DeNiro testifies in trial of gallery owner
Actor Robert DeNiro attends the premiere of Julian Schnabel's "Miral" at the United Nations General Assembly Hall in Manhattan. (March 14, 2011) Credit: Getty Images
The star took a turn in the witness box Friday.
Actor Robert DeNiro played more straight man than "Raging Bull" during a rare court appearance in a Manhattan art fraud trial.
DeNiro, 67, spent nearly an hour testifying at the criminal fraud trial of Leigh Morse, 54, an art gallery director charged with siphoning $77,000 from the sale of two paintings belonging to DeNiro's father's estate into her personal account.
Morse says the money was to pay commissions owed her by gallery owner Lawrence Salander, who has pleaded guilty in a $120-million fraud. Her lawyer, jousting with DeNiro, asked if he cared how the money was routed as long as Salander eventually paid him for the paintings.
"It sounds good in theory," said DeNiro, fixing defense lawyer Andy Lankler with the smirk of Travis Bickle, his character in "Taxi Driver." "But I don't know where you're going here."
That was about as lively as it got, despite a courtroom filled with star-gawkers watching the actor perch on the witness stand in a green corduroy jacket and open-collared shirt, scratch his goatee as he searched for answers and chuckle when he messed up by interrupting questions or nodding instead of saying, “Yes.”
DeNiro said he hired Salander to sell his father's artwork in 1993. The deal was supposed to be a 50/50 split. He said his suspicions began to grow because of Salander's lavish spending -- flying over to gallery shows of DeNiro's father's work on chartered jets.
"It just didn't add up," he said.
The actor faulted himself for not monitoring Salander, who he said he trusted "implicitly." He pulled out of the deal when he learned that Salander had signed over some of his father's paintings to a gallery in Italy to pay off personal debts.
His baffled bemusement with court procedures continued right to the end. When Lankler, on a second cross-examination, tried a rhetorical question to get DeNiro to absolve Morse, prosecutors objected. The judge sustained it. Then DeNiro, in a world of his own, began to answer anyway before the judge told him to stop.
"The objection," DeNiro said to no one in particular, "is sustained."
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From toxic dump to condos? ... Apartment rental scams ... Picture This: Montauk Monster ... What's up on LI
