The Parlors in Burns Hall

Sister Elizabeth Hill talks about the Parlors in Burns Hall [Voices of SJC Spring 2017]

Sister Elizabeth: We were on Law & Order one time. They wanted to use -Mayumi, you probably have a clip of that- Angela Lansbury and Antonio Banderas [Angela Lansbury and Bradley Cooperin, Law & Order: Trial by Jury (2005)] were the two starts. They wanted to use this room, as a courtroom and I said “no”. We had a lot more sisters here at the time and it would have been very distractive. There were Sister Alice, Sister [inaudible], and Sister Winifred, who were in their 80s and 90s and I just said “No, we cannot do that”. But they did use across the street, the Parlors [in Burns Hall at 245 Clinton Avenue] and they took all the furniture that we had there and brought in other, and it was Angela Lansbury’s Upper East Side home. I said “Oh that was very nice”. Antonio Banderas, of course, was her son and he was the murderer butshe didn't believe it so she was trying to bribe everybody, it was really one of those. But what they could do with the camera! When I saw the actual movie or the TV thing, they made the room look twice the sizewith the perspective, the way they used the camera they went deep and broad. It was amazing. We also had the walls-basically, this sort of neutral blah color and they came and painted the wall gray that they are now. And when they leave, of course, they restore everything exactly the way it was, and they began to bring in the bucket of paint, and I said “no, no no, we like the gray”. When they first painted I said “Gray, who even paints it gray”? But it was perfect. They had the artistic sense they knew what would work better. So that was a happy accident. So it has a little interesting history.