Nick Castle, Père and Fils

Horror fans undoubtedly know the name Nick Castle (b. 1947). He was the original Michael Myers in John Carpenter’s Halloween (1978), and reprised the role in cameos in the three films of the recent reboot. He also wrote and appeared in Escape from New York (1981), and directed such films as The Last Starfighter (1984), Dennis the Menace (1993), Major Payne (1994), and the Ellen DeGeneres vehicle Mr. Wrong (1996).

Of particular interest to our readers and an (apparent) anomaly in his body of work is the fact that Castle wrote and directed the 1989 movie Tap with Gregory Hines, Sammy Davis Jr (in his last film role), Savion Glover, and cameos by Bunny Briggs, Arthur Duncan, Sandman Sims, Steve Condos,Harold Nicholas, and Jimmy Slyde.

It turns out that this seeming outlier in Castle’s career wasn’t such at all, but a labor of love and tribute to his father, Hollywood dance director Nick Castle (Nicholas John Casaccio, 1910-1968), pictured above. The first Nick Castle was from Brooklyn, and had worked in vaudeville prior to beginning his career in Hollywood in the 1930s. His professional name would seem to be in tribute to Vernon and Irene Castle, and was chosen because his own surname means “dilapidated house” in Italian. Castle’s nearly 100 screen credits include several Shirley Temple movies, the bio-pic Swanee River (1939), Down Argentine Way (1939), Abbott and Costello’sBuck Privates (1941), Hellzapoppin’(1941), Ball of Fire (1941), Stormy Weather (1943), Show Business (1944), Earl Carroll Sketchbook (1946), Summer Stock (1950), I Dream of Jeannie (1952), White Christmas (1954), The Seven Little Foys (1955), Pocketful of Miracles (1961), the 1962 version of State Fair, and several Jerry Lewis film and television projects both with and without Dean Martin. He was working on Lewis’s TV show at the time of his death by heart attack in 1968.

For more on show business history, pleaseconsult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous.