Movies

Keefe Brasselle’s Strangest Role: Cupid in NYC’s Sickest Romance

The movie starred the deservedly forgotten Keefe Brasselle, a very modestly talented singer-actor. Riss recalls in the film that the dorky-looking Pugach repeatedly trotted out the handsome Brasselle and he peformed the tune “Linda” to help Burt woo her 21-year-old self. Pugach notes that Brasselle, whom I met at a taping of his short-lived TV variety show in the ’60s (he died in 1981), was best known for playing the title role in “The Eddie Cantor Story.” Among the worst musical biographies ever committed to celluloid, Warner Home Video nominated it last year for its annual DVD Decision program, in which users of amazon.com were asked to pick titles that were released in January. It didn’t make the cut.

JUNE 18, 1959

HUNT ON FOR JILTED SUITOR

IN LYE ATTACK ON BRONX GIRL

By LEONARD KATZ

Two terrified women, the mother and aunt of the 22-year-old Bronx girl possibly blinded in an acid or lye attack, barricaded themselves in their apartments yesterday, and refused even to tell police the name of the rejected suitor they believed responsible.

Police were seeking the spurned suitor and the stranger they think he hired to hurl the acid into the girl’s face.

“He threatened to get us all,” said Mrs. Bertha Riss, 55, of 1124 Grant Av., who was also burned when the liquid splashed into the face of her attractive daughter Linda on Monday.

Linda and her mother both blamed a jealous former boy friend, who, they say, hired a thug posing as a messenger to injure them.

Both described the acid-hurler as a Negro, about 6 feet tall and weighing about 180 people. He was dressed in rough work clothes.

The attacker was a stranger to them, they said.

The mother said the suitor Linda spurned had caused previous trouble.

“She lost one job because he bothered her at work,” Mrs. Riss said. “He came to the apartment at 3 in the morning and made threats. We complained to the police but they couldn’t do anything.”

Linda, a tall, svelte brunette, had an engagement party at her home Sunday. This was just 10 months after she broke off with a suitor after finding out he was married and had two children.

“The man she broke off with kept calling her up and annoying her,” said Mrs. Pauline Kavalov, 52, of 1025 Gerard Av., Linda’s aunt. “He kept threatening her over the phone and told her, ‘I’ll get you somehow.’ Sunday she became engaged to a lovely boy and now this.”

Rushed to Morrisania Hospital with her mother, Detective Eugene Hatchett heard the girl say over and over:

“Someone had this done to me.”