Writer, director and actress Toni Kalem (“The Sopranos“) is adapting Lore Segal’s internationally acclaimed 1964 semi-autobiographical novel “Other People’s Houses,” about a Jewish child refugee who finds asylum in Britain via the Kindertransport rescue effort.
The story follows a 10-year-old Jewish girl from Vienna who is sent to England as part of the 1938 children’s transport that followed Nazi Germany’s annexation of Austria. She spends the next several years living in wildly disparate households, from wealthy families to modest working-class folks, an experience that presents her with stark impressions of England’s class system.
For Kalem, best known for her portrayal of Angie Bonpensiero on the HBO series “The Sopranos,” adapting Segal’s book has also offered the opportunity to explore her own family history.
“Like Lore Segal, my mother, a German refugee, boarded the Kindertransport as a young girl,” Kalem tells PvNew. “Saying goodbye to her mother and living separately from her siblings once arriving in the U.K. in 1939, she spent the next few years working and living in other people’s houses. Unlike Lore, she barely spoke of her experience.
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“All I knew was that she had a happy childhood until ‘Hitler came to power,’ when her world was turned upside down and she was forced to escape with a tiny suitcase and leave her mother, her home, her family, culture and language and travel to England until she was finally granted passage to America. She was always grateful that she was ‘saved,’ but the trauma of what had happened to her, the end of her childhood set against the rise of totalitarianism and World War II, she kept buried.
“As a mother myself, I cannot imagine being forced to make the ultimate unthinkable decision – send your children away to save them. ‘Other People’s Houses’ gave me an emotional and historical context to my family history and a link to my own identity – to who I am. Like ‘Belfast,’ ‘Passing,’ and ‘Unorthodox,’ this is the deeply personal story I have wanted to tell most of my life.”
Segal’s story “has never been more timely,” she adds. “We are living through an unparalleled world refugee crisis. Its greatest casualty the generation of children forced from their homes by war, persecution, climate disaster – traveling unaccompanied and seeking asylum in foreign lands or returning to homes that no longer exist.”
Kalem has spent countless hours interviewing Segal and researching her life. “It seems kismet that Lore is my neighbor in New York City, though I never knew it, though I’d been a fan of hers for years.”
She initially conceived “Other People’s Houses” as a limited series and has written a bible for the show and pilot episode.
“But I could also see it easily pivoting to a feature. Lore Segal is now 96 years old. And though she remains creatively prolific and is as spirited and as young as anyone I know, I am aware of how fleeting time is, and I want to find the most expeditious journey of bringing ‘Other People’s Houses’ to the screen – big or small.”
“I write with the idea of creating a complete world peopled with great roles – not just for the leads but for each character,” she adds. “I am interested in the details that make up a human being and the arcs of their journeys, which comes from my years as an actress.”
While Kalem says she always writes “wearing my director’s hat,” she is open to “a director coming onboard who has the eye and the understanding and the humanity to tell this historical yet deeply personal story. Although ‘Other People’s Houses’ is set against a dark period of human history and is about the end of childhood, Lore writes with humor and irony and the wild imagination of a born writer,” she notes.
Kalem also hopes to realize the project as an international co-production.
“I am always shocked to see how little people in the States know about the Kindertransport, if they know about it at all. In Germany and Austria, however, I have discovered the Holocaust is a vital part of every child’s education. I find this kind of series is more in demand in European markets, given that World War II stories tend to resonate more strongly overseas. I feel that if it can find a home in Europe first and be packaged with international talent, it may be easier to then find a U.S. home as a secondary market.”
I now have my German citizenship and divide my time between living and working in the EU and New York City.
Kalem has already spent considerable time in the U.K., Germany, and Austria doing research and unofficial location scouts.
This past February, she attended an exhibit about Segal at the Bezirksmuseum Josefstadt in Vienna.
“I went with Lore’s family, who have become like family to me. We retraced the journey 10-year-old Lore took up until December 1938 when she boarded the Kindertransport at the Wien Hauptbahnhof in the dead of night, never knowing if she would ever see her parents again.”
Kalem’s writing and directing credits also include the 1999 romantic drama and Sundance screener “A Slipping-Down Life,” starring Lili Taylor and Guy Pearce and based on the novel by Anne Tyler. In addition to starring in such feature films as Philip Kaufman’s cult classic “The Wanderers” and Howard Zieff’s “Private Benjamin,” she has also worked extensively for television, writing for “The Sopranos,” Showtime’s “The Big C” and other productions.
