Speaker 1: This is an I Heart original. Yeah, it's June nineteen
Speaker 1: sixty nine. And the town, actually it's a borough of
Speaker 1: Penn's Grove, New Jersey, is quiet. It's always quiet. Penns
Speaker 1: Grove sits on the Delaware River, looking out across the
Speaker 1: water to Wilmington. The sunsets are beautiful here, but it's
Speaker 1: in contrast to the shoreline, which is covered in debris,
Speaker 1: and to the businesses, many of which are boarded up.
Speaker 1: Times are not prosperous. The local economy is in an
Speaker 1: extended slump. The DuPont Chemical plant is one of the
Speaker 1: few bright spots in a largely abandoned industrial town of
Speaker 1: roughly six thousand people less than one square mile in size.
Speaker 1: Only two things give Penn's Grove its identity. One, it's
Speaker 1: Bruce Willis's hometown, though that won't really be notable for
Speaker 1: another fifteen years or so. Today Bruce is just fourteen
Speaker 1: and doing poorly in math class. The second notable thing
Speaker 1: about Penn's Grove is that it's about to blow up.
Speaker 1: A series of explosions rock the DuPont plant in nearby
Speaker 1: Carneys Point. It's an explosives factory, and when catastrophe strikes.
Speaker 1: It's seismic. Three storage areas filled with seventy five thousand
Speaker 1: pounds of explosives are accidentally ignited, creating an inferno. Glass
Speaker 1: shatters up to ten miles away. Kids at a nearby
Speaker 1: school cower as windows are blown out of their classrooms.
Speaker 1: The explosion ripples across the Delaware River, jolting people as
Speaker 1: far as Wilmington's. A total of seven men died, with
Speaker 1: many more injured. Investigators will be combing through the rubble
Speaker 1: for days. Downtown PEngs Grove resembles a war zone. Debris everywhere,
Speaker 1: doors ripped off their hinges. It was a scene reminiscent
Speaker 1: of a disaster movie. It would probably be the climactic ending.
Speaker 1: Actually it felt like armageddon. Despite the incident, DuPont remained
Speaker 1: the biggest employer in town, one of the few job
Speaker 1: opportunities in the area. In fact, even after the disaster,
Speaker 1: Bruce Willis will graduate high school and work for DuPont,
Speaker 1: just like his father had. That's just what you did
Speaker 1: in Penn's Grove. Life didn't allow for a lot of dreaming.
Speaker 1: Of course, Willis got out, made it big, you know
Speaker 1: all that. But there will come in time when Willis
Speaker 1: will be able to return to Penn's Grove, wealthy beyond
Speaker 1: imagination and try to rescue it from oblivion. To sweep
Speaker 1: up the glass and put the doors back on their hinges.
Speaker 1: The adult Bruce Willis will breathe new life into his
Speaker 1: hometown with plans that are as ambitious as anything he's
Speaker 1: ever cooked up. Even though he's been busy doing just
Speaker 1: that with his adopted hometown of Hailey, Idaho. Willis believes
Speaker 1: there's room in his life for two Willisvilles, two towns
Speaker 1: where his money and vision can create jobs and raise spirits.
Speaker 1: After all, he did it with Haley, injecting a nightlife
Speaker 1: and vibrancy to the sleepy and snowbound hamlet. Why couldn't
Speaker 1: he do the same to his actual hometown, And why
Speaker 1: couldn't those plans be much much bigger. Some thirty years
Speaker 1: after Penn's Grove exploded, Bruce Willis came back, armed with
Speaker 1: an audacious, fifty million dollar plan to take it from
Speaker 1: the brink of insolvency, and for better and worse, another
Speaker 1: shock wave was coming for I Heart Radio. This is
Speaker 1: Haleywood and I Heart original podcast. I'm your host. Danish
Speaker 1: sports and this is episode seven Homecoming. Penn's Grove did
Speaker 1: have a heyday of sorts, and he used to be
Speaker 1: capital Caviare of the world. That's Eric Myers, Penn's Grove
Speaker 1: resident well um born and raised from Penn's Grove. I'm
Speaker 1: the youngest of six six boys. Pen Grove was a
Speaker 1: great place as I was a kid. You know, wasn't
Speaker 1: a whole lot to do, but we made the best
Speaker 1: of it. Eric wasn't around for the town's best days.
Speaker 1: Those were during World War One when munitions became the
Speaker 1: area's big industry, but he knows the story. The town's
Speaker 1: population went from two thousand to six thousand in a blink.
Speaker 1: Chemical plants like DuPont began to line the Delaware River.
Speaker 1: It also brought a little bit of write Headenism, gambling, drinking.
Speaker 1: Bordello's main Street in Penns Group at one time was
Speaker 1: a happening the spot. You know, people come from all
Speaker 1: over and you know, and that's what made the town
Speaker 1: thrive at the time. Then progress hit and hit hard.
Speaker 1: Someone went and built two bridges that allowed for easy
Speaker 1: passage across the Delaware River. The Delaware Memorial Bridge was
Speaker 1: finished in the nineteen fifties, so was interstate. But you know,
Speaker 1: once the bridge was put in and no one came
Speaker 1: through it no more, they bypassed it. And that's what
Speaker 1: really made the town struggle, uh, financially, with stores and
Speaker 1: stuff like that. Suddenly people could head to Wilmington's for
Speaker 1: cheap goods in a state free of sales tax, Fewer
Speaker 1: people had reason to pass through Penn's Grove. The chemical
Speaker 1: plants began closing up, jobs were lost, Penn's Grove was
Speaker 1: slowly being forgotten. I remember as a kid President Carter
Speaker 1: came to Pen's Grove across from the library, and I
Speaker 1: remember seeing him. He brought low income housing to the area,
Speaker 1: and since then there was a lot of different stores
Speaker 1: and stuff that none of them are there today. That's
Speaker 1: the Penns Grove of Bruce Willis's childhood, a post boom
Speaker 1: industrial town that had seen most of its industry leave.
Speaker 1: Willis grew up in a house right next to his
Speaker 1: grandfather's welding shop in Carney's Point, which isn't exactly the
Speaker 1: same place, but close. Pen Grove is like one square
Speaker 1: mile as about five thousand people. Corney's Point surrounds Penns
Speaker 1: Grove and it's like a brother sister type community. Willis's
Speaker 1: family were primarily blue collar workers. Willis's father, David, was
Speaker 1: a mechanic and welder and worked at DuPont. Well, just
Speaker 1: about everyone worked at DuPont. His father's relatives were also
Speaker 1: mechanics and wilders. Willis worked in his grandfather's shop. After school,
Speaker 1: he'd wander the halls of Penn's Grove, high humming on
Speaker 1: his harmonica, being a class cut up, giving people the
Speaker 1: idea he was destined for something. What well, who could
Speaker 1: say but something? Willis knew it too. He'd tell teachers
Speaker 1: who are upset over bad math tests that Penn's Grove
Speaker 1: could never hold him. He had a freedom of spirit
Speaker 1: that manifested in certain ways. He got busted for marijuana
Speaker 1: back when that was scandalous, and he liked creaking, running
Speaker 1: up and down Main Street wearing just sunglasses and sneakers.
Speaker 1: As he grew he kept running. After working briefly at DuPont,
Speaker 1: Willis left to attend Montclair State College, and you can
Speaker 1: fill in the blanks. From there, he pursued acting, landed Moonlighting,
Speaker 1: then die Hard, then superstardom. In one episode of Moonlighting,
Speaker 1: David Addison finds himself in the slammer. His prison uniform
Speaker 1: number was zero eight zero six nine, the zip code
Speaker 1: of Penn's Grove. A little nod to his buddies back home,
Speaker 1: but not the kind of thing that would change the
Speaker 1: town's fortune. Hen's Grove was once recognized as the most
Speaker 1: distressed town in New Jersey after new work. That's not
Speaker 1: the kind of thing you put up at your visitor center.
Speaker 1: Not that Pen's Grove had the visitor center in Penn's Grove.
Speaker 1: It had been in the decline now for probably thirty
Speaker 1: five years. And to see stores and businesses and the
Speaker 1: community go downhill and have to get transitional aid from
Speaker 1: the state and no jobs, and the people struggling, it
Speaker 1: was it was deflating. It was depressing, and Willis knew it,
Speaker 1: knew about its troubles. He had never lost his hometown connection.
Speaker 1: His parents still lived there, and Willis would make return
Speaker 1: trips back whenever his busy schedule allowed. He'd stop in
Speaker 1: for a sub sandwich by locals, a few drinks, visit relatives,
Speaker 1: cause a little bit of a stir, and then slip away.
Speaker 1: Willis got a little closer for a longer period of
Speaker 1: time he was shooting the science fiction movie Twelve Monkeys
Speaker 1: in Philadelphia, just to shore ride from Penn's Grove. You know,
Speaker 1: you would hear, you know, stories about, you know, this
Speaker 1: guy from Penn's Grove who's trying to make it big
Speaker 1: in Hollywood. And I knew one of his good friends,
Speaker 1: Mark Murphy, that I had worked for doing carpentry, roofing
Speaker 1: and stuff like that, and he was always, you know,
Speaker 1: proud of Bruce's accomplishments and would talk about him, being like, hey,
Speaker 1: he's my good buddy. Pretty soon Eric and Bruce crossed paths.
Speaker 1: So I started a small landscaping company, me and my
Speaker 1: best friend Billy Vanam and clean it up yards and
Speaker 1: leave removal, gutter cleaning. And my buddy Mark Murphy said, hey,
Speaker 1: I want you to stop by up to the waterfront.
Speaker 1: Want to introduce you to someone and see if you
Speaker 1: want to clean up the property. Willis bought his father
Speaker 1: the nicest house on Main Street and it was going
Speaker 1: to need some care, and so Mark introduced me and
Speaker 1: it really didn't register it for and then Mark was like, yeah,
Speaker 1: this is Bruce Willis in Moonlighting, the TV series, And
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, Eric, helped out around the property,
Speaker 1: getting to know the Willis family and becoming friendly with
Speaker 1: Bruce's father, David. I became really close to David. He
Speaker 1: was just, you know, a great guy to talk to, Uh,
Speaker 1: like a mentor. That the house looked beautiful. I mean,
Speaker 1: people rode by it all the time, and the area
Speaker 1: was just coming alive. Around the same time he was
Speaker 1: shooting twelve monkeys, Willis started telling a real estate agent,
Speaker 1: a friend of his named Maggie Dietrich, about what he
Speaker 1: was doing at thousands of miles away in Hayley, Idaho,
Speaker 1: how he had bought the mint and a movie theater
Speaker 1: and more. He'd given this tiny town a jolt of excitement.
Speaker 1: Maybe he said there were opportunities in Penn's Grove to
Speaker 1: do the same. But before he explained himself, he did
Speaker 1: what Bruce Willis was in the habit of doing. He
Speaker 1: swore Maggie Dietrich to secrecy. He told Dietrich that if
Speaker 1: she breathed a word of this to anyone, he'd disappear.
Speaker 1: Maggie agreed, and so Bruce Willis told her he was
Speaker 1: very interested in some other property in Penns Grove, property
Speaker 1: like the Penn's Grove National Bank and Trust Building, which
Speaker 1: was notable for allegedly having once been robbed by gangster
Speaker 1: pretty boy Floyd, though that might be more urban legend
Speaker 1: than fact. It was also where Willis's mother used to
Speaker 1: work and where he had opened his first ever savings account.
Speaker 1: He also wanted to buy another building, this one a
Speaker 1: former library, and another building a one time Masonic lodge,
Speaker 1: and he had ideas to bring like a like a restaurant,
Speaker 1: like a steakhouse where the bank would be. I guess
Speaker 1: it was something similar like he did out Hailey, Idaho,
Speaker 1: and I thought his ideas were brilliant and would would
Speaker 1: make a big impact in the town. After Maggie took
Speaker 1: her vow of silence, Willis disclosed something else. He was
Speaker 1: looking at twelve acres of riverfront property sitting along the
Speaker 1: Delaware River. It was all unoccupied. A crumbling pier stretched
Speaker 1: out into the oil slicked water and reached clear into
Speaker 1: Wilmington's On the surface, it looked well unspectacular, but Penn's
Speaker 1: Grove is centrally located. There are roughly four million people
Speaker 1: who are less than thirty miles away. Even though Penn's
Speaker 1: Grove only had six thousand people. It had an amazing
Speaker 1: view of the Delaware Memorial Bridge. When you stood near
Speaker 1: the river as the sunset overlooking Wilmington's you could feel
Speaker 1: the possibilities, untapped potential, and the land was reasonable for
Speaker 1: less than a million dollars. Willis bought the twelve acres,
Speaker 1: and just like he had in Haley, he did it
Speaker 1: under a company name. In Haley it was x NAY.
Speaker 1: In Penn's Grove it was Screwball Incorporated. Slowly the town
Speaker 1: began to understand what Willis and Screwball inc. Were planning.
Speaker 1: It was about much more than a few buildings. Willis
Speaker 1: didn't want to merely revitalize Penn's Grove with a facelift.
Speaker 1: He wanted to draw in all the people who had
Speaker 1: deserted it when the bridge and highway opened. He was
Speaker 1: going to put Penn's Grove back on everyone's map by
Speaker 1: opening a massive entertainment complex and marina. And soon the
Speaker 1: town that had been mostly forgotten suddenly noticed something unusual.
Speaker 1: Won't Tourists began pulling up to the barren waterfront, getting
Speaker 1: out of their cars and taking pictures of an empty
Speaker 1: plot of land strewn with trash, maybe it was just
Speaker 1: so someday they could tell people this is what it
Speaker 1: looked like before Bruce Willis came and saved the day.
Speaker 1: I kinda was excited. I was like, you know, blessed
Speaker 1: Bruce might come back to town and do something. And
Speaker 1: when I heard and saw what was going on, yeah
Speaker 1: it was. It was a good feeling, not just for me,
Speaker 1: but for the entire community. Sometimes people would stop by
Speaker 1: a place called Willis Hardware, thinking there had to be
Speaker 1: some kind of a connection. Maybe it was the first
Speaker 1: Bruce Willis storefront. Maybe Bruce Willis would sell you a hammer.
Speaker 1: It wasn't, but people took pictures of it anyway. Amidst
Speaker 1: all this excitement, words spread that Bruce Willis had even
Speaker 1: grander ambitions than water front development. There was news reporters
Speaker 1: and just seeing it building, everything getting cleaned up, and
Speaker 1: the momentum, and now people from all over wanted to
Speaker 1: know what was going on. The marina and entertainment complex
Speaker 1: were one thing, A big thing, sure, but just one thing.
Speaker 1: If everything went well, Penn's Grove wouldn't just be resurrected.
Speaker 1: It might become another Atlantic city. The town's leaders began
Speaker 1: buzzing Willis was back. A town councilman named Rick Cowles
Speaker 1: started a website named Bruno Watch. It was a kind
Speaker 1: of parody of a tabloid, with rumors and innuendo about
Speaker 1: Willis mixed with actual fact. Not too many people in
Speaker 1: Penn's Grove read brew No Watch, though, to be fair,
Speaker 1: most of them didn't have Internet access, but Cowles persisted.
Speaker 1: He lived on Main Street and watched as cars with
Speaker 1: strange license plates drove by, hoping to catch a glimpse
Speaker 1: of something. He reported on the fact that Willis's representatives
Speaker 1: had appeared at a city council meeting to unveil his
Speaker 1: master plan, a massive fifty million dollar riverfront entertainment complex
Speaker 1: that would host a ninety room hotel, restaurants, movie theaters, shops,
Speaker 1: fresh fish obviously, maybe a return of Caviare and Marina,
Speaker 1: big enough for a hundred boats. Already, local real estate
Speaker 1: prices were rising ten to fifteen percent. The plan would
Speaker 1: create hundreds and hundreds of jobs for an area that
Speaker 1: was suffering from a fifteen percent unemployment rate, three times
Speaker 1: that of the national average at the time. This was
Speaker 1: a big deal, and fifty million, well, that wasn't a
Speaker 1: number Penn's Grove, ever, expected to see. The town's annual
Speaker 1: budget was just a tenth of that. One of the
Speaker 1: anchors of the riverfront complex was thought to be something
Speaker 1: that harkened back to the earliest days of Penn's Grove.
Speaker 1: From all appearances, it seemed like Willis wanted to get
Speaker 1: into the business of riverboat gambling. Like Bruce we you know,
Speaker 1: I knew the idea was to try to bring riverboat gambling.
Speaker 1: It was like a fifty million dollar project to bring
Speaker 1: riverboat gambling to the Penn's Grove waterfront. Riverboat casinos were
Speaker 1: and are a kind of legal sleight of hand dot
Speaker 1: do on water. They can circumvent certain laws related to
Speaker 1: gambling on land. At the time, Delaware, New Jersey, and
Speaker 1: Pennsylvania we're all considering legalizing riverboat gambling. The property Willis
Speaker 1: was eying already contained appear. There were ideas for a
Speaker 1: ferry across the Delaware River and back, making it easy
Speaker 1: for pleasure seekers to make their way into Penn's Grove
Speaker 1: from towns like Newcastle, Delaware City, or Pennsville. While on
Speaker 1: the water, people could try their hand at games of
Speaker 1: skill and chance. This was vegas by way of Willis
Speaker 1: Bruno backerat maybe Bruno Slot Machines. It would all take time,
Speaker 1: but the people of Penn's Grove weren't just sitting idly by.
Speaker 1: Not long after Willis made his plans public, sixteen small
Speaker 1: businesses materialized in Penn's Grove, all of them hoping to
Speaker 1: capitalize on the people Willis's plans would be attracting. There
Speaker 1: was Marshall's Clothing, a trendy apparel shop. There was Bobby's Place,
Speaker 1: a small supermarket just across the way, where a shopkeeper
Speaker 1: and her son swept the floors and patiently waited for
Speaker 1: can instruction workers to start dropping by. A pizza place
Speaker 1: called Italian Kitchen, where Willis sometimes phone for pizza, opened
Speaker 1: its first ever dining room area to host the expected
Speaker 1: overflow of customers. Penn's Grove was suddenly home to a
Speaker 1: lot of entrepreneurs. Eric Myers was one of them. A
Speaker 1: couple of times I had to go to the airport
Speaker 1: to pick up some of Bruce's people. I would go
Speaker 1: in my pickup truck or you know, whatever I could get,
Speaker 1: and that gave me the idea, like, you know, how
Speaker 1: can you get like a car service or limo, and
Speaker 1: there was nothing in the area. This was long before Uber.
Speaker 1: With the influx of tourists, gamblers and v I p
Speaker 1: s they'd need wheels. I put a business plan together
Speaker 1: and and I'd saved some money, and so I saw
Speaker 1: these limos for sale, and a gold stretch Limo which
Speaker 1: was a six passenger and a white one, and I
Speaker 1: ended up started Riverfront Limousine Service with the Golden Touch,
Speaker 1: and I started with them two vehicles, And that's how
Speaker 1: it started out. As he might expect, one of Eric's
Speaker 1: customers was Bruce Willis, who was dropping in and out
Speaker 1: of town regularly. I did pick up Bruce from the
Speaker 1: Newcastle County Airport and brought him over to the house.
Speaker 1: I would pick up some of his people, take him
Speaker 1: to local meetings over the d R B A and
Speaker 1: the Della Memorial Bridge and different stuff like that. Eric
Speaker 1: knew it would be poor form to pepper Bruce Willis
Speaker 1: with questions about the development from the driver's seat. Instead,
Speaker 1: bits and pieces of information would come from Bruce's father, David.
Speaker 1: David was just as excited as anyone to see development
Speaker 1: come to penns Grove. His father would just tell me
Speaker 1: a Bruce really busy, He's doing this, doing that, And
Speaker 1: I'd ask a few questions and he would only tell
Speaker 1: me what needed to know. I really went pry into
Speaker 1: is he going to do this? Is he going to
Speaker 1: do that? Because I just figured I I would see
Speaker 1: it happen at some point, you know or not. But
Speaker 1: Penn's Grove didn't dwell on the or not part. The
Speaker 1: penns Grove National Bank and Trust Company building was being gutted.
Speaker 1: Willis had all but locked up most of the desirable
Speaker 1: riverfront property. Small businesses were popping up. Against all odds.
Speaker 1: The town was coming back to life. Willis had even
Speaker 1: taken political steps to realize his ambitions. In Willis drove
Speaker 1: to the governor's residence of Christine Todd Whitman. Their women
Speaker 1: committed to offering whatever state resources she could to make
Speaker 1: sure Willis's plans move forward. Now the state of New
Speaker 1: Jersey was backing Willis's efforts. Penn's Grove also agreed to
Speaker 1: help screwball and get some grant money for the development.
Speaker 1: The only thing the borough balked at was a Willis
Speaker 1: plan for housing. He wanted to put up fifty homes
Speaker 1: in the area right on the waterfront, a kind of
Speaker 1: Lovett Town or Willis Town. But Penn's Grove didn't need housing.
Speaker 1: They had a glood of that. Their sewers were at capacity.
Speaker 1: They wanted people, people to spend their money by day
Speaker 1: and go back home at the end of the night.
Speaker 1: They wanted activity, action. They wanted Bruce Willis to build
Speaker 1: his vast riverboat gambling empire like yesterday. But just as
Speaker 1: in Haley, Willis wasn't a full time developer. He was
Speaker 1: a movie star, and the movie star was needed on set.
Speaker 1: In early Willis chose a film project that made the
Speaker 1: people in his hometown even more enthusiastic. He started shooting
Speaker 1: a movie titled Broadway Brawler, about a broken down hockey
Speaker 1: layer who gets romantically involved with a single mom played
Speaker 1: by more Tyranny. It was said to be a sports
Speaker 1: comedy in the vein of Jerry McGuire, which had come
Speaker 1: out the previous year. The plot isn't what got penns
Speaker 1: Grove excited, though. What got penns Grove excited was that
Speaker 1: Willis was shooting Broadway Brawler in Wilmington, Delaware, right across
Speaker 1: the river. It was another move that would aid in
Speaker 1: about the local economy, bringing jobs and money thanks to
Speaker 1: the cast and crew. Willis even took what was for
Speaker 1: him a pay cut. He made only seven point five
Speaker 1: million dollars, rather than the twenty million A Starring World
Speaker 1: typically brought him. He reportedly liked the script the story
Speaker 1: enough to make some concessions, and shooting in Wilmington's kept
Speaker 1: him close to Penn's Grove, close enough to keep tabs
Speaker 1: on its evolution. The Bruno Watch website kept a close
Speaker 1: eye on things. Progress was slow but steady. The town
Speaker 1: was in a state of anticipation, waiting for Bruce Willis
Speaker 1: to unveil one of those tiny tabletop models of the
Speaker 1: Marina project, waiting for ground to be broken and for
Speaker 1: cars to start crossing the bridge back to Penn's Grove,
Speaker 1: waiting for Bruce Willis to save the day, just like
Speaker 1: in the movies. Eric Myers opened up a newspaper one
Speaker 1: day in and flinched a little bit. It was about
Speaker 1: Bruce Willis and his plans for Penn's Grove. There is
Speaker 1: a an article that was written and my name was
Speaker 1: in it, and it was kind of crappy, said, you know,
Speaker 1: as I ride down main street of Pen's Grove, and
Speaker 1: I see the pigeons and the seagulls crapping on the buildings,
Speaker 1: and the beer cans and diapers flowing down the gutters.
Speaker 1: One young man by the name of Eric Myers started
Speaker 1: a limousine business, the idea of transforming the town. It
Speaker 1: was met with a kind of hostility. Penn's Grove had
Speaker 1: spent too long in dire straits, and even optimists had issues.
Speaker 1: Criticism was starting to bubble up that things weren't happening
Speaker 1: fast enough, that Penn's Grove might be too small for
Speaker 1: a movie stars big ambitions. It was everything Bruce Willis
Speaker 1: didn't want. What he had warned real estate agent Maggie
Speaker 1: Dietrich about every detail put under a microscope. And then
Speaker 1: I realized that, you know, all this negative publicity, why
Speaker 1: would Bruce continue giving him trouble trying to do the
Speaker 1: riverboat gambling? Just all there was many things that I
Speaker 1: could tell that he was getting frustrated, And Willis was frustrated,
Speaker 1: not just about Penn's Grove. In February, after twenty days
Speaker 1: of shooting and seventeen million dollars spent on Broadway Brawler,
Speaker 1: the Bruce Willis Hockey romance movie. Willis decided he wasn't
Speaker 1: happy with the way things were going, and he was
Speaker 1: Bruce Willis, so he made his feelings known. He clashed
Speaker 1: with the female director, Lee Grant, and did something he
Speaker 1: could do as a producer on the film. He fired her.
Speaker 1: He also fired her husband, Joe Fury, who was also producing,
Speaker 1: And he fired the cinematographer, William Franker, and he fired
Speaker 1: the wardrobe designer, Carol Oditz. Bruce Willis was on a
Speaker 1: firing spree. Then he brought on a man named Dennis Dugan,
Speaker 1: who had directed Willis during his moonlighting days. Dennis Dugan
Speaker 1: lasted one day before he was told to go home.
Speaker 1: This Poe Willis and a tight spot. He had, after all,
Speaker 1: agreed to star in Broadway Brawler, and now he seemed
Speaker 1: to be opposed to showing up unless the movie could
Speaker 1: be made exactly the way you wanted it to be made.
Speaker 1: Bruce Willis was having a movie star sized tantrum. Synergy,
Speaker 1: the studio behind the movie, had no idea what to do.
Speaker 1: No one was sure what to do next. It just
Speaker 1: so happened that Disney was in the process of buying
Speaker 1: out Synergy, and they saw the spat between Willis and
Speaker 1: the studio as an opportunity, Yeah, Disney told Willis they'd
Speaker 1: reimburse Synergy for the seventeen million dollars they had lost
Speaker 1: on the unfinished movie if Willis agreed to star in
Speaker 1: two or three movies for Disney at a cut rate.
Speaker 1: For Willis, that meant a cool fourteen million dollars instead
Speaker 1: of his usual twenty million quote Hollywood's version of a discount.
Speaker 1: One of those movies ended up being The Sixth Cents,
Speaker 1: far and away the biggest hit of Willis's career. So
Speaker 1: Bruce Willis managed to extricate himself with a kind of
Speaker 1: golden parachute, one with a big mouse shaped logo. Only
Speaker 1: if anyone in Penn's Grove read about Broadway Brawler, it
Speaker 1: might have been caused for a little concern. If he
Speaker 1: could walk away from a movie, what else could he
Speaker 1: walk away from? You know, after the fact, you know,
Speaker 1: it was I think announced in the papers and Council
Speaker 1: that Bruce and screwballing was, you know, pulling out the
Speaker 1: project by the spring of roughly two years after Willis
Speaker 1: first purchased the riverfront property and with no real construction,
Speaker 1: having commenced a J. Crishenz the Burrows a list of
Speaker 1: Penn's Grove got a call from Joe McAllister, Willis's head
Speaker 1: hauncho at Screwball, Inc. McAllister told him, in as few
Speaker 1: words as possible, that Bruce Willis had lost interest in
Speaker 1: Penn's Grove. There would be no marina, no hotel, no restaurant,
Speaker 1: and no riverboat gambling. Christen Zi tried to get some
Speaker 1: kind of explanation. Didn't Willis realize the town had put
Speaker 1: their hopes in him, That over a dozen small businesses
Speaker 1: had opened in anticipation of the complex, with some taking
Speaker 1: out twenty five thousand dollar loans to get started. Didn't
Speaker 1: Bruce Willis remember the blown out windows of his youth,
Speaker 1: the cratered areas left behind by du Pont. Christen Z
Speaker 1: couldn't ask any of these questions. Joe McAllister had disconnected
Speaker 1: his phone number. Penn's Grove went into a tailspin. Some
Speaker 1: believed Willis was just bluffing, trying to get real estate
Speaker 1: prices down, and I just maybe it was, you know,
Speaker 1: a strategy to give some time to uh, you know,
Speaker 1: shut things down for a little bit, and too they
Speaker 1: could you know, get other people involved. And at least
Speaker 1: I was hoping anyhow, but it was no bluff. Many
Speaker 1: of the businesses absent to the expected tourist dollars didn't survive,
Speaker 1: and it felt personal. It wasn't that some developer had
Speaker 1: changed their mind. Those were a dime a dozen. Bruce Willis,
Speaker 1: the hometown hero, had changed his mind. Shortly after I
Speaker 1: started my business, Bruce decided to shut things down. So
Speaker 1: I was working for Clementi's construction company doing curbing, getting
Speaker 1: up early and pouring concrete and curbs and sidewalks and
Speaker 1: then go home and take phone calls and wash cars.
Speaker 1: And I was overwhelmed. And I'll never forget it that
Speaker 1: I was down to my like three pennies literally, and
Speaker 1: I had moved home home, back to my parents with
Speaker 1: the limos everything, and I wasn't sure if I was
Speaker 1: going to make it. Frustrated, Eric gave an interview to
Speaker 1: a reporter from a local newspaper. This guy convinced me that, look,
Speaker 1: we're here to help. Just say a few words on
Speaker 1: how that impacted you. And after the story was published,
Speaker 1: well you might see where this is going. Bruce got
Speaker 1: upset with me, and I was kind of shocked to
Speaker 1: get a phone call from them saying, hey, don't use
Speaker 1: my name, you know, try to avoid that stuff. And
Speaker 1: I was. I was blown away that. Look, I'm here,
Speaker 1: living here, trying to make the best out of it,
Speaker 1: and I'm not upset with you that it pulled out.
Speaker 1: But it's bigger than that. What I said was nothing
Speaker 1: negative towards him. It was just that with or without
Speaker 1: Bruce Willis, I think this community can move forward and
Speaker 1: grow and and develop. What frustrated Pen's Grove the most
Speaker 1: was that Bruce will Us never explained why, never offered
Speaker 1: a reason as to why he announced big, ambitious plans
Speaker 1: and then backed away from them. The town was left
Speaker 1: to wonder if they had done something wrong, had someone
Speaker 1: said the wrong thing, had they not paved a road
Speaker 1: he wanted to travel down. Was it all the red
Speaker 1: tape surrounding the gambling, Or was a town less than
Speaker 1: one square mile simply too small for his big ideas.
Speaker 1: Or maybe it was just that if you build a
Speaker 1: massive complex, what do you do with the rest of
Speaker 1: Penn's Grove boarded up and blaighted. Maybe Bruce Willis realized
Speaker 1: being the savior of Penn's Grove, New Jersey was just
Speaker 1: too much. You know, when Bruce come in, people were
Speaker 1: really you know, I'll be like, Bruce, are you're really
Speaker 1: going to do this or you really? You know, like wow,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know if that's the right approach.
Speaker 1: You know, They're word about so many things in town
Speaker 1: where I was like, why don't we give it a chance?
Speaker 1: It it just seemed like it needed to be done
Speaker 1: so bad, the community needed so much that the pressure
Speaker 1: was overwhelming. Two years later, Willis sold the twelve acres
Speaker 1: to a developer who managed to put a riverwalk in place,
Speaker 1: but couldn't get much further than that. Today, Penn's Grove
Speaker 1: is still known primarily for being the town where Bruce
Speaker 1: Willis was raised, where he patrolled the halls of his
Speaker 1: high school and announced he was destined for something bigger,
Speaker 1: and for telling a town that it was destined for
Speaker 1: something bigger. It came true for Willis, it didn't come
Speaker 1: true for Penn's Grove, But twenty six years later, Eric
Speaker 1: Is still in business. I worked long hours, and you know,
Speaker 1: and UH started it from the ground up, and I
Speaker 1: was proud of that, and I'm proud still today. Even
Speaker 1: the challenges through over the years for Eric. Bruce Willis
Speaker 1: isn't the bad guy in this story. He was a
Speaker 1: guy who saw his hometown in trouble and tried to help.
Speaker 1: Bruce is a businessman and movie star maker, and but
Speaker 1: he made a decision. And you know, I'm I'm not
Speaker 1: at all upset. I haven't transported Bruce in a while. Um.
Speaker 1: I was blessed to do his father tuneral, who I
Speaker 1: missed a lot. And I might have picked up Bruce
Speaker 1: once or twice to bring him into town after that.
Speaker 1: So it's been a while. And uh, but have you
Speaker 1: ever calls me? I'm right there for him. And I
Speaker 1: think he knows that Eric himself has taken a page
Speaker 1: from the Willis playbook. He's been buying bladed properties and
Speaker 1: rehabilitating them. His limo business has a ten thousand square
Speaker 1: foot building nearby. More than one hometown boy made good.
Speaker 1: I still and you know a lot of people then
Speaker 1: say Eric, wasting your time. But I still think the
Speaker 1: Pensburg Waterfront is one of the last properties on the
Speaker 1: Delaware River that is left to be developed. It has
Speaker 1: a beautiful view of the Della Memorial Bridge to Twin
Speaker 1: Span bridges coming across and going, you know, and the
Speaker 1: Wilmington's skyline, and it's got the best sunsets, and you know,
Speaker 1: stories and people that's come from there. I still think
Speaker 1: one day something amazing is going to happen, and I
Speaker 1: just hope I'm alive to sit two thousand miles away.
Speaker 1: The people of Haley heard bits and pieces of the
Speaker 1: penns Grove saga that Willis had found a kind of
Speaker 1: Doppelganger town to nourish before leaving it in the lurch,
Speaker 1: But there were important differences Willis's plans. Prepend Grove had
Speaker 1: never made it past the drawing board. Haley, he had
Speaker 1: already transformed it, had already made it his home, had
Speaker 1: already lit up the mint with his band and put
Speaker 1: his name on the marquis at the Liberty. Haley had
Speaker 1: been his home for over a decade. By this point,
Speaker 1: nothing about Haley was hypothetical. It was all as real
Speaker 1: as the ground it was built on. But if you looked,
Speaker 1: really looked, you could see something in Bruce Willis that
Speaker 1: could be considered a pattern. When he didn't like what
Speaker 1: was happening with Broadway Brawler, he walked away. When he
Speaker 1: couldn't make Penn's Grove work, he walked away. Willis had
Speaker 1: a tendency to disappear if things weren't exactly how he
Speaker 1: wanted them to be. So what exactly would happen to
Speaker 1: Haley if Bruce Willis didn't think things were going his way?
Speaker 1: I was the one year in my position that had
Speaker 1: to drop the bomb on it twenty dollars of more
Speaker 1: some months to cover the bills Hailey was about to
Speaker 1: find out. Haleywood is hosted by Danis Schwartz. This show
Speaker 1: is written by Jake Rawson, editing by Derrick Clements, Mary
Speaker 1: do and me Josh Fisher. Sound design and mixing by
Speaker 1: Jeremy Thal, Derrek Clemens, and me Josh Fisher. Original music
Speaker 1: by Natasha Jacobs. Research and fact checking by Jake Rawson,
Speaker 1: Austin Thompson and Marissa Brown. Show logo by Lucy Quentinia.
Speaker 1: Our senior producer is Ryan Murdoch and our executive producer
Speaker 1: is Jason English. Special thanks to the people of Hailey,
Speaker 1: Idaho and all those who've shared their stories. Haileywood is
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio. Until Next Time