"Into this urban hurly-burly landed twine-wrapped bundles of the February 14,1977, issue of the Village Voice . The cover trumpeted articles about loan sharks, sardonic monuments to the disgraced former president Richard Nixon, and big red lips for Valentine's Day. A headline on the lower left asked, "Do Psychiatrists Drive Their Kids Crazy?" and was accompanied by a photo of a dark-haired 3-ish-year-old with less a cherubic than an apprehensive expression, credited to Sylvia Plachy."
"And thus, untold thousands of New Yorkers were greeted by Adrien Brody - at newsstands, bodegas, coffee shops - whose serious child's face was unknown to readers but which moviegoers would become very familiar with over the coming decades. Although this early brush with fame lasted a week more than Warhol's decreed 15 minutes, it arrived only after a long, fraught journey: Brody's mother, Sylvia Plachy, was born in Budapest in 1943 and was 13 when her family fled Hungary, leaving behind many relatives lost to the Holocaust as well as her country's trauma after the failed 1956 uprising against the Soviet yoke."
"By the time Brody turned 4, Gerald Ford was no longer president, but the Son of Sam, a madman in thrall to a demonic dog, was terrorizing the Big Apple by randomly shooting young women (and sometimes, their beaus) who wore their dark hair long - which led to a booming business in short bobs, dye jobs, and blonde wigs in outer-borough beauty parlours. It was a tough time in Gotham, but with the Yankees preparing a run at a World Series ring after a 14-year drought, the city was brimming with mad energy."
Adrien Brody was born in Woodhaven, Queens, in 1973, during a period of New York turmoil. The city faced fear from the Son of Sam and a broader atmosphere of tension, while the Yankees prepared for a World Series run after a long drought. In February 1977, a Village Voice issue appeared with a cover featuring articles on loan sharks, Nixon-related satire, and Valentine’s Day themes. A lower-left headline asked whether psychiatrists drive kids crazy, paired with a photo of a dark-haired young child credited to Sylvia Plachy. The image circulated widely across New York, making Brody’s face familiar to readers before his later decades of movie recognition.
Read at The Village Voice
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