM Unit HI 99 IMI I (i'l fMii'ti Sim US 99 if mmmmmmmmm "mi BUYS Mi IMI I Id Mi SUM HI 99 mvil Itm Mi imi Imi US 99 Hill I Mi Stti Ill 99 lltil I fcitiltil him'i'Smi IIS 99 IMJI tJ SH 11! 99 Ml vM Ml Sl SALE 89 89 89 89 HI! Ill ISS ISI Mi I' fy 7 1 I 'III I MMR 1 M'I1 S-i! IJ 49 i.t 39 BUYS si HE- -I 2 ill Ss J'J K. SALE i-; 3 49 IJi'J 39 s-i; 'JS 49 i.vi ti hi iniij 39 i.v.j Iw 49 ijil'l t.t iKi 39 i-ii 9 ''Ml Hill Mi ii 39 l-s T. 49 lm lii'l IM.

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All can be installed by our expert Additional Padding. Needs No mechanics. Backed I- iTB 1 1 jj i tj yi lui rm i UNCONDITIONAL GUARANTEE If you are not satisfied with your new carpet for any reason, return it to us with the sales slip within seven days in its original condition for a credit or refund. tmiw.m I which "Dog Day Afternoon" If based. Al Pacino will star in the movie being filmed in New York City.

A LONG WAIT Mrs. Carmen Wojtowicz and her daughter Dawn Marie, re the wife nd daughter of John Wojtowicz, who masterminded the caper on.