Larry Marinelli

This is the obituary of our Friend Larry. Larry was a faithful attender at Meeting for Worship and Meeting events. We miss him.

Lorenzo Marinelli, a 30-year resident of Columbia County, New York and North Bergen, New Jersey, died suddenly of a cerebral hemorrhage on May 20, 2018, at St. Peter’s Hospital in Albany, New York. He had celebrated his 79th birthday in February. 

Larry was the proud son of an Italian immigrant, Nino Marinelli, who made the treacherous voyage from Abruzzi, Italy to America by himself at the age of 13. He loved visiting his father’s village and his surviving relatives in Rome.

On New Year’s Eve of 1990, he met his beloved wife Deborah, mother of his stepchildren Rachel Aydt of New York City and Christian Aydt of Little Falls, New Jersey. The couple married at their home on Lake Kinderhook, New York, in 1994. He is also survived by his sons Lawrence Marinelli (Marina) of Queens, N.Y.,  Ward Marinelli (Barbara) and Dean Marinelli (Ria) of East Stroudsburg, Pa., ex-wife Judy of East Stroudsburg, Pa., and grandchildren Jessica, Nicholas, Daniel, Christina and James.
 
Larry was a film editor who also worked in television production; he enjoyed the creative side of production more than the business side. The name of his first and most enduring company was East End Productions, which survived at least one move to the West Side; still, he kept its name. He was an active member of the Motion Picture Editor's Guild for over 50 years, and was proposed to the Guild board by his friend and mentor Stanley Ackerman, longterm president of the Director's Guild in New York City. He got his greatest pleasure from his career in independent film and television.
 
He and his brother Rudolfo Marinelli founded one of the first film translation companies, Language In Motion, for foreign directors who wished to gain access to American markets. They perfected the technique of using professional actors to dub films into English, and worked to dub Italian masterpieces by Fellini and Bertolucci; he was also a member of the New York team that produced Scenes from a Marriage by the Swedish director Ingmar Bergman for English-speaking audiences. To make a living and perfect his craft, he worked on both artistic, independent, and low budget and cult feature films, including Vigilante, Very Close Quarters, Heart, Maniac, A Time to Remember, East Side Story, New York Cop, Ankle Bracelet, and Bad Company. He loved all genres, and often helped to close funding gaps for filmmakers struggling to complete projects and get distribution deals.  His support extended to Italian science fiction; Larry loved to remember chasing monsters through the streets of Rome and two-hour pasta and wine lunches with the Italian crew of Cosmos: War of the Planets. He also created trailers for many directors, and got a kick out of his industry nickname, "King of the Trailers.” In later years, he was an associate producer of Inside the Law and Health Choices, which were widely shown by PBS stations, and worked on the PBS Intrepid documentary with his close friend, producer Phillip Marshall.
 
In a side adventure, Larry made a dear friend for life, Randy Jurgenson of the NYPD, when he opened his studio on Fifty-Fourth Street and Tenth Avenue for Jurgenson, who was desperately trying to identify and arrest killers responsible for nearly 500 deaths in three NYC precincts in 1972. Those were violent years in the City.  Lorenzo's crucial support of the NYPD was immortalized in Jurgenson’s book "Circle of Six.” Jurgenson wrote: “Larry’s office was a large facility with three smaller offices situated off its main reception area. Larry had one office, another office housed flatbed, plus upright editing bays, a film-developing kiosk, and a third office was vacant. Larry was well aware of my real estate problem in the NYPD, so he magnanimously offered me this space, no strings attached. That office became the unofficial Cardillo/Jurgenson war room.”
 
Larry had another side: he was a passionate defender of the environment. When St. Lawrence Cement was threatening to build the biggest cement plant in the world in Hudson, New York, Larry spent nearly a hundred volunteer hours filming their planning meetings, and the environmental legal team that was hired to protect the county’s interests was able to use his tapes in preparing their ultimately victorious case. 

He loved going to the movies, and attended independent film festivals from New York to Reykjavik. In upstate New York, he enthusiastically supported the Chatham Film Festival at his favorite historic theater, the Crandell. He loved the water and had a few rowboats going at any one time on Lake Kinderhook, hopefully at least one without a leak. He always wanted a party boat, and in the last year of his life, he finally bought one and he and Deborah used it for sunset picnicking; he was excited for the parties he planned to throw this summer. He loved meeting his friends at the drop of a hat for pizza and wine celebrations. He was a faithful companion to dogs, most recently his shih tzu Tucker. He traveled the world with Deborah, and visited Costa Rica, Serbia, Croatia, Italy, Scotland, Peru, Ecuador, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, and many other countries. He found the one New York pizza place in Pushkar, India, a Hindu holy city he’d been told was completely teetotal, and somehow talked his way into a cold beer in a teacup, to better enjoy his pizza while remaining sensitive to local mores. One of Larry's last and most profound adventures was to see Mount Annapurna at sunrise in Pokhara, Nepal. He and Deborah were together, holding hands, as the sun cast first light on one of the highest mountains in the world.
In lieu of flowers, friends who care to make a contribution in Larry’s memory may wish to consider his beloved Old Chatham Friends’ Meetinghouse, the Chatham Film Club, or the Kinderhook Dog Park. Interment was beside his parents and brother at St. Raymond’s Cemetery in the Bronx, New York.  A local memorial will be held at the Old Chatham Friends’ Meetinghouse later this month.
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