AMC: Susan Lucci article from "People"
Karin Dietterich
"People" magazine.
Redocorating with...Susan Lucci
As soap vixen Erica Kane, she's been tearing up Pine Valley, while at home
she's been ripping up her own house.
by Karen S. Schneider
The mistress of the house is known to neighborhood children as Mrs. Huber.
When no one is listening, her adoring Austrian-born husband, Helmut, likes
to call her Schnickelfritz. (Don't ask; even he can't translate it.) The
rules here are simple: no junk mail in the dining room, no food in the
living room, and -- this one is for the kids only -- no shoes in the house.
"They bring in pebbles in their sneakers" explains Helmut. "*I* can wear
shoes because *I* don't wear sneakers."
Welcome to the House at the End of the Block, Garden City, Long Island, 25
miles east of Manhattan -- and a world away from Pine Valley, ABC, where
for 24 years Schnickelfritz has been known as _All_My_Children's_
irrepressible Erica Kane. Here the most exciting news is not that Erica
has been acquitted of attempted murder (temporary insanity) but that Susan
Lucci's 19-year-old daughter Liza, a freshman at the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill, has been named the Queen of the Shenandoah
Apple Blossom Festival. The biggest eyebrow-raiser is not that Erica's
crazed daughter Kendall tried to seduce her stepfather, Dimitri, but that
the local schoolgirls never seem to stop calling Andreas, Susan's handsome
14-year-old son.
"No one *ever* calls *us*," says Huber, 56, Lucci's husband of 24 years and
president of SL Enterprises.
"Andreas doesn't even *know* he's getting off easy," says Lucci, 44, with
a warm laugh. "He thinks girls calling boys is just how things work."
Let's be frank: Ms. Kane would be bored silly here in a suburban spread
complete with a dog barking in the kitchen and a tire swinging from a tree
out front. But the grandest dame of daytime television -- who this week
hosts the first daytime Emmy Awards ceremony in 14 years in which she is
not a nominee -- grew up in Garden City. She left straight out of college,
eager for the glamor of Manhattan. But 16 years ago she and Helmut -- who
met in 1966 at the Garden City Hotel, where she was a part-time hostess,
he a chef -- decided to move back. It was Lucci who fell in love with the
1927 Georgian colonial house; Huber thought the five-bedroom place was too
big. But Susan made him see reason, and so, within its shingled walls, they
raised their children and counted their many blessings.
Then early one morning about two years ago, wandering about the house as
she likes to do ("It's the only time I can think my own thoughts," she
explains), Lucci noticed a strange incongruity: the fancy handiwork in
the dining room -- a carved mantelpiece and the elaborate ceiling molding
-- didn't extend into the living room. "Maybe the original owners ran out
of money," says Lucci of the apparently abrupt decision to stop work on the
interior. "Maybe it was the Depression -- or just divorce."
In any case, Lucci decided, the time was long overdue for a change. With the
aid of her good friend, Garden City-based decorator Betty Barbatsuly, Lucci
set about turning her house into a palace: poring over fabric swatches for
the window treatments, scouring New York State antique stores for her
favorite Staffordshire porcelain figurines, blow-drying paint strips in her
search for the perfect green for the sunroom. And yes, she confesses,
escaping with the family to their seven-bedroom beachfront home in the
Hamptons last summer while the carpenters, painters and electricians worked
their magic.
Today, with Project Palace nearly complete (the kitchen and a few upstairs
bedrooms remain undone), Lucci is unabashedly proud. At every turn are
touches of the elegance she adores: Herend china from Hungary; Seguso
candlesticks from Venice; an exquisite trompe l'oeil hand painted on the
foyer walls, in which a pheasant outside an old villa appears to fly
away with a strand of pearls.
"Those are mine," says Lucci, pointing to the likeness of the necklace.
"For years I wanted pearls, but Helmut always said, 'No, no, you're too
young.' and I'd say, 'No, no, I *really* would *love* pearls.' And then one
Valentine's Day he just pulled out this beautiful opera-length strand from
underneath the breakfast table. I was *so* happy. So we decided to
incorporate them into our home."
In fact, for all the fancy trappings, it is the personal touches and
treasures -- and, of course, the stories behind them -- that make this house
a home. The silver bowl, tucked on a shelf in the kitchen, that Helmut
used as a child in Innsbruck, Austria. A poem, written by Liza for her
mother, hung in a back hallway. The portrait of Liza and Andreas, painted
in 1983, that hangs by the front door.
"If there were a fire," says Lucci, "that portrait is what I would take."
And her husband, what would he take? "The kids," says Huber.
"*Honey*," says Lucci with a laugh. "The kids are *out* already."
"Oh," says Huber. He thinks for a moment. "Nothing then, there is nothing
I would take."
Huber has no talent for these "what if" games. Susan is the family romantic,
eager to talk about, say, the brush-strokes in a landscape painting, while
he wants to discuss the electrical options for lighting it. Still, there
is very little upon which this couple can't easily compromise. "The big
poing of disagreement," says Lucci, "is that I like really big scale and
he likes very delicate." (Hardly a surprise: "Look who I married," says
the 5'2" actress of the man who towers a foot over her, "and look who he
married.") A smaller point of contention: the photographs of Lucci that
cover the walls, paying homage to her soap stardom, her Ford commercials, her
various miniseries, the line of hair products she now sells on QVC. "Helmut
put these up," she says, slightly embarrassed. "I said, 'Please don't do
this. I mean it, *Please*.' But he says I should be proud of my
accomplishments."
And so she is. This year's Emmy snub, she admits, "makes me sad." But
Lucci keeps the slight in perspective: it is nothing that can't be cured
by the prospect of zebra print in the master bedroom. Or better yet, the
prospect of seeing Andreas and his pals, who, she says, will soon return
from lacrosse practice and flop down on the newly covered chairs in the
living room. "*After* they take off their shoes," says Helmut. Lucci
grins. She is fond of this husband of hers, this life, this home. Yes,
she admits, she might try to coax the sweaty boys out of the living room
and into the family room downstairs. But if they end up staying, she says,
both she -- and the chairs -- will survive. "The *point* of all this beauty,"
says Lucci, "is to be happy. And I'm lucky: I am."
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There are some great pictures that accompany this article.
"Lucci (with Oscar {a white poodle} in the sunporch) included her daughter's
doll and a Viennese painting in the redesign."
The sunporch furniture is covered in a flower print with a
yellow background. There is a corner-cabinet in one corner
that displays a collection of figurines.
"Thanks to husband Helmut Huber, Susan's image is everywhere in the house."
One picture shows Helmut and Susan sitting on the hardwood
floor surrounded by fabric swatches. On the wall are pictures
of Susan and other awards.
The second picture shows a grand piano with lots of pictures
sitting on it.
"'In my next life I'd like to come back as a homebody *or* an actress,' says
Lucci (in her garden). 'There's not enough time to be both.'"
The garden is gorgeous. Susan is dressed casually in jeans,
a white scoop-neck T-shirt and a long, grey, v-neck sweater.
There are daffodils, pachasandra, rhododendrons, and another
flowering tree surrounding the lawn.
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Karin