The Italians in Show Biz

That’s Jimmy Durante — of course, I’m going to give him pride of place among Italian Americans in show business. He’s kind of the “Adam” of it all, a musician, a singer, a comedian, an actor, an all around entertainer. It’s Columbus Day as a I write this and I realized that I’m way overdue for an omnibus post here on Italians in American show biz. Over a dozen years ago I did a post on the “Italians of Vaudeville”, but it was a little anemic. The big wave of Italian immigration came after the “first wave” Germans and the Irish, and, in contrast with the “second wave” (largely Jewish) Eastern Europeans it took them a couple of generations to get a foothold. They didn’t start to really make a mark until the vaudeville period was over. By now though this blog has expanded way beyond a focus on vaudeville per se to cover all of show business, so we present you with this updated tribute.

The roots of course go back to the old country. The origin of much of western clowning and comedy tradition lies in the Italian commedia dell’arte. For a little squib on varieta, the all-Italian American vaudeville, go here.

Italian circus brought American vaudeville countless acrobats . The annals of vaudeville are chock full with acrobats and magicians with Italianate names. Some were real. But the appeal was so great, many artists would fake an Italian name. (And, like every other ethnic group, Italians were the subject of comic ethnic stereotype. The most famous purveyor of what might be called “Italian face” was Chico Marx).

Two of the most important vaudeville impresarios Tony Pastor (the Father of Vaudeville!) and Sylvester Poli, were Italian Americans. Important Italian stars from the vaudeville period included  Jimmy Durante, Rudolph Valentino, Jimmy Savo, Nick Lucas, Rose Marie (though just a tot), Bernardo de Pace, the Ponselle Sisters, Karyl Norman, Miss Patricola, Leopoldo Fregoli, Tess Gardella, the Great Chefalo, Enrico Rastelli, rival accordion players Guido Deiro and Pietro Frosini, Slydini the Magician, Ragtime Al, the Roma Brothers, the Mosconi Brothers and Galetti’s Monkeys, et al.

Others like Lou Costello and his brother-in law Joe Kirk,Robert Alda, Joey Faye and Ann Corio came from burlesque. A shout-out to some notable Italian Little People: Billy Barty, Felix Sitta (Cousin Itt from The Addams Family), and Little Angie Rossitto.

Pretty obscure now, a lot of them, right? The big wave seems to come with radio and the big band band era, all those suave crooners like Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Tony Bennett, Perry Como, Al Martino, Russ Columbo, Duke Mitchell, the other Tony Pastor, and Vic Damone. The swing era also brought figures like Louis Prima and Ted Fio Rita, and the DeMarco Sisters. The world of boxing brought Primo Carnera, Rocky Graziano, and Jake La Motta into show business; from wrestling came Lenny Montana.

The rock era brought a second generation of Italian American singers to make a second generation of bobby soxers scream: Dion,Fabian, Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons,Bobby Rydell, Bobby Darin, James Darren, Johnny Rivers. And of course Frankie Avalon and Annette Funicello, and Connie Francis. And Joey Dee and the Starliters of the “Peppermint Twist”! As part of a second wave of the second wave, there’s people like Springsteen and Little Steven Van Zandt (both half Italian) and Joe Pesci and Frank Vincent, who started out as musicians and wound up actors.

Which of course is the segue to the film people who made a huge cultural imprint starting in the 1970s: directors like Martin Scorsese, Francis Ford Coppola, and Brian Da Palma, actors like Robert de Niro and Al Pacino, pop culture phenoms like Sylvester Stallone, John Travolta, the fictional Fonzie, and his creator, half Italian Garry Marshall, whose sister Penny played Laverne de Fazio. The entire casts of those Scorsese and Coppola movies and the entire cast ofThe Sopranos.

We skipped over some interesting mid-century figures: the unspeakably great Don Ameche, the half Italian Liberace, Kay Ballard, lots of comedy people like Dom Deluise, Ruth Buzzi, Pat Cooper,Guy Marks, Pete Barbutti…and the man who encompasses all of the above, Uncle Floyd Vivino.

In more recent times…Madonna, and Lady Gaga, who takes us back to my old boss Tony Bennett, not to mention, my other old boss the great Angie Pontani “The Italian Stallionette” (I was honored to direct her Burlesque-a-pades show in 2012 and 2013).

For about a hundred more I haven’t listed, see the Italian section of Travalanche here. Yep! Just like the Bronx, I have an Italian section!