Editor’s note: Tony Lo Bianco, born in Brooklyn in 1936, passed away on June 11, 2024, at the age of 87. Basil M. Russo, the national president of Italian Sons and Daughters of America (ISDA), knew Tony well and delivered the following tribute: “Tony will always be remembered, not only as a great stage and screen actor, but as a man who loved and promoted his Italian heritage, and who honored and supported our country’s veterans’ organizations. He was truly a class act in every sense of the word, and he will be greatly missed.”
By John Deike, La Nostra Voce
Tony Lo Bianco got his start on the streets of Brooklyn, teaching the mechanics of stick ball to older children and occasionally trading fists with kids down 49th Street.
It was 1946, the war was over, the economic boom had not yet arrived and within New York’s boroughs — and through most of the world — people were dusting themselves off and trading existential questions.
The answers were evasive, but the arts — film, theater and rock ‘n’ roll — would offer a reeducation in the value of self-expression and human connection.
This article first appeared in the May 2023 edition of La Nostra Voce, ISDA’s monthly newspaper that chronicles Italian American news, history, culture and traditions. Subscribe today.
By 1951, things were cooking and Lo Bianco, now 15, was lacing up his gloves across town; it would be his first Golden Gloves boxing match. He was undersized, outmatched and seeing stars by the end of the first round. Stunned, he returned to his corner only to see a bombshell blonde in the first row. She shot him a smile and the up-and-coming thespian suddenly came back to life and won the fight.
A master of first impressions was born, and in the distance, sitting among perspiring amateur fighters, was Lo Bianco’s high school drama teacher, Patricia Jacobson, who had something else in mind for his future — on a different stage entirely.
It was an eventuality that became all the more likely during his first acting competition, when he won a declamation prize for his performance of a poem about a soldier dying in a foxhole and seeing God for the first time.
“To me, everything is a lesson,” said the actor and one-time star athlete, who tried out for the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1950s. “Ms. Jacobson taught me awareness on stage. How to sit, how to move, how to pull the audience in.”
He didn’t make the MLB cut, but by 1971, he would star opposite Gene Hackman in The French Connection. The film would go on to win Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director, and critics praised Lo Bianco’s gritty performance as Sal Boca.
But it was his leading role in 1970’s The Honeymoon Killers, now a cult classic, that would set the stage for such opportunities.
“For Honeymoon Killers, they wanted to cast a guy with a Spanish accent. I’m Italian American, but I took on a Spanish accent and landed the role. Everybody thought it was genuine, then they heard my real voice one day on set, they couldn’t believe it.”
On TV, Lo Bianco kept making faces and starred as the undefeated heavyweight champ Rocky Marciano in Marciano, and again in the remake, The Rocky Marciano Story with George C. Scott and Jon Favreau. He appeared in the mini-series Marco Polo; Franco Zeffirelli’s Jesus of Nazareth with Lawrence Olivier and Anthony Quinn; he co-starred in La Romana with Gina Lollobrigeda and in The Last Tenant with legendary acting teacher Lee Strasberg. He has appeared in episodes of Law & Order and Murder, She Wrote.
In one memorable encounter, the actor bumped into Frank Sinatra and his wife Nancy at a club in New York City.
“We talked the whole night, about everything. The business, growing up, family. Sinatra put his arm around me at one point and asked when he and I were going to work together. Just hearing those words, oh can you imagine it?”
On stage, following his performance as Eddie Carbone in Arthur Miller’s A View from the Bridge on Broadway, he was nominated for a Tony Award for Best Actor. Lo Bianco also co-founded the Triangle Theater and served as artistic director. In recent years, he won over critics for his part as Fiorello La Guardia in the one-man show The Little Flower.
The actor’s latest role as a bristling Italian American patriarch in Somewhere in Queens, which was released in theaters on April 21 and includes comedian Sebastian Maniscalco, follows a homespun father (Ray Romano) who’s trying to guide his teenage son through his formative years.
The film is Romano’s directorial debut and is receiving high marks from critics (the movie has earned a 90 percent on Rotten Tomatoes).
Moving forward, Lo Bianco is in the process of writing, and plans to develop a new project based on his younger years. Also, he and his wife, Alyse, are executive producers of a movie based on Jerome Corsi’s novel, The Shroud Codex, proving the authenticity of the Shroud of Turin.
“I’ve worn a lot of faces, and to me, acting was always about human connection — it’s the only thing that matters.”
Wise words from an artist who has seen it all.
