Tom Grimaldi was five years old in 1956 and when he looked out the window of his family’s rented home on Third Avenue in Mount Vernon, N.Y. one Saturday afternoon, he saw that it was raining.
Tom Grimaldi at Town Hall in New Canaan. Credit: Michael Dinan
The stormy weather canceled his two big brothers’ plan to take him to the movies “and I was disappointed,” Tom recalled on a recent afternoon.
“And so my oldest brother called a friend of his and he comes over with his projector and some ‘Abbott & Costello’ movies and we go into the garage and he puts a white sheet on the wall and throws an old mattress on the floor and he’s playing the movies,” Grimaldi recalled from his “man cave” in the Stamford home he shares with his wife of 37 years, a small square room whose walls are adorned with classic film posters from the 1950s and ‘60s, tables covered in movie books and whose dominant piece of furniture is a wooden cabinet with seven shelves that house about 1,000 DVDs. “And I’m saying, ‘Wow, I’m not even at the movie theater and we are watching these great comedies on a rainy, cloudy day and in this secluded area.’ ”
Part of Tom Grimaldi’s collection in the “man cave.”
The moment would have a profound and lasting effect on Grimaldi, a part-time seasonal worker in the New Canaan Town Clerk’s office. An artist by temperament who would find avenues for expression through his professional life, including about 30 years with IBM, Grimaldi recently discovered a way to share his collection with residents visiting Town Hall.
Thumbing recently through a book featuring about 50 of Norman Rockwell works, he came across a famous rendering of a municipal official overseeing a marriage ceremony—a rite that often still is held in the office of the Town Clerk.
“I thought, ‘That is perfect for Town Hall.’ Definitely Americana,” Grimaldi said.
A Clark Gable caricature, by Tom Grimaldi.
As were the equally well-known “Four Freedoms” renderings from Rockwell—Freedom of Worship, Freedom from Fear, Freedom from Want and Freedom of Speech—that were published in the Saturday Evening Post in 1943, as the United States was in the midst of World War II.
“It’s a reminder of years past and values of America, and it’s my concept, too, a way to remember what America really is all about with the values and simplicity of days gone by,” Grimaldi said. “So as I went through the books, I looked to try and find more appropriate images and gradually did see that this or that would be good.”
Norman Rockwell’s “Marriage License”—from the print at Town Hall.
Thanks to Grimaldi, more than a dozen of those images now are mounted and framed, and adorn the walls of the Town Clerk’s Office. In a town often said to achieve a “Rockwellian” feeling—think of Christmas Eve caroling at God’s Acre, the Memorial Day Parade or Holiday Stroll—Grimaldi’s selections are apt and welcome additions.
They also speak to two core character traits of Grimaldi himself: nostalgia and artistry.
By the time he finished high school at Mount St. Michael Academy in the Bronx, Grimaldi had gained two more experiences—beyond the home movie day at age five—that would help shape his keen interest in film.
A “Betty Boop” drawing by Tom Grimaldi.
One day during Show-and-Tell at Longfellow Elementary School in Mt. Vernon, Grimaldi recalled, a classmate brought a small toy projector with a crank handle, and “a Walt Disney Mickey Mouse collection.”
“I was so impressed with seeing the frame-by-frame of the projector,” Grimaldi said.
He never forgot it. Nor did he forget figures that entered his life starting at age 10. He had a 16-millimeter projector, and began collecting large, 2,000-foot reels—westerns, comedies and cartoons—to watch on his own.
The family had moved to Pelham, N.Y. and he lived across the street from a motion picture library, an organization that would rent full-length features.
Part of Tom Grimaldi’s collection in the “man cave.”
“I befriended a woman there, she sold me professional equipment—editing equipment, rewinds and stuff like that—so I got to know her better and we shared stuff, so to speak. After that, I met an old retired projectionist who shopped at a department store where I worked part-time. I got to know him and he brought me to his home and had a whole collection of movies. He sold me some of his large reels and that was really an inspiration for me.”
He entered the Fashion Institute of Technology to study textile design, and later studied at Parsons School of Design, even while he started supporting himself professionally around 1970, at IBM. He started in the mailroom there and eventually got his foot in the door of the communications department.
Laurel & Hardy, a drawing by Tom Grimaldi.
There, prior to the advent of computer-generated art, he started creating illustrations of early-model computers, hand drawings with rapidograph pens.
He was at IBM for 30 years and while he worked there, Grimaldi continued to sketch for himself and build up his movie collection—a collection that now requires its own printed catalogue that he keeps hole-punched and in a binder, with titles arranged by era as well as genre.
Part of Tom Grimaldi’s collection in the “man cave.”
His collection goes well beyond movies, to books on the motion picture industry and various actors and directors, and some 50 movie posters.
The films and tokens of his childhood bring Grimaldi back to a far less complicated time in his own life.
“It’s all back to the ‘50s,” he said. “Growing up. I love that period of time. The old TV shows and the movies. The nostalgic stuff. I watch them most every day.”