Arlene Alda, Chazz Palminteri look back at the Bronx

When the name name "Alda" is mentioned, people usually think of Alan, the iconic TV and movie actor.

But on Thursday, Arlene Alda, Alan's wife of 58 years, takes center stage at the Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville. The event, called "Just Kids from the Bronx: An Evening With Arlene Alda and Chazz Palminteri," starts with a screening of the 1993 iconic film "A Bronx Tale," which Palminteri wrote and starred in, followed by Alda chatting with him about their respective childhoods in the Bronx.

Alda, 82, will also introduce her new book, "Just Kids from the Bronx," a collection of personal stories and memories from 64 noteworthy people who grew up in New York City's northernmost borough.

Alda's Bronxites range in age from 23 to 93 and include Al Pacino, Mary Higgins Clark, Carl Reiner, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Bobby Bonilla, and many other leading artists, athletes, scientists and entrepreneurs.

Alda arranged these pieces of the past — the parks, pick-up ball games, politics, gangs, food — into an oral history of the borough from the early 20th century up to today.

Each personal story starts with a vintage photo including one of Colin Powell on his bike as a teen.

Like the others, Alda eventually left the Bronx. She graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Hunter College and lived with a friend for a time in Manhattan. "Both us of had interim jobs so we could pay our bills, go to concerts and play music," she says. Alda received a Fulbright Scholarship to study the clarinet in Germany, then became a professional clarinetist with the Houston Symphony.

She met her future husband in 1956 at a dinner party on Manhattan's Upper West Side and married him in 1957. "So I basically lived in Bronx until Alan and I married when I was in my early 20s," she says. She switched careers when the couple's three daughters were young, and became an award-winning photographer and author who's written 19 books. She and her husband live in Manhattan and Long Island.

She answered a few questions before her Burns event:

The Bronx is pretty vast. Where did you grow up?

At the intersection of Barnes and Arno Avenues in a huge building called the Mayflower. It took up half of the block and the Mayfair building took up the other half. There were 96 apartments in each building, so at least 400 people lived in those two buildings, with tons of kids. It was a kid's paradise. All the kids had lots of other kids their own ages to play with and who went to the same school. It was like being in a small town — very insular in a way, but with different neighborhoods within that small town.

How did your family end up there?

My parents, immigrants from eastern Poland and Lithuania, moved to the Mayflower in the late 1920s, when they already had my older brother and sister. I was born in 1933. My father, who died in that building in 1986, was a commercial lithographer.

How did you gather the people for your book?

It started out in random, haphazard way. My friend Mickey Drexler (Millard "Mickey" S. Drexler is the chairman and CEO of J.Crew Group and formerly the CEO of Gap Inc.) and I grew up in the Mayflower. Our kitchen windows faced each other's across a courtyard, but we didn't know each other back then. Mickey told me about his childhood, and when we thought about all of the prominent people who grew up in Bronx, we thought it would be interesting to find out about others' experiences.

You interviewed some very accomplished people. What did they have to say?

There was no set format. They talked about whatever appealed to them when they were kids. Each had a different way of explaining what they wanted to say. Their playing on the streets and peer culture were important parts of their childhoods. My job was to figure out what each person's basic story was and to then make sure that no one's memories overlapped anyone else's.

It was interesting to see the changes that happened in the Bronx over seven decades. It went downhill in the 1970s and 1980s, but that's all in the past. It is still the poorest borough but very much on the upswing.

You and Alan have been married for more than 50 years. To what to you attribute your marriage's longevity?

I don't think there's a formula you can write down and say, "This is the reason." Being able to laugh is the greatest gift. We laugh a lot. The second thing is to forget about the petty stuff that raised each other's hackles. Having a short memory is good. In the long run, who knows? Life is a mystery. A happy marriage is a mystery.

Do you run out of things to talk about?

As long as we keep doing things, as long as you keep growing, which is the essence of living, there's always something to talk about. There's something nice about being in the same room with each other and not having to talk all the time. Alan is my best friend.

If you go

What: "Just Kids from the Bronx: An Evening With Arlene Alda and Chazz Palminteri"

When: 7:30 p.m. March 5

Tickets: $7

Where: Jacob Burns Film Center, 364 Manville Road, Pleasantville. 914-747-5555, burnsfilmcenter.org. Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event and at the Village Bookstore, 10 Washington Ave., Pleasantville, 914-769-8322.