by Vince Chiarelli | Mar 3, 2021 | Television
Bartolo “Buddy” Valastro Jr. was born in Hoboken, New Jersey, and grew up there and in Little Ferry, New Jersey. His mother was born in Altamura, Italy, and is the daughter of Italian-American immigrants who moved to New Jersey when she was six years old. His father, Buddy Sr was born in Lipari, Italy. Valastro grew up with four sisters: Grace, Mary, Maddalena and Lisa.
He attended Ridgefield Park High School and took baking courses at the Bergen County Technical High School, Teterboro Campus.
Valastro began working at his family’s business, Carlo’s Bakery at age 11, alongside his father. When his father died in 1994, Valastro was 17. Valastro took over the family business.
Valastro is the owner and head baker of Carlo’s Bakery, the bakery featured on the TLC show Cake Boss. Carlo’s has since opened 17 more bakeries due to the popularity of the show. In January 2012, as a result of the attention that the shop and the TV series had brought to the city of Hoboken, the Hudson Reporter named Valastro as an honorable mention in its list of Hudson County’s 50 most influential people.
Carlo’s Bakery has seven locations in New Jersey—Hoboken, Marlton, Morristown, Red Bank, Ridgewood, Wayne, and Westfield. Outside of New Jersey, the bakery operates locations in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Bethlehem, Pennsylvania; Westbury and New York, New York; Orlando, Florida; Frisco, Dallas, and The Woodlands, Texas; São Paulo, Brazil; Uncasville, Connecticut; Las Vegas and most recently in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The Lackawanna Factory in nearby Jersey City serves as the corporate office for the business and is used as additional space to create wedding and specialty cakes, and to bake specialty baked goods for shipment across the country.
Valastro launched an event planning and catering company, Buddy V’s Events, in June 2014.
In 2016 Valastro partnered with Whole Earth Sweetener Co. on the campaign “Rethink Sweet.” The company said Valastro would serve as brand ambassador for a “new line of zero- and lower-calorie sweeteners, and will work to help his fans make healthy lifestyle choices”, as they provide recipes using the product.
In 2018 Valastro partnered with The Pound Bakery, a pet treat manufacturing company to redesign and launch a new line of pet treats. “We wanted to create palatable treats for dogs that are inspired by classic Italian entrees and desserts,” said Lexie Berglund, President of The Pound Bakery. Buddy also worked with several other companies to launch a full line of ready-to-use fondant, buttercream icing, and Italian Biscotti cookies under the new brand name Buddy Valastro Foods in 2018.
Valastro, a supporter of the Special Olympics, baked a commemorative cake for the 2011 announcement that the 2014 Special Olympics USA National Games would be held in New Jersey.
Buddy and Lisa Valastro married on October 14, 2001. Until 2014, Valastro resided in East Hanover Township, New Jersey, with her and their four children: Sofia, Bartolo “Buddy” III, Marco, and Carlo. He has four sisters and a stepfather, Sergio. As of 2014, he resided in Montville, New Jersey.
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by Vince Chiarelli | Feb 26, 2021 | Film, Television
John Turturro was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Katherine Incerella and Nicholas Turturro. His mother was born in the U.S., to Italian parents with roots in Sicily, and was an amateur jazz singer, who had worked in a naval yard during World War II. His father had immigrated to the United States from Giovinazzo, Italy, at age six and later worked as a carpenter and construction worker before joining the U.S. Navy.
Turturro was raised a Roman Catholic and moved to the Rosedale section of Queens, New York with his family, when he was six. He majored in Theatre Arts at the State University of New York at New Paltz, and completed his MFA at the Yale School of Drama.
Turturro’s first film appearance was a non-speaking extra role in Martin Scorsese’s critically acclaimed Raging Bull (1980). He created the title role of John Patrick Shanley’s Danny and the Deep Blue Sea at the Playwrights Conference at the Eugene O’Neill Theatre Center in 1983. He repeated it the following year Off-Broadway and won an Obie Award. Turturro had a notable supporting role in William Friedkin’s action film To Live and Die in L.A. (1985), as the henchman of the villainous counterfeiter played by Willem Dafoe.
Spike Lee liked Turturro’s performance in Five Corners (1987) so much that he cast him in Do the Right Thing (1989). This movie was the first of a long-standing collaboration between the director and Turturro, which includes work together on a total of nine films—more than any other actor in the Lee oeuvre—including Mo’ Better Blues (1990), Jungle Fever (1991), Clockers (1995), Girl 6 (1996), He Got Game (1998), Summer of Sam (1999), She Hate Me (2004), and Miracle at St. Anna (2008).
Turturro has appeared in both comedy and drama films, and engaged in an extended collaboration with the Coen Brothers—he appeared in their films Miller’s Crossing (1990), Barton Fink (1991, in the lead role), The Big Lebowski (1998), and O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000). Turturro has also appeared in several of Adam Sandler’s movies, such as Mr. Deeds (2002) and You Don’t Mess with the Zohan (2008). He played a severely disturbed patient of Jack Nicholson’s character in the comedy Anger Management and played Johnny Depp’s character’s antagonist in Secret Window.
He won an Emmy award for his portrayal of Adrian Monk’s brother Ambrose in the USA Network series Monk, and reprised the role on numerous occasions. He has also been nominated and won many awards from film organizations such as Screen Actors Guild, Cannes Film Festival, Golden Globes and others.
Turturro produced and directed, as well as acted in, the film Illuminata (1999), which also starred his wife, actress Katherine Borowitz. He wrote and directed the film Romance and Cigarettes (2005). In 2006 he appeared in Robert De Niro’s The Good Shepherd, and as the Sector 7 agent Seymour Simmons in four films of the Transformers live-action series. In 2010, he directed (and had cameo on-screen appearances in) Passione, which chronicles the rich musical heritage of Naples, Italy.
Turturro’s brother is actor Nicholas Turturro. Abstract painter Ralph Turturro, composer and film director Richard Termini, and actress Aida Turturro are his cousins. He has two sons: Amedeo (born 1990) and Diego (born 2000), with his wife, actress Katherine Borowitz, who moved on to a social work career in 2016.
John Turturro participates as a member of the Jury for the New York International Children’s Film Festival (NYICFF), which is dedicated to screening films for children between the ages of 3 and 18. Turturro holds dual Italian and American citizenship as of January 2011.
He has lived in Park Slope in Brooklyn, New York since 1988.
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by Vince Chiarelli | Feb 22, 2021 | Podcasts
On this episode of the Italian American Entertainment Podcast, Vince Chiarelli, of The Vince Chiarelli Band, interviews the very talented singer, actor and overall entertainment legend, Bobby Rydell. His career has encompassed six decades and counting. Bobby first found success as a teen idol, selling over 25 million records. He went on to star on television, stage, and film and is now the author of a best-selling autobiography, “BOBBY RYDELL: TEEN IDOL ON THE ROCKS – A Tale of Second Chances.”
by Vince Chiarelli | Feb 17, 2021 | Uncategorized
Steven Vincent Buscemi was born in the New York City borough of Brooklyn, to John Buscemi, a sanitation worker and Korean War veteran, and Dorothy Buscemi, a hostess at Howard Johnson’s. Buscemi’s father was of Italian descent; his ancestors were from the town of Menfi in Sicily.
The family moved to Valley Stream in Nassau County and Buscemi graduated in 1975 from Valley Stream Central High School along with classmate and future actress Patricia Charbonneau. In high school Buscemi wrestled for the varsity squad and participated in the drama troupe.
Buscemi made his acting debut in the 1985 film The Way It Is, directed by Eric Mitchell and produced by No Wave Cinema. Other early performances include Parting Glances (1986) and Slaves of New York (1988), as well as an appearance in an episode of the television series Miami Vice in 1986. Buscemi received a nomination for the Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Male for his role in Mystery Train, released in 1989. In 1990, he played Mink in the Coen Brothers’ Millers Crossing. This was the first of five of the Coen Brothers’ films in which Buscemi performed. Also that year, he starred as Test Tube, a henchman of Laurence Fishburne’s character Jimmy Jump in Abel Ferrara’s crime film King of New York, as well as Edward in the anthology film Tales from the Darkside: The Movie, the protagonist of the “Lot 249” segment of the film.
In 1991, he played a bellboy, Chet, in the Coen Brothers film Barton Fink. His first lead role was as Adolpho Rollo in Alexandre Rockwell’s In the Soup (1992). He gained wider attention for his supporting part as pseudonymous criminal Mr. Pink in Quentin Tarantino’s film Reservoir Dogs (1992), a role that Tarantino originally wrote for himself, and one that earned Buscemi the Independent Spirit Award for Best Supporting Male in his second nomination.[ Also in 1992, he had a guest role as Phil Hickle, Ellen’s father and older Pete’s guidance counselor, in The Adventures of Pete and Pete. The following year, he starred as the eponymous character in the critically panned horror comedy film Ed and His Dead Mother. He also appeared in a cameo appearance in Tarantino’s next film, Pulp Fiction, where he portrays a waiter dressed as Buddy Holly who serves Mia Wallace and Vincent Vega. In 1995, Buscemi guest-starred as suspected murderer Gordon Pratt in “End Game”, an episode of the television series Homicide: Life on the Street. Buscemi was rumored to be considered for the role of The Scarecrow in Joel Schumacher’s proposed fifth installment of the first Batman franchise, Batman Unchained, before Warner Bros. cancelled the project.
The next year, Buscemi again collaborated with the Coen Brothers, starring as kidnapper Carl Showalter in Fargo. Subsequently, he gained a reputation as a character actor, with supporting roles as Garland Greene in Con Air (1997), Rockhound in Armageddon (1998) and Donny in The Big Lebowski (1999). Going into the 2000s, Buscemi continued to co-star in supporting roles. He played Seymour in Ghost World (2001) and Romero in Spy Kids 2: The Island of Lost Dreams (2002), as well as its successor Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over (2003). He also extensively performed voice-over work for animated films, playing Randall Boggs in Monsters, Inc. (2001), — a role he later reprised in its prequel Monsters University (2013) — Mr. Wesley in Home on the Range (2004), Nebbercracker in Monster House (2006) and Templeton the Rat in Charlotte’s Web.
In 2004, Buscemi joined the cast of the television series The Sopranos as Tony Soprano’s cousin and childhood friend, Tony Blundetto, a role that earned him an Emmy Award nomination. Buscemi had previously contributed to the show as director of the third-season episode “Pine Barrens”, which was one of the most critically acclaimed episodes of the series, and the fourth-season episode “Everybody Hurts”. He appeared in episode three of season 6 as a doorman in the afterlife, which is portrayed as a country club in Tony Soprano’s dream. He also directed the episodes “In Camelot”, the seventh episode of season 5, and “Mr. & Mrs. John Sacrimoni Request…”, the fifth episode of season 6. As well, he appeared in the music video for Joe Strummer’s cover version of Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song”.
Buscemi starred in the HBO series Boardwalk Empire starting in 2010, as Enoch “Nucky” Thompson (based on Enoch L. Johnson), a corrupt Atlantic City politician who rules the town during the Prohibition era. He won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Television Series Drama for the role. In 2011 he hosted NBC’s Saturday Night Live.
Buscemi grew up pronouncing his name as boo-SEM-ee, in an anglicized way. In Sicily, where his ancestors are from, it is pronounced as boo-SHEM-ee. He once remarked, “I had to go to Sicily to find out I pronounce my name wrong.”
Buscemi was a New York City firefighter from 1980 to 1984, with Engine Company No. 55, in the Little Italy section of New York. The day after the 9/11 attacks in New York, he returned to his old firehouse to volunteer; he worked twelve-hour shifts for a week, and dug through rubble looking for missing firefighters. On May 25, 2003, Buscemi was arrested with nineteen other people while protesting the closing of a number of firehouses, including Engine 55.
Buscemi married Jo Andres in 1987; they were married until her death in early January 2019. They had one son.
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by Vince Chiarelli | Feb 15, 2021 | Uncategorized
Maria Grazia Morgana Messina was born in Pleasantville, New York. Her parents were from Fiumefreddo di Sicilia, Province of Catania, Sicily, Italy. She grew up in New York City with five siblings. Her father, who owned a coal and ice business, played the piano and guitar by ear. Her family experienced a difficult financial period after her father died.
Around the age of thirteen her vocal gifts were recognized when she was overheard singing the aria “I’ll See You Again” from Noël Coward’s operetta Bitter Sweet. At age 16 she developed a love for big bands. A scholarship to the Metropolitan School of Music soon followed.
Her professional singing career began at age sixteen as Morgana King. When she sang in a Greenwich Village nightclub in 1953, a record label executive took an interest after being impressed with the unique phrasing and multi-octave range. Three years later in 1956, her first album, For You, For Me, For Evermore, was released.
In the first appearance of Leonard G. Feather’s Encyclopedia of Jazz (1960), Morgana King stated that her ambition was “… to become a dramatic actress.” She began her acting career in The Godfather, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, as Carmela Corleone, wife of Don Vito Corleone. In the film, she sang the song “Luna mezzo mare”. King appeared as herself in the television documentary The Godfather: Behind the Scenes (1971). She reprised the role in The Godfather Part II (1974), where her character dies aged 62, due to natural causes.
King headlined clubs, concert halls and hotels, and toured throughout the United States, Europe, Australia and South America. Her repertoire contains more than two hundred songs on more than thirty albums. Most of her recordings and re-issues have not remained in the catalogs. In 1964, she received a Grammy Award nomination for Best New Artist. The award went to the Beatles.
Beginning with The Andy Williams Show and The Hollywood Palace in 1964. For more than a decade she performed on television talk and variety shows including The Mike Douglas Show, The Dean Martin Show and The David Frost Show.
King announced her retirement from performing during an engagement at the Cotton Club in Chicago on Friday, December 10, 1993, and added that her recording would not be affected by the decision.
She died, aged 87, of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in Palm Springs on March 22, 2018.
King’s voice is notable for its four-octave contralto range. She continued to pursue new forms of expression and presentation by exploring current music trends, which can be heard and read from the list of songs and composers on more than thirty albums. She ventured into new creative areas throughout her career all the while keeping contact with her musical point of origin in jazz. Her distinctive sound has its criticism and detractors.
In literature, the Library of Jazz Standards by Ronny Schiff (2002) recognizes Morgana King as one of the performers who made famous the songs “Imagination” (Van Heusen, Burke), “Like Someone in Love” (Van Heusen, Burke) and “Will You Be Mine” (Adair, Dennis). Also, there is the occasional mention of her in fiction.
Her signature song is “A Taste Of Honey”, originally released on the album With A Taste of Honey (Mainstream Records, 1964). Her most re-issued songs are “My Funny Valentine”, from Everything Must Change (Muse, 1978), and the title track of For You, For Me, For Evermore (EmArcy Records, 1956).
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