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 27, 2020 | Blog, Film, Television
Anna Maria Louisa Italiano was born in 1931 in the Bronx, New York. She was the middle of three daughters of parents Mildred DiNapoli, a telephone operator, and Michael G. Italiano a dress pattern maker.
Her parents were both children of Italian immigrants. In an interview, she stated that her family was originally from Muro Lucano, in the province of Potenza. After appearing in a number of live television dramas under the name Anne Marno, she was told to change her surname, as it was “too ethnic for movies”; she chose Bancroft “because it sounded dignified.”
In 1957, Bancroft was directed by Jacques Tourneur in a David Goodis adaptation, Nightfall. In 1958, she made her Broadway debut as lovelorn, Bronx-accented Gittel Mosca opposite Henry Fonda in William Gibson’s two-character play Two for the Seesaw. For this role, she won the Tony Award for Best Performance by a Featured Actress in a Play.
Bancroft won the Tony Award again in 1960, when she played Annie Sullivan, the young woman who teaches the child Helen Keller to communicate in The Miracle Worker. She appeared in the 1962 film version of the play and won the 1962 Academy Award for Best Actress, with Patty Duke repeating her own success as Keller alongside Bancroft.
Bancroft was widely known for her role as Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate (1967), for which she received a third Academy Award nomination. In the film, she played an unhappily married woman who seduces the son of her husband’s business partner, the much younger recent college graduate played by Dustin Hoffman.
Bancroft is one of ten actors to have won both an Academy Award and a Tony Award for the same role (as Annie Sullivan in The Miracle Worker), and one of very few entertainers to win an Oscar, an Emmy and a Tony award. This rare achievement is also known as the Triple Crown of Acting. She followed that success with a second television special, Annie and the Hoods (1974), which was telecast on ABC and featured her husband Mel Brooks as a guest star. She received a fourth Academy Award nomination for Best Actress in 1977 for her performance in The Turning Point (1977) opposite Shirley MacLaine, and a fifth nomination for Best Actress in 1985 for her performance in Agnes of God (1985) opposite Jane Fonda.
Bancroft made her debut as a screenwriter and director in Fatso (1980), in which she starred with fellow Italian American Dom DeLuise.
In the 1990s and the first half of the 2000s, Bancroft took supporting roles in a number of films in which she co-starred with major film stars—including Honeymoon in Vegas (1992) with Nicolas Cage, Love Potion No. 9 (1992) with Sandra Bullock, Malice (1993) with Nicole Kidman, Point of No Return (1993) with Bridget Fonda, Home for the Holidays (1995) and Heartbreakers (2001) with Jennifer Love Hewitt, Sigourney Weaver and Gene Hackman. She also lent her voice to the animated film Antz (1998).
Bancroft’s final appearance was as herself in a 2004 episode of HBO’s Curb Your Enthusiasm. Her last project was the animated feature film Delgo, released posthumously in 2008. The film was dedicated to her. Bancroft received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her work in television.
Anne Bancroft died of uterine cancer at age 73 on June 6, 2005 in Manhattan.
Source: Wiki
by Vince Chiarelli | Oct 23, 2020 | Blog, Film, Television
Alphonso Joseph D’Abruzzo was born in 1936 in the Bronx, New York City. Alda spent his childhood with his parents travelling around the United States in support of his father’s job as a performer in burlesque theatres. His Italian father Robert Alda (born Alfonso Giuseppe Giovanni Roberto D’Abruzzo) was an actor and singer. His adopted surname, “Alda”, is a portmanteau of ALfonso and D’Abruzzo.
When Alda was seven years old, he contracted polio. To combat the disease, his parents administered a painful treatment regimen developed by Sister Elizabeth Kenny, consisting of applying hot woolen blankets to his limbs and stretching his muscles. In 1956, he received his Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Fordham University in the Bronx, where he was a student staff member of its FM radio station, WFUV.
During Alda’s junior year, he studied in Paris, acted in a play in Rome, and performed with his father on television in Amsterdam. In college, he was a member of the ROTC, and after graduation, he served for a year at Fort Benning, and then six months in the United States Army Reserve on a tour of duty in Korea.
In 1966, he starred in the musical The Apple Tree on Broadway, also starring Barbara Harris; he was nominated for the Tony Award as Best Actor in a Musical for that role. In early 1972, Alda auditioned for and was selected to play the role of Hawkeye Pierce in the TV adaptation of the 1970 film MASH. He was nominated for 21 Emmy Awards, and won five. He took part in writing 19 episodes, including the 1983 2 1⁄2-hour series finale “Goodbye, Farewell and Amen”, which was also the 32nd episode he directed. It remains the single most-watched episode of any American broadcast network television series. Alda was the only series regular to appear in all 256 episodes.
Alda commuted from Los Angeles to his home in New Jersey every weekend for 11 years while starring in M*A*S*H. His wife and daughters lived in New Jersey and he did not want to move his family to Los Angeles, especially because he did not know how long the show would last. Alda’s father, Robert Alda, and half-brother Antony Alda appeared together in an episode of M*A*S*H, “Lend a Hand”, during season eight. In 1996, Alda was ranked 41st on TV Guide’s 50 Greatest TV Stars of All Time.
During M*A*S*H’s run and continuing through the 1980s, Alda embarked on a successful career as a writer and director, with the ensemble dramedy, The Four Seasons being perhaps his most notable hit. Betsy’s Wedding is his last directing credit to date. After M*A*S*H, Alda took on a series of roles that either parodied or directly contradicted his “nice guy” image.
Beginning in 2004, Alda was a regular cast member on the NBC program The West Wing, portraying California U.S. Senator and presidential candidate Arnold Vinick, until the show’s conclusion in May 2006. In August 2006, Alda won an Emmy for his portrayal of Vinick in the final season of The West Wing. Alda appeared in a total of 28 episodes during the show’s sixth and seventh seasons.
In 2004, Alda portrayed Maine Senator Owen Brewster in Martin Scorsese’s Academy Award-winning film The Aviator, in which he co-starred with Leonardo DiCaprio. Alda received his first Academy Award nomination for this role in 2005.
In 2018, Alda began portraying psychiatrist Dr. Arthur Amiot in Season 6 of Showtime’s Ray Donovan.
Alda has three daughters: Eve, Elizabeth, and Beatrice. Two of his eight grandchildren are aspiring actors. In an intimate interview, Alda revealed that his wife sometimes will call him “Fonzi” in reference to his birth name “Alphonso”. The Aldas have been long-time residents of Leonia, New Jersey. On July 31, 2018, he appeared on CBS This Morning and announced he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease three years prior.
Source: Wiki
by Vince Chiarelli | Oct 17, 2020 | Blog, Television
Joy Mangano was born in 1956, in East Meadow, New York, to Italian-American parents. Mangano began inventing at an early age when, as a teenager working at an animal hospital in Huntington, New York, on Long Island, she dreamed up a fluorescent flea collar to keep pets safe. A product with a similar design was released the next year by Hartz Mountain. After graduating from Pace University with a degree in business administration in 1978, she held a variety of jobs, including waitress and airline reservations manager while raising her three children as a divorced mother.
In 1990 after growing frustrated with ordinary mops, Mangano developed her first invention, the Miracle Mop, a self-wringing plastic mop with a head made from a continuous loop of 300 feet of cotton that can be easily wrung out without getting the user’s hands wet. With her own savings and investments from family and friends, she made a prototype and manufactured 1000 units.
After selling the mop at trade shows and in local stores on Long Island, she sold 1,000 units on consignment to QVC. It sold modestly at first, but once QVC allowed Mangano to go on-air to sell it herself, she sold 18,000 mops in less than a half hour. Mangano incorporated her business as Arma Products, later renaming it Ingenious Designs. She sold Ingenious Designs to USA Networks, the parent company of the Home Shopping Network, in 1999. By the year 2000, the company was selling $10 million worth of Miracle Mops per year.
Mangano is a named inventor of 71 patent families and 126 distinct patent publications for her inventions. Some of her other inventions include Huggable Hangers, Forever Fragrant, Shades Readers, Clothes It All Luggage System, and many more.
Soon after she began appearing on QVC in 1992, Mangano began spending 120 hours a year on air. She appeared regularly on HSN and is considered the network’s most successful purveyor, with annual sales of more than $150 million. Her hourly sales regularly top $1 million. Mangano has also appeared in shorter commercials and infomercials for her company’s products. In 2005, Mangano was a judge on the cable reality show Made in the USA.
Mangano released her autobiography, Inventing Joy, in 2017. The 2015 film Joy was loosely based on her life. Jennifer Lawrence was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of Mangano.
Source: Wiki
by Vince Chiarelli | Oct 15, 2020 | Blog, Film, Television
Carole Penny Marshall was born in the Bronx, New York City, New York, on October 15, 1943, to Marjorie and Anthony “Tony” Masciarelli, later Anthony Wallace Marshall, a director of industrial films and later a producer. Her father was of Italian descent, his family having come from Abruzzo. Marshall’s father changed his last name from Masciarelli to Marshall.
Marshall first appeared on a television commercial for Head and Shoulders beautifying shampoo. In 1968, Marshall accepted an offer from her brother, Garry Marshall, to appear in a movie he had written and was producing, called How Sweet It Is. She landed another small role in the film The Savage Seven, as well as a guest appearance on the hit television series That Girl, starring Marlo Thomas.
In 1970, Garry Marshall became the executive producer of the television series The Odd Couple. The following year, Marshall was added to the permanent cast to play a secretary, Myrna, and held the role for four years.
Garry Marshall, creator and then part-time writer for Happy Days, cast Marshall and Cindy Williams to guest appear on an episode of the show. The installment, titled “A Date with Fonzie”, aired on November 11, 1975 and introduced the characters Laverne DeFazio and Shirley Feeney (played by Marshall and Williams, respectively). In that episode, Laverne and Shirley were a pair of wisecracking brewery workers who were dates for Fonzie (Henry Winkler) and Richie (Ron Howard). The pair were such a hit with the studio audience that Garry Marshall decided to co-create and star them in a successful spinoff, Laverne & Shirley (1976–1983).
At the encouragement of her brother, Marshall became interested in directing. While starring on Laverne and Shirley, she made her debut as a director and directed four episodes of that show as well as other TV assignments. In 1979, she directed several episodes of the short-lived sitcom Working Stiffs, starring Michael Keaton and James Belushi. She soon moved on to theatrical films, her first film being Jumpin’ Jack Flash (1986) starring Whoopi Goldberg.
Marshall directed several successful feature films from the mid-1980s onwards, including Big (1988) starring Tom Hanks (the first film directed by a woman to gross over US$100 million), Awakenings (1990) starring Robin Williams and Robert De Niro, A League of Their Own (1992) with Geena Davis, Tom Hanks, Madonna and Rosie O’Donnell, and The Preacher’s Wife (1996) starring Denzel Washington and Whitney Houston.
Marshall died in Los Angeles on December 17, 2018, at the age of 75.
Source: Wiki