Also this issue:

Guilty, Eh?
International row follows Philly conviction of Canadian for trading with Cuba.
-Steve Eckardt

Art Attack
A brawl over a wall near Peirce College.
-Jenn Carbin

Sins of the Fathers
Two papers, two approaches to covering the biggest story on the religion beat since the Reformation.
-Frank Lewis

City Beat

Soundbites
-Frank Lewis

April 11-17, 2002

city beat

Bender on a Roll

cast of thousands: Bender and his re-creation of three colonial-era slaves.

Photo By: Michael T. Regan

The city’s most famous forensic sculptor has two new projects on tap.

by Jenn Carbin

Philly’s own Frank Bender, a fine artist and nationally renowned forensic sculptor, is currently involved in two projects that involve other worlds: modern-day Hollywood and colonial New York.

The Hollywood project is a film about the three founding members -- Bender among them -- of the Vidocq Society, an exclusive organization of forensic experts and former cops. Bender's role in crime solving is set to be one focus of the film.

The other project is the sculpture of three slaves, yet to be cast in bronze, that Bender created for the African Burial Ground Project. The piece, created to honor the slaves whose remains were discovered in lower Manhattan in 1991, is set to be placed at the discovery site.

Bender first reached the attention of filmmakers years ago, when word spread of his rather unique talent for sculpting uncanny representations of crime victims and criminals -- the kind of people who need to be identified or found -- based on skulls and photographs.

It took producer Danny DeVito and his company Jersey Films, which Bender says "bid the most" on the rights to the story, to get things moving. (Bender wouldn't say for how much.) Screenwriter David Franzoni (Amistad and Gladiator) is working on the film, which Bender says is currently in "serious development."

During a recent visit from a reporter, he was compelled to take a phone call from a member of the script team. Bender patiently described the way a crime was carried out and solved. He says such calls have been a daily happening for the past several weeks.

Though he's not allowed to give away specifics about the film, Bender speaks comfortably about the process.

"I believe in Jersey Films so much because of Danny," he says. "He's a beautiful person."

Bender and his wife, Janice, socialized a bit with DeVito and his wife, Rhea Perlman, when they attended parties the actors hosted to celebrate the millennium. Despite the size of the crowds, he says, "The atmosphere was warm. They were like family parties."

Bender, who has been profiled in more than one documentary, is not bothered by the idea that Hollywood is going to fictionalize his life.

"Do I really care? No," he says. "If you put out a fact version, somebody is going to come along and make a fictional version anyway."

Bender says he's keeping himself informed only of what he needs to know about the development process, and when shooting begins this month, he intends to keep it that way. "I want to keep the magic going; when I see the film, I want to be caught off guard the way a paying customer would."

In Bender’s studio there is much to see, including commissioned sculptures, based on photographs, of what children who died in the Holocaust would look like in their old age. And there is the sculpture of three African-American slaves. The image portrays the busts and hands of these individuals, whose remains were retrieved alongside those of 405 others, from the largest pre-Revolutionary African-American graveyard known to exist in North America.

In 1991, construction workers doing excavation in New York for a 34-story, $276 million federal building and pavilion discovered the first bones pulled from the site. The federal General Services Administration (GSA) gave responsibility for the remains to Howard University.

Biological anthropologists there decided to get Bender involved with an education program utilizing the remains. Bender was also brought in to breathe life into the remains of the chosen three: A young man who was dead before 30; a young woman with a musket ball in one rib, a broken arm and broken bones in her face; and an old woman, who Bender says is special to him. "She endured the most, was around the longest," he explains.

Though neither Howard nor GSA ultimately came through with funding for Bender's work, the British Broadcasting Corp. (BBC) did, and includes Bender's work on the sculpture in a segment of a new documentary describing the slave experience in New York City. It will be released in this country near the end of this year.

Bender says the sculpture is set to be unveiled during an interment ceremony for the remains, sometime in June. Attempts to get through to the African Burial Ground Project to confirm this were unsuccessful.

Browse The
November 20, 2003
Issue

Join the
City Paper
Mailing List