Issue No.21 - Polo De’Marco Magazine Issue No.21 - International Edition | Page 241

1. People know you as a film producer; however you started your career as a pharmacologist. Tell
us how you got into the industry? And why you moved into films?
I started working at a local drugstore as a delivery boy. Through my experience working in the drug store,
when it was time to go to college, I decided to become a pharmacist. It was then that I started Universal
Marine Medical Supply, servicing shipping companies and cruise ship lines with medical supplies required by
the World Health Organizations for commercial vessels to have on board.
While opening an office in LA for Universal Marine Medical, I would stay at the homes of my neighbourhood
friends that I grew up with that were in the entertainment business - Scott Baio, Jimmy Baio, Tony Danza,
Billy Crystal, and Penny Marshall.
At a certain point a friend of mine that I grew up with in Brooklyn, was producing a TV show called Hill
Street Blues. He had called me and told me that a famous Italian director named Sergio Leone needed a
bilingual interpreter because he was coming to our neighbourhood to scout locations for the film Once
Upon a Time in America. I told him I would help him out and for six weeks I worked as his assistant on the
production. Then, as they say, the rest was history!
2. Having a degree in Bachelor in Science at St Johns University and then a Doctorate in
Pharmacy in the University of Connecticut. Did you analyse any films that you had produced or
co-produced when it comes to medicine and pharmaceutical work?
No, I never had the opportunity of having films that required a technical advisor, but while working with
Sergio Leone as his assistant on Once Upon a Time in America, he had asked me to get him a glass of water
because he needed to take his medicine. When he pulled out the pillbox, and started taking out his medicine
for a number of different ailments, I noticed that he took all of the pills at the same time. At that point, I
had said to him - “What are you doing? That is a hand grenade you just threw in your stomach!” He said
to me, “Who are you to tell me how to take my medicine,” and my response was “Maestro I happen to be a
pharmacist.” He embraced my knowledge and I became his consultant anytime he needed new medications.
3. In 1978 you and your colleague Xavier Roberts opened the Cabbage Patch Babyland General
Hospital, which was a craze back then. Imagine that time - why did you open the hospital and
does it still exist today?
Originally, I had gotten the location to open a pharmacy, and I was given the wrong information from the
company that does demographics on locations showing how many physicians are in the area and what transit
stops were close by. They told me there was a bus stop in front of the store, but it turned out to be a bus stop
for NYC tours.
During that period, the price of silver skyrocketed. People were melting down quarters and dimes. As a
result, this caused a huge shortage of quarters and dimes in the big cities. What many of the stores were
doing, they would put a basket in front of the cash register of trial-sized products and samples and they
would tell the customer, we do not have the quarters but you can take something out of the basket, which had
a value of over a dollar. So I was constantly searching for close-outs to put in the basket. In the baskets I had
added some rag dolls that I had found that were irregular - a button missing, things like that.
At the same time, I was trying to figure out how to attract the attention of people on the street to come
into the store. I had called a good friend of mine (who was a set designer on Broadway who lived in my
neighbourhood in Brooklyn and as a part time job, he would go to local stores in BK and dress their
windows) to create window displays. When he walked through the store to take the products and put them in
the window, he came across these dolls in the baskets and used them as props.
At a certain point when all of these tourists from Middle America were coming on an NYC tour package a
retired farmer from Broken Arrow, OK, came in and asked me how much were the dolls in the window. He
bought around six of the irregular dolls, and he went back to Oklahoma, and gave them to his granddaughter
who gave them to her classmates. Suddenly, I started getting mail asking for more, and they were including
postal money orders.