Sunday, Sep 7, 2008
Where did your people come from?
They came from the Sorrento, Naples area, Southern Italy. My dad was born here, though; he's an American. He was the first generation. Yeah, grandpa came up from Italy, grandma came up from Italy, both sides came up in 1903. I was the first one to go to college in my family.
What part of New York did you grow up in?
In the Bronx. In the Italian, Parker Avenue section. The Little Italy of the Bronx.
What changed things for you in the '60s?
By 1960, I was in Brooklyn College. Wilson Lehr, in the theater faculty, was a wonderful teacher and support for me. He just died recently. Both he and Skipper Davidson [the father of Gordon Davidson, the artistic director of the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles] were mentors and encouraged me. I was 29 years old. That's when I really made the decision to be an actor. And still, I got scared, and I married a girl from Brooklyn College -- she was 18 or 19, and interested in the theater -- and then we had three kids. So I always hedged my bets, you know? It's a great story, isn't it? Because acting was that scary, you needed help, you know? We had three beautiful children and they're all grown up now. And even though our marriage didn't work out we're still friends.
Wilson Lehr offered me the lead in "The Male Animal." Through the American Educational Theater Association we went to Greenland and to air force and naval bases in and around North America. That was really exciting. Then I realized that acting was my calling. After that, it became a question of getting more experience. I began teaching school for a couple of years, but the calling was always there, always there. Eventually it split up my marriage, but I had to follow it.
So you're a 29 or 30-year-old would-be actor in New York; how did you keep the faith?
My friends would say, "You should keep it up, you're so good." People from summer stock would ask, "Why'd you give it up? You're a good actor." I tried to do both things -- teach and act. It was hard. When I did teach I was a good teacher. I taught in Brooklyn. And I found the experience very eye-opening. I couldn't follow a lesson plan; I tried to teach through dramatic arts. I took supposedly the slowest class in the fifth grade, and they put on a play, and they were brilliant. They got a standing ovation from all the other students, you can imagine. But in 1963 I was ahead of the times. It was only about two months after that that I left.
Did you then do small theater work in New York?
I was doing off-Broadway. I studied at the Herbert Berghof Studio for about six months and learned a lot. And I knocked on George C. Scott's dressing room door one time at the Circle in the Square, and his wonderful wife, Colleen Dewhurst, opened the door and she asked, "What do you want?" And I said, "I'd like to see Mr. Scott" and I walked in and saw George. We had been working in a bank together a couple of years before.
You're kidding.
No, we worked at a late night bank -- all night in a bank together, so he knew who I was. "C'mon in Dominic, c'mon in." You know, he got me on the TV show "East Side/West Side" in about a week. Got me a job on there. He was a great man. A nice man, George. I never forgot that. So that gave me a little TV credit. That was my first taste of filmmaking. But it wasn't 'til "Godfather Part II," in 1973, that I really got into films.
When I talked to the casting director of that film, Fred Roos, he said that the "Godfather" films marked the first time anyone like Coppola had made the decision that when they were doing an Italian gangster movie they were going to cast Italians. Had it been a drawback at all, before that, to be identified as an Italian-American from New York?
No. I played all kinds of roles, and I also had a musical career. I did "The Fantasticks," "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum," a lot of musicals. And later on, I did Shakespeare. So the ethnic stuff didn't enter that much into the theater. After "The Godfather," of course, I did "Kojak," and other TV shows. But during the '60s it was really off-Broadway. We did a lot of classic theater. It was low pay, but I was learning my craft, really learning my craft.
It seems as if David Chase went about casting "The Sopranos" in the same way Coppola and Roos went about casting the "Godfather" movies, going for New York actors, a lot of whom had backgrounds they could draw on for the characters.
Yes, it's very, very, very similar. I'm sure there were mob figures in our neighborhood when I was growing up. My father used to point out people to me sometimes in the papers. And we'd see guys with hats and he'd say "Those guys are racketeers." When I saw the movie "A Bronx Tale," I was saying "That's me when I was a kid." My father wasn't a bus driver, but he took his kid around and he let me make up my own mind about what life is all about.
And when you started to act for the camera, did you enjoy it? Or did you have trouble adjusting to it?
I did learn something, which was very interesting. When I did "Godfather II" with Pacino, my first scene as Johnny Ola was to come in, introduce myself, sit down and have a talk with Michael Corleone. And I had my speech, of course, all worked out. I knew it backwards and forwards, but as we're shooting the scene, Coppola says, "Oh, cut for a second, Dominic. I want you to change the names...you know, to change the names of the lawyers in that scene." I said, "OK." We take it again, and of course, when we I got to the lawyers' names, I don't know 'em. So he says, "Cut. That's all right, Dom. Let's take it again. Oh, by the way" he says, "change it from Sidney to Allan." So, I don't know what he's doing, right? Pacino's looking at me, staring at me. So, I'm going through, and of course, I went up again.
Get Salon in your mailbox!