CONCEPTUAL RENDERINGS:
THE ICE CREAM QUEEN OF ORCHARD STREET
Based on THE ICE CREAM QUEEN OF ORCHARD STREET by Susan Jane Gilman, this project imagines what the novel could look like as a film. As a child in 1913, Malka Trenovsky flees Russia for New York with her family – only to become physically disabled and abandoned in the streets as soon as she arrives. Taken in by an Italian ice peddler, Malka absorbs his trade secrets, and over the course of the 20th century, transforms herself into Lillian Dunkle, “The Ice Cream Queen of America,” the grand doyenne of an empire of ice cream franchises and a tv celebrity. Spanning 70 years, Lillian’s spectacular rise and fall is inextricably linked to the course of American history itself — from Prohibition to the disco days of Studio 54. The show would follow a three act structure with flashbacks from the 1980s. The novel discusses themes of socioeconomic class, antisemitism, sexism, homophobia, racism, family, business, and the American Dream.
