Bigg chill for actress
An elderly retired actress who was whacked on “The Sopranos” says being killed off on TV is nothing compared to the slow death she’s experiencing in her Upper East Side apartment.
Wheelchair-bound Fran Anthony, 87, is one of about 15 residents at 260 E. 72nd St. in Manhattan who have been without heat and hot water for the past six days.
“It’s too cold for me to even order any food because I don’t want to stand in that hall and answer the intercom,” Anthony told The Post on Sunday, covering herself with blankets and running a space heater around the clock to keep warm in her fourth-floor apartment.
“A lot of the neighbors have friends they can go to, or a relative they can go to. I don’t have anybody,” Anthony said.
Anthony played Minn Matrone in the fourth season of the HBO Mafia series. Her character socialized with the mother of Soprano capo Paul “Paulie Walnuts” Gualtieri, who smothered her with a pillow when she caught the wiseguy trying to rob her house.
Amid temps that dipped into the low 30s Saturday into Sunday, Anthony said it’s become a struggle for her to bathe or use the bathroom because she doesn’t want to get out from underneath her blankets.
“I have to take everything off to go to the bathroom. It’s so hard,’’ Anthony said.
“Even my hands, when you use the toilet, you want to wash your hands, but it’s freezing cold,” she added. “I’ve been using that chemical stuff [hand sanitizer]. It feels pretty awful.”
The five-story apartment building at the corner of Second Avenue was sold at the end of last month. The previous owner of the building installed an outdoor boiler after one in the basement stopped working around the time of the sale, according to Carole Cusa, who has lived in the building since 1977.
The city Buildings Department on Sunday confirmed that the previous owner had requested an emergency work order to install an outdoor boiler on Oct. 30.
But after the building was sold, the outdoor boiler was taken out of service and has not been replaced, according to Cusa.
“We’ve been calling 311 repeatedly since Wednesday,” she said, referring to the city hot line. “It seems to be taking an awful long time to fix this problem.”
The management company that now oversees the building told The Post on Sunday that it delivered heaters to all residents of the building Friday and is “working around the clock to get this resolved.”
While some people might be surprised that “this is happening right here on East 72nd Street,’’ Cusa said that she only had one question for the landlord: “Why is it taking us so long to get heat and hot water?”