MINEOLA, N.Y., April 12 (UPI) -- The movie "Lonely Hearts" is personal for director Todd Robinson, grandson of the Nassau County, N.Y., detective who investigated a "lonely heart" death case.
His grandfather, Elmer C. Robinson, is portrayed by John Travolta. James Gandolfini of "The Sopranos" fame is Robinson's partner, Charles Hildebrandt.
Salma Hayek and Jared Leto are cast as "lonely hearts killers" Ray Fernandez and Martha Beck, Newsday said Thursday.
Fernandez and Beck operated by simple rules: correspond with then talk up lonely women, take their savings and kill the ones who protested. Although they may have been responsible for as many as 20 deaths during the 1940s, the pair was convicted in 1949 of three killings -- one in Albany, N.Y., where the two were tried, convicted and eventually electrocuted.
"My grandfather didn't talk about himself very much at all," Robinson said. "It was part of the culture he grew up in, and part of the cop culture, which I don't think has changed very much."
Travolta said he based his interpretation of Elmer Robinson from what he recalled of his own boyhood.
"My father was from that era, and all the men that I remember from that era, they limited their expressiveness," the actor said.
