Even though Boston’s Cocoanut Grove fire happened long before she was born, Michele Shapiro learned all about the disaster when she was a girl.
Her grandfather, Frank Shapiro, was at a nearby theater with his wife the night of Nov. 28, 1942, when a blaze tore through the swanky Cocoanut Grove nightclub, killing 492 people. The young lawyer helped with the rescue efforts and later represented the survivors and the estates of the victims.
“I grew up hearing about this case because it was such a big part of his life,” Michele Shapiro said. When she heard a filmmaker was making a documentary about the disaster, she had to get involved.
The result is “Six Locked Doors: The Legacy of Cocoanut Grove,” a nearly 70-minute film that features interviews with survivors in their 90s, many of whom never before talked publicly.