John Palcewski - Luckiest Man Alive I'll try not to take the bait with the title: a tender moment between a Seattle man and his daughter, emotionally caught at an Italian night club, after a long hiatus? Truth is stranger than fiction, goes the cliche, and the truth in this instance is that the image is a self-portrait of Maria and me in the second guest bedroom of the duplex at Four Sutton Place in New York, owned by the late Leila Hadley Luce and her husband Hank Luce II, son of the founder of the Time-Life empire. A life-long friend and patron of mine, Leila was deeply interested in helping Maria contact Sophia Loren to find out if she'd finally acknowledge giving up Maria for adoption, shortly after giving birth to her in Naples as she was filming Ieri, oggi e domanni with co-star Marcello Mastroianni. Below are links to the adoption story in Eclectica, as well as an autobiographical piece about how I met and got involved with Leila. Sophia Loren's Daughter? http://www.eclectica.org/v7n4/palcewski.html Witness: a Memoir-in-Progress http://www.eclectica.org/v13n1/palcewski.html
