For “Starstruck,” Hriniak is not playing any specific historical figure. She said Attie asked her to wear period dress and try to look as neutral as possible: “not smiling, not having any particular expression or emotion.”
Hriniak kept a straight face, but in her head she let her imagination loose.
“What would a woman of the time period be thinking of if she could come to Bethlehem today and see this?” she mused. “How would she react? Would she be proud? Would she be amazed at what she’s seeing?”
We will never know if a Moravian woman would approve of how the town she helped found out of religious faith almost three centuries ago evolved the way Bethlehem did, but, for Hriniak, being part of the film project was “fantastic.”
“Shimon’s idea of having the steel worker standing in the church, or having the nurse practitioner standing at the steel stacks, having these people in places where you don’t think they would be … even if it doesn’t quite feel right, it’s all Bethlehem,” she said. “We’re all Bethlehem, and this is all of our history.”
That history of the city is in the performer’s DNA. The man who plays the steel worker, Vincent Doddy, comes from a long line of Bethlehem Steel workers: both of his grandparents, his father, his uncles, and his brother worked at the now closed plant.
Doddy, himself, never worked steel.
“My parents said, ‘Either you work for Bethlehem Steel or for Mack Trucks,’” he said. “I studied international marketing in college, so I went to work for Mack Trucks.”
The rusting hulk of Bethlehem’s former steel plant is a reminder of its industiral past. It’s largest employers today include a hospital and a casino. (Emma Lee/WHYY)
Doddy worked for Mack Truck for 38 years before retiring. He is now in the medical training field.
In the film Doddy appears in a bukly, silver suit that makes him looks like a nonplussed space alien investigating Bethlehem, but actually the fire retardant coverall would have been worn by men working the blast furnace, protecting workers from sparks and the intense heat of molding steel.
As with Hriniak, Attie told Doddy not to emote for the camera. But the suit made that impossible.
“If you look at my face it looks like I was hurting. Maybe because of the suit that I was wearing. It was really cumbersome,” said Doddy.
Doddy could not help but think of his family. His grandfather, also named Vincent, would have likely worn a similar suit.
“I channeled my grandfather,” he added. “I could just imagine him working with those beams after they came out of the blast furnace. I imagined the job that he had.”
Doddy said the visiting filmmaker “nailed it.”
“What impressed me was how Shimon could visualize an artistic concept in his mind and cast and direct normal people like myself who identify with that concept,” he said. “It was really an amazing film.”
“Starstruck: An American Tale” will remain on view in the Lehigh University Art Galleries until Dec. 3.