Tony Pro song

[Ivan]

There's a clip in The Irishman where some guy is singing a song about Tony Provenzano. It's so weird that it occurred to me that it was probably taken from real life, as something that odd isn't something that Scorsese (or anyone) would just make up. It's the sort of weird little detail that you come across ocasionally in real stories about the mob. So I went looking and someone put the (apparent) real thing on YouTube (a long time before The Irishman came out, interestingly).

Movie version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_cleGw9cPDI

Apparent real version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-VrLonr0oY

Anyone know where the latter is from? Looks like it could be an old news clip, though the way it's edited feels more like a documentary or something.

[outfit guy]

Great stuff, thanks. DeBari I recall; the slaughterhouse but not Villa Romano.

[Ivan]

Great stuff, thanks.

Stephen Graham said that the part in the movie where Provenzano is talking about "the princes of industry" or whatever is taken from footage of him and I bet it's from the same source as this song.

YOU'RE MY BOOOOOOOYYYY
TONY PROOOOOOO
WE'RE ALL YOOOOOUUUUUURRRSSSSS

[newera_212]

Thanks, always wondered about that clip in the movie and if that ridiculous song was real. Kinda cool that it was.

[Ivan]

Thanks, always wondered about that clip in the movie and if that ridiculous song was real. Kinda cool that it was.

Yeah like I said above it was too fucking weird to be made up so I went looking for it.

Anyway, I did some more digging and apparently this is all from a 1961 episode of David Brinkley's Journal titled "Inside Hoffa," and that 17 minutes of it is included in the bonus features on the The Irishman Criterion Collection Blu-Ray release. The part with Tony Pro talking (about "luxurious yachts" or whatever) after the goofy song is also copied directly from real-life footage of him in the episode. Evidently the feature on the Blu-Ray is about how they copied stuff from real life exactly for the movie (such as that song). Here it is on IMDB: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14630164/

I am in the process of trying to obtain the blu-ray featurette. WATCH THIS SPACE

[Ivan]

OK I got the movie featurette but the parts of the David Brinkley show included are just the bits with Hoffa talking. The Tony Pro footage is not present. Annoyingly it actually cuts over to the next Hoffa-only segment in the middle the song that got me interested in this thing in the first place. Why the fuck didn't they just put the whole thing in (it was originally 30 minutes) instead of just part (only 17 minutes) of it? I hate the human race.

I'll have to obtain the original David Brinkley show episode in its entirety somehow. STAY TUNED