Daytime legend Susan Lucci (ex-Erica, ALL MY CHILDREN) is auctioning off some of her most prized possessions (including Daytime Emmy gowns!) on estate sale website Everything But The House (www.ebth.com), with a percentage of the proceeds benefitting a cause dear to her heart, UCP, United Cerebral Palsy of New York City. “And,” Lucci notes, “there’s a sweepstakes. People can go to the EBTH website and enter a sweepstakes to win a trip for two to New York and have lunch with me in one of my favorite restaurants here in New York. We had lunch together all those years with people watching ALL MY CHILDREN, and now we can have lunch in person!” She spoke to Soap Opera Digest about the auction, which is open now and ends on March 10.
Soap Opera Digest: What was the genesis of this auction — had you been wanting to downsize?
Susan Lucci: I actually had been wanting to divest, to clean house, to lighten up, for quite some time. Over the course of my career, my life, I’ve been fortunate to assemble these clothes, and then I just couldn’t even find the time to even focus to go into my closet. We’ve been traveling so much — to Los Angeles [where AMC shot in its final years], to Atlanta for four years [where she filmed DEVIOUS MAIDS] — and I’d go home and play catch-up but not have the time or ability to focus enough to go into my closet and start to go through that process. My husband and I were discussing, “What is the best way to do this? How can we do it?” And my son Andreas knew I wanted to this, too, and he researched and found EBTH [Everything But The House], and we realized, “This is the best way!” It’s going to raise funds for UCP, and at the same time, give access to some of these items that our passionate, loyal fans can have access to. As I said to Andreas, “This is win-win!”
Digest: When it came to the nitty-gritty of actually going through everything you own, what was the process like?
Lucci: It was quite a process because it involved things from our house at the beach and also from our main house in Garden City. I can’t say enough for EBTH in this process. We had a meeting first and they assessed what was there. Jacquie [Denny], who is the founder, is the one that we met with at first, and also one of her assistants, and then they came as a team. They were so thorough and so meticulous. They wore booties as if they were a first-rate construction crew coming into your house. You would never know they were there! Everything was clear in their mind, they didn’t by mistake take anything they weren’t supposed to, they packaged beautifully, they wrapped everything securely. And then we went up into the attic and that was so daunting because I had probably 12 or 15 racks of clothing, mostly designer clothes. I had already given away warm coats to the homeless, different things like that, and it was still such a daunting thing to do. Jacquie and her team had expertise in china and home furnishings, and then there were also experts in fashion and design, and so Jacquie and her assistant who knew all about clothing, we went up into the attic together and it just became a joyful process and I got really into it. Really into it. They were fabulous to work with. They made the process a joy.
Digest: Tell me about some of the items that fans can bid on.
Lucci: There are gowns that I have worn to Emmys. There is the white sofa that was in my ALL MY CHILDREN dressing room in New York, and I loved it so much I had it moved to L.A., so it was in my dressing room in Los Angeles, and we moved it back again because I loved it, but my husband convinced me that it should go on the auction. My husband convinced me to put the ivory sofa on the auction block, and I convinced him to get rid of his collection of beer steins [laughs]! That’s a beautiful sofa in great condition with a lot of memories attached. I studied my scripts on that sofa, I took five-minute power naps lying perfectly still in Dolce & Gabbana cocktail dresses in my dressing room at ALL MY CHILDREN, I just have great, great — oh my goodness, emotional attachment to it. There really are stories to so many things. There’s a gold lamé [piece], it looks like a jumpsuit, but it’s two pieces and it’s a very soft, drapey, gold lamé that I wore the night that I got to meet Sammy Davis, Jr., Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Shirley MacLaine. There’s actually a picture of that meeting in my book, and so that meant a lot to me. That was quite an evening for me, having admired them all so much. There’s the black straw hat that I wore at the Kentucky Derby when I sat in the box with Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip. You know, things that really mean a lot to me. There’s a beautiful red, tweed Chanel suit. It was the first designer piece of clothing that I had purchased ever. I had never been in Chanel, but I was shooting the last season of DALLAS in Paris, and I went to Chanel and asked the saleswoman when I saw it if she could hold it until my husband came with me later this afternoon to see what he thought, and as the saleswoman moved away to take the suit to be held in the back, she revealed that Sophia Loren was sitting in the chair behind her, and I had grown up — Sophia Loren was who I idolized, so there are lots of emotional attachments and stories for so much of what we’re putting up for auction.
Digest:Was there any bittersweetness to preparing to part ways with some of these really storied items? Did you have to be emotionally ready?
Lucci: Yes, for me it was definitely a process, and it was a couple of years in the making. I had been wanting to do this, but not able to do it. I was just completely overwhelmed at the thought of doing it, and the emotional attachment was part of that. It was wonderful to revisit some of the things, but I was ready at that point. I was ready, and there are certain things that I have kept that at a later date I can think about whether I want my children to have first access to some of those, but right now, for example, putting the sofa on the auction and the gold lamé that I met Sammy Davis Jr., and Frank Sinatra, and Shirley MacLaine, and Dean Martin in — once I knew that we could raise funds for UCP of New York City, I really got into it more because it is win-win, because this was the perfect way to do it, and we had been searching for the perfect way to do it, and that coupled with the fact that — fabulous fans, you know how loyal they are and passionate they are, and they continue to be just incredible to me, and I value them. And to be able to share some of these articles that they may have seen photos of, so much of those things have been photographed, that’s just a win-win-win.
Digest: Are any items from Erica’s wardrobe available?
Lucci: Oh, yes. For example, there is a periwinkle blue, delicate lace teddy, and matching robe shorts that I wore as Erica on one of my honeymoons with Adam Chandler that is going to be on there, on the auction. The bidding starts at $1 so that anybody can participate.
To view the items up for auction — and, of course, to bid on them! — visit https://www.ebth.com/sales/21095-susan-lucci-auctions-designer-fashion-for-united-cerebral-palsy.
