Local Hero Star, Peter Riegert

Here's the forementioned Peter Riegert. King of the Corner was a great movie. A lot of aging father/son touching scenes. Here's part of an interview with Peter where he mentions his teaching days: "Long before we knew him as an actor, Peter Riegert was a teacher. It was 1968, and the Lindsay administration was under fire over the emotional issue of community control of schools in the largely black and Hispanic Ocean Hill/Brownsville school district, a movement that resulted in strikes by the predominantly white teachers union. “This was the height of the war. This was my way of doing something other than just protest the war,” he says. “It became clear very quickly that I wasn't a good teacher or couldn't be a good teacher because I didn't want to be a teacher. You know, I didn't have any passion for teaching. I had a passion for not supporting a war." After his teaching stint, Riegert worked in 1970 for one of the most compelling characters in New York politics, Bella Abzug. “So I'm typing away and I feel this presence over my shoulder,” he says. “So I turn around and looming over me is Bella. In her inimitable way, she just kind of looked as me as if I was either a pathetic soul, or, ‘Is this the best we can do?’ Somebody would challenge her in terms of her ideas and a full-fledged debate would go on right at the subway stop or wherever we were. I'd never done this before, and she would like yell at me, ‘That's not the way to do it. Don't just stick the pamphlet out - you've got to say my name. You got to tell them who's on the pamphlet.’”

Here's a link to an interesting interview with Peter about "King of the Corner"