“A Case of MisTaken Identity”

“Joe was the kind of friend you could count on – he knew the score, and you knew that he would always be straight with you. As I read his frank, touching book, I was astonished to learn that Joe was in and out of foster homes and various institutions from the time he was seven until his 18th birthday. That experience, that range of experience, must have played a big part in his solitude, and in his worldliness.”

Those are the words of motion picture icon Martin Scorsese.
Joseph Jacoby is a writer, author of “Boy on a String,” and independent filmmaker, honored with a weeklong retrospective of his films by the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 2006.

In “A Case of MisTaken Identity,” being presented by Smoky Hills Public Television at 7:00 p.m. Thursday, July 31, Jacoby stars in the most compelling work of his career – a film documenting his search for the father he never knew.

In an excited call to another filmmaker friend one day, Jacoby said, “Al – grab your camera. There’s a woman living in Forest Hills that I have reason to believe may have been married for 45 years to the father I never knew.”

A man named Benjamin Jacoby, the name listed as Father on Joe’s birth certificate, had lived with his wife of 45 years in Forest Hills, New York.
Joe filmed his visit with Ben’s widow, Laura, who was then 90 and had been stonewalling him for over a year and had finally agreed to meet him.
That initial meeting was so compelling that his friend convinced himself that Joe had found his father.

The encounter would start Jacoby on a two-year journey that would span two coasts, and included everything from meeting a putative half-sister, Evelyn, who like Laura, became convinced that Joe was indeed a relative, to hypnosis and DNA testing.

Joe Jacoby began his career as a creator of game shows and as a puppeteer. He is the founder of Children’s Video Theater.

After working with puppet masters Bill Baird and Morey Bunin and graduating from New York University’s film school with classmate and friend Martin Scorsese, Jacoby was determined to become a Hollywood player.

His first film, “Shame, Shame…Everybody Knows Her Name” (1969), was shot in ten days, with unknown actors and a budget of $34,500, and was presented in one of MoMA’s first Cineprobe programs.

Exhibiting a taste for realism and social satire, Jacoby produced four major works, including the autobiographically inspired “Harry Up, or I’ll Be 30” (1973), the ensemble comedy “The Great Bank Hoax (1978), and the Children’s Video Theater musical “Davy Jones’ Locker (1995).

Presented by Smoky Hills Public Television, “A Case of MisTaken Identity” is distributed by American Public Television, a prime source of programming for the nation’s public television stations for 47 years.

   
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