NEW YORK -- The worst thing Peter Gimbel and Elga Andersen foresee happening when the bank safe from the sunken liner Andrea Doria is opened on live television next week is that nothing is left but a pile of green mush.
The safe, recovered three years ago by an expedition lead by Gimbel and his wife, Ms. Andersen, will be opened 33 minutes into the 2-hour documentary 'Andrea Doria: The Final Chapter.'
The program, hosted by George Plimpton, will be shown over an ad hoc TV network through Television Program Enterprises, Division of Telerep, Inc., covering more than 90 percent of the nation's TV households (consult local listings).
Since the flagship of the Italian Line went down 28 years ago after colliding with the Swedish passenger ship Stockholm in fog 50 miles south of Nantucket Island, it has been rumored that its safes held a fortune in cash and precious stones.
Gimbel and Ms. Andersen, however, maintain that because the safe they recovered from 240 feet of water was a bank safe, it probably contains currency and travelers checks.
'I'm not a treasure hunter,' said Gimbel during an interview in the screening room of his upper East Side triplex. 'I didn't sell this project on the basis of what was in the safe.
'How could I? I sold it as a TV film project.'
Still, the producer of the acclaimed theatrical feature 'Blue Water, White Death,' about the great white shark, admitted that when he was finding backers for the project he saw eyes light up when the safes were mentioned.
Ms. Andersen, who met the man she still calls simply 'Gimbel' when she ws promoting her movie 'Le Mans' in 1971, called the safe 'the carrot and the cross.'
'It helped sell the project, but it's also been an incredible burden,' the German-born former model said.
Since its recovery, the safe has been kept submerged in cold seawater in a tank at the New York Aquarium.
Last week, locksmith Sal Schillizzi, who will open the safe on television, ran into a snag when after working the safe's combination, he found that because of rust, he couldn't budge the door's handle.
To handle the problem, Gimbel had flown to New York from England a 'S.W.A.T.' team of professional 'safecrackers' -- experts employed by the makers of that safe and its parent company whose job it is to demonstrate how good a safe is by breaking into it.
Also involved in the safe opening is a group of chemists who will use a fluid displacement system containing a heavy liquid that does not attack ink or paper fibers to float the safe's contents out of the door once it is opened.
'I'm not saying nothing can go wrong, because on live television, there are so many unknown factors,' Gimbel said. 'The worst would be that we opened the safe and all we had was green mush.
'But experts I've talked to are not without hope that it won't come out all right because traveler's checks and currency are made with such high quality paper.'
The film itself is stunning and at times humorous as we listen to the diving crew communicate in their helium-high voices.
We see the crew of 29 men and one woman (Andersen) battle Hurricane Dennis, the frustration of living for31 days inside a pressurized chamber and other emergencies, including a race against the deadly diving phenomena, 'the bends.'
Most awesome is the film footage taken inside the sunken ship itself. It's the ultimate visit to a haunted house -- fine china, untouched for years by human hands, scattered throughout a long-darkened dining room, run over by eels instead of rats.
Gimbel was the first person to see the Andria Doria after she sank.
He first dove to the wreck on July 27, 1956, the day after the ship went down and the photographs he took were published in two successive issues of Life.
'I was surprised when I went out there that day that there was not a sign of life anywhere. Just us.'
Gimbel made a 3-week expedition to the Andria Doria in 1975, which resulted in the CBS TV special 'The Mystery of the Andrea Doria.'
'I won't be going there again,' he said, 'because I don't think I can make a better film.'
