Danny Aiello

Daniel Louis Aiello Jr. was born on June 20, 1933, on West 68th Street in Manhattan, the fifth of six children. His mother, Frances Pietrocova, was a seamstress originally from Naples, Italy, and his father, Daniel Louis Aiello, was a laborer who abandoned the family after his wife lost her eyesight and became legally blind. Aiello publicly condemned his father for many years before the two reconciled in 1993. Of Italian descent, he moved to the South Bronx at age seven and later attended James Monroe High School. At sixteen, he lied about his age to enlist in the United States Army, served three years, and returned to New York City to take on various jobs to support himself and his family.

Before entering entertainment, Aiello held several notable positions. During the 1960s, he served as president of New York Local 1202 of the Amalgamated Transit Union, representing Greyhound Bus workers. In 1967, he led an unsanctioned wildcat strike after the company altered bus driver schedules; the action was unauthorized by the parent union, resulting in his suspension, and he called off the strike after a single day. He also worked as a bouncer at the New York City comedy club The Improv.

Aiello broke into film in the early 1970s, with one of his earliest roles as a ballplayer in the baseball drama Bang the Drum Slowly (1973) alongside Robert De Niro. He had a walk-on role as small-time hood Tony Rosato in The Godfather Part II (1974), ad-libbing the line "Michael Corleone says hello!" during a hit on a rival character. A co-lead role with Jan-Michael Vincent followed in Defiance (1980), and he received considerable acclaim playing a racist New York City police officer in Fort Apache, The Bronx (1981) with Paul Newman. In 1981, he won a Daytime Emmy Award for Outstanding Performer in Children's Programming for his appearance in the ABC Afterschool Special A Family of Strangers. He reunited with De Niro for Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in America (1984), playing a police chief whose surname was also "Aiello." Director Woody Allen cast him in two films, The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985) and Radio Days (1987), and he played the befuddled fiancé of Cher in the romantic comedy Moonstruck (1987).

The role that brought Aiello his greatest film recognition was Salvatore "Sal" Frangione, a pizzeria owner in Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing (1989). In a Chicago Tribune interview at the time of the film's release, he described it as his "first focal part" and characterized the production as a collaborative effort, noting that Lee encouraged him to make his own choices. Aiello wrote a key scene he shared with John Turturro just ten minutes before it was filmed. The performance earned him nominations for both the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor in a Motion Picture, and the film critics' associations of Boston, Chicago, and Los Angeles each named him best supporting actor. Among his many subsequent film credits are Jacob's Ladder (1990), Hudson Hawk (1991), the biopic Ruby (1992) in which he portrayed Jack Ruby, Léon: The Professional (1994), the Academy Award-winning short film Lieberman in Love (1995), City Hall (1996) with Al Pacino, the miniseries The Last Don (1997) in which he played Don Domenico Clericuzio, Dinner Rush (2000), and Lucky Number Slevin (2006). He also starred in Brooklyn Lobster, which premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2005, and the independent feature Dolly Baby (2012), both written and directed by Kevin Jordan.

Aiello's Broadway career spanned from 1975 to 2017. He made his Broadway debut in 1975 in Lamppost Reunion, the first of three plays he appeared in by playwright Louis La Russo II. The following year he appeared in Wheelbarrow Closers, and in 1979 he starred in Knockout. In 1977, he originated the role of Fran Geminiani in the long-running play Gemini. His work in this period earned him a Theatre World Award in 1976. In 1981, he starred alongside Beatrice Arthur in Woody Allen's The Floating Light Bulb, a semi-autobiographical play set in 1945 about a lower-middle-class family in Brooklyn. In the mid-1980s, he joined the replacement cast of Hurlyburly alongside Christine Baranski, Frank Langella, Ron Silver, and Candice Bergen, and starred in The House of Blue Leaves (1986) alongside John Mahoney, Ben Stiller, Stockard Channing, and Julie Hagerty. Additional Broadway credits include Home for the Holidays.

Beyond Broadway, Aiello starred in the 2002 off-Broadway production of Elaine May's Adult Entertainment alongside May's daughter Jeannie Berlin, directed by Stanley Donen and staged at the Variety Arts Theatre. In July 2011, he appeared off-Broadway in The Shoemaker, a two-act drama written by Susan Charlotte and directed by Antony Marsellis, based on his 2006 film A Broken Sole.

Aiello also pursued a music career, releasing several albums featuring big-band arrangements, including I Just Wanted to Hear The Words (2004), Live from Atlantic City (2008), and My Christmas Song for You (2010). In 2011, he and EMI songwriter Hasan Johnson released Bridges, an album combining standards with rap. He appeared in the music video for Madonna's "Papa Don't Preach" (1986) as the singer's father and recorded an answer song, "Papa Wants the Best for You," written by Artie Schroeck.

In 2014, Aiello published his autobiography, I Only Know Who I Am When I Am Somebody Else: My Life on the Street, on the Stage, and in the Movies, through Simon & Schuster. He married Sandy Cohen in 1955 and lived for many years in Ramsey, New Jersey, before relocating to Saddle River, New Jersey. He was the father of stuntman and actor Danny Aiello III, who died in 2010 of pancreatic cancer, and actor Rick Aiello, who died in 2021 of the same disease. Danny Aiello died on December 12, 2019.