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© 1995 by Art Metrano and Cynthia Lee
ISBN 1-56796-060-X
112 pp., 16 pp. b&w photos
6 x 9, cloth
WRS Publishing

There are few actors who can play both comedy and tragedy and do them well. Art Metrano rises above "playing" these emotions. He is telling. his own heartbreaking and ultimately heartwarming story.

Metrano took a fall from a ladder that initially left him paralyzed from the neck down. In this book based on his own widely popular one-man play, Metrano has assembled a moving and laugh-provoking autobiography peppered with characters from his past, painting a hilarious picture of his sturdy knack for surviving the worst.

The message of courage, overcoming odds, and finally laughing the darkness away extends beyond victims of injury or disease to anyone who has suffered hardship. Twice Blessed is exhilarating, enjoyable and exhausting, but unforgettable.

Art Metrano has enjoyed a long, successful career in movies, television and comedy. Perhaps best known for his portrayal of Lt. Mauser in the hit Police Academy films, his television credits include, among many shows, a recurring role on "L.A. Law" as Judge Fiorello.

Metrano is now involved with supporting others with spinal cord injuries. He currently performs his one-man autobiographical play, "Twice Blessed."

To inquire about having Metrano perform his "Twice Blessed" play for your convention, association or meeting, call or write:

WRS Speakers Bureau
P.O. Box 21207
Waco, Texas 76702-1207
Phone: (800) 299-3366
Fax: 817-757-1454

Cynthia Lee is a playwright, author, filmmaker and a magazine writer based in Los Angeles. She has had a number of her plays produced in southern California and on the East Coast. She heads her own production company in Los Angeles and has written and directed numerous documentaries, short films, and television commercials.

Art Metrano and I are from Brooklyn, where there remains today something like a brotherhood among those of us who grew up and went to school together in the forties and fifties. We reconnect at high school reunions, weddings, funerals -- that sort of gathering of people who have forged a common bond. It was the place that formed us, the place that we left behind to become who we are today, and yet the place that will always be a part of who we are.

Like me, Art has a strong sense of his beginnings. And when it came time for Life to smack him in the face and leave him for dead, he looked inward (and backward) at those people and at those places to find the strength to deal with what had happened to him.

At times in our lives (and we will all have such times if we live long enough), we must make an assessment of the ruins of our situation and decide, as Art did, if we want to continue or to give up and quit. If we do want to live, then we have to figure out how to do it. If we're wise and courageous, we learn from the pain. After we figure out that God won't pull any puppet strings and make things right for us, we learn those life lessons that we would never have had an opportunity to learn if it weren't for the pain. Valuable lessons. Priceless lessons.

My "moment of truth" was my heart attack. Your moment of truth will be something else. These very hardest of life's rows to hoe have a way of calling our attention to where we've been and where we're going. And when all is said and done, we know we've come a long way when we can finally say, "I am a better man because of it."

No one who knows him would deny that Art was down and almost out -- for a while. And yet, he has come back, a long way back -- in his own words, a better man. He wants us to know him, and he wants to teach us something of the important things of life -- lessons of hope, lessons of forgiveness, lessons of love. Way to go, Art!

P.S.: The only thing better than reading this book is seeing the play by the same name. Readers, if you ever get a chance to see Art in Twice Blessed, in New York or Los Angeles or wherever, don't let the opportunity slip by.