Two Absent Friends - Larry Storch and Tony Sirico

Larry Storch

1923-2022

Comic actor Larry Storch died this past week, and while living to age 99 and staying in relative good health the whole time is a terrific run, the loss of Storch causes a real pang of sadness in the hearts of Classic TV Sitcom lovers everywhere.  I have long maintained that if there were a Mt, Rushmore of Sitcom Second Bananas, Larry Storch's Cpl. Randolph Agarn of "F Troop" would be on it.*  

Storch's 250 IMDB acting credits stretch back to 1951, the year that I was born, and continued through 2010, but Storch continued making personal appearances, and even Tik-Tok videos to the very end.  He started out as a nightclub comic, moved into bit parts in movies, TV shows, and appearances on television variety shows (remember those?).  He hit the jackpot, though, when cast as Forrest Tucker's Sgt. O'Rourke's sidekick in "F Troop", a sitcom about an inept group of US Army Cavalry soldiers stationed at the forsaken Fort Courage in Indian territory right after the Civil War.  The series ran for only two seasons on prime time from 1965-67, but it has lived forever in reruns, syndication, and Classic TV cable channels.   Unlike some actors who despair over being constantly being identified with one role, Storch loved the fact that fans would see him on the streets and still say "Hey, Agarn".  It pleased me to read in his obits that he considered his two year run on "F Tropp" as the highlight of his career.

Storch's name came up frequently during my trip to Canada last month when we visited the Canadian town of Banff.  "F Troop" fans (me foremost among them) immediately thought of the episode from Season Two called "The Singing Mountie" wherein Storch played Agarn's French Canadian cousin, Lucky Pierre Agarniere, and the plot line revolved aroung the notorious Canadian bandit, The Burglar of Banff.  The schtick in the show, though, was that the second f in Banff was also pronounced.  "Banff-ff." Hard to make it funny with just words on a page, so watch this video instead.

Some interesting facts gleaned from reading Storch's obit in the New York Times:

• He received an Emmy nomination for his role in "F Troop"
• Until the end, he would often go into Central Park and play the saxophone
• He claimed to made more money doing voice over work on McDonald's commercials than in any other gig in his career
• One of his Navy buddies during WW II was a guy from Brooklyn named Bernie Schwartz.  Schwartz, of course, went on to be Tony Curtis, and he would often cast Storch in his movies, one of which was "The Great Race" (1965) and included this great scene where all Storch wanted was "a little fightin' room."

The "F Troop" Stars

Tucker, Storch, Ken Berry, Melody Patterson

O'rourke, Agarn, Parmenter, Wrangler Jane

All of them no longer with us

Rip Larry Storch

*If you are wondering what the other three Second bananas on this particular Mt. Rushmore, the answer is Don Knotts' Barney Fife, Art Carney's Ed Norton, and Jason Alexander's Geoge Costanza.

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                                                                Tony Sirico (1942-2022)

To paraphrase what I wrote about James Caan in this space earlier this week, when an actor who was key figure in one of the greatest television series ever leaves us, that passing is worth noting.  Such is the case with the death of Tony Sirico, 79, who played Mob enforcer Paul "Paulie Walnuts" Gualtieri in 74 episodes of  "The Sopranos" from 1999-2007, and, more often than not, he ended up with some of the more memorable lines in any given show.

Sirico's acting career turned out to be a case of art imitating life.  Growing up in Brooklyn, Sirico was a "half a wise guy" who was arrested twenty-eight times, and did two stretches in prison covering almost three years.   A common theme runs through many of his 79 IMDB credits.  He played a mobster in a minor role in "Goodfellas".  He appeared in six different Woody Allen movies, usually playing, you guessed it, a mob guy.  He even did the voice of a talking dog in an episode of "Family Guy", and the dog was, of course, a wise guy.  In "The Sopranos" his Paulie Walnuts was one of the few long term characters who survived as the Jersey mob wars culminated on that final season in 2007.  Fact I didn't know until reading the Washington Post obit for Sirico:  Paul Gualtieri was given the name "Paulie Walnuts" because early on in his mob career, he was supposed to hijack a truckload of television sets, but the truck ended up carrying nothing but nuts (the kind you eat) instead.   Paulie also killed more people on the show, nine, than any other character.

He was one of the most memorable characters on this show that was full off them, and his most memorable episode was probably from Season Three, "Pine Barrens."  You can watch a five and a half minutesclip with highlights of that classic episode HERE.  It's gold!

RIP Tony Sirico.

To Absent Friends - Frank Vincent

Frank Vincent

1939-2017

We learned yesterday of the death of actor Frank Vincent at the age of 78.

Frank Vincent is probably best known for two roles, New York city mob boss Phil Leotardo in 38 episodes the great HBO series "The Sopranos" (2004-2007), and as small time hood Billy Batts in Martin Scorese's 1990 classic, "Goodfellas".  In the former role, Vincent showed us the potential danger that could come from pumping your own gas at a service station, and in the latter, he taught us never to mess with Joe Pesci.

Vincent's acting career numbered eighty-nine acting credits in IMDB and included rolls in two other Scorsese classics, "Raging Bull" and "Casino".  Most of his other rolls consisted of his playing guys with names like Sal, Vinny, and Carmine and having last names that ended with vowels.  So, I guess that you could say that he was pretty much typecast, but it was still a long and pretty successful career.  Oh, and before he started acting, he was an accomplished musician, playing drums behind such artists as Dell Shannon and Paul Anka.

I conclude with the famous scene from "Goodfellas" when Vincent as Billy Batts told Pesci to go home and get his shine box.

RIP Frank Vincent.

To Absent Friends: James Gandolfini

"Shocking" would not be too strong a word in describing the reaction to the news last night of the death of actor James Gandolfini at the way-too-young age of 51.

It is impossible to name the "best show in television history", but I don't think that anyone would argue that HBO's "The Sopranos" would not be in the discussion for best dramatic show ever, and James Gandolfini, playing Mob Boss and New Jersey family man Tony Soprano was the heart and soul of the series' 86 episodes, which ran from 1999 to 2007.  The Associated Press obituary that ran in this morning's Post-Gazette quoted "Sopranos" creator David Chase as saying that "a great deal of that genius (Gandolfini's) resided in those sad eyes."  How appropriate, because in watching "The Sopranos" I always said that Gandolfini-as-Tony could say more with his eyes than other actors could with several pages of dialog.

Actors who play such iconic characters as Tony Soprano run the risk of forever being known for one part and being typed as one particular kind of character.  Gandolfini seemed to combat that trap by returning to the Broadway stage, to much acclaim, and by taking smaller, character roles in movies.  The last time I saw him was in the role of CIA Director Leon Panetta in last year's terrific "Zero Dark Thirty".  Once you realized who the actor was, you forgot Tony Soprano, because that was  Leon Panetta up there on the screen.  How sad that we will not see him again.

I can think of no greater way to pay homage than what I will do this afternoon:  Go to my DVD collection and randomly select any disk from any season of "The Sopranos" and watch a few episodes.  You might want to do that yourself, as well.

RIP James Gandolfini.

By the way, I would not remiss if I did not share with you a message I received late last night from Friend and Loyal Reader Mark Matera.  Knowing that I would no doubt be doing an Absent Friend write-up on Gandolfini, he suggested I tie it in with another notable death from yesterday, that of singer Slim Whitman.  He suggested that the headline read "Death Takes a Pair of Sopranos".

Too good not to share.

Movie Review: "A Bronx Tale"

Loyal Reader BigPoppy has long been recommending that I see the 1993 Robert DeNiro directed movie, "A Bronx Tale." Finally, it has come to pass that I have now seen this gem (thanks solely to the BigPoppy's loan of his personal DVD of the movie), and what a great movie!

The movie stars DeNiro as Lorenzo, a New York City bus driver, and Chaz Palminteri as Sonny, the neighborhood wiseguy who holds court over this one little neighborhood in the Bronx. It is told from the point of view of Lorenzo's son, Calogero, or "C". In 1960, nine year old Calogero witnesses a murder, doesn't properly identify the shooter, and is then taken under the wing of Sonny. What happens then is not what you might think. C does not fall into Sonny's way of life (as happened to Henry in "Goodfellas"), although he is surely tempted. The honest working guy Lorenzo battles to keep his son on the straight an narrow as he grows into a teenager (the movie jumps ahead in time to Calogero at age 17 in 1968).

It's a mob movie, it's a movie about family values, it's a coming of age movie, it's funny, and it's deadly serious. And it is based in fact: Palminteri wrote the screenplay for the movie based upon his own one act play, which was based on his own life growing up in the Bronx. Turns our that Chaz is a nickname for Calogero.

I don't honestly even remember this movie when it came out, and it is difficult to find today. I could not get it from the library, and I am told that you can't even get it on Netflix, so many thanks to BigPoppy for the loan of his DVD. It is worth keeping your eye out for this one if you've never seen it. It is well worth watching.

Oh and for fans of The Sopranos, the role of Lorenzo's wife is played by Kathleen Narducci who played Charmaine Bucco, and the 17 year old Calogero was played by Lillo Brancato (who, btw, looks enough like Robert DeNiro to actually be his son) who played Matthew Bevilaqua, who met an untimely end at the hands of Tony Soprano himself while sipping a diet soda, "the last thing you're ever going to taste." And it could have had an even stronger Sopranos connection. According to IMDB, there was to be a scene where Sonny's mob boss was to pay him a visit, and that don was to be played by Frank Vincent, aka Phil Leotardo, aka Billy Bats from "Goodfellas." It was eventually decided to leave that scene out of the movie.

Big Thumbs Up from The Grandstander for this one.