Senior Bachelor

On May 1, 1965, Margaret Ann Davis (Meg) and I were married. Meg is Grace Kelly's niece and the Godmother of Princess Caroline, who, in turn, is Godmother to my eldest child, Richard. Meg's mother, Peggy, was Grace's eldest sister. This was a big "step-up" for me- a kid from the streets of New York City. I'm of Irish descent and, if you're Irish, we feel the two most famous Irish-American families are the Kennedy's and the Kelly's.

Grace Kelly and Maria Callas circa 1973Not only was Grace an Academy Award winning actress, she was a top model, a Princess, a loving wife and mother and, on top of all that, a truly unbelievably kind, sweet, warm and wonderful person! I had the extremely distinct pleasure of knowing Grace well and the rest of the Royal Family as a result of numerous visits to Monaco and living in the Palace as well as during their visits to Philadelphia.

I became quite friendly with Prince Albert, who in April, 2005, became the Serene Highness after the death of his father Prince Rainier- also a truly amazing and wonderful human being. I mention this because I have many photographs and film clips of the Royal Family starting in 1973, and I have many, many stories I heretofore have never shared with anybody....until now.

Julian Lennon and Prince AlbertI am writing a book about my travels and the interesting people I have met in my life and hope to have it finished upon the completion of the Senior Bachelor Adventure Journey, sometime in 2006. The book will contain stories of the following people I have spent time with in Monaco in addition to the Royal Family: Cary Grant, Gregory Peck, Frank Sinatra, Ava Gardner, David Niven, and Maria Callas. I have a particularly interesting story about a late night I spent drinking champagne with Maria Callas while at the Palace.....

In 1973 I was 32, and embarked on my first trip to Europe- to Monaco and England. I was so impressed by Europe that I returned the following two years on vacation. This whetted my appetite for travel and I wanted to see the rest of the world -- but how could I do this with only a few weeks vacation each year? That's when I decided to take my family on an extended world tour, which resulted in 1978 and 1979 in a 14 month journey around the world to 38 countries on 5 continents. My boys were 10, 11, and 12 at the time. What an adventure!

In the late 1980's all of my sons were attending The University of Virginia, and my marriage started to unravel, resulting in a separation in 1992 and, sadly, a divorce in 1994 after 29 years of marriage. I was devastated and wanted to run away- to see people who wouldn't try to comfort me, to meet new people and to see new places. I decided to take another trip around the world.

I asked my three sons, all of whom had graduated from The University of Virginia and were living on the beaches of Southern California, if they would like to join me. Richard and Gabby could not, but Chris, then 29, very much wanted to come along. He had an interesting plan- to make a movie about fathers and sons in different countries!! Chris had never showed any interest in filmmaking, had never taken any courses or read books about this industry. In fact he had never even owned a film camera!! 190 days, 5 continents and 27 countries later, we returned to the U.S. with 100 hours of digital videotape, which we made into a feature length documentary film titled "POP&ME."

To our utter amazement, POP&ME won 6 festivals, and was a Semi-Finalist for an Academy Award as Best Feature Length Documentary in 2000. MGM purchased the film, transferred it to 35 Millimeter, added Dolby Stereo, and POP&ME was in theaters in 20 cities in America.

I learned so much about filmmaking and Hollywood during this time and currently I teach classes and seminars at colleges such as UCLA and USC-the two premiere film schools in America. I have many "Hollywood stories" to share with readers in the upcoming book, including having met (here comes a lot of shameless name-dropping) Sean Connery, George Clooney, Robin Williams, Al Roker, Vince Vaughn, Bill Cosby, Kevin Spacey, Jack Lemmon, Will Smith, Nicholas Cage, Michael Clark Duncan, Ed Harris, Marisi Tomei, Donald Trump, Mark Burnett, Ben Affleck, Matt Damon, Chris Moore, William Hurt, Shaq, Leonardo DiCaprio, Bryant Gumbel, Magic Johnson, Tug McGraw, Kareem Abdul Jabbar, Frank Purdue, Chuck Norris, Dennis Hopper, Mickey Rourke, Kerry Otis, and the greatest of all- on two separate appearances on her show-OPRAH!

I’m running the risk of giving "too much information" by talking about all this. I felt it important to give you a good sense of my history which I hope will make it easier for me to find you- The Perfect Traveling Partner. With the possibility of becoming a life partner!