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 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 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 9, 2020 | Blog, Film, Musicians, Television
James William Ercolani, known by his stage name James Darren, was born in Philadelphia, on June 8, 1936, of Italian descent. He wanted to be an actor and studied in New York City with Stella Adler for a number of years. Darren was discovered by talent agent and casting director Joyce Selznick after he got some photographs taken by Maurice Seymour to show potential agents: Columbia signed Darren to a long term contract in July 1956. A few weeks later he was filming his first film, Rumble on the Docks (1956), a low budget “B” movie, where Darren played the lead.
Darren guest starred on an episode of TV’s The Web (“Kill and Run”) then Columbia gave him a support role in an “A” picture, the comedy Operation Mad Ball (1957), starring Jack Lemmon. Darren was third billed in the surf film, Gidget (1959), starring Sandra Dee and Cliff Robertson, playing Moondoggie. He also sang the title track. The film was a hit with teen audiences and so was the song. Darren wound up recording a string of pop hits for Colpix Records, the biggest of which was “Goodbye Cruel World” (#3 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1961). It sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc. Another sizeable hit was “Her Royal Majesty” (#6 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1962).
Darren was featured in many other films and tv shows throughout the decades.
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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
