{"id":13771,"date":"2010-04-23T23:06:23","date_gmt":"2010-04-24T06:06:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/leogrin.com\/CimmerianBlog\/?p=13771"},"modified":"2015-09-25T09:18:17","modified_gmt":"2015-09-25T16:18:17","slug":"frazetta-family-dispute-seemingly-resolved","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/leogrin.com\/CimmerianBlog\/frazetta-family-dispute-seemingly-resolved\/","title":{"rendered":"Frazetta Family Dispute (Seemingly) Resolved"},"content":{"rendered":"

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The news is out. The four children of Frank Frazetta, Sr. have agreed to settle their differences beyond the legal confines of a Pennsylvania county\u00a0courtroom.<\/p>\n

As regular readers of The Cimmerian<\/em> already know, the past\u00a0nine months have been traumatic for Mr. Frazetta. In July 2009, Ellie Frazetta<\/a>, Frank’s wife, business partner and number-one fan, passed away after a battle with cancer. Things seemed to unravel after that.<\/p>\n

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Not long after Ellie’s death, Frank signed over all control of his artwork\/creations to a limited liability company. That company’s board of directors was composed of Bill Frazetta (Frank’s son, who runs a hobby shop in East Stroudsburg, PA), as well as Holly Taylor and Heidi Gravin (Frank’s two daughters).\u00a0Alfonso Frank\u00a0Frazetta, Frank Sr.’s eldest son\u00a0(also known as “Frank Jr.”), was made a beneficiary of the LLC, but was given no say-so over the disposition of Frank Sr.’s works.<\/p>\n

By November 1st, Frazetta’s cover painting for the Lancer edition of Conan the Conqueror<\/em> had been sold to a private collector<\/a> (several sources seem to agree that Kirk Hammett, lead guitarist for Metallica, was the buyer). All this, despite the previous assertions from Frank and Ellie that all of Mr. Frazetta’s paintings for the Lancer Conans would remain on\u00a0display at the Frazetta Museum located\u00a0near Marshall’s Creek, Pennsylvania. The dedication of the Frazetta Museum\u00a0is the central event\u00a0featured on the Painting With Fire<\/em> dvd.<\/p>\n

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At the time of sale, it was rumored that Frank Jr. was opposed to the auction of his father’s iconic painting. Frank Jr. had been hand-picked by Ellie Frazetta to help her run the Frazetta mail-order business, as well as assist in the planning and construction of the Frazetta Museum. Frank Jr.’s home is situated less than a mile from his parents’ former\u00a0residence (with the Museum next door to it).<\/p>\n

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By all accounts, Frank Frazetta, Sr.\u00a0spent Thanksgiving (less than four weeks after the sale of “Conqueror”)\u00a0at Frank Jr.’s house. Bill, Heidi and Holly apparently couldn’t make it.\u00a0Not quite\u00a0a week later, Frank Sr. was seated in the office of Adeline Bianco, notary public, revoking the power of attorney which he had given to Bill, Heidi and Holly. A few days later, Frank Sr. was on a plane to Florida to stay under the loving care of his daughter, Holly Taylor. He’s been there ever since.<\/p>\n

Mr. Frazetta’s son, Alfonso Frank\u00a0Frazetta, appears to have taken drastic action after receiving a notarised letter from his father. Blog entries about that can be read here<\/a> and here<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

One consequence of the hearing for Frank Jr. in December was the firing of small-town notary public,\u00a0Adeline Bianco<\/a>, from her job at Katz Insurance. The word on the street is that the Frazetta LLC filed a ten million dollar lawsuit against Mrs. Bianco.<\/p>\n

Alfonso Frank\u00a0Frazetta was facing charges which could have put him in prison for twenty years. The notarized letter from Frank Sr. which authorized\u00a0Frank Jr.\u00a0to secure the paintings in the Frazetta Museum has never been legally\u00a0invalidated (to my knowledge). More word from the street would seem to indicate that\u00a0Frank Jr. and his wife, Lori Frazetta, ditched their small-town attorney recently and brought on a heavy-hitter to match those marshalled by\u00a0the Frazetta LLC (which does so\u00a0with funds drawn from the sale of Fritz’s iconic paintings; a vicious circle). Suddenly, an out-of-court settlement has been reached. I think it no coincidence. I predicted as much in December.<\/p>\n

Frank Frazetta deserves better than what he’s had to endure the\u00a0last nine months. Here’s hoping that he can now concentrate on creating more classic works of art. We can\u00a0still hope that Frank’s paintings will return to the Frazetta Museum, as Ellie Frazetta always intended.<\/p>\n

*My thanks to Frazetta (and REH) fan extraordinaire, Terry Allen, for the tip.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The news is out. The four children of Frank Frazetta, Sr. have agreed to settle their differences beyond the legal confines of a Pennsylvania county\u00a0courtroom. As regular readers of The Cimmerian already know, the past\u00a0nine months have been traumatic for Mr. Frazetta. In July 2009, Ellie Frazetta, Frank’s wife, business partner and number-one fan, passed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1370],"tags":[140,288,834,1058,142,1045,864,1047],"class_list":["post-13771","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-frank-frazetta-fantasy-art","tag-alfonso-frank-frazetta","tag-conan-the-conqueror","tag-frank-frazetta","tag-frazetta-break-in","tag-frazetta-museum","tag-kirk-hammett","tag-metallica","tag-the-berserker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/leogrin.com\/CimmerianBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13771","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/leogrin.com\/CimmerianBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/leogrin.com\/CimmerianBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/leogrin.com\/CimmerianBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/leogrin.com\/CimmerianBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13771"}],"version-history":[{"count":23,"href":"http:\/\/leogrin.com\/CimmerianBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13771\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16817,"href":"http:\/\/leogrin.com\/CimmerianBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13771\/revisions\/16817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/leogrin.com\/CimmerianBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13771"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/leogrin.com\/CimmerianBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13771"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/leogrin.com\/CimmerianBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13771"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}