CELEBRITY ROOTS
Finding Barry Manilow’s Mysterious Grandfather
He did the crime, he did the time, and then he disappeared — again.
I should have known better when I decided to write an article about Barry Manilow’s Irish roots. As an Irish American fanilow, I wanted to know which town or city could lay claim to him (shout-out to Limerick!), but that’s not where the real story was — or where 80% of my research effort went. I only made it as far as his grandmother, Anna “Annie” Sheehan, before getting derailed when I accidentally tripped into a retro, true crime tale featuring a central character who disappeared.
When Harry Met Annie
A New York-born child of Irish immigrants, Annie married young, seemingly to escape a floundering household, but it turned out to be a fire-to-the-frying-pan situation. At the age of 16, she wed Harry Pincus, the son of Russian immigrants, at Brooklyn Borough Hall.
