September 23, 2022 • 52 mins
Georgia Durante became the "Kodak Girl" when the life size image of her became the poster-board ad for Kodak, displayed in more than 80,000 retail stores throughout the world.
But behind that static smiley cardboard version of Georgia was a girl who endured brutal rape, got caught up in the mob, and had to flee for her life.
This woman is the epitome of strong, connected to her core, and FILLED with self-respect that she built from scratch.
Georgia Spills:
- How she got involved with the MOB and why she had to flee to the other side of the country
- How being “the Kodak girl” shaped her future and self-worth
- Why staying silent after her rape wasn’t an option and how she helps women who have been abused
- What life looks like now, after 3 failed marriages, and adopting her granddaughter.
Listen to Georgia’s Podcast, Wheel Woman:
Get Georgia’s Book, “The Company She Keeps”:https://www.thecompanyshekeeps.com/
Book Georgia’s Vacation Rental:
https://theenchantedmanorvacationrental.com/
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Host @lisahayim
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Edited by Houston Tilley
Intro Jingle by Alyssa Chase aka @findyoursails
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
M Hm. I know will be a right even when
times gutheart and you feel you're in the dark. Cusye,
just how beautiful laugh can be. When you soph in
your heart, you can finally start to fire to see
(00:30):
you slide. Hello everybody. Lisa two point Oh back in
the studio, a K A my spare bedroom slash office,
where we record the truth is life, and I want
to say thank you so much for everybody who listened
to last week's episode, all about my meat treat and integration.
It felt really good to put my whole self out
there and even better to know that it resonated with
(00:52):
a lot of you and served as a prompt to
ask yourself questions about how you're living your own life.
That's really what these podcast episodes are about. The Solo
ones can feel a little bit like self indulgent who
wants to hear every aspect of my life, but my
real reason for doing them is so that I could
provide some sort of tool, information, insight or prompt for
(01:14):
you to look further into your own life and take
something away, and I think that we did accomplish that.
So this episode was actually created before the birth of
Lisa two point now, but I think that it kind
of came at the perfect time because it's with Georgia Durant,
who is a seventy something year old woman who has
lived in absolute crazy life, but, most importantly, her energy
(01:37):
is of a strong woman who is, of course getting older,
as we all are, but somebody who really owns every
aspect of her life and although she has been through
so many things that could have broken her down into
tiny pieces, it has instead kind of been rebuilt like
a ceramic sculpture and is so much more beautiful because
(01:58):
of everything she's experienced, endured and survived content learning. We
are talking about things like sexual abuse and violence. Her
life is absolutely crazy, with involvement with the mob and
terrible things that happened to her, but every step of
the way she brings this like Georgia energy which you'll
feel immediately when she starts talking, and I hope for
(02:19):
all of us listeners. It's a little bit contagious that,
although we go through life and things don't necessarily go
right a lot of the time, we still bring forth
this ownership to everything that we go through. She talks about,
for example, getting divorced three times, and these, quote unquote,
failed marriages and instead of being like well, yeah, I'm
looking for somebody else, as we expect a woman to say,
(02:42):
she's like not, I don't even know if I want
another partner in this lifetime. The strength that she puts
out is the exact older generation female energy that I
gravitate towards. It's kind of in the theme of my
life lately. I keep having these really great interactions, I'll
get more into it in next week's episode, with old
or women who are changing the narrative of what it
means to get older. And when we talk about getting older,
(03:06):
you know obviously we we think, we hear women who
are like embarrassed to say their age and we really
have to flip this narrative on the head, on its
head if we want to embrace getting older, to keep
our power growing as women and not allow this ridiculous
societal view of aging to tip away at US without
us even realizing. So that's kind of my big takeaway here.
(03:29):
How can we develop our self worth from scratch, even
though we've all been through things that have broken us down?
Quick note on self worth for self esteem. Self esteem
is usually derived from other people's applaud of what you do,
and while self esteem is important, self esteem without self
worth is a risky way to live. Self worth is
living with a sense of knowing that you are enough
(03:50):
without at all, without the looks, without the ability to
get good grades, without the ability to run really fast
or be a perfectionist, that everything that you do, you know,
all the things that you get applaud for. And Life
Without those applaud can you still feel a whole? As
we age, I think self worth becomes even more and
more important, unrelated to just necessarily body image, where I
(04:12):
normally talk about self worth, but to our wholeness and
Um our ability to get through life's challenges. Anyway, this
woman is really inspiring. She's a great storyteller. I hope
you enjoy this upbeat story that gives us a glimpse
into the crazy American history through the lens of this
woman who had her ties to the mob, fled to
(04:34):
the other side of the country, became a Hollywood stunts
woman and truly does it all. I'm linking her book
below where you can directly support her. I think it's
a great gift, maybe for even a parent if you're
a younger listener, because, like I said, you get that
like really good insight into American history without having to
read a dry textbook. Again, thank you all for your
(04:55):
support for being here for at least a two point. Oh,
and I'm really excited for all the things coming. I
hope you all have a great weekend and I'll see
you back here next weekend. Welcome back to the truthiest life.
Today is a wonderful guest, Georgia. Welcome Georgia to the
truthiest life. We were just chatting a little bit before
(05:16):
we hit record, and I actually wanted to jump into
record before Georgia told me anything more, so that we
could have kind of just a first listen together with
my audience. And I know that your life has been
how mask how old you are? Two next week, oh
my gosh. Well, happy almost birthday. What's your birthday? July nine? Oh,
(05:36):
I'm June thirty. We are cancers, obviously, and I felt
connected to a strong woman like you, but your story
is compelling. It's, for lack of a better word, terrifying.
You know, a lot has happened in your lifetime, even
just before the age of twenty. You know, kind of
like the cliff notes on you is that you were
(05:59):
a model. You know you've experienced rape that you've been
brave enough to discuss, been part of mob violence, gone
through a failed marriage, a baby, a kidnapping of your daughter.
I believe there's been a lot in your life timeline
that you know most people don't experience. YEA, three, three
(06:20):
failed marriages. Well, were they really failures? Let's start with that.
Now that you're on the other side. For each of these,
do you call these these marriages that didn't work out, failures?
Or I know technically that's what we call divorce, but well,
the first marriage was, you know, like a high school sweetheart,
and that just didn't work. The second one was a
(06:42):
mob guy. He was very abusive. This guy held me
out of a window because I wanted to leave by
my ankles and put a gun to my head with
one bullet in it and pulled the trigger twice. So
I finally got away from him and then I came
out to California met my third husband, who just that
(07:06):
didn't that just didn't work. But anyway, I haven't been
married now since nine and have no plan to do
it ever again. Journey through the husbands, but it sounds
like you've really found yourself through your lived terrifying experiences.
I'M GON use that we're terrifying a few times, I
think because not many people have been. I hope not
(07:29):
many people have been held out a window by their
ankles or ever had a gun, you know, near them,
let alone put up to their head. But let's just
kind of start with the beginning, because you weren't always
this l a stunt person. You started out living in
Rochester and your nickname was the Kodak girl. So why
did people call you the Kodak Girl? Because I was
(07:51):
the Kodak Girl. What does that mean? Well, people don't
even know what Kodak is. I grew up in Roch sister.
When I was twelve years old, I started modeling for Kodak.
By the time I was seventeen I was considered the
Kodak Girl. They had a life life size poster of
me in a blue and white poked up bikini that
(08:14):
was in all the drug stores and camera stores all
over the world. And then I moved to New York
City and to further my modeling career and I ended
up meeting these uh guys in the mob. But I
had known these other guys in the mob growing up.
I mean everybody in Rochester, if you opened up the
(08:35):
phone book, everybody's last name ended in a bowl. I
didn't know anybody who wasn't Italian until I was like seventeen,
and so there was the mob element in that whole scenario.
And also when I was like twelve or thirteen, I
was sitting in a in a restaurant which was a
mob kind of hang out and I was there with
(08:56):
my girlfriend and these two guys started hitting on us
and he were like wealth thirteen years old. We look
a little older because we have a lot of makeup
on and but obviously so. When this guy started hitting
hitting on us very crudely, this guy got up and
walked over to him and dragged these two guys outside
(09:16):
and just beat the living heck out of him. And
it turned out to be the godfather upstate New York. Oh,
he wasn't the Godfather at the time. He was working
his way up, but he kind of watched over me
as I grew up and I would go into bars.
At that time you had to be eighteen to get in,
(09:37):
but I was like sixteen or seventeen. He just nodded
the bouncer letter in and he would watch out for me.
I felt very protected, you know, around him. and also
at Seventeen I was raped by my brother in law.
He wanted to have my brother in law eliminated and
I held this guy's life on the tip of my tongue.
(09:58):
All I had to do is say yes, but I
couldn't take someone's life. So anyway, uh, that's when I
moved to New York. I met these the first night there,
these mob guys who we ended up in this after
hour club and then I started dating the guy who
owned the club. And so I'm there and like five
(10:19):
ft away from me this guy pulls out a gun
and he shoots the guy next to him. Everybody scattered.
He threw me the car keys. He says, Georgie girl,
get the car, pull it up, so I did and Um,
they got his body down two flights of stairs. They
threw him in the back seat. Now I'm in the
driver's seat. I end up getting him to Bellevue Hospital
and record time we pulled in front of the emergency
(10:41):
they pulled his body out, left him on the sidewalk,
jumped back in the car, beat the Horn and took off.
All they talked about was man, Georgie girl, can you
drive a car? It's like they could care less with
this guy lived or died, you know. So there was
a lot of talk about that for like a couple
of months and I went back to Rochester for a weekend.
(11:04):
At that time you could you could fly for ten dollars,
ten dollars out of stand by. So I get back
to and I run into Sammy, who was the guy
that ended up protecting me. He says, Georgia, I need
you to do me a favor. I said sure, Sammy.
What do you want me to do? He says, I
can't trust anybody. He said if anybody finds out about this,
(11:24):
they're going to find my body in the genesee river.
And I said okay. Well, what do you want me
to do? He says, I need you to deliver a
message for me. So he shows up the next day
with an envelope and I fly back to New York
and I'm picked up in this black limousine and driven
to this restaurant in Brooklyn. So now I'm being escorted
(11:46):
into this back room where four guys are sitting and
I'm introduced as Georgia girl and this one guy raised
his eyebrow like he had recognized the name. I guess
he had heard about how I drove the car or
that night. So I've given me M Open. He looks
at me, he got very angry and he says you
tell Mr Jim Jello he's gonna have to meet with
me in person. And I said, Hey, you know, I
(12:08):
have no idea what this is about. I'm just the
Messenger here. So now I'm being escorted out of the
restaurant and uh, the guy said to me the old
man really liked you, and I said which old man?
They were all old, on like seventeen right. So anyway,
it turns out it was Carlo Gambino, and at the
(12:29):
time he was like the Godfather. You know. They must
have figured, you know, if Sammy could trust me with
whatever was in that message, and I still don't know
what what it was, even today. But at the time
I'm appearing on covers and magazines. I looked like the
girl next door that they figured I can drive, like all,
let's use her. So they started having me pick up
(12:52):
packages and delivering, delivering. A lot of times I delivered
them to JFK report to these two guys in suits.
I later found out there were millions of dollars in
these packages, which I had no idea, and these two guys,
which I had no idea, they were the CIA and
they were laundering the money for the mob in foreign countries.
(13:13):
And then it kind of graduated to what they called pickups,
and I assumed what they were doing, because they never
told me exactly what they were doing. I was just
told to drive and I wighed around the corner for
them and I assumed what they were doing was, you know,
breaking legs to get their their big or whatever. But
one day they came out with their guns out and
(13:35):
flung open the door and said step on it, and
then I heard the sirens in the distance and I
got away and it was probably the worst thing I
could have done, because then they wanted to use me
all the time, and you can't say no to these
guys easily. So after a while, as a mob, war
(13:55):
had broken out. They were killing everybody who knew anything
and uh, I was told there was a contract on
my life. So I fled to California and I had
seven dollars in my pocket. I couldn't I couldn't call
anybody and tell him where I was and I finally
found a friend. I lived in my car until I
could find this friend of mine that I used to
model within New York and he had a little studio
(14:17):
apartment in Brentwood. He let me stay there until I
could figure out what I was going to do. And
the only thing I had ever done was modeled since
I was twelve years old. And I'm watching TV every
day and every time there was a commercial, it seems
like it's a car commercial. And then I started to
pay attention to it and realized you could never see
the driver. I said that's perfect, I could do that right.
(14:41):
But at that time they were putting wigs on guys.
Women just weren't doing that kind of thing. But my
friend was an actor and he would tell me where
they were shooting car commercials. So I would show up
on the sets and I would bug these directors, you know,
like they would just look at me like yeah, sure,
she can drive. They just paid no attention to me
at all. But I didn't give up. I kept going
(15:01):
back and I kept running into the same director and
finally he got he got sick of scene. He said, okay,
show up on Tuesday. We'll see what you can do.
So I showed up on Tuesday and basically showed him
what I could do and he uh started hiring me,
and then he would tell the next director and the
next guy, and then they started hiring me and before
(15:22):
I knew it I was turning down work. I couldn't
do it all and I said, Jeez, if I could
just clone myself, I could be a millionaire. Right. So
I went after good looking women who could drive, race
car drivers, stunt women, and I trained them in precision.
Then I knew I had to have guys too, because
there was a lot more work for guys than there
was for women. So I got Bobby Yanser Jr on
(15:45):
my team, Darr Robinson, who was like an incredible stunt man,
and I probably one of the worst precision drivers, but
he was a great stunt man. I came out of
the gate with, you know, sixteen great drivers and started
my company and it took off. I went from living
in my car to living into a five thousand square
(16:08):
foot home which I know rent out for weddings and
vacation people and you know, it's really worked out well.
So yeah, I mean, I mean a million lives in
one all before you were, you know, twenty five. It
sounds like so much kind of happened and I didn't
want to interrupt you while you were speaking, but if
(16:29):
we can go back for a second, when you talk
about the mob, and I know that this is, you know,
very understood what it is because you grew up in Rochester,
where that's the norm, and then New York City, that
was your affiliation. But for our average listener, or even
you know me, I guess I'd call it privilege. I
don't have much experience with the mob outside of movies
(16:51):
and the Sopranos. I don't even know if that's the mob.
But you know, hearing you say that they work with
the C I A, can you kind of simply, without
endangering yourself of course, kind of explain what the mob
is and what their goal is? Well, see, I was
not privy to a lot of behind the scenes of
(17:13):
what was going on, but I always said the mob
may have pulled the trigger, but the C I a
loaded the gun. So essentially, these people work for the government.
Is The mob part of the no, it's not part
(17:34):
of the government. Not. What is this? I know you
probably think I'm an idiot, sorry, there was things that
the government wanted to get done. That kind of yeah,
they can turn to the mob to do for them
and in return they did favors for them, like wandering
the money. Got It. And when you said that there was,
(17:56):
I think called it a mob war, and everybody's life,
anybody that knew anything, was getting killed and there was
a contract out for your name, that means that they
they wanted you killed because you knew possibly information that
they needed to dead end my understanding. Yeah, okay, Henry
Hill was a friend of mine. He was the Ray
(18:18):
lely out of played him and Goodfellas, and Henry knew
a lot right and they wanted to kill him because
they thought he was he was weak, because he was
dealing in drugs and that if he got picked up
for the drugs he would turn around and rat on them.
(18:38):
So he needed to go. But before they ended up
killing him, he got the jump on it and turned
state's evidence. So that's the kind of thing. It's a
very fast paced life you were living and I assume
it was made even harder because we're telling these stories.
And if this were going on today and you were
in that situation, first of all, you have a cell
(19:00):
phone so you can kind of figure out who knows
what and play a little control in the game to,
you know, create allies maybe, or something like that. But
without the cell phone, what are your means of communication right?
Is it just the landline? You're waiting for a call phone.
You never talked to you know, you, you know. You
(19:20):
always had to take a chance that the phone was
being bugged. Okay, you would always go to a pay phone.
This is like a real life, but it's it's it
is real life, but it sounds way more like a movie.
So I mean, that is a lot going on for you,
and you kind of glazed over intense parts of your
own life too. That if you don't mind if we
(19:41):
back up for a moment, starting with just being the
Kodak girl, and you mentioned even Um rape from a
brother in law, which maybe we can touch on, maybe not,
depending on how you're emotionally feeling. Take that aside for
just a second. You know, I feel like sometimes these
cool things happened to us when we're young, like it
must have been really cool to get this big modeling
(20:02):
Gig and then see yourself all over the nation as
this Kodak Girl in the face and body that everybody knows.
Obviously it's glamorous and it means you're beautiful and it
comes with prestige, especially in New York. At some point
did that feeling start to shift where what felt really
good and maybe you maybe develop self esteem, started to
(20:24):
make you feel like exposed? You know, you mentioned that
you're in a bikini in this photo and it's a
blow up size version of you. Did you ever turn
on that feeling? Well, first of all, Kodak was such
a conservative company that when that poster came out, it
was it was a bikini that came up to my
waist and they air brushed out my belly button. You know,
(20:49):
it was the first time they ever used a Pikini
and they were like real nervous about it. They were
so conservative. But after I was I was raped. That's
what blew my self esteem, going through the court thing
and I tried to kill myself and that's when I
went to New York to get away from all of
(21:10):
that Um. He ended up doing time, but, you know,
thank God because that probably saved his life. But just
going through that whole trauma, you know, and they make
him the victim and and you're the bad person, that
you brought this on and all that. You know. And
I grew up in a small town where people were already,
(21:33):
you know, kids my age. They were already jealous of
me because I was I was always on TV or
in a magazine and the newspaper, but I didn't realize
that they were jealous of me. I thought they just
didn't like me. So I had I had a very
low self esteem to begin with. What age are we
talking about? When this was like seventeen the rape, you
(21:57):
were in your teens and the trial went on a
trial to testify? Yes, all in your teams. Yep, while
you're also this Kodak girl with your body in a
bikini around the world. That am I putting all the
pieces together. It was actually before the summer, Girl. I
mean I had already taken pictures for the poster, but
(22:17):
it it took about eight months before it actually came out.
So this happened before the poster actually came out. Were
there any fears of tarnishing your career with speaking out?
Oh yes, somebody, somebody even wrote to Kodak saying, you know,
that this was such you know, to use somebody like
(22:38):
me it would be a bad image for Kodak, and
Kodak with such a conservative company, they had second thoughts
about putting that poster out. You know. Yeah, I mean,
that was the small minded people of that town. But anyway,
that's why I ended up mirrying my first husband. He
went off to Vietnam, I moved to New York and
(22:59):
I fell in love with with Frankie. But when all
this stuff went down, he made me go back to
Rochester because he didn't want me involved in the killing
and to be questioned about it. So I I thought
I thought he didn't want me anymore because I wasn't
a virgin anymore, right, and that was a big thing
to me. So I was writing all these I didn't
(23:21):
want to tell Tom until he came back from Vietnam that,
you know, I wasn't going to marry him. So I
continued to write him. But now I'm writing him all
these depressing letters because I'm getting deeper and deeper into depression.
And Uh, he showed my letters to his commanding officer
and they let him come home on a compassionate leave
and I had no idea who was coming. He just
(23:43):
showed up at my door and hugged me and said
I'm going to marry you and take you away from
all this, and I said okay, and I ended up
marrying him out of just because of that. You know,
it was the wrong reason to get married. Of course
I got I got pregnant right away on our honeymoon.
He goes back to Vietnam and then when he comes
(24:04):
back we have a little baby, you know, which I
named Tony, and I was so unhappy. You know, it's
like he worked for Kodak and you know it was
just every day you would just make popcorn and watch
TV and you know, I had this exciting life going
on and it was like very boring. So, anyway that ended.
(24:27):
So you had a baby with with him. Yeah, and
how old are you when you had your your your son?
You said Tony, it's a girl. I thought you had
a girl, but then when he said Tony, I was like, okay, wait,
maybe it's a boy. I don't know. She's fifty two now. Yeah,
I was nineteen when I gave birth to her. Okay,
so just again to recap here. You'RE A model, you've
(24:48):
experienced rape from a somewhat family member. You stood up
in court, you're involved with the mob? At this point?
Or did that come after no, at this point, at
this point. Right. Okay, then you've got your soldier husband
a new baby, all before you turned twenty years old. Yeah,
race car driving really does feel like a good fit
(25:09):
for you. You do like a lot of action, even
if it's, you know, just for for the movies. You
know what, at that time in my life I joined
up posse going in any direction as long as there
was danger and excitement. You know, when I was when
I was twelve years old, I hopped a freight train
and ran away. I got as far as Buffalo. Uh
(25:30):
in a passing train saw me, you know, in the
box car and radio ahead to the engineer who was
driving my train and by the time we got in,
we pulled in the buffalo there were police cars waiting
for me. That was my first time writing at a
police car when I was twelve years old. And you
know what, I had a wonderful childhood. I had a
mom and dad who loved me. We had dinner on
(25:53):
the table at five o'clock. It was so normal, you know,
and they were always very supportive of me. Thank God
I had that, because if I did not have that
who knows where I would be when I speak to
these women in prisons. You know they've had abuse of
childhoods and you know, sexual things going on with their
(26:15):
their fathers and relatives and and it's just knocked down
their self esteem something tremendously. And you know, the first
time I went to Twin Towers here in Los Angeles,
I actually got there an hour early, but it took
so long to get me in that I was late.
(26:36):
And now they were like sixty of these women in
this room, Um sitting on chairs with their links up
on the chair in front of them and chewing gum
with their arms like folded. Like what was this broad
gonna say? Right, and I walked in and you know,
and they've been waiting, so they were already piste off
and you know, I'm looking around him, man, it's gonna
(26:57):
be a tough crowd, right, and the first thing I
said was, I gotta let you guys in on a
little secret here. I said getting into this place is
tougher than getting out, and they cracked up and they
started to loosen up a little bit and then I
asked him, you know, how many people in here have
been sexually abused. And you know, I went through the
(27:18):
whole gamut. Every single one of them raised their hands,
which told me the reason why they're there is they
think that all these people that they're in there with,
you know, their equals. No one has ever patted them
on the back for the good things that they've done.
You know, nobody ever gave them any compliments or and
(27:39):
I know that that happened to me because until I
kind of got out on my own and people told
me what, you know, what they thought of me, I
had no idea. I didn't even think I was pretty,
and I was. I was appearing on covers of magazines,
you know. Anyway, when I was leaving there, I mean
they just clawed onto me like please, come back. Nobody
understands us, know, and when I came out, I talked
(28:02):
to the sheriff and said, you know, you've got to
have some kind of program, you know, when these girls
get out, to help them get jobs and get them
some nice clothes to be interviewed in. And you know,
some of them have rotten teeth. You know, I have
a dentist that will do this kind of work for
them and reconstruction surgery and people who have been beaten
(28:23):
up in their faces were distorted. I had all those
people in place, you know. Anyway, you know writing my
book and talking about all these abusive situations that happened
to me. I didn't know this was going to happen,
but I started getting emails from everywhere, and I'm not
a therapist. I can I can only tell you what
I went through and how I dealt with it, but
that doesn't mean that's the right thing for you to do.
(28:46):
But that put me on another path where I started
doing a lot of speaking and helping a lot of
these women. Last year I had a girl named Kelsey
Pommel on this podcast who is a survivor of domestic
(29:08):
abuse and in the last few years her career has
skyrocketed because she took to a platform called Tiktok to
talk about it, and I found my way to her.
I have no idea how, and I'm very fortunate that
I've never experienced physical abuse in my life, and that
privilege also blinded me from the realities that thousands millions face.
(29:35):
And I'm drawn to her because her her life is
so different than mine. But, more importantly, Tiktok is a
platform where you post and then all the comments are
public and the comments that she gets from all these
women who are going through it in the moment and
they're stuck and they're looking to her as this person
who got out. So for me, I'm sitting here like,
(29:56):
oh my gosh, this is this is happening every single
day to millions of people. And Kelsey is, you know,
not a therapist either, like you're not a therapist, but
you sharing your story, her sharing her story provides, you know,
so much more than hope. It actually provides tools of
how to do it. And I could close my eyes
and imagine, if it were me, what it must feel
(30:18):
like to have children to you know, a lot of
these women give up their careers to be stay at
home moms and they go through abuse, physical, sexual. They
lose their self esteem, they don't know who they are,
they're terrified to leave what is also hurting them. So
I hear you when you say you're not a therapist,
but at the same time you are helping these you're
(30:39):
continued to help by being kind of this illuminated path
that they may not see and there is a way
out when they feel so stuck. You know, you mentioned
being depressed and suicidal. I think that is the feeling
of so many people around the world who have so
much to live for. They have children, they have a
life on the other side, but they're so duck and
(31:00):
it's it's frightening when when that's your reality. I had
a sister in law that kept telling me that her
husband was going to kill her, and he was a
great family man. When his when his son almost drowned
in the background pool, the above Ground Pool, he ripped
that thing apart with his bare hands, you know I mean,
because he loved his family right. She wanted to leave
(31:23):
him and he wasn't. He just wasn't having it, and
she kept telling me he's gonna kill me, he's gonna
kill me, and I just found it hard to believe
because he loved his family so much. Well, he did.
He killed her, he killed all four children and then
he killed himself. And I will never forget standing in
(31:44):
that cemetery surrounded by six caskets, knowing how close I
was to dyeing that same death. And one of my
drivers lived in Colorado and he was reading my book
and he was at that part in my book and,
like you, he's ever been around any kind of abuse
or anything. So you just you have no idea. You
(32:04):
know the dynamics that goes on, you know. So he's
reading this and he had met this girl in Ohio and, uh,
she called him right when he was in that part
of the book. They're talking and she said, uh, hears
his banging on the door and this yelling and she said,
Oh my God, that's my ex husband. I'll call you
back and she hangs up the phone. So now, because
(32:28):
he just read this in the book, he's a little nervous.
So he waits about twenty minus. He calls back. There's
no answer. Calls again, there's no answer. So he finds
the police department in her city and calls them and
asked them to go over there. Then he doesn't hear anything.
The next morning he gets a phone call from the
police and he said, are you the gentleman that called
(32:51):
us last night, and he said yes. He said, well,
we just want to let you know that you saved
that woman's life. He said when we got there he
had stabbed her several times. We broke down the door
and got her to the hospital and she's going to
be okay. Can you believe it? So that was the
second person that I felt I had saved just through
(33:12):
writing my book, after your own rape. You mentioned it
was with a brother in law. So that involves family
of some kind, and I'm sure internal politics. was staying
quiet ever an option for you? No, no, writing the
book was and, as far as you know, staying quiet.
But no, he was going to go to court and
(33:33):
he was going to pay. But immediately after that, you know,
you said it broke your self esteem, but it didn't
put you into a state of fear. What? Why is that?
Where did that strength come from? I don't know, I
really don't know. It's I think it's maybe revenge. I
don't know. was that a you said a brother in law.
Was this a sister's husband? Yes, my sister's husband. So
(33:55):
clearly this messed up her marriage, I would think. You know,
there's it was already kind of on the on the
blank and that's why he came. He came to my
house to try to get me to talk her into,
you know, staying with him, and you know, so they
were already breaking up. But just writing about about that,
you know it was you cannot write a book about
(34:16):
your life and not say it the way it is
and try to protect people, if you know, because that
incident really put me on another path. You know, Um,
that was the catalyst to a lot of the things
that I did in my wife and I had to
write about it. And another, another person emerged that night.
When he realized what he had done and he knew
(34:39):
I wasn't going to shut up about it, he decided
he was going to kill me. This is the my
brother in law. Yeah, I used my head, I said,
I said you can't kill me as because I was
staying with my aunt, my mom and my sister. My
father were out of town. And how old are you
at this point? I'm seventeen. So anyway, I would always
(35:01):
tell my aunt, you know what time I'll be home,
and you know I was. It was good like that.
So when I didn't come home, she was kind of
up waiting for me, knowing something was wrong, and I said,
I said, Dick, you can't kill me. I said, the
photographer I'm supposed to work for today. I said, he
knows I was out with you, so he's gonna know
(35:22):
it was you, right. He said, well, you better call him,
you better call him and tell me weren't with me.
So that's how I got to the phone and I
called my aunt and her son is a cop who
lives with her. So I got on the phone and
I'm pretending it's the photographer and I said, Amiel, I'm
so sorry, I can't work for you today, and she said,
George as you could tell, something's wrong. She said what's wrong?
(35:43):
Where are you? And she said Keithan, Keithie, get on
the phone, something's wrong with Georgia. So he gets on
the phone. He says, Georgia, where are you? And I said, Emiel,
I'm very sorry, I said, but my brother in law
was very sick and I had to take and Dick
figured out what I was doing and he grabbed the
own just pulled it out of the wall right. But
my I knew my cousin figured out where I was.
(36:06):
He called my uncle, who was also a cop. They
both arrived at the same time, squealing, you know, down
the driveway, knocked down the door and uh Dick, prior
to that he was dragging me out to the backyard
with a shovel to to to actually dig my own grave, right,
and that's when I talked him into what you know. Yeah,
(36:28):
so my uncle's came in and they beat the living
heck out of him and, uh, they took me home
and the police came and they took pictures of all
the bruises and all that stuff, and and my sister
came home the next day and that, you know, that
was a sad, sad thing. So, anyway, that night is
(36:50):
when Georgia black was born. Now, when I was writing
my book, I had no idea of all this because
I had never examined my life. Do you ever been
to therapy? No, no, I just pushed things that, you know,
buried things. Never thought about him, never talked about him.
And and well, at first I was doing this bugle
(37:12):
boy jeans commercial and I had to do a one
eight on a narrow mountain road and, uh, the back
tire cut the soft shoulder and flipped the car over.
And it was a vintage Dino Ferrari and as I'm
summer signed towards a three foot drop off into the ocean,
all I'm thinking about was, oh my God, I'm wrecking
(37:34):
a two hundred and fifty thousand dollar car. That's I
didn't think about my life, you know. So the ambulance
was taking me to the hospital. I was fine, but
I'm thinking, why was the car so important? Why didn't
I think about my life, you know, or my kids
or whatever? So when I got back from location, I
went to a therapist and the therapist suggested I get
(37:55):
a journal and write in it for twenty minutes a day,
whatever came into my head, and I started doing that
and that's when all this stuff started coming out. How
many years, I'm sorry, how old are you at the
point that you're now experiencing therapy for the first time
after living this crazy life? This was in, uh, ninety,
(38:17):
so you're how old? Oh, let me see, it was
born in what forty four, so twenty years after the
onset of, you know, the first major traumatic event, or so. Yes,
so now I'm writing in this journal, but I'm starting
to add dialogue and, uh, I noticed this other voice
(38:40):
coming out, and that was, like I named it George
that's Georgia black, right, and I discovered that Georgia black
was always there to step in and help me get
through all these crisis and Georgia White was that sweet,
vulnerable side of me. You know that. And and that
was really that was really strange. And because it's at
Chiliz's voice actually kept doing the writing, you know. So
(39:04):
I had about forty pages of this raw journal and
and I said, you know, this is people told me
all my life you should write a book, you should
write a book, and I never even gave it and
I don't think my life was interesting right Um. And
so I said this is kind of turning into a book.
We all his dialogue and everything I'm adding. So I
called Sydney Sheldon, who happened to be a friend of mine,
(39:27):
and I said, Sydney, I said, I think I'm writing
a book here, but I really don't know how to write.
I said, can you suggest a ghostwriter? He said send
me what you got. So I sent him these forty
pages of this very raw journal of some really dramatic
things that had happened, and he calls me three days
later he says, Georgia, you don't need a ghostwriter, he said.
(39:49):
You know how to tell a story, he said, and
you have a story to tell. He's I had no idea,
he said, but what I would do, he says, start
from your childhood. Get the reader to know you and
love you so when they get to these parts they'll
forgive you. Start with the Kodak girl, the sweet side,
the you know, the all American and then, yeah, no,
(40:10):
it is very interesting because, especially just, you know, as
you continue to live your life and go down these
really traumatic roads, you know, your pictures still plastered all
over America, kind of, you know, frozen in time, and
I believe you mentioned this that the pictures were taken
right before it all happened, which is kind of poetic
(40:32):
to like preserving you and your your youth right before
it all, you know, was was taken from you. Heyway, Um,
you know, I went down roads that, you know, I
didn't anticipate, but I always loved driving. I used to
steal my parents car in the middle of the night
when I was like twelve and just drive for hours.
(40:56):
They could never understand why they had no gas. And
my father was a golf probe at this country club where,
you know, we lived. He had all these electric carts
and after I got past the first hole where he
couldn't see me anymore, I'd go tearing down those fairways
and run over the Greens. I mean I just I
(41:16):
just love that. Then I started hanging around with these
guys that were building cars and drag racing and I
would hand them to tools and everything and I'd go
to the race track with them and I wanted to drive.
So at one time they let me drive and I
was up against a twenty year old drag racing and
(41:37):
I beat him. I eat him and I got Oh man,
I just this is what I want to do, right,
and you know that didn't happen right away, but in
the end it kind of you know, it's it's the
direction I took. Well, it's not the end. Yeah, do
you think they're gonna take? You're going to write another book?
Because your book came out, you mentioned, in the nineties, right,
(42:00):
but came out again with penguin in two thousand eight,
and then recently it had a huge uptick in sales
as well. Right, forty copies in the past year. You know,
I've got wheel woman, is the podcast that I'm doing,
and that's also been a big jump in sales. And, UH,
and we've had a lot of interest for the movies,
(42:22):
so we're kind of fielding all the calls from that.
So it's it's uh, this really should be. I mean,
I would love for it to be a movie, but
you cannot tell the whole story in two hours. You
know it needs to be a series. You know you
go you go through so much. Well, that's what Netflix
is about these days, right. You really put things into
segments and it's a lot longer than two and a
(42:43):
half hours, but it really lasts. I just, you know,
want this to happen while I'm still young enough to
double the woman who doubles for me. I love that.
That is crazy to be in your own movie. Well,
I'd be doing all this. Still do so. Do you
still stud well, I'm not working anymore. I had a
(43:07):
stunt gone wrong and had to take an earlier retirement
or the doctor said I'd be in a wheelchair. Do
you still drive fast? I would do it for the movie.
You know what I well, I when I adopted my
little girl. I when I drive regular on the streets.
I'm pretty normal now. So you're a little girl. You
you adopted your granddaughter, Right, I did. Yes, she was
(43:30):
ten days old when I got her. She's sixteen now.
So this is your daughter, Tony's daughter? No, my son
Dustin's daughter. Okay, so you went on to have a son. Okay, yeah,
my son is uh, my son is forty two going
on sixteen, not father material at all. Yeah, and her
birth mother passed away from cancer not too long ago.
(43:55):
It just, you know, like three years ago, and I
had allowed her to have a relationship with and uh,
which was probably a mistake, you know. I mean a
lot of issues came up because of that. But so
you're mothering again at the age of, you said, you
in your seventies. So when you're a grandma, you can,
you know, spoil them and give them back. In my case,
(44:16):
I couldn't. I couldn't give her back and I just
spoiled the hell out of her and, uh, I'm paying
for it now. So has your life slowed down at
all as you've gotten older? And I know that you
don't work because of the injury, but you are somebody
that I feel like from birth it seems to really
thrive off of adrenaline. So do you scratch that itch now?
(44:38):
Not Really. Um, I have like when my my birthday
is coming up, what I do every year is I
have all the girls over, there's maybe about fifteen of
us and, you know, we just have a couple of drinks,
we jump in the pool, we jumped in the Jaccuzzi.
I mean I have such great friends and a lot
of my friends are, you know, celebrities. As a matter
(44:59):
of fact, I'm having a wedding here. Some friends of
mine are getting married and the officiant is going to
be Joe Montana. Well, she got he got ordained just
to do this wedding. Yeah, so, Um, I always have
very interesting people here. Have people come from Europe, in fact.
You know when when Angela was little, you know, they
(45:19):
didn't speak the language, but they always had kids and
she always had playmates, because I'm you know, I don't
have any friends with kids that young anymore, and she
would swim with them in the pool and, you know,
they figured out how to communicate even though they had
different languages, you know. But I've met some wonderful people
and I love sitting around the firepit with them and
having a glass of wine and, Um, it's if they
(45:42):
want to see me. If they don't, they don't ever
see me. It's interesting to hear somebody who's gone through
your life and your age kind of speak about girlfriends
in such a lovely way. I feel like a lot
of the you know, my mom and my mother in law,
all the women that I know who are our your
age aren't really having like girls nights the way you are.
(46:05):
Maybe because, you know, everybody's kind of either husband up
or if they've you know, if they're a widow. You
know their their lives are kind of, I feel like
they feel like an odd man out. How do you
go about finding such amazing I want to have girlfriends
as I get older. So I'm looking to you to
kind of understand how to cultivate make new ones and really,
(46:25):
you know, continue to enjoy that aspect of life. Well,
a lot of my a lot of my friends, are single, single.
The ones that are married, you know, they just leave
their husband's home for a night. You know, we go out,
but we make it at least once a month have
the girls night out or a girl's night in, you
know where we come and just sit around the fireplace
and have some wine and laughs and yeah, you know what,
(46:49):
my my my life is so full and I'm so
blessed with the people that are in my life. I
don't miss being married at all. Like I said, I
haven't been married since nine three. Do you miss companionship
at all? Oh No, I have compared I have my
(47:09):
my girlfriends. You know, it's like yeah, and I have
a lot of male friends too. You know, I'll go
out to dinner two or three times a week with
different people, but they all know that they're my friend,
that they're not going to get dessert after dinner. You
really built back up yourself worth though, after a moment,
(47:30):
after it took a big hit, I'm sure. Absolutely. Yes,
I can't. I look back at some of the things
that I put up with and I cannot believe that
that was me. That is not who I am today. Yeah,
I really loved listening to your journey and seeing your
strength kind of, you know, kind of like a fire.
You are a fire and then it kind of got
(47:52):
a little bit less lit over time when people tried
to blow it out or pour water over it, but
overall the fire kept going, as we're seeing now, and
I love that you're using your torch to spread that
that fiery energy and strength and confidence, especially for, you know,
women in jail and places where they are really just
(48:13):
knocked down. You know, to be that that person to
say I've been where you are, you're going to come
on out and you're gonna help and and even just
talking about reconstructive surgeries from people that have been through
domestic violence and have had their teeth knocked out, all
these things that like visibly show up on you. They're
very hard to then, you know, show up back into
(48:34):
the universe and feel like yourself when you visibly have
these outward marks and changes. You know, I think that
these are these are parts of the conversation that it's
so important to really, I don't know, just recognize that
that everybody has these these things going on so we
can be more compassionate kind and help each other through
(48:55):
these hard things. You are so right. I just wanted
to finish off with two questions for you, and one is,
what does self respect mean to you? What does self
respect me? I mean, I think it's pretty obvious through
the life that you lived, but it would be interesting
to hear what it means to you verbally expressed succinctly. Well,
I I really think you have to have self respect
(49:18):
in order to just live your your life. I mean,
if you didn't, these are the people that end up
in jail, these are the girls that think they're not
worthy of anything. You know, and how you get that
self respect is, you know, standing up for your your
own beliefs and sticking to it and having people around
(49:41):
you that are that are going to pat you on
the back for that, you know, instead of tear you down.
Don't be around people that are going to tear you down,
because that will just keep weakening you and weakening you
and making you believe that, you know, you are not worthy.
Thank you. I like that answer. And what's your favorite
trait about your self? And that could be about Georgia
(50:01):
black or Georgia White, or maybe there's another Georgia that
only you know, that the universe doesn't get to see
through your books and writing and storytelling. I am glad
that I have Georgia black. It doesn't mean that Georgia
black is an evil person. Georgia black is that person
that stands up for me and will ward off any,
(50:22):
you know, people that are trying to do harm to me.
Georgia black has your back. Yeah, and I'm really grateful
for that. I didn't even know she existed until you
started journaling and started to kind of realize that you
have these two personas. Is that what you mean? Yeah, yeah,
I think everybody, everybody has it, you know, but really
(50:44):
I needed I needed her at a lot of points
in my life. You know that I could not have
gotten through without her, and that kind of speaks to
to who I am and the strength that I had
to get through all this. Right. I mean, at the
end of the day, Georgia black is the name for
this part of you, but it's you, you know. So
your your favorite trade about yourself, if we don't label
(51:06):
black and white. Literally, is your strength to persevere and
get through this crazy ride of life that you've been on. Yeah,
thank you for using your voice for good. Um, I'm
excited for people to listen to your podcast and to
continue to get to know you and hear all the
amazing pieces of advice that you're putting out into the universe. So,
(51:29):
and if anybody listening would like to know more about
the details, my book is called the company she keeps,
and that's the name of the website to the company
she keeps. That com and I will sign every book
personally and send it out, and they get it cheaper
there too than on Amazon. You're a real one, so
(51:49):
you can support the author herself. You can get a
signed copy. I will put that link in the show
notes below so you can easily get it and we'll
remind our listeners to check you out support your work and, hopefully,
by way of using your voice, you again saved another
life for anyone out there who might feel stuck. You're
(52:09):
you're never ever stuck. If you could, you know, abruptly
moved to the other side of the country with seven
dollars in your pocket and start over in a time
when there were none of the technological advances that we
have now, certainly you can too. You know what, living
my life the way I did, I wouldn't change a thing,
because it's really come out to help so many other people.
(52:31):
So that's it in the nutshell. Thank you so much, Georgia,
and we will see you, hopefully soon. All right, thank
you so much. I really appreciate it. H
M Hm. I know will be a right even when
times gutheart and you feel you're in the dark. Cusye,
just how beautiful laugh can be. When you soph in
your heart, you can finally start to fire to see
(00:30):
you slide. Hello everybody. Lisa two point Oh back in
the studio, a K A my spare bedroom slash office,
where we record the truth is life, and I want
to say thank you so much for everybody who listened
to last week's episode, all about my meat treat and integration.
It felt really good to put my whole self out
there and even better to know that it resonated with
(00:52):
a lot of you and served as a prompt to
ask yourself questions about how you're living your own life.
That's really what these podcast episodes are about. The Solo
ones can feel a little bit like self indulgent who
wants to hear every aspect of my life, but my
real reason for doing them is so that I could
provide some sort of tool, information, insight or prompt for
(01:14):
you to look further into your own life and take
something away, and I think that we did accomplish that.
So this episode was actually created before the birth of
Lisa two point now, but I think that it kind
of came at the perfect time because it's with Georgia Durant,
who is a seventy something year old woman who has
lived in absolute crazy life, but, most importantly, her energy
(01:37):
is of a strong woman who is, of course getting older,
as we all are, but somebody who really owns every
aspect of her life and although she has been through
so many things that could have broken her down into
tiny pieces, it has instead kind of been rebuilt like
a ceramic sculpture and is so much more beautiful because
(01:58):
of everything she's experienced, endured and survived content learning. We
are talking about things like sexual abuse and violence. Her
life is absolutely crazy, with involvement with the mob and
terrible things that happened to her, but every step of
the way she brings this like Georgia energy which you'll
feel immediately when she starts talking, and I hope for
(02:19):
all of us listeners. It's a little bit contagious that,
although we go through life and things don't necessarily go
right a lot of the time, we still bring forth
this ownership to everything that we go through. She talks about,
for example, getting divorced three times, and these, quote unquote,
failed marriages and instead of being like well, yeah, I'm
looking for somebody else, as we expect a woman to say,
(02:42):
she's like not, I don't even know if I want
another partner in this lifetime. The strength that she puts
out is the exact older generation female energy that I
gravitate towards. It's kind of in the theme of my
life lately. I keep having these really great interactions, I'll
get more into it in next week's episode, with old
or women who are changing the narrative of what it
means to get older. And when we talk about getting older,
(03:06):
you know obviously we we think, we hear women who
are like embarrassed to say their age and we really
have to flip this narrative on the head, on its
head if we want to embrace getting older, to keep
our power growing as women and not allow this ridiculous
societal view of aging to tip away at US without
us even realizing. So that's kind of my big takeaway here.
(03:29):
How can we develop our self worth from scratch, even
though we've all been through things that have broken us down?
Quick note on self worth for self esteem. Self esteem
is usually derived from other people's applaud of what you do,
and while self esteem is important, self esteem without self
worth is a risky way to live. Self worth is
living with a sense of knowing that you are enough
(03:50):
without at all, without the looks, without the ability to
get good grades, without the ability to run really fast
or be a perfectionist, that everything that you do, you know,
all the things that you get applaud for. And Life
Without those applaud can you still feel a whole? As
we age, I think self worth becomes even more and
more important, unrelated to just necessarily body image, where I
(04:12):
normally talk about self worth, but to our wholeness and
Um our ability to get through life's challenges. Anyway, this
woman is really inspiring. She's a great storyteller. I hope
you enjoy this upbeat story that gives us a glimpse
into the crazy American history through the lens of this
woman who had her ties to the mob, fled to
(04:34):
the other side of the country, became a Hollywood stunts
woman and truly does it all. I'm linking her book
below where you can directly support her. I think it's
a great gift, maybe for even a parent if you're
a younger listener, because, like I said, you get that
like really good insight into American history without having to
read a dry textbook. Again, thank you all for your
(04:55):
support for being here for at least a two point. Oh,
and I'm really excited for all the things coming. I
hope you all have a great weekend and I'll see
you back here next weekend. Welcome back to the truthiest life.
Today is a wonderful guest, Georgia. Welcome Georgia to the
truthiest life. We were just chatting a little bit before
(05:16):
we hit record, and I actually wanted to jump into
record before Georgia told me anything more, so that we
could have kind of just a first listen together with
my audience. And I know that your life has been
how mask how old you are? Two next week, oh
my gosh. Well, happy almost birthday. What's your birthday? July nine? Oh,
(05:36):
I'm June thirty. We are cancers, obviously, and I felt
connected to a strong woman like you, but your story
is compelling. It's, for lack of a better word, terrifying.
You know, a lot has happened in your lifetime, even
just before the age of twenty. You know, kind of
like the cliff notes on you is that you were
(05:59):
a model. You know you've experienced rape that you've been
brave enough to discuss, been part of mob violence, gone
through a failed marriage, a baby, a kidnapping of your daughter.
I believe there's been a lot in your life timeline
that you know most people don't experience. YEA, three, three
(06:20):
failed marriages. Well, were they really failures? Let's start with that.
Now that you're on the other side. For each of these,
do you call these these marriages that didn't work out, failures?
Or I know technically that's what we call divorce, but well,
the first marriage was, you know, like a high school sweetheart,
and that just didn't work. The second one was a
(06:42):
mob guy. He was very abusive. This guy held me
out of a window because I wanted to leave by
my ankles and put a gun to my head with
one bullet in it and pulled the trigger twice. So
I finally got away from him and then I came
out to California met my third husband, who just that
(07:06):
didn't that just didn't work. But anyway, I haven't been
married now since nine and have no plan to do
it ever again. Journey through the husbands, but it sounds
like you've really found yourself through your lived terrifying experiences.
I'M GON use that we're terrifying a few times, I
think because not many people have been. I hope not
(07:29):
many people have been held out a window by their
ankles or ever had a gun, you know, near them,
let alone put up to their head. But let's just
kind of start with the beginning, because you weren't always
this l a stunt person. You started out living in
Rochester and your nickname was the Kodak girl. So why
did people call you the Kodak Girl? Because I was
(07:51):
the Kodak Girl. What does that mean? Well, people don't
even know what Kodak is. I grew up in Roch sister.
When I was twelve years old, I started modeling for Kodak.
By the time I was seventeen I was considered the
Kodak Girl. They had a life life size poster of
me in a blue and white poked up bikini that
(08:14):
was in all the drug stores and camera stores all
over the world. And then I moved to New York
City and to further my modeling career and I ended
up meeting these uh guys in the mob. But I
had known these other guys in the mob growing up.
I mean everybody in Rochester, if you opened up the
(08:35):
phone book, everybody's last name ended in a bowl. I
didn't know anybody who wasn't Italian until I was like seventeen,
and so there was the mob element in that whole scenario.
And also when I was like twelve or thirteen, I
was sitting in a in a restaurant which was a
mob kind of hang out and I was there with
(08:56):
my girlfriend and these two guys started hitting on us
and he were like wealth thirteen years old. We look
a little older because we have a lot of makeup
on and but obviously so. When this guy started hitting
hitting on us very crudely, this guy got up and
walked over to him and dragged these two guys outside
(09:16):
and just beat the living heck out of him. And
it turned out to be the godfather upstate New York. Oh,
he wasn't the Godfather at the time. He was working
his way up, but he kind of watched over me
as I grew up and I would go into bars.
At that time you had to be eighteen to get in,
(09:37):
but I was like sixteen or seventeen. He just nodded
the bouncer letter in and he would watch out for me.
I felt very protected, you know, around him. and also
at Seventeen I was raped by my brother in law.
He wanted to have my brother in law eliminated and
I held this guy's life on the tip of my tongue.
(09:58):
All I had to do is say yes, but I
couldn't take someone's life. So anyway, uh, that's when I
moved to New York. I met these the first night there,
these mob guys who we ended up in this after
hour club and then I started dating the guy who
owned the club. And so I'm there and like five
(10:19):
ft away from me this guy pulls out a gun
and he shoots the guy next to him. Everybody scattered.
He threw me the car keys. He says, Georgie girl,
get the car, pull it up, so I did and Um,
they got his body down two flights of stairs. They
threw him in the back seat. Now I'm in the
driver's seat. I end up getting him to Bellevue Hospital
and record time we pulled in front of the emergency
(10:41):
they pulled his body out, left him on the sidewalk,
jumped back in the car, beat the Horn and took off.
All they talked about was man, Georgie girl, can you
drive a car? It's like they could care less with
this guy lived or died, you know. So there was
a lot of talk about that for like a couple
of months and I went back to Rochester for a weekend.
(11:04):
At that time you could you could fly for ten dollars,
ten dollars out of stand by. So I get back
to and I run into Sammy, who was the guy
that ended up protecting me. He says, Georgia, I need
you to do me a favor. I said sure, Sammy.
What do you want me to do? He says, I
can't trust anybody. He said if anybody finds out about this,
(11:24):
they're going to find my body in the genesee river.
And I said okay. Well, what do you want me
to do? He says, I need you to deliver a
message for me. So he shows up the next day
with an envelope and I fly back to New York
and I'm picked up in this black limousine and driven
to this restaurant in Brooklyn. So now I'm being escorted
(11:46):
into this back room where four guys are sitting and
I'm introduced as Georgia girl and this one guy raised
his eyebrow like he had recognized the name. I guess
he had heard about how I drove the car or
that night. So I've given me M Open. He looks
at me, he got very angry and he says you
tell Mr Jim Jello he's gonna have to meet with
me in person. And I said, Hey, you know, I
(12:08):
have no idea what this is about. I'm just the
Messenger here. So now I'm being escorted out of the
restaurant and uh, the guy said to me the old
man really liked you, and I said which old man?
They were all old, on like seventeen right. So anyway,
it turns out it was Carlo Gambino, and at the
(12:29):
time he was like the Godfather. You know. They must
have figured, you know, if Sammy could trust me with
whatever was in that message, and I still don't know
what what it was, even today. But at the time
I'm appearing on covers and magazines. I looked like the
girl next door that they figured I can drive, like all,
let's use her. So they started having me pick up
(12:52):
packages and delivering, delivering. A lot of times I delivered
them to JFK report to these two guys in suits.
I later found out there were millions of dollars in
these packages, which I had no idea, and these two guys,
which I had no idea, they were the CIA and
they were laundering the money for the mob in foreign countries.
(13:13):
And then it kind of graduated to what they called pickups,
and I assumed what they were doing, because they never
told me exactly what they were doing. I was just
told to drive and I wighed around the corner for
them and I assumed what they were doing was, you know,
breaking legs to get their their big or whatever. But
one day they came out with their guns out and
(13:35):
flung open the door and said step on it, and
then I heard the sirens in the distance and I
got away and it was probably the worst thing I
could have done, because then they wanted to use me
all the time, and you can't say no to these
guys easily. So after a while, as a mob, war
(13:55):
had broken out. They were killing everybody who knew anything
and uh, I was told there was a contract on
my life. So I fled to California and I had
seven dollars in my pocket. I couldn't I couldn't call
anybody and tell him where I was and I finally
found a friend. I lived in my car until I
could find this friend of mine that I used to
model within New York and he had a little studio
(14:17):
apartment in Brentwood. He let me stay there until I
could figure out what I was going to do. And
the only thing I had ever done was modeled since
I was twelve years old. And I'm watching TV every
day and every time there was a commercial, it seems
like it's a car commercial. And then I started to
pay attention to it and realized you could never see
the driver. I said that's perfect, I could do that right.
(14:41):
But at that time they were putting wigs on guys.
Women just weren't doing that kind of thing. But my
friend was an actor and he would tell me where
they were shooting car commercials. So I would show up
on the sets and I would bug these directors, you know,
like they would just look at me like yeah, sure,
she can drive. They just paid no attention to me
at all. But I didn't give up. I kept going
(15:01):
back and I kept running into the same director and
finally he got he got sick of scene. He said, okay,
show up on Tuesday. We'll see what you can do.
So I showed up on Tuesday and basically showed him
what I could do and he uh started hiring me,
and then he would tell the next director and the
next guy, and then they started hiring me and before
(15:22):
I knew it I was turning down work. I couldn't
do it all and I said, Jeez, if I could
just clone myself, I could be a millionaire. Right. So
I went after good looking women who could drive, race
car drivers, stunt women, and I trained them in precision.
Then I knew I had to have guys too, because
there was a lot more work for guys than there
was for women. So I got Bobby Yanser Jr on
(15:45):
my team, Darr Robinson, who was like an incredible stunt man,
and I probably one of the worst precision drivers, but
he was a great stunt man. I came out of
the gate with, you know, sixteen great drivers and started
my company and it took off. I went from living
in my car to living into a five thousand square
(16:08):
foot home which I know rent out for weddings and
vacation people and you know, it's really worked out well.
So yeah, I mean, I mean a million lives in
one all before you were, you know, twenty five. It
sounds like so much kind of happened and I didn't
want to interrupt you while you were speaking, but if
(16:29):
we can go back for a second, when you talk
about the mob, and I know that this is, you know,
very understood what it is because you grew up in Rochester,
where that's the norm, and then New York City, that
was your affiliation. But for our average listener, or even
you know me, I guess I'd call it privilege. I
don't have much experience with the mob outside of movies
(16:51):
and the Sopranos. I don't even know if that's the mob.
But you know, hearing you say that they work with
the C I A, can you kind of simply, without
endangering yourself of course, kind of explain what the mob
is and what their goal is? Well, see, I was
not privy to a lot of behind the scenes of
(17:13):
what was going on, but I always said the mob
may have pulled the trigger, but the C I a
loaded the gun. So essentially, these people work for the government.
Is The mob part of the no, it's not part
(17:34):
of the government. Not. What is this? I know you
probably think I'm an idiot, sorry, there was things that
the government wanted to get done. That kind of yeah,
they can turn to the mob to do for them
and in return they did favors for them, like wandering
the money. Got It. And when you said that there was,
(17:56):
I think called it a mob war, and everybody's life,
anybody that knew anything, was getting killed and there was
a contract out for your name, that means that they
they wanted you killed because you knew possibly information that
they needed to dead end my understanding. Yeah, okay, Henry
Hill was a friend of mine. He was the Ray
(18:18):
lely out of played him and Goodfellas, and Henry knew
a lot right and they wanted to kill him because
they thought he was he was weak, because he was
dealing in drugs and that if he got picked up
for the drugs he would turn around and rat on them.
(18:38):
So he needed to go. But before they ended up
killing him, he got the jump on it and turned
state's evidence. So that's the kind of thing. It's a
very fast paced life you were living and I assume
it was made even harder because we're telling these stories.
And if this were going on today and you were
in that situation, first of all, you have a cell
(19:00):
phone so you can kind of figure out who knows
what and play a little control in the game to,
you know, create allies maybe, or something like that. But
without the cell phone, what are your means of communication right?
Is it just the landline? You're waiting for a call phone.
You never talked to you know, you, you know. You
(19:20):
always had to take a chance that the phone was
being bugged. Okay, you would always go to a pay phone.
This is like a real life, but it's it's it
is real life, but it sounds way more like a movie.
So I mean, that is a lot going on for you,
and you kind of glazed over intense parts of your
own life too. That if you don't mind if we
(19:41):
back up for a moment, starting with just being the
Kodak girl, and you mentioned even Um rape from a
brother in law, which maybe we can touch on, maybe not,
depending on how you're emotionally feeling. Take that aside for
just a second. You know, I feel like sometimes these
cool things happened to us when we're young, like it
must have been really cool to get this big modeling
(20:02):
Gig and then see yourself all over the nation as
this Kodak Girl in the face and body that everybody knows.
Obviously it's glamorous and it means you're beautiful and it
comes with prestige, especially in New York. At some point
did that feeling start to shift where what felt really
good and maybe you maybe develop self esteem, started to
(20:24):
make you feel like exposed? You know, you mentioned that
you're in a bikini in this photo and it's a
blow up size version of you. Did you ever turn
on that feeling? Well, first of all, Kodak was such
a conservative company that when that poster came out, it
was it was a bikini that came up to my
waist and they air brushed out my belly button. You know,
(20:49):
it was the first time they ever used a Pikini
and they were like real nervous about it. They were
so conservative. But after I was I was raped. That's
what blew my self esteem, going through the court thing
and I tried to kill myself and that's when I
went to New York to get away from all of
(21:10):
that Um. He ended up doing time, but, you know,
thank God because that probably saved his life. But just
going through that whole trauma, you know, and they make
him the victim and and you're the bad person, that
you brought this on and all that. You know. And
I grew up in a small town where people were already,
(21:33):
you know, kids my age. They were already jealous of
me because I was I was always on TV or
in a magazine and the newspaper, but I didn't realize
that they were jealous of me. I thought they just
didn't like me. So I had I had a very
low self esteem to begin with. What age are we
talking about? When this was like seventeen the rape, you
(21:57):
were in your teens and the trial went on a
trial to testify? Yes, all in your teams. Yep, while
you're also this Kodak girl with your body in a
bikini around the world. That am I putting all the
pieces together. It was actually before the summer, Girl. I
mean I had already taken pictures for the poster, but
(22:17):
it it took about eight months before it actually came out.
So this happened before the poster actually came out. Were
there any fears of tarnishing your career with speaking out?
Oh yes, somebody, somebody even wrote to Kodak saying, you know,
that this was such you know, to use somebody like
(22:38):
me it would be a bad image for Kodak, and
Kodak with such a conservative company, they had second thoughts
about putting that poster out. You know. Yeah, I mean,
that was the small minded people of that town. But anyway,
that's why I ended up mirrying my first husband. He
went off to Vietnam, I moved to New York and
(22:59):
I fell in love with with Frankie. But when all
this stuff went down, he made me go back to
Rochester because he didn't want me involved in the killing
and to be questioned about it. So I I thought
I thought he didn't want me anymore because I wasn't
a virgin anymore, right, and that was a big thing
to me. So I was writing all these I didn't
(23:21):
want to tell Tom until he came back from Vietnam that,
you know, I wasn't going to marry him. So I
continued to write him. But now I'm writing him all
these depressing letters because I'm getting deeper and deeper into depression.
And Uh, he showed my letters to his commanding officer
and they let him come home on a compassionate leave
and I had no idea who was coming. He just
(23:43):
showed up at my door and hugged me and said
I'm going to marry you and take you away from
all this, and I said okay, and I ended up
marrying him out of just because of that. You know,
it was the wrong reason to get married. Of course
I got I got pregnant right away on our honeymoon.
He goes back to Vietnam and then when he comes
(24:04):
back we have a little baby, you know, which I
named Tony, and I was so unhappy. You know, it's
like he worked for Kodak and you know it was
just every day you would just make popcorn and watch
TV and you know, I had this exciting life going
on and it was like very boring. So, anyway that ended.
(24:27):
So you had a baby with with him. Yeah, and
how old are you when you had your your your son?
You said Tony, it's a girl. I thought you had
a girl, but then when he said Tony, I was like, okay, wait,
maybe it's a boy. I don't know. She's fifty two now. Yeah,
I was nineteen when I gave birth to her. Okay,
so just again to recap here. You'RE A model, you've
(24:48):
experienced rape from a somewhat family member. You stood up
in court, you're involved with the mob? At this point?
Or did that come after no, at this point, at
this point. Right. Okay, then you've got your soldier husband
a new baby, all before you turned twenty years old. Yeah,
race car driving really does feel like a good fit
(25:09):
for you. You do like a lot of action, even
if it's, you know, just for for the movies. You
know what, at that time in my life I joined
up posse going in any direction as long as there
was danger and excitement. You know, when I was when
I was twelve years old, I hopped a freight train
and ran away. I got as far as Buffalo. Uh
(25:30):
in a passing train saw me, you know, in the
box car and radio ahead to the engineer who was
driving my train and by the time we got in,
we pulled in the buffalo there were police cars waiting
for me. That was my first time writing at a
police car when I was twelve years old. And you
know what, I had a wonderful childhood. I had a
mom and dad who loved me. We had dinner on
(25:53):
the table at five o'clock. It was so normal, you know,
and they were always very supportive of me. Thank God
I had that, because if I did not have that
who knows where I would be when I speak to
these women in prisons. You know they've had abuse of
childhoods and you know, sexual things going on with their
(26:15):
their fathers and relatives and and it's just knocked down
their self esteem something tremendously. And you know, the first
time I went to Twin Towers here in Los Angeles,
I actually got there an hour early, but it took
so long to get me in that I was late.
(26:36):
And now they were like sixty of these women in
this room, Um sitting on chairs with their links up
on the chair in front of them and chewing gum
with their arms like folded. Like what was this broad
gonna say? Right, and I walked in and you know,
and they've been waiting, so they were already piste off
and you know, I'm looking around him, man, it's gonna
(26:57):
be a tough crowd, right, and the first thing I
said was, I gotta let you guys in on a
little secret here. I said getting into this place is
tougher than getting out, and they cracked up and they
started to loosen up a little bit and then I
asked him, you know, how many people in here have
been sexually abused. And you know, I went through the
(27:18):
whole gamut. Every single one of them raised their hands,
which told me the reason why they're there is they
think that all these people that they're in there with,
you know, their equals. No one has ever patted them
on the back for the good things that they've done.
You know, nobody ever gave them any compliments or and
(27:39):
I know that that happened to me because until I
kind of got out on my own and people told
me what, you know, what they thought of me, I
had no idea. I didn't even think I was pretty,
and I was. I was appearing on covers of magazines,
you know. Anyway, when I was leaving there, I mean
they just clawed onto me like please, come back. Nobody
understands us, know, and when I came out, I talked
(28:02):
to the sheriff and said, you know, you've got to
have some kind of program, you know, when these girls
get out, to help them get jobs and get them
some nice clothes to be interviewed in. And you know,
some of them have rotten teeth. You know, I have
a dentist that will do this kind of work for
them and reconstruction surgery and people who have been beaten
(28:23):
up in their faces were distorted. I had all those
people in place, you know. Anyway, you know writing my
book and talking about all these abusive situations that happened
to me. I didn't know this was going to happen,
but I started getting emails from everywhere, and I'm not
a therapist. I can I can only tell you what
I went through and how I dealt with it, but
that doesn't mean that's the right thing for you to do.
(28:46):
But that put me on another path where I started
doing a lot of speaking and helping a lot of
these women. Last year I had a girl named Kelsey
Pommel on this podcast who is a survivor of domestic
(29:08):
abuse and in the last few years her career has
skyrocketed because she took to a platform called Tiktok to
talk about it, and I found my way to her.
I have no idea how, and I'm very fortunate that
I've never experienced physical abuse in my life, and that
privilege also blinded me from the realities that thousands millions face.
(29:35):
And I'm drawn to her because her her life is
so different than mine. But, more importantly, Tiktok is a
platform where you post and then all the comments are
public and the comments that she gets from all these
women who are going through it in the moment and
they're stuck and they're looking to her as this person
who got out. So for me, I'm sitting here like,
(29:56):
oh my gosh, this is this is happening every single
day to millions of people. And Kelsey is, you know,
not a therapist either, like you're not a therapist, but
you sharing your story, her sharing her story provides, you know,
so much more than hope. It actually provides tools of
how to do it. And I could close my eyes
and imagine, if it were me, what it must feel
(30:18):
like to have children to you know, a lot of
these women give up their careers to be stay at
home moms and they go through abuse, physical, sexual. They
lose their self esteem, they don't know who they are,
they're terrified to leave what is also hurting them. So
I hear you when you say you're not a therapist,
but at the same time you are helping these you're
(30:39):
continued to help by being kind of this illuminated path
that they may not see and there is a way
out when they feel so stuck. You know, you mentioned
being depressed and suicidal. I think that is the feeling
of so many people around the world who have so
much to live for. They have children, they have a
life on the other side, but they're so duck and
(31:00):
it's it's frightening when when that's your reality. I had
a sister in law that kept telling me that her
husband was going to kill her, and he was a
great family man. When his when his son almost drowned
in the background pool, the above Ground Pool, he ripped
that thing apart with his bare hands, you know I mean,
because he loved his family right. She wanted to leave
(31:23):
him and he wasn't. He just wasn't having it, and
she kept telling me he's gonna kill me, he's gonna
kill me, and I just found it hard to believe
because he loved his family so much. Well, he did.
He killed her, he killed all four children and then
he killed himself. And I will never forget standing in
(31:44):
that cemetery surrounded by six caskets, knowing how close I
was to dyeing that same death. And one of my
drivers lived in Colorado and he was reading my book
and he was at that part in my book and,
like you, he's ever been around any kind of abuse
or anything. So you just you have no idea. You
(32:04):
know the dynamics that goes on, you know. So he's
reading this and he had met this girl in Ohio and, uh,
she called him right when he was in that part
of the book. They're talking and she said, uh, hears
his banging on the door and this yelling and she said,
Oh my God, that's my ex husband. I'll call you
back and she hangs up the phone. So now, because
(32:28):
he just read this in the book, he's a little nervous.
So he waits about twenty minus. He calls back. There's
no answer. Calls again, there's no answer. So he finds
the police department in her city and calls them and
asked them to go over there. Then he doesn't hear anything.
The next morning he gets a phone call from the
police and he said, are you the gentleman that called
(32:51):
us last night, and he said yes. He said, well,
we just want to let you know that you saved
that woman's life. He said when we got there he
had stabbed her several times. We broke down the door
and got her to the hospital and she's going to
be okay. Can you believe it? So that was the
second person that I felt I had saved just through
(33:12):
writing my book, after your own rape. You mentioned it
was with a brother in law. So that involves family
of some kind, and I'm sure internal politics. was staying
quiet ever an option for you? No, no, writing the
book was and, as far as you know, staying quiet.
But no, he was going to go to court and
(33:33):
he was going to pay. But immediately after that, you know,
you said it broke your self esteem, but it didn't
put you into a state of fear. What? Why is that?
Where did that strength come from? I don't know, I
really don't know. It's I think it's maybe revenge. I
don't know. was that a you said a brother in law.
Was this a sister's husband? Yes, my sister's husband. So
(33:55):
clearly this messed up her marriage, I would think. You know,
there's it was already kind of on the on the
blank and that's why he came. He came to my
house to try to get me to talk her into,
you know, staying with him, and you know, so they
were already breaking up. But just writing about about that,
you know it was you cannot write a book about
(34:16):
your life and not say it the way it is
and try to protect people, if you know, because that
incident really put me on another path. You know, Um,
that was the catalyst to a lot of the things
that I did in my wife and I had to
write about it. And another, another person emerged that night.
When he realized what he had done and he knew
(34:39):
I wasn't going to shut up about it, he decided
he was going to kill me. This is the my
brother in law. Yeah, I used my head, I said,
I said you can't kill me as because I was
staying with my aunt, my mom and my sister. My
father were out of town. And how old are you
at this point? I'm seventeen. So anyway, I would always
(35:01):
tell my aunt, you know what time I'll be home,
and you know I was. It was good like that.
So when I didn't come home, she was kind of
up waiting for me, knowing something was wrong, and I said,
I said, Dick, you can't kill me. I said, the
photographer I'm supposed to work for today. I said, he
knows I was out with you, so he's gonna know
(35:22):
it was you, right. He said, well, you better call him,
you better call him and tell me weren't with me.
So that's how I got to the phone and I
called my aunt and her son is a cop who
lives with her. So I got on the phone and
I'm pretending it's the photographer and I said, Amiel, I'm
so sorry, I can't work for you today, and she said,
George as you could tell, something's wrong. She said what's wrong?
(35:43):
Where are you? And she said Keithan, Keithie, get on
the phone, something's wrong with Georgia. So he gets on
the phone. He says, Georgia, where are you? And I said, Emiel,
I'm very sorry, I said, but my brother in law
was very sick and I had to take and Dick
figured out what I was doing and he grabbed the
own just pulled it out of the wall right. But
my I knew my cousin figured out where I was.
(36:06):
He called my uncle, who was also a cop. They
both arrived at the same time, squealing, you know, down
the driveway, knocked down the door and uh Dick, prior
to that he was dragging me out to the backyard
with a shovel to to to actually dig my own grave, right,
and that's when I talked him into what you know. Yeah,
(36:28):
so my uncle's came in and they beat the living
heck out of him and, uh, they took me home
and the police came and they took pictures of all
the bruises and all that stuff, and and my sister
came home the next day and that, you know, that
was a sad, sad thing. So, anyway, that night is
(36:50):
when Georgia black was born. Now, when I was writing
my book, I had no idea of all this because
I had never examined my life. Do you ever been
to therapy? No, no, I just pushed things that, you know,
buried things. Never thought about him, never talked about him.
And and well, at first I was doing this bugle
(37:12):
boy jeans commercial and I had to do a one
eight on a narrow mountain road and, uh, the back
tire cut the soft shoulder and flipped the car over.
And it was a vintage Dino Ferrari and as I'm
summer signed towards a three foot drop off into the ocean,
all I'm thinking about was, oh my God, I'm wrecking
(37:34):
a two hundred and fifty thousand dollar car. That's I
didn't think about my life, you know. So the ambulance
was taking me to the hospital. I was fine, but
I'm thinking, why was the car so important? Why didn't
I think about my life, you know, or my kids
or whatever? So when I got back from location, I
went to a therapist and the therapist suggested I get
(37:55):
a journal and write in it for twenty minutes a day,
whatever came into my head, and I started doing that
and that's when all this stuff started coming out. How
many years, I'm sorry, how old are you at the
point that you're now experiencing therapy for the first time
after living this crazy life? This was in, uh, ninety,
(38:17):
so you're how old? Oh, let me see, it was
born in what forty four, so twenty years after the
onset of, you know, the first major traumatic event, or so. Yes,
so now I'm writing in this journal, but I'm starting
to add dialogue and, uh, I noticed this other voice
(38:40):
coming out, and that was, like I named it George
that's Georgia black, right, and I discovered that Georgia black
was always there to step in and help me get
through all these crisis and Georgia White was that sweet,
vulnerable side of me. You know that. And and that
was really that was really strange. And because it's at
Chiliz's voice actually kept doing the writing, you know. So
(39:04):
I had about forty pages of this raw journal and
and I said, you know, this is people told me
all my life you should write a book, you should
write a book, and I never even gave it and
I don't think my life was interesting right Um. And
so I said this is kind of turning into a book.
We all his dialogue and everything I'm adding. So I
called Sydney Sheldon, who happened to be a friend of mine,
(39:27):
and I said, Sydney, I said, I think I'm writing
a book here, but I really don't know how to write.
I said, can you suggest a ghostwriter? He said send
me what you got. So I sent him these forty
pages of this very raw journal of some really dramatic
things that had happened, and he calls me three days
later he says, Georgia, you don't need a ghostwriter, he said.
(39:49):
You know how to tell a story, he said, and
you have a story to tell. He's I had no idea,
he said, but what I would do, he says, start
from your childhood. Get the reader to know you and
love you so when they get to these parts they'll
forgive you. Start with the Kodak girl, the sweet side,
the you know, the all American and then, yeah, no,
(40:10):
it is very interesting because, especially just, you know, as
you continue to live your life and go down these
really traumatic roads, you know, your pictures still plastered all
over America, kind of, you know, frozen in time, and
I believe you mentioned this that the pictures were taken
right before it all happened, which is kind of poetic
(40:32):
to like preserving you and your your youth right before
it all, you know, was was taken from you. Heyway, Um,
you know, I went down roads that, you know, I
didn't anticipate, but I always loved driving. I used to
steal my parents car in the middle of the night
when I was like twelve and just drive for hours.
(40:56):
They could never understand why they had no gas. And
my father was a golf probe at this country club where,
you know, we lived. He had all these electric carts
and after I got past the first hole where he
couldn't see me anymore, I'd go tearing down those fairways
and run over the Greens. I mean I just I
(41:16):
just love that. Then I started hanging around with these
guys that were building cars and drag racing and I
would hand them to tools and everything and I'd go
to the race track with them and I wanted to drive.
So at one time they let me drive and I
was up against a twenty year old drag racing and
(41:37):
I beat him. I eat him and I got Oh man,
I just this is what I want to do, right,
and you know that didn't happen right away, but in
the end it kind of you know, it's it's the
direction I took. Well, it's not the end. Yeah, do
you think they're gonna take? You're going to write another book?
Because your book came out, you mentioned, in the nineties, right,
(42:00):
but came out again with penguin in two thousand eight,
and then recently it had a huge uptick in sales
as well. Right, forty copies in the past year. You know,
I've got wheel woman, is the podcast that I'm doing,
and that's also been a big jump in sales. And, UH,
and we've had a lot of interest for the movies,
(42:22):
so we're kind of fielding all the calls from that.
So it's it's uh, this really should be. I mean,
I would love for it to be a movie, but
you cannot tell the whole story in two hours. You
know it needs to be a series. You know you
go you go through so much. Well, that's what Netflix
is about these days, right. You really put things into
segments and it's a lot longer than two and a
(42:43):
half hours, but it really lasts. I just, you know,
want this to happen while I'm still young enough to
double the woman who doubles for me. I love that.
That is crazy to be in your own movie. Well,
I'd be doing all this. Still do so. Do you
still stud well, I'm not working anymore. I had a
(43:07):
stunt gone wrong and had to take an earlier retirement
or the doctor said I'd be in a wheelchair. Do
you still drive fast? I would do it for the movie.
You know what I well, I when I adopted my
little girl. I when I drive regular on the streets.
I'm pretty normal now. So you're a little girl. You
you adopted your granddaughter, Right, I did. Yes, she was
(43:30):
ten days old when I got her. She's sixteen now.
So this is your daughter, Tony's daughter? No, my son
Dustin's daughter. Okay, so you went on to have a son. Okay, yeah,
my son is uh, my son is forty two going
on sixteen, not father material at all. Yeah, and her
birth mother passed away from cancer not too long ago.
(43:55):
It just, you know, like three years ago, and I
had allowed her to have a relationship with and uh,
which was probably a mistake, you know. I mean a
lot of issues came up because of that. But so
you're mothering again at the age of, you said, you
in your seventies. So when you're a grandma, you can,
you know, spoil them and give them back. In my case,
(44:16):
I couldn't. I couldn't give her back and I just
spoiled the hell out of her and, uh, I'm paying
for it now. So has your life slowed down at
all as you've gotten older? And I know that you
don't work because of the injury, but you are somebody
that I feel like from birth it seems to really
thrive off of adrenaline. So do you scratch that itch now?
(44:38):
Not Really. Um, I have like when my my birthday
is coming up, what I do every year is I
have all the girls over, there's maybe about fifteen of
us and, you know, we just have a couple of drinks,
we jump in the pool, we jumped in the Jaccuzzi.
I mean I have such great friends and a lot
of my friends are, you know, celebrities. As a matter
(44:59):
of fact, I'm having a wedding here. Some friends of
mine are getting married and the officiant is going to
be Joe Montana. Well, she got he got ordained just
to do this wedding. Yeah, so, Um, I always have
very interesting people here. Have people come from Europe, in fact.
You know when when Angela was little, you know, they
(45:19):
didn't speak the language, but they always had kids and
she always had playmates, because I'm you know, I don't
have any friends with kids that young anymore, and she
would swim with them in the pool and, you know,
they figured out how to communicate even though they had
different languages, you know. But I've met some wonderful people
and I love sitting around the firepit with them and
having a glass of wine and, Um, it's if they
(45:42):
want to see me. If they don't, they don't ever
see me. It's interesting to hear somebody who's gone through
your life and your age kind of speak about girlfriends
in such a lovely way. I feel like a lot
of the you know, my mom and my mother in law,
all the women that I know who are our your
age aren't really having like girls nights the way you are.
(46:05):
Maybe because, you know, everybody's kind of either husband up
or if they've you know, if they're a widow. You
know their their lives are kind of, I feel like
they feel like an odd man out. How do you
go about finding such amazing I want to have girlfriends
as I get older. So I'm looking to you to
kind of understand how to cultivate make new ones and really,
(46:25):
you know, continue to enjoy that aspect of life. Well,
a lot of my a lot of my friends, are single, single.
The ones that are married, you know, they just leave
their husband's home for a night. You know, we go out,
but we make it at least once a month have
the girls night out or a girl's night in, you
know where we come and just sit around the fireplace
and have some wine and laughs and yeah, you know what,
(46:49):
my my my life is so full and I'm so
blessed with the people that are in my life. I
don't miss being married at all. Like I said, I
haven't been married since nine three. Do you miss companionship
at all? Oh No, I have compared I have my
(47:09):
my girlfriends. You know, it's like yeah, and I have
a lot of male friends too. You know, I'll go
out to dinner two or three times a week with
different people, but they all know that they're my friend,
that they're not going to get dessert after dinner. You
really built back up yourself worth though, after a moment,
(47:30):
after it took a big hit, I'm sure. Absolutely. Yes,
I can't. I look back at some of the things
that I put up with and I cannot believe that
that was me. That is not who I am today. Yeah,
I really loved listening to your journey and seeing your
strength kind of, you know, kind of like a fire.
You are a fire and then it kind of got
(47:52):
a little bit less lit over time when people tried
to blow it out or pour water over it, but
overall the fire kept going, as we're seeing now, and
I love that you're using your torch to spread that
that fiery energy and strength and confidence, especially for, you know,
women in jail and places where they are really just
(48:13):
knocked down. You know, to be that that person to
say I've been where you are, you're going to come
on out and you're gonna help and and even just
talking about reconstructive surgeries from people that have been through
domestic violence and have had their teeth knocked out, all
these things that like visibly show up on you. They're
very hard to then, you know, show up back into
(48:34):
the universe and feel like yourself when you visibly have
these outward marks and changes. You know, I think that
these are these are parts of the conversation that it's
so important to really, I don't know, just recognize that
that everybody has these these things going on so we
can be more compassionate kind and help each other through
(48:55):
these hard things. You are so right. I just wanted
to finish off with two questions for you, and one is,
what does self respect mean to you? What does self
respect me? I mean, I think it's pretty obvious through
the life that you lived, but it would be interesting
to hear what it means to you verbally expressed succinctly. Well,
I I really think you have to have self respect
(49:18):
in order to just live your your life. I mean,
if you didn't, these are the people that end up
in jail, these are the girls that think they're not
worthy of anything. You know, and how you get that
self respect is, you know, standing up for your your
own beliefs and sticking to it and having people around
(49:41):
you that are that are going to pat you on
the back for that, you know, instead of tear you down.
Don't be around people that are going to tear you down,
because that will just keep weakening you and weakening you
and making you believe that, you know, you are not worthy.
Thank you. I like that answer. And what's your favorite
trait about your self? And that could be about Georgia
(50:01):
black or Georgia White, or maybe there's another Georgia that
only you know, that the universe doesn't get to see
through your books and writing and storytelling. I am glad
that I have Georgia black. It doesn't mean that Georgia
black is an evil person. Georgia black is that person
that stands up for me and will ward off any,
(50:22):
you know, people that are trying to do harm to me.
Georgia black has your back. Yeah, and I'm really grateful
for that. I didn't even know she existed until you
started journaling and started to kind of realize that you
have these two personas. Is that what you mean? Yeah, yeah,
I think everybody, everybody has it, you know, but really
(50:44):
I needed I needed her at a lot of points
in my life. You know that I could not have
gotten through without her, and that kind of speaks to
to who I am and the strength that I had
to get through all this. Right. I mean, at the
end of the day, Georgia black is the name for
this part of you, but it's you, you know. So
your your favorite trade about yourself, if we don't label
(51:06):
black and white. Literally, is your strength to persevere and
get through this crazy ride of life that you've been on. Yeah,
thank you for using your voice for good. Um, I'm
excited for people to listen to your podcast and to
continue to get to know you and hear all the
amazing pieces of advice that you're putting out into the universe. So,
(51:29):
and if anybody listening would like to know more about
the details, my book is called the company she keeps,
and that's the name of the website to the company
she keeps. That com and I will sign every book
personally and send it out, and they get it cheaper
there too than on Amazon. You're a real one, so
(51:49):
you can support the author herself. You can get a
signed copy. I will put that link in the show
notes below so you can easily get it and we'll
remind our listeners to check you out support your work and, hopefully,
by way of using your voice, you again saved another
life for anyone out there who might feel stuck. You're
(52:09):
you're never ever stuck. If you could, you know, abruptly
moved to the other side of the country with seven
dollars in your pocket and start over in a time
when there were none of the technological advances that we
have now, certainly you can too. You know what, living
my life the way I did, I wouldn't change a thing,
because it's really come out to help so many other people.
(52:31):
So that's it in the nutshell. Thank you so much, Georgia,
and we will see you, hopefully soon. All right, thank
you so much. I really appreciate it. H
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