Mobsters turned actors

[furiofromnaples]

Giorgio Castellani aka Giuseppe Greco,was the son of Michele Greco aka the Pope a high ranking boss of Cosa Nostra,actor in Crema, cioccolata e... paprika and productor with the father money.

https://www.pastemagazine.com/movies/10 ... e-sopranos

Michael Squicciarini, The Sopranos

Only the most studious Sopranos viewers will recognize Michael “Big Mike” Squicciarini, who briefly played low-level enforcer “Big Frank” Cippolina in the show’s second season. The 6-foot-5, 305-pound actor, who died of natural causes in 2001, was determined to hit it big on the HBO mob drama: “Just give me one year on that show—give me nine or 10 episodes—and I’ll be a household name,” Squicciarini, also known as “Scuch,” told the New York Observer. But Scuch, a former debt collector for the DeCavalcante family—the New Jersey mob crew upon which The Sopranos’ DiMeo family is loosely based—who had spent years in prison behind multiple aggravated assault charges, also had a back-up plan, one that would prove deadly. “Let me put it this way,” Squicciarini told the Observer. “If the movie business doesn’t work out, I always got something to fall back on. I got my mask and gun at home.” True to his word, Squicciarini never quite put his mobster past behind him.

In 2002, the actor was posthumously implicated in a cold-blooded gangland execution that had taken place 10 years prior. According to documents filed by Manhattan District Attorney John Hillebrecht (via The Guardian), Squicciarini and others lured a rival drug dealer named Ralph Hernandez into a Brooklyn nightclub owned by DeCavalcante capo Joseph “Joe Pitts” Conigliaro. Conigliaro, who was wheelchair-bound due to a paralyzing wound sustained in a prior shootout, pulled a piece on Hernandez and shot him in the forehead. The capo was then wheeled over to the dying drug dealer, whom he shot thrice more in the head. Conigliaro’s henchmen rolled Hernandez’s body up in a carpet, dumped it in an abandoned lot nearby and returned to clean the blood-stained nightclub floor. One of these men was likely Squicciarini, though his exact role in the killing is uncertain. Scuch was linked to the crime by sources who knew his nickname, and was ultimately implicated by witnesses who, in an absurd twist of fate, recognized him in a Sopranos clips shown to them by investigators. Bada bing!

Alex Rocco, The Godfather

The Godfather was Alex Rocco’s big break, and as bespectacled Las Vegas big shot Moe Greene, he made his relatively small role count. Lines like “I made my bones when you were going out with cheerleaders!” made Moe a memorable character in a film full of them. Rocco’s character’s unforgettable death during the film’s climactic christening montage even spawned a gangster film trope all its own: the “Moe Greene Special.” And though the recently deceased Rocco, born Alexander F. Petricone Jr., could not have claimed the criminal underworld clout of, say, a Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, upon whom Moe Greene is said to have been based, he did make a few mobster bones of his own. The Cambridge, Mass., native had a history with Boston’s notorious Winter Hill Gang, the predominantly Irish-American organized crime confederation that lists such infamous gangsters as James “Whitey” Bulger (portrayed by Johnny Depp in Scott Cooper’s Black Mass) among its members.

In 1961, a young Rocco was arrested in connection to the murder of Bernard “Bernie” McLaughlin, a formidable Irish gang leader from Boston’s Charlestown neighborhood. A witness told authorities that Winter Hill Gang boss James “Buddy” McLean shot McLaughlin down in broad daylight while Rocco acted as the getaway driver. Both men were arrested on suspicion of murder, but a grand jury would decline to indict them. Four years later, McLean was murdered, a casualty of the Winter Hill Gang’s ongoing war with McLaughlin’s gang. Meanwhile, while Rocco was serving jail time for his part in a brawl in a Somerville diner, his wife borrowed new Winter Hill Gang leader Howard T. Winter’s car, somehow escaping injury when a bomb planted in the vehicle exploded. Rocco and his wife divorced, and he left Boston—and his life of crime—behind. “I had to get out of the Boston area, so I flipped a coin and said, ‘Heads Miami, tails California,’” Rocco told the Boston Globe. “I was in my mid-20s and came out here with no training. Acting wasn’t even in my mind.”


10. Tony Sirico,Goodfellas, The Sopranos

Tony Sirico first tasted the big time with small roles in a pair of gangster classics before rocketing to fame as The Sopranos fan favorite Paul “Paulie Walnuts” Gualtieri. Stop me if you’ve heard this one: it’s difficult to tell the factual man from the fictional one, as Sirico’s rap sheet is nearly as extensive as his IMDb page. But judging by a 1990 LA Times profile, Sirico, born and raised in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, was very much a product of his environment. “Where I grew up, every guy was trying to prove himself. You either had to have a tattoo or a bullet hole. I had both,” a grinning Sirico told the Times. Before becoming an actor, he was arrested 28 times, first for stealing nickels from a newsstand at the tender age of seven. Sirico went on to become a notorious stick-up artist, getting pinched time and time again, and serving two prison terms on weapons and armed robbery charges. But all of those run-ins with the law were essentially just auditions, to hear him tell it: “I got 28 arrests and only two convictions, so you gotta admit I have a pretty good acting record,” Sirico boasts. It was during his second stretch inside, while watching a group of ex-con performers, that he decided to give acting a shot: “I watched ’em and I thought, ‘I can do that.’”

It was Sirico’s extensive finger-on-trigger experience that ultimately made him a success as a silver screen gangster. During his armed robbery days, Sirico was a fast-rising associate of the Colombo family, serving under notorious boss Carmine “Junior” Persico, per Cosa Nostra News. (Incidentally, Sirico’s wiseguy nickname was also Junior.) The Sopranos even makes reference to Sirico’s pinstriped past—in “The Blue Comet,” the series’ penultimate episode, Paulie Walnuts recalls, “I lived through the seventies by the skin of my nuts when the Colombos were goin’ at it.” And it’s rumored that Sirico agreed to play Paulie only with the assurance that his character would never become an informant. “Listen, Junior was a genuine tough guy,” says James Caan, a long-standing acquaintance of Sirico’s who ran in some of the same organized-crime circles. “But in a funny way, now that he’s straight, he can behave like a wiseguy. He’s been able to romanticize his past, throw in a few bangles and sparkles and use it as an actor. What you see is really him—he just adds a little pepper, a little cayenne, to spice it up.” Fellow Colombo associate Caan’s words ring true: Paulie Walnuts is nothing if not a fiery, unforgettable, authentic character. “I feel good about what I’ve accomplished,” Sirico says. “I came from another world—and now I’m an actor.”

[JakeTheSnake630]

What about Donnie Shacks in Night at The Golden Eagle

[PolackTony]

Michael Spilotro (whatever happened there) had some acting gigs. He appeared as an FBI agent on an episode of Magnum PI, and had a part in a made-for-TV movie "Will: The Autobiography of G. Gordon Liddy". Spilotro got his break because he was old buddies with actor Robert Conrad from back when they were kids in Chicago.

[Villain]

Michael Spilotro (whatever happened there) had some acting gigs. He appeared as an FBI agent on an episode of Magnum PI, and had a part in a made-for-TV movie "Will: The Autobiography of G. Gordon Liddy". Spilotro got his break because he was old buddies with actor Robert Conrad from back when they were kids in Chicago.

Didnt Roselli also act in or maybe directed some movie?

[JohnnyS]

Actor turned made member. Anthony Corozzo.

[Pogo The Clown]

Michael Spilotro (whatever happened there)

Whatever happened there? Whatever happened there?


I remember reading that Michael Spilotro was also in an episode of Miami Vice.could never find which one to look for him.


Pogo

[PolackTony]

Michael Spilotro (whatever happened there) had some acting gigs. He appeared as an FBI agent on an episode of Magnum PI, and had a part in a made-for-TV movie "Will: The Autobiography of G. Gordon Liddy". Spilotro got his break because he was old buddies with actor Robert Conrad from back when they were kids in Chicago.

Didnt Roselli also act in or maybe directed some movie?

Not sure. Would be cool to know. Behind the scenes somewhere I wouldn't doubt.

Though arguably Roselli was acting in his own epic movie, which came to an abrupt finish a la Tony Soprano, for most of his life.

[Villain]

Michael Spilotro (whatever happened there) had some acting gigs. He appeared as an FBI agent on an episode of Magnum PI, and had a part in a made-for-TV movie "Will: The Autobiography of G. Gordon Liddy". Spilotro got his break because he was old buddies with actor Robert Conrad from back when they were kids in Chicago.

Didnt Roselli also act in or maybe directed some movie?

Not sure. Would be cool to know. Behind the scenes somewhere I wouldn't doubt.

Though arguably Roselli was acting in his own epic movie, which came to an abrupt finish a la Tony Soprano, for most of his life.

Found this....

https://themobmuseum.org/blog/mob-fixer ... spotlight/

[PolackTony]

Michael Spilotro (whatever happened there)

Whatever happened there? Whatever happened there?


I remember reading that Michael Spilotro was also in an episode of Miami Vice.could never find which one to look for him.


Pogo

An everlasting shame is that we never got to see Spilotro acting alongside the late great Dennis Farina. Throw in Joe Mantegna, and it could've been a Chicago Dago triumvirate that would've changed popular culture as we know it lol.

Farina was former CPD and very close to the notoriously mobbed-up Bill Hanhardt (half-Sicilian himself, who grew up in the same old Near North Side "Little Sicily" area as Farina). Outfit associate turned informant Red Wemette has claimed that Farina falsified testimony to a Grand Jury alongside Hanhardt to put away Outfit-connected master burglar Peanuts Panczko (yet another example of an honest Polack being shafted by the Machine).

[PolackTony]

Michael Spilotro (whatever happened there) had some acting gigs. He appeared as an FBI agent on an episode of Magnum PI, and had a part in a made-for-TV movie "Will: The Autobiography of G. Gordon Liddy". Spilotro got his break because he was old buddies with actor Robert Conrad from back when they were kids in Chicago.

Didnt Roselli also act in or maybe directed some movie?

Not sure. Would be cool to know. Behind the scenes somewhere I wouldn't doubt.

Though arguably Roselli was acting in his own epic movie, which came to an abrupt finish a la Tony Soprano, for most of his life.

Found this....

https://themobmuseum.org/blog/mob-fixer ... spotlight/

Thanks, that's what I would've expected from him.

The Johnny Roselli saga is worthy of its own long-format series.

[Pogo The Clown]

Michael Spilotro (whatever happened there)

Whatever happened there? Whatever happened there?


I remember reading that Michael Spilotro was also in an episode of Miami Vice.could never find which one to look for him.

An everlasting shame is that we never got to see Spilotro acting alongside the late great Dennis Farina. Throw in Joe Mantegna, and it could've been a Chicago Dago triumvirate that would've changed popular culture as we know it lol.

Farina was former CPD and very close to the notoriously mobbed-up Bill Hanhardt (half-Sicilian himself, who grew up in the same old Near North Side "Little Sicily" area as Farina). Outfit associate turned informant Red Wemette has claimed that Farina falsified testimony to a Grand Jury alongside Hanhardt to put away Outfit-connected master burglar Peanuts Panczko (yet another example of an honest Polack being shafted by the Machine).

Ironically enough Farina was also in a few episodes of Miami Vice (playing a mob boss of course).


Pogo

[PolackTony]

Michael Spilotro (whatever happened there)

Whatever happened there? Whatever happened there?


I remember reading that Michael Spilotro was also in an episode of Miami Vice.could never find which one to look for him.

An everlasting shame is that we never got to see Spilotro acting alongside the late great Dennis Farina. Throw in Joe Mantegna, and it could've been a Chicago Dago triumvirate that would've changed popular culture as we know it lol.

Farina was former CPD and very close to the notoriously mobbed-up Bill Hanhardt (half-Sicilian himself, who grew up in the same old Near North Side "Little Sicily" area as Farina). Outfit associate turned informant Red Wemette has claimed that Farina falsified testimony to a Grand Jury alongside Hanhardt to put away Outfit-connected master burglar Peanuts Panczko (yet another example of an honest Polack being shafted by the Machine).

Ironically enough Farina was also in a few episodes of Miami Vice (playing a mob boss of course).


Pogo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ry0g4W0_ZI

I honestly don't know how Farina wasn't cast in Casino. He shoulda played every character lol.

If anyone ever wonders what some random Outfit guy sounded like, this clip should do the trick.

[Villain]

Michael Spilotro (whatever happened there)

Whatever happened there? Whatever happened there?


I remember reading that Michael Spilotro was also in an episode of Miami Vice.could never find which one to look for him.

An everlasting shame is that we never got to see Spilotro acting alongside the late great Dennis Farina. Throw in Joe Mantegna, and it could've been a Chicago Dago triumvirate that would've changed popular culture as we know it lol.

Farina was former CPD and very close to the notoriously mobbed-up Bill Hanhardt (half-Sicilian himself, who grew up in the same old Near North Side "Little Sicily" area as Farina). Outfit associate turned informant Red Wemette has claimed that Farina falsified testimony to a Grand Jury alongside Hanhardt to put away Outfit-connected master burglar Peanuts Panczko (yet another example of an honest Polack being shafted by the Machine).

Ironically enough Farina was also in a few episodes of Miami Vice (playing a mob boss of course).


Pogo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ry0g4W0_ZI

I honestly don't know how Farina wasn't cast in Casino. He shoulda played every character lol.

If anyone ever wonders what some random Outfit guy sounded like, this clip should do the trick.

Nice

[PolackTony]

Michael Spilotro (whatever happened there)

Whatever happened there? Whatever happened there?


I remember reading that Michael Spilotro was also in an episode of Miami Vice.could never find which one to look for him.

An everlasting shame is that we never got to see Spilotro acting alongside the late great Dennis Farina. Throw in Joe Mantegna, and it could've been a Chicago Dago triumvirate that would've changed popular culture as we know it lol.

Farina was former CPD and very close to the notoriously mobbed-up Bill Hanhardt (half-Sicilian himself, who grew up in the same old Near North Side "Little Sicily" area as Farina). Outfit associate turned informant Red Wemette has claimed that Farina falsified testimony to a Grand Jury alongside Hanhardt to put away Outfit-connected master burglar Peanuts Panczko (yet another example of an honest Polack being shafted by the Machine).

Ironically enough Farina was also in a few episodes of Miami Vice (playing a mob boss of course).


Pogo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ry0g4W0_ZI

I honestly don't know how Farina wasn't cast in Casino. He shoulda played every character lol.

If anyone ever wonders what some random Outfit guy sounded like, this clip should do the trick.

Nice

Dennis Farina was Chicago's answer to Frank Vincent lol.

[Villain]

Michael Spilotro (whatever happened there)

Whatever happened there? Whatever happened there?


I remember reading that Michael Spilotro was also in an episode of Miami Vice.could never find which one to look for him.

An everlasting shame is that we never got to see Spilotro acting alongside the late great Dennis Farina. Throw in Joe Mantegna, and it could've been a Chicago Dago triumvirate that would've changed popular culture as we know it lol.

Farina was former CPD and very close to the notoriously mobbed-up Bill Hanhardt (half-Sicilian himself, who grew up in the same old Near North Side "Little Sicily" area as Farina). Outfit associate turned informant Red Wemette has claimed that Farina falsified testimony to a Grand Jury alongside Hanhardt to put away Outfit-connected master burglar Peanuts Panczko (yet another example of an honest Polack being shafted by the Machine).

Ironically enough Farina was also in a few episodes of Miami Vice (playing a mob boss of course).


Pogo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ry0g4W0_ZI

I honestly don't know how Farina wasn't cast in Casino. He shoulda played every character lol.

If anyone ever wonders what some random Outfit guy sounded like, this clip should do the trick.

Nice

Dennis Farina was Chicago's answer to Frank Vincent lol.

Lol wasnt there a weapon charge or something back in the days?