by Vince Chiarelli | Dec 2, 2020 | Musicians
On July 17, 1928, Vincent Anthony Dellaglio was born in San Francisco, CA. Vince changed his last name when he was a child to match that of his adoptive father. He attended Lincoln High School and San Francisco State College. During his time in high school and college, he played a variety of gigs including weddings and dances. By the early 1950s, Vince joined jazz musician Cal Tjader’s group and his first recording with the trio was released a year later. Before the end of the decade, he was pursuing his own projects and released his own original recordings.
In 1964, film producer Lee Mendelson heard one of Vince’s singles on the radio. Lee knew the song had the right feel and sound for a project he was working on. He contacted Vince about the project, who agreed immediately. Two weeks later, Vince had written “Linus and Lucy” and finished the soundtrack for A Charlie Brown Christmas shortly after that. During his career, Vince composed the musical score for 18 Peanuts films and television specials.
Vince unexpectedly passed away on February 6, 1976. His music has inspired countless musicians, including Wynton Marsalis, David Benoit and George Winston. Vince’s score from A Charlie Brown Christmas continues to conjure feelings of the holiday for children and adults alike.
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by Vince Chiarelli | Nov 30, 2020 | Blog, Film, Television
Vince Edward Zoine was born in 1928 in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, New York, to Julia and Vincento Zoine, an Italian-American bricklayer. He and his twin brother, Anthony, were the youngest of seven children. He studied aviation mechanics at East New York Vocational High School, graduating in June 1945.
An excellent swimmer, he worked as a lifeguard at Coney Island and swam for the Flatbush Boys Club. He was a standout on his high school swim team, also playing on the school’s baseball and track teams. He studied at Ohio State University on an athletic scholarship. He was part of the university’s swim team that won the United States National Championships. After two years at Ohio State, he transferred to the University of Hawaii where he spent much time training as a swimmer for the Olympics.
Edwards studied acting at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts; his classmates included Anne Bancroft, John Cassavetes, and Grace Kelly. In 1950, he was signed to a contract by Paramount Pictures, making his film debut as Vincent Edwards in 1951’s Mister Universe. The following year he played the lead role in Hiawatha. Although he had major roles in several films, including film noirs The Killing (1956) and Murder by Contract (1958), it was not until he was featured as the title character in the highly successful Ben Casey television series that he achieved stardom. The medical drama, which he occasionally directed, ran from 1961 to 1966. As a result of the show’s success and his own popularity, Edwards released several music albums and appeared in the all-star war film The Victors in 1963.
When the Ben Casey television series ended, Edwards returned to acting in motion pictures with a major role in the 1968 war drama The Devil’s Brigade, together with films such as Hammerhead (1968), The Desperados (1969), and The Mad Bomber (1973). In 1983, he played the main protagonist, Hawk, in the sci-fi film Space Raiders. He directed a number of episodes in a variety of television series including the original Battlestar Galactica. He was also the voice of Jake Rockwell in the 1986 animated series Centurions. Twenty-two years after the series ended, Edwards returned to television as Dr. Ben Casey in a 1988 TV movie, The Return of Ben Casey. He made his last film, The Fear, in 1995. After the filming he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. During his acting career he ventured occasionally into the recording studios and there were a number of singles released in his name. Sadly, the most important one was never issued and in 1959 Ray Peterson was credited with the first version of ‘The Wonder of You’ which became an International Hit for him and Elvis Presley – however, the very first recording was made by Vince Edwards.
Edwards died of pancreatic cancer in Los Angeles, California, on March 11, 1996.
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by Vince Chiarelli | Nov 23, 2020 | Blog, Dancing
José Greco was born in Montorio nei Frentani, Italy of parents, Paolo Emilio Greco and Maria Carmela Bucci. His real name was Costanzo Greco but he later changed it to José Greco. When he was 10 years old, Greco and his family moved to New York City. He began dancing in Brooklyn with his sister Norina at a young age.
Greco made his professional dancing debut in 1937 at the Hippodrome Theatre in Manhattan. His most famous partners were La Argentinita (Encarnación López Júlvez) and, after her death, her sister Pilar López. In 1949, he formed the José Greco Dance Company, with which he toured extensively.
He also appeared in a number of films, including Sombrero (1953), Around the World in 80 Days (1956), Holiday for Lovers (1959), Ship of Fools (1965), and The Proud and the Damned (1972).
In 1951 Greco made his first appearance in the UK at the Sadler’s Wells Theatre. Later in the decade in 1954 and again in 1957 his troupe collaborated with Alfredo Antonini and members of the New York Philharmonic while performing during open air concerts at Lewisohn Stadium in New York City.
Greco received many honors and awards including being knighted by the Spanish government (Cruz Laureada del Caballero del Mérito Civil) and receiving four honorary doctorates.
José Greco started the José Greco Foundation for Hispanic Dance in 1972 and retired from the stage for the first time in 1974. He published an autobiography, Gypsy in My Soul: The Autobiography of José Greco, in 1977. He had six children, three boys and three girls. His sons José Luis and Paolo are composers; his son José Greco II is a dancer as are his three daughters, Alessandra, Carmela and Lola.
He came out of retirement in the late 1980s to form a company featuring his children. He appeared on stage for the last time in 1995, at the age of 77. Until his death he was Visiting Professor of Dance at Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.
José Greco died of heart failure in his home in Lancaster, on Dec. 31, 2000. In an obituary in the Los Angeles Times, dance critic Lewis Segal noted that Greco had been characterized as “the undisputed Spanish dance star of the ’50s and ’60s” and “the greatest of all dance stars until the advent of Rudolf Nureyev” in terms of box-office power.
by Vince Chiarelli | Nov 20, 2020 | Blog, Film, Television
Ermes Effron Borgnino was born on January 24, 1917, in Hamden, Connecticut, the son of Italian immigrants. His mother, Anna Boselli hailed from Carpi, near Modena, while his father Camillo Borgnino was a native of Ottiglio near Alessandria. Borgnine’s parents separated when he was two years old, and he then lived with his mother in Italy for about four and a half years. By 1923, his parents had reconciled, the family name was changed from Borgnino to Borgnine, and his father changed his first name to Charles. The family settled in New Haven, Connecticut, where Borgnine graduated from James Hillhouse High School. He took to sports while growing up, but showed no interest in acting.
Borgnine joined the United States Navy in October 1935, after graduation from high school.He served aboard the destroyer/minesweeper USS Lamberton and was honorably discharged from the Navy in October 1941. In January 1942, he reenlisted in the Navy after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Borgnine returned to his parents’ house in Connecticut after his Navy discharge without a job to go back to and no direction.
He took a local factory job, but was unwilling to settle down to that kind of work. His mother encouraged him to pursue a more glamorous profession and suggested to him that his personality would be well suited for the stage. He studied acting at the Randall School of Drama in Hartford, then moved to Virginia, where he became a member of the Barter Theatre in Abingdon, Virginia. In 1949, Borgnine went to New York, where he had his Broadway debut in the role of a nurse in the play Harvey. More roles on stage led him to being cast for decades as a character actor.
An appearance as the villain on TV’s Captain Video led to Borgnine’s casting in the motion picture The Whistle at Eaton Falls (1951) for Columbia Pictures. That year, Borgnine moved to Los Angeles, California, where he eventually received his big break in Columbia’s From Here to Eternity (1953), playing the sadistic Sergeant “Fatso” Judson, who beats a stockade prisoner in his charge, Angelo Maggio (played by Frank Sinatra). Borgnine built a reputation as a dependable character actor and played villains in early films, including movies such as Johnny Guitar, Vera Cruz, and Bad Day at Black Rock.
In 1955, he starred as a warmhearted butcher in Marty, the film version of the television play of the same name. He gained an Academy Award for Best Actor over Frank Sinatra, James Dean, and former Best Actor winners Spencer Tracy and James Cagney.
Borgnine’s film career flourished for the next three decades, including roles in The Flight of the Phoenix (1965), The Dirty Dozen (1967), Ice Station Zebra (1968), The Poseidon Adventure (1972), Emperor of the North (1973), Convoy (1978), The Black Hole (1979), and Escape from New York (1981).One of his most famous roles was that of Dutch, a member of The Wild Bunch in the 1969 Western classic from director Sam Peckinpah.
Borgnine died of kidney failure on July 8, 2012 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, California. He was 95 years old.
In 1994, Borgnine received the Ellis Island Medal of Honor from the National Ethnic Coalition of Organizations. In 2006 the comune of Ottiglio, Italy, his father’s birthplace, gave him honorary citizenship.
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by Vince Chiarelli | Nov 18, 2020 | Blog, Film, Television
David Henry Chase was born into a working-class Italian American family in Mount Vernon, New York. His father Henry Chase, a hardware store owner, had changed his surname from “DeCesare” to “Chase” well before his son was born. He was an only child and grew up in a small garden apartment in Clifton, New Jersey, and in North Caldwell, New Jersey.
Chase started in Hollywood as a story editor for Kolchak: The Night Stalker and then produced episodes of The Rockford Files and Northern Exposure, among other series. He also worked as a writer of 19 episodes while on The Rockford Files—a show which he worked on in various capacities for more than four years. He won several Emmy awards, including one for a television movie, Off the Minnesota Strip, the story of a runaway he scripted in 1980.
Chase worked in relative anonymity before The Sopranos debuted. Chase had been fascinated by organized crime and the mafia from an early age, witnessing such people growing up. He also was raised on classic gangster films such as The Public Enemy and the crime series The Untouchables. The series is partly inspired by the Richard Boiardo family, a prominent New Jersey organized crime family when Chase was growing up, and partly on New Jersey’s DeCavalcante family. He has mentioned American playwrights Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams as influences on the show’s writing, and Italian director Federico Fellini as an important influence on the show’s cinematic style. The series was named after high school friends of his.
Chase’s feature film debut was released on December 21, 2012. It centers on the lead singer of a teenage rock ‘n’ roll band (played by John Magaro) in 1960s New Jersey. Described as “a music-driven coming-of-age story,” the film reunites Chase with James Gandolfini (former star of Sopranos), who co-stars as Magaro’s father. Other cast members include Bella Heathcote, Christopher McDonald, Molly Price, Lisa Lampanelli, Jack Huston and Brad Garrett. Chase himself has described the film as about “a post-war, post-Depression-era parent who has given his kid every advantage that he didn’t have growing up, but now can’t help feeling jealous of the liberated, more adventurous destiny his son is able to enjoy.” Another former Sopranos cast member, Steven Van Zandt, served as music supervisor and executive producer.
After graduating from NYU in 1968, Chase moved to California and married his high school sweetheart Denise Kelly. He is the father of actress Michele DeCesare who appeared in six of The Sopranos episodes as Hunter Scangarelo.
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by Vince Chiarelli | Nov 13, 2020 | Artists, Blog
Robert William Montana was born in 1920 in Stockton, California, to Italian American parents Roberta Pandolfini and Ray Montana. Both were in show business: Roberta had been a Ziegfeld girl, and Ray performed banjo on the vaudeville circuit. As a result, Bob Montana traveled extensively as a child. He attended Haverhill High School in Haverhill, Massachusetts and graduated from Manchester High School Central in Manchester, New Hampshire.
While freelancing at True Comics and Fox Comics, Montana created an adventure strip about four teenage boys and tried to sell it without success. Montana started working for MLJ Comics (which would later be known as Archie Comics). He was asked to work up a high school style comic strip story, featuring Archie Andrews. The success of the Archie and friends story in MLJ Comics’ Pep Comics (Dec. 1941) led MLJ to assign Montana to draw the first issue of Archie (Nov. 1942). Montana was soon drawing the Archie comic strip, doing both the daily and Sunday strip, which over the next 35 years ran in over 750 newspapers
According to Jane (Donahue) Murphy, a high school classmate of Montana’s, Archie and his friends were based on people from their hometown and high school. She said Archie Andrews was based on Donahue’s cousin, Richard Heffernan; Veronica Lodge on Agatha Popoff, the daughter of the local football team’s doctor; Jughead Jones on a mischievous teen named “Skinny” Linnehan; while Miss Grundy may have been based on a high school typing and shorthand teacher named Lundstrom; however, Haverhill’s school librarian is also believed to be the model for Grundy.
Montana married Peggy Bertholet and they had four children. He died at age 54 of an apparent heart attack while cross-country skiing near his New Hampshire home.
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