From 'Kodak Girl' to the mob, Rochester woman's remarkable life story could become streaming series

Teenage model. Mob wife. Domestic abuse survivor.

Getaway driver for organized crime. Stunt driver for Hollywood.

East Rochester native Georgia Durante has led a life built for the screen, one of highs and lows, successes and traumas. Her 1998 memoir, "The Company She Keeps," navigates those waters with a saga so compelling that, upon its release 25 years ago, it caught the attention of the likes of talk show host Larry King and publications like People magazine.

Yet no one seemed quite sure how to shoehorn her story into a film.

Now, with Netflix, Amazon Prime and their brethren pushing out multi-episode series, that may finally change. Sony Pictures has optioned Durante's memoir and has writers crafting a series that could land on a streaming network.

"No one could take my whole life and cram it into two hours," Durante said in a telephone interview this week from her home in California, hours before she planned to fly to Rochester for family visits and an Oct. 23 book signing. "What are you going to keep out? Where does the arc go?"

But, as a streaming series, "it makes sense," she said. "Time goes on and now, 25 years later, here we are."

With Durante's life, there is much to tell. As a teenager in the 1960s she modeled, becoming recognized as "the Kodak girl," the first of Eastman Kodak's models to don a bikini instead of a one-piece swimsuit. The gig was a prominent one. (Actress Cybil Shepherd was also a "Kodak girl.") Durante was on hundreds of billboards and newspaper ads.

But Durante's life was then far from glamorous. She found herself, as she wrote, "thrown into an adult world at an early age."

She intimidated peers of her own age. Boys did not ask her out. Meanwhile her modeling career blossomed, reaching well beyond Rochester and Kodak. She began to frequent Rochester bars, hangouts in the 1960s and 1970s for the men and women entrenched in Rochester's then-vibrant organized crime circles.

She recognized some of the mobsters. They were daily fodder for the Rochester news media. Salvatore "Sammy G" Gingello was among those she befriended. He became a protector of sorts, not a love interest but more of a big brother.

With his dapper style and constant smile, Gingello was a frequent target of newspaper and television coverage. He regularly appeared in articles about Rochester's criminal underbelly; Durante's ads would often be in the same editions.

"Sammy G and I use to joke about who was in the newspaper more," Durante said.

Gingello would die in April 1978 when his car was blown up. Durante ached for her lost friend, but the murder also helped her decide to keep her distance from organized crime.

"The cornerstone of my underworld past had fallen," she wrote in her memoir. "It was the closure I needed to begin transforming my own life."

The mob fascination: Rochester criminal scene

Through the years many have shown interest in transforming "The Company She Keeps" into a film. Those who optioned the book, Durante said, range from Hollywood studio executives to comedian Howie Mandel and Gene Simmons of the rock band Kiss.

America seems to love its mobsters, and Durante's story allows for an uncommon perspective, that of a woman who became enmeshed in the mob lifestyle and later escaped it for safety and sanity.

Her story includes painfully dark moments: She was raped at a young age and later fled from a marriage to get free of her abusive mob-connected husband. Many readers who speak to her of her life focus on her years hanging with organized crime figures both in Rochester and New York City, Durante said.

"There is this interest in the mob, even though my book is not all about the mob," she said. "It's about my life. It's about issues of abuse."

One of those who in 1998 helped Durante revisit the history and chronology of the Rochester mob was local lawyer and author Frank Aloi. Aloi's 1982 book about organized crime, "The Hammer Conspiracies," still stands as the pinnacle of Rochester mob reportage.

Aloi's and Durante's books have both seen renewed interest, partly because of a recent series of books from author Blair Kenny about Rochester's mob past and a popular Facebook page that focuses on the history.

"I noticed that my 'Hammer Conspiracies' book, which goes back to the '80s, all of a sudden people are asking for it again," Aloi said. "I do not understand the fascination of just plain folks about the bad guys."

Aloi said he once asked "a quasi-intellectual" mobster why he thought the public was so enthralled with organized crime. The answer: The public has "never been able to game the system, and we game the system so we're kind of the dark side of capitalism."

Durante acknowledges that there was an intriguing allure with the local mobsters, men who lived life big and on the edge. She recognizes the violence and heartache they caused, but she also saw another side, Durante said.

Gingello "never bragged about it, but he helped so many people," she said. "If a girl couldn't pay the rent he'd pay the rent and bring food over. He'd give $100 tips (at restaurants). That's like $1,000 today."

There was also the electricity of proximity with Gingello and mob boss Frank Valenti and others.

"I was pulled in by the power. I'd walk into a bar and before I'd even hit the bar there'd be six shot glasses lined up."

From youthful adventures to talented mafia getaway driver

As a kid, Durante loved cars and was known to hotwire golf carts at a golf course, sometimes finding others to race down fairways.

"I use to steal my mom and dad's car when I was 12 and take it for joyrides in the middle of the night," she said. Later in life her driving prowess became so apparent to her mob friends that she was occasionally enlisted as a getaway driver.

While modeling in New York City, she became entangled with the Gambino crime family. At an after-hours club, she witnessed the shooting of a "wise guy" and ended up as the driver who raced him to Bellevue Hospital shortly before dawn.

Once at the hospital, the mobsters who were with her dragged the wounded man to the sidewalk, blew the car horn, then had Durante speed away.

That incident, Durante said, helped cement her reputation with the mob as someone quite capable at the wheel of a car. They had her drive to and from cash pick-ups, and even chose her to be at the wheel for some robbery get-aways.

Breaking into stunt driving

"The Company She Keeps" does not flinch from the nastier side of organized crime, the beatings and brazen violence. As a young adult, Durante fled to California from her abusive ex-husband and what she realized was the darker side of organized crime.

She still had friends in the mob, but Rochester's organized crime factions, in the late 1970s, were deep in a bloody internecine war of shootings and bombings. Closeness to the mob had its own hazards, including the possibility of arrest and prison.

In California, Durante was so afraid of being discovered by her ex-husband that she was hesitant to seek any jobs that could again put her in the public eye. While looking for work, she kept seeing commercials for cars. She saw the need for drivers for the ads, and visited a filming site for a commercial.

It was a natural fit, but the production team balked at the thought of a female driver.

Nonetheless, she kept returning to filming locations. "I just kept showing up and this one director just got sick of seeing me."

He gave her a shot and Durante entered a new career. Once the film industry witnessed her fearlessness behind the wheel, she transitioned into stunt driving. Durante later formed her own female stunt driving team, working alongside titans in the industry like Bobby Unser Jr., a member of the historic auto-racing family.

"Before I knew it, I was turning down work," Durante said. "I couldn't do it all."

In one popular Pepsi commercial, Durante was the stunt driver for model Cindy Crawford. Her work brought her into Hollywood circles, as she became close friends with Buddy Hackett, Dom DeLuise, Hugh O'Brian (himself a Rochester native), and Chuck Woolery.

One stunt caused Durante to reconsider her life. She almost drove a vintage Dino Ferrari off a cliff and realized afterward that her fear had not been about death but instead the possible loss of "a $250,000 car."

"It was like my life didn't pass in front of me, nor any of those things that you think are going to happen when you face death," she said. She began to re-examine her life and started journaling. Her writings became the foundation of "The Company She Keeps."

Her novelist friend, the late Sidney Sheldon, read some of her writings and encouraged her to keep writing. She had considered pursuing a book with a ghost writer but he told her none was needed. "I sent him 40 days from the very raw journal and he said, 'You don't need a ghost writer. You know how to tell a story.' "

While writing "The Company She Keeps," Durante found an inner strength that she had left subsumed for most of her life. "I look back on my life and I can't believe that I put up with the (expletive) I did," Durante said.

Durante has occasionally returned to Rochester for book signings. A woman in her 20s remarked about a photo of Durante as the Kodak model at one past signing. She recalled the photo, the young woman said.

Durante answered that the woman was likely too young to have seen the ad.

"No, my brother had an antique store and he had one in there," the woman answered.

Remembering that meeting, Durante said, "If I was an antique then I'm surely one now."

'My life is good'

Durante has traveled to prisons and jails to counsel women about domestic abuse. She recalls speaking before 60 female inmates at the Twin Towers Correctional Facility in Los Angeles. She asked who had been the victims of sexual or physical abuse. Each woman raised a hand.

"This is why they're where they are," she said. The abuse saps self-esteem and strength, leaving one a shell with a wavering moral compass. "You don't feel good enough about yourself," Durante said.

Durante spent 30 years in the stunt driving field, but had to abandon driving after a collision with a car driven by Unser while filming a movie left her seriously injured. In a career shift, she transformed her Los Angeles home — one that she jokes "that Chevy built" from her commercial driving — into an 18,000-square-foot resort used for weddings, parties and longer-term stays.

Called "The Enchanted Manor," the property includes a cottage for children designed to capture the magic of fairy tales and youthful imagination. This is a frequent spot for birthday parties.

"My life is good," Durante said. "I'm around happy people all the time. People are getting married. Everybody's happy.

"It's a great place to be."

Book signing Oct. 23 at Brook House

Georgie Durante will give a talk and sell and sign books at Red Fedele's Brook House on Oct. 23 from 6-9 pm.

The event is hosted by "Rochester Mob Wars," the website from author Blair Kenny, who also will sell books at the event. Gina Gingello, the daughter of Salvatore Gingello, will also be onhand with her book about her father, "Sammy 'G': The Untold Story of My Father."

Recent D&C mob coverage

A lingering murder mystery: Where were the police when mobster 'Sammy G' Gingello was murdered?

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Where is the contract killer: Notorious Rochester mob hitman Dominic Taddeo escapes federal custody

Hitman captured: Contract killer Dominic Taddeo allegedly had $5K and license of dead man when arrested

When mobsters die: Writing the obituaries of mobsters

Obituary of a "stone cold" killer: Notorious Rochester mob hit man 'Mad Dog' Sullivan dies in prison

A mobster's daughter: Daughter of Rochester mobster 'Sammy G' Gingello co-authors book remembering her father

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Voting fraud from a Mafia chief: For voting in Rochester, mob kingpin Frank Valenti got three years in Pittsburgh

This article originally appeared on Rochester Democrat and Chronicle: Georgia Durante in Rochester NY for book signing