Second in a series. 

Re: “Success Leveraged by Heartbreak – One Man’s Dramatic Life”

John Cassese does not merely possess a flair for drama –he backs it up with real life pathos.

At the outset of a screening of his compelling show-business-with-a-flair biography (“John Cassese: American Story”) in the living room of his longtime Pacific Palisades home, the Santa Monica-based Dance Doctor serves up a tea spoon of what lies ahead.

“God has been watching over me since the day I was born,” says the singer-dancer who was not sure he would survive his childhood.

“I have had many near-death experiences. He saved me every time, even when I didn’t ask.”

Those two sentences served as a shock absorber for what was to come.

But first…

With Mr. Cassese doing the voiceover, actors role-played only the early years when family video was unavailable.

“Let me take you back,” says Mr. Cassese. “It all began in the in New York in the 1940s,” and the next scene, real-life, shows  a doomed B-52 bomber crashing into the Empire State building, killing 13, on the very day of the evidently star-crossed Mr. Cassese’s birth.

(To be continued)