by Vince Chiarelli | Nov 11, 2020 | Blog, Comedy, Television, Uncategorized
Domenick Jack “Dom” Irrera is an Italian American actor and stand-up comedian. Much of his material is in the form of stories about his life, especially his childhood years and growing up in an Italian American family.
Irrera has appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show, The View, The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson 1986, The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson, and The Late Show with David Letterman, and has made numerous cameo appearances on TV shows.
Irrera is a regular performer at the Cat Laughs in Kilkenny; he has made 22 appearances at the festival – more than any other comic. He appeared on an episode of the NBC sitcom Seinfeld as Ronnie Kaye, the prop comic and on the CBS sitcom The King of Queens as Spero Demopolous. Irrera made 11 appearances as himself on the animated series Dr. Katz, Professional Therapist, and is the only comic to appear in all six seasons.
Irrera was voted one of the hundred funniest comics of all time by Comedy Central. He was the Judge on the Supreme Court of Comedy on the 101 exclusively on DirecTV.
He also did some voiceovers for Nickelodeon as Ernie Potts on Hey Arnold! and as Duke on Back at the Barnyard, and played a chauffeur in the 1998 film The Big Lebowski.
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by Vince Chiarelli | Nov 2, 2020 | Blog, Comedy, Film, Television
Daniel Louis Castellaneta was born in 1957 at Roseland Community Hospital on Chicago’s south side and was raised in River Forest and Oak Park, Illinois. He is of Italian descent, born to Elsie Lagorio and Louis Castellaneta.
Castellaneta became adept at impressions at a young age and his mother enrolled him in an acting class when he was sixteen years old. He would listen to his father’s comedy records and do impressions of the artists. Upon graduating high school, he started attending Northern Illinois University (NIU) in the fall of 1975.
Castellaneta studied art education, with the goal of becoming an art teacher. He became a student teacher and would entertain his students with his impressions. Castellaneta started acting after his graduation from Northern Illinois University in 1979. He began taking improvisation classes, where he met his future wife Deb Lacusta. He started to work at The Second City, an improvisational theatre in Chicago, in 1983 and continued to work there until 1987. During this period, he did voice-over work with his wife for various radio stations.
He auditioned for a role in The Tracey Ullman Show and his first meeting underwhelmed Tracey Ullman and the other producers. Ullman decided to fly to Chicago to watch Castellaneta perform. His performance that night was about a blind man who tries to become a comedian and Ullman later recalled that although there were flashier performances that night, Castellaneta made her cry. She was impressed and Castellaneta was hired.
Castellaneta is most famous for his role as Homer Simpson on the longest running American animated television show The Simpsons. The Tracey Ullman Show included a series of animated shorts about a dysfunctional family. Voices were needed for the shorts, so the producers decided to ask Castellaneta and fellow cast member Julie Kavner to voice Homer and Marge Simpson respectively, rather than hire more actors. Homer’s voice began as a loose impression of Walter Matthau, but Castellaneta could not “get enough power behind that voice” and could not sustain his Matthau impression for the nine- to ten-hour long recording sessions.
He tried to find something easier, so he “dropped the voice down”, and developed it into a more versatile and humorous voice during the second and third season of the half-hour show. Castellaneta’s normal speaking voice has no similarity to Homer’s. To perform Homer’s voice, Castellaneta lowers his chin to his chest, and is said to “let his IQ go.”
Castellaneta also provides the voices for numerous other characters, including Grampa Simpson, Barney Gumble, Krusty the Clown, Groundskeeper Willie, Mayor Quimby, Hans Moleman, Sideshow Mel, Itchy, Kodos, Arnie Pye, the Squeaky Voiced Teen and Gil Gunderson.
Castellaneta has won several awards for voicing Homer, including four Primetime Emmy Awards for “Outstanding Voice-Over Performance”. In 1993, Castellaneta was given a special Annie Award, “Outstanding Individual Achievement in the Field of Animation”, for his work as Homer on The Simpsons.
Source: WIKI
by Vince Chiarelli | Oct 31, 2020 | Blog, Comedy, Film, Television
Italian American comedian Louis Francis Cristillo was born on March 6, 1906, in Paterson, New Jersey. Growing up, Lou was a gifted athlete and played a number of sports in high school, but his main pasion was acting. Lou grew up admiring silent films and actors, especially the work of Charlie Chaplin. When he was 21, he moved to Hollywood and began to work as a stuntman where he adopted the professional name “Costello” after famed silent film actress Helene Costello. His career was short lived as he sustained an injury that prevented him from continuing to work as a stunt person. Lou decided to move to New York City and joined the vaudeville circuit performing as a comedian.
It was on one of those circuits that Lou met a fellow comedian named Bud Abbott. The two joined forces and changed the face of comedy forever. The comedy team’s career began to take off in 1942 with their radio program The Abbott and Costello Show. They made the move to film and television and continued to perform in over 50 television episodes and 36 films. In 1956, the two decided to end their work relationship. Lou hoped to broaden his film roles and worked in more dramatic projects. On March 3, 1959, he passed away from a heart attack. Lou Costello’s comedic style lives on today with adults and children alike debating who, exactly, is on first.
SOURCES: ABBOTT & COSTELLO FAN CLUB, BIOGRAPHY.COM, ENCYCLOPÆDIA BRITANNICA, OSIA
by Vince Chiarelli | Oct 29, 2020 | Blog, Comedy, Film, Musicians, Television
Antonio Salvatore Iadanza (Tony Danza) was born in 1951 in Brooklyn, New York, to parents Anne Cammisa and Matty Anthony Iadanza. His mother was a bookkeeper and his father worked as a waste collector in Brooklyn. Danza’s father was of Italian ancestry and Danza’s mother was an immigrant from the town of Campobello di Mazara in the Sicilian province of Trapani. Danza attended Malverne Senior High School, graduating in 1968. He earned a bachelor’s degree in history in 1972 from the University of Dubuque, which he attended on a wrestling scholarship.
Danza was a professional boxer with a record of 9–3 (9 knockouts, 7 in the first round), with all but one of his fights, wins and losses, ending in a knockout, including three technical knockouts.
Shortly after his college graduation from the University of Dubuque, Danza was discovered by a producer at a boxing gymnasium in New York. He then earned a spot on the television show Taxi, playing a cab driver and part-time boxer Tony Banta, and later starred on Who’s the Boss?, in which he portrayed a former baseball player, housekeeper, and single father Tony Micelli. For his contribution to the television industry, in 1988, Danza was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Danza also plays the role of a baseball player in Angels in the Outfield (1994).
Danza also starred in the short-lived sitcoms Hudson Street (1995) and The Tony Danza Show (1997), not to be confused with his 2004–2006 talk show, The Tony Danza Show. He had a role in the TV drama Family Law from 2000 until 2002.
He was nominated for an Emmy Award for a guest-starring 1998 role in the TV series The Practice. His movie debut was in the comedy The Hollywood Knights (1980), which was followed by Going Ape! (1981). He received critical acclaim for his performance in the 1999 Broadway revival of the Eugene O’Neill play The Iceman Cometh. In 2002, Danza released his debut album The House I Live In as a 1950s-style crooner.
He starred on Broadway as Max Bialystock in The Producers, from December 19, 2006, to March 11, 2007, and reprised his role at the Paris Las Vegas from August 13, 2007, to February 9, 2008.
In 2008, Danza and his son Marc published a cookbook, “Don’t Fill Up on the Antipasto: Tony Danza’s Father-Son Cookbook.”
Source: Wiki
by Vince Chiarelli | Oct 1, 2020 | Blog, Comedy, Television
Richard John Colangelo, better known by his stage name Richard Jeni, was born in 1957. Jeni was raised in an Italian-American Roman Catholic family in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. He graduated with honors from Hunter College, earning a bachelor’s degree in comparative politics. After graduating, Jeni went on to do public relations work, but was let go from five different firms in two years before doing an open-mic night in Brooklyn and deciding to pursue standup comedy as a career in 1982.
Jeni first received recognition through a series of Showtime stand-up specials and frequent appearances on The Tonight Show. After making his The Tonight Show debut in 1988 with Johnny Carson, Jeni would return often and later made appearances on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, with more appearances than any other stand-up comedian. In 1989, he won Comedy USA’s Best Nightclub Comedian, as voted by comedy club owners and comedians, and his first Showtime special Richard Jeni: The Boy From New York City won a CableACE Award.
Top executives at HBO picked up his first appearance on The HBO Comedy Hour in 1992, titled Richard Jeni: Platypus Man. The show was well received, and Jeni returned for two more shows, going on to receive another CableACE Award for one of his HBO specials. Jeni starred in the short-lived 1995 UPN sitcom Platypus Man and appeared in the Jim Carrey film The Mask. He appeared in The Aristocrats, Dad’s Week Off, An Alan Smithee Film: Burn Hollywood Burn, and Chasing Robert.
In 2004, Jeni was ranked #57 on Comedy Central’s list of the 100 Greatest Stand-ups of All Time. Jeni passed away on March 10, 2007.
by Vince Chiarelli | Sep 18, 2020 | Blog, Comedy, Film, Television
Dominick DeLuise was born in 1933 in Brooklyn, New York, to Italian American parents Vincenza DeStefano and John DeLuise. DeLuise graduated from Manhattan’s High School of Performing Arts and later attended Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts where he majored in biology.
In 1961, DeLuise played in the Off-Broadway musical revue Another Evening with Harry Stoons, which lasted nine previews and one performance. Another member of the cast was 19-year-old Barbra Streisand. DeLuise generally appeared in comedic parts, although an early appearance in the movie Fail-Safe as a nervous USAF technical sergeant showed a broader range. His first acting credit was as a regular performer in the television show The Entertainers in 1964. He gained early notice for his supporting turn in the Doris Day film The Glass Bottom Boat (1966).
TV producer Greg Garrison hired DeLuise to appear as a specialty act on The Dean Martin Show. DeLuise ran through his “Dominick the Great” routine, a riotous example of a magic act gone wrong. Dom’s catch phrase, with an Italian accent, was “No Applause Please, Save-a to the End.” The show went so well that DeLuise was soon a regular on Martin’s program, participating in both songs and sketches.
DeLuise was probably best known as a regular in Mel Brooks’ films. He appeared in The Twelve Chairs, Blazing Saddles, Silent Movie, History of the World, Part I, Spaceballs, and Robin Hood: Men in Tights. Brooks’ late wife, actress Anne Bancroft, directed Dom in Fatso (1980)
In the 1970s and 1980s, he often co-starred with his real-life friend Burt Reynolds, in films like The Cannonball Run and Smokey and the Bandit II. DeLuise was the host of the television show Candid Camera from 1991 to 1992. He was a mainstay of Burke’s Law, an American television series that aired on CBS in the mid 1990’s.
An avid cook and author of several books on cooking, he appeared as a regular contributor to a syndicated home improvement radio show, On The House with The Carey Brothers, giving listeners tips on culinary topics.
DeLuise died of kidney failure on May 4, 2009 at age 75. He had been battling cancer for more than a year prior to his death.
Source: Wiki
