By Karenlyn Barone
But "Nana's" grandson, Alex Halpern, began filming a documentary of her life that year -- eight years ago -- and on Saturday, Nov. 22, Nana attended the Long Island premiere of "Nine Good Teeth," the story of her life. She is now 104, and still vibrant.
"Nine Good Teeth" was the first film to sell out at New York's Tribeca Film Festival in the spring of 2002. It attracted the attention of the BBC, which bought it and began showing it overseas this past summer. Then HBO purchased the film, and continues to show it. No wonder. The homespun documentary is sweet and spirited, a lovely tribute to a unique lady.
The film humorously chronicles the life of Nana and her family through more than a century of Italian-American experience. Nana allows viewers a look at her idiosyncrasies and lets them peer into her vault of memories as she speaks her mind while maintaining her pride. By the film's end, it is easy to share the director's love for his Nana.
Although delighted with her grandson's finished product, Nana was less than cooperative at the onset of filming. "Don't waste all that film," she chided Alex. "But hurry up and get it done."
Alex finished the film in 2001, the year his grandmother celebrated her 102nd birthday. It's an 80-minute documentary that crackles with stories of marriage, infidelity and murder, as well as Nana's views on all of the above. She is outspoken and candid, and as she sat in the audience at the recent showing, she seemed delighted by her life and the tribute her grandson has lovingly produced.
"My inspiration was to spread Nana around," said Alex. "I knew I made a good, solid film."
Nana rejoices in Alex's creative talents. "I always say Alex is the genius," she said with a smile.
As the film documents, Nana was born on Sept. 8, 1899, the second of 13 children of Maria and Domenico Mirabito, who immigrated to America in the late 1800s from the island of Stromboli, Italy. At 23, she married John Livornese, who was three years her junior. They welcomed their first son, John, but when he was 5, Nana heard rumors that her husband was cheating on her. In the film, she tells her grandson, "I was so angry, Alexander. I wanted to divorce him."
The marriage survived, but not without Nana's getting a measure of extramarital revenge on her unfaithful husband. She told him that she, too, had been unfaithful, with a friend of his named Tommy Cavaliere. Enraged by this revelation, Nana said, Livornese hired someone to have Cavaliere killed. Nana intervened and begged the hitman not to hurt Cavaliere. Eternally grateful, her suitor left town and did not return for 30 years.
Nana and Livornese vowed to save their marriage, and shortly afterward a daughter was born. Nana refers to her daughter Maria as her "reconciliation baby."
Tragically, Livornese died in 1961, just shy of his 59th birthday. Widowed at 62, Nana lived alone in her comfortable house in Lynbrook -- until Cavaliere resurfaced four years later.
"If you want to sleep with me, you have to marry me," she told him. And so he did. Unfortunately, her new husband died just four years later.
"He waited all those years to marry me," Nana mused in the film. "God, he must have loved me."
Digging deeper, Alex asked his grandmother during the filming what it's like to go to bed alone now. Even at her advanced age, she answers candidly. "I feel I want somebody there that would love me," she said. "I get lonesome. I'm old, but inside of me I feel very young."
She thinks for a moment and then barks at her grandson, "Sexually, OK?"
It was obvious by the unashamed sniffles heard during the screening that the audience was touched by Nana's story. Jerry Strongin of Lynbrook bent down to kiss her hand after watching the film. "It was so heart-warming," he said. "I really liked it."
Nana, her famous filmmaker grandson and her daughter, Maria Halpern Fitzgibon, were generous with their time after the screening, spending a long time talking with the audience. They graciously fielded questions and basked in the glow that only a 104-year-old movie star can produce.
When asked for the secret to her longevity, Nana did not hesitate: "I never smoked, I don't drink coffee or tea, and I eat plenty of vegetables and fish," she said. "Fish is the key."
She has passed her youthful charm and agelessness down to her daughter, who travels to all the film's openings. "As long as my mother is alive, I'm still young," said Maria. "I will only admit that I do remember World War II."
Patty and Raul Rojas and their daughter, Chelsea, 4, who were in the audience at the library's showing, have a vested interest in the story. "We now own the house in Lynbrook where Nana lived," said Raul. "We love the film."
Little Chelsea gets a kick out of seeing the segments that were filmed in "her" house, but it does make for some confusion. "She watches the film and recognizes her room, but wants to know why her pillow isn't there," said Patty.
In the film, seated among the tapestry pillows on her sofa, Nana reflects on death. "Why should I worry?" she asks Alex. "I'm ready. They should put me in a plain box and let the little worms come in and eat me."
For now, film critics and audiences here and abroad are, in a less literal way, eating up this spicy Italian grandmother. The crowd at the Lynbrook Library applauded at the end of the film, tissues in hand.
