Last updated: 4:23 am
August 10, 2008
Posted: 4:19 am
August 10, 2008
THE son of beloved "Law & Order" actor Jerry Orbach, who died of cancer in 2004, has lashed out at his father's widow, claiming in a vitriolic letter that she manipulated her husband into cutting his children out of his $10 million estate - and had his eyes "shucked out" on his deathbed.
Chris Orbach, 39, calls his stepmother, Elaine Cancilla-Orbach, "a double-dealing, lying, scheming, miserable fool" who, with the help of "cut-rate, borscht-belt" lawyers, has "painted [herself] as the beginning and the end of the Jerry Orbach Legacy" and can now "boast about 'never flying coach,' or 'never riding the subway.' "
All he has been left, Chris claims, are "two sweaters, a pool cue, a few CDs and a pocketknife from the estate of one of television's best-known faces - a man who happened, incidentally, to be my father."
Chris Orbach's letter to his stepmother was private. The Post obtained a copy from a source sympathetic to his story. In an interview, Orbach, an actor and musician, said he regrets that the matter has become public but stands by his letter. "It's a very melodramatic gesture," he said. "But I no longer saw the sense in maintaining a relationship with Elaine."
Cancilla-Orbach, a former Broadway dancer and actress, said she was "in shock when I received the letter. I stood there in my kitchen having four pages of this vomit being thrown at me by someone I thought I had a relationship with. I don't hate Chris, but I don't understand why he's doing this. Everything he says is untrue."
Orbach also attacks his stepmother for her decision to donate his father's eyes to the Eye Bank Association of America. "Having to leave my father's deathbed so that some guy with an ice box could shuck his eyes out while they were fresh still makes me sick and furious to this day," he writes.
Chris Orbach did a voiceover for an Eye Bank ad, but "only to stay on Elaine's good side." Eventually, he asked the bank to use another actor's voice.
"Jerry always said he was so proud that at age 69, he didn't need glasses," Cancilla-Orbach said. "He said, 'If I can give anything back, I want to give my eyes. I can't give my liver because I drank too much, and I can't give my lungs because I smoked too much. But I can give my eyes.' So on his deathbed, when they asked if he was an organ donor, I said, 'Take his eyes.' Chris knew nothing of this. He knew nothing of what his father and I discussed for 25 years."
COMMENTS