Appearance | Art And Music | Deceit | Hypocrisy | Weakness

SWEET BUT STOLEN
When Narcelle Hall heard exquisite sound come from her husband’s violin, she attributed it to his musical talent. Before he died, however, he confessed he was playing a Stradivarius that was stolen in 1936. “I thought it was Juilan’s playing,” Hall said, “but it was the violin. My 13-year-old granddaughter recently played it and she even sounded very good.” Her husband, Julian Altman, whom Hall characterized as a womanizer and a heavy drinker, kept the violin for nearly half a century, playing it in orchestras, restaurants and even at the White House. In 1985, when Altman was dying of stomach cancer, he called his wife to his side and instructed her to look between the canvas cover of the violin case and she’d find some papers. She found newspaper accounts of the theft of a Stradivarius violin case and she’d find some papers. She found newspaper accounts of the theft of a Stradivarius violin from Carnegie Hall in 1936. It belonged…