in a black suit and shirt and red tie, sends a shudder of recognition through the few African-Americans in the largely white crowd. Everyone perks up a little at the appearance of Daniel Benzali, late of TV’s Murder One, bald head reflecting his blindingly white double-breasted summer suit (worn with white sneakers). But he’s not the one they’re here to see.
Then the crowd parts and Harvey Keitel joins the procession, his ten-year-old daughter Stella in tow. His hair longish and dark, shot through with gray, his face deeply tanned, he looks fit and natty in charcoal and black, his sportcoat and open-neck shirt complemented by sandals and a small gray suede bag with a knit strap.
The power surge through the crowd is almost noticeable. Harvey Keitel is here – the movie star. The Brooklyn movie star.
Suddenly this unmotivated throng has a purpose. Now they’re ready: ‘Welcome Back to Brooklyn’ day can begin.
A few determined members of the public have wormed their way into this invitation-only ceremony, at which Keitel, Roach, Benzali and two others are being inducted into the Celebrity Path in the Botanic Garden. The Celebrity Path, an idyllic trail through shady pines near a lake, consists of flagstones bearing the carved names of prominent Brooklynites.
The press has been invited and has responded with a slightly pushy band of photographers and cameramen, battling for position around the edges of the crowd as the official procession begins up the narrow pathway. Led by a pompous fellow in a bad straw hat and what looks like a shepherd’s crook, the caterpillar-like procession of honorees, their families, the press, and civilians who have slipped past the lax security works its way up the path.
It inches its way along, in part because Mary Tyler Moore, who is being crowned Queen of Brooklyn for the day, is on crutches. But there’s also the matter of stopping at each flagstone for an annual ceremonial reading of the names.
‘Walt Whitman!’ the man with the shepherd’s staff calls out, before taking two baby steps to the next stone. ‘The Ritz Brothers!’ he announces, leaving one to ponder the range of vision possessed by the selection committee.
Holding hands with his daughter, a slim and pretty girl with her father’s piercing eyes (in gimlet), Keitel moves with the crowd, trying not to be bothered by all the cameras, the photographers now snapping pictures of his little girl, the cameras constantly clicking at him. His shirt and pants are black, soaking up heat like solar panels; the only cooling effect comes from the sockless sandals he’s affected for this walk in the park with a few hundred onlookers pressing closely in on him.
Then, with a final flourish – ‘Floyd Patterson!’ – the procession stops at Keitel’s new marker.
‘Harvey Keitel – one of our inductees,’ the man with the shepherd’s crook enunciates and Keitel steps forward. He looks down at his name chiseled in capital letters in the smooth piece of paving.
After a moment of cameras clicking it becomes obvious that he is expected to say something.
‘I’m honored to be included in this walkway,’ he says, not quite meeting the eyes of the circle closing in around him, ‘and I thank you for having me here today.’
There is a smattering of applause and then it’s time to move on to the next stone – ‘Gil Hodges!’ – as Keitel and Stella fade back into the crowd.
As the procession gathers around the stone of another inductee – early sixties New York radio legend ‘Cousin Brucie’ Morrow – Keitel stops at a marker and stoops down. The stone is that of Harry Houdini, whom Keitel is getting ready to play in a film for Paramount, Illumination. He has already begun doing copious homework, sometimes phoning his researcher at midnight with new ideas he’d like to look into. All in preparation for a portrayal of the great escape artist and mama’s boy who spent half his life debunking mediums and spiritualists – and the other half seeking a way to contact his mother in the next world.
He touches the stone, then kisses his hand and offers it with a smile to Stella, for her kiss as well. One stone further and he stops again: ‘Look – Edward Everett Horton!’ he says to his daughter with genuine glee. ‘The Mad Hatter in Alice in Wonderland!’
The procession ahead of them comes to a conclusion, stranding the crowd on a narrow path on a peninsula in the lake. Everyone must now turn around to return to a small amphitheater overlooking the water.
There, Keitel finds himself perched on a folding chair on the edge of the improvised stage, tapping his foot, waiting for the event to begin. Max Roach comes and sits next to him, and Cousin Brucie, his hairpiece looking distinctly younger than anyone on the stage, sits down next to him.
Cousin Brucie leans over to Keitel and Roach and says, ‘Isn’t it strange to think that that stone will be here after we’re gone?’ as though he had only this second discovered his own mortality.
If anything, for Keitel, the stone symbolized more about how far he had come since he was the kid who’d managed to make himself unwanted at two Brooklyn high schools, the kid whose greatest aspiration was his own stick at the poolroom, the kid who, out of simple macho boredom, quit high school altogether at seventeen and joined the Marines to escape from Brighton Beach.
To be here in Brooklyn was an honor he couldn’t ignore. Still, the photographers are beginning to get on his nerves. Sitting on the folding chair in the cramped amphitheater, he can feel the lenses pointing at him as Stella crawls into his lap and, at age ten, begins sucking her thumb.
Keitel scans the crowd. He spots his older brother, Gerry, and several old friends, who’ve come to keep him company, to celebrate, and to see their friend and brother receive recognition from the borough where he grew up.
Stella leans against him, her thumb still in her mouth, watching with bored eyes as Daniel Benzali gets up to receive the medal signifying his placement in the Celebrity Path from Borough President Howard Golden. Her free hand pinches her father’s ear between thumb and forefinger, as Keitel affects a look of comic pain.
Then Golden begins talking about Keitel and mentions Smoke – the Wayne Wang film in which Keitel plays Auggie Wren, the owner of a Brooklyn smoke shop. The film has been adopted as an official Brooklyn film when, in fact, it is Blue in the Face, Smoke’s rowdier, less self-satisfied companion film, that repeatedly announces its love for all things Brooklyn. Be that as it may, Smoke is the film Keitel is associated with on this day of accolades – because it’s about Brooklyn and because it’s more socially acceptable than, say, Bad Lieutenant or Reservoir Dogs.
‘… Our next honoree, Harvey Keitel.’
Keitel gets up and Golden shakes his hand. There’s the grip-and-grin moment for the cameras, which snap and whir furiously – the two men shaking hands while Golden holds the medal up between them. Then, as he starts to give it to Keitel, the hand-over is muffed and the bronze medal falls to the flagstones with a clang.
‘Ooooh,’ says the assembled group, but Keitel saves the moment, picking up the medal and holding it aloft to show it’s unharmed. Then he kisses it and offers it to God.
‘Remember that?’ he says of the gesture. He smiles broadly. ‘I think of the words of that Sinatra song: “The house that I lived in, the people I knew.” The guy in the poolroom was named Charlie. I remember Mr Levy, the tailor. And my friends, Howie Weinberg and Carl Platt – we joined the Marines together.
‘All those people I grew up with, my buddies, my brother. We carved our names in cement all over Brooklyn, notched it in trees and poolrooms. I’m pleased to be here. Thank you.’
Even as Golden is introducing Max Roach, Keitel is spirited away to the fragrance garden by one of the event’s press flacks for a stand-up interview with New York’s Fox-TV affiliate. As he stands uncomfortably next to a smiling blonde, mouthing the necessary niceties (‘I’ve always loved Brooklyn’), his group of friends have detached themselves from the crowd still watching the induction ceremonies and stand together: Platt, Weinberg, Gerald Keitel, Keitel’s long-time buddy Victor Argo (who appears in many of Keitel’s films),