Tony Lo Bianco

Tony Lo Bianco (October 19, 1936 – June 11, 2024) was an American actor whose career spanned theater, film, and television across more than five decades. Born Anthony LoBianco in Brooklyn, New York, he was the son of a housewife mother and a taxi driver father, and the grandson of Sicilian immigrants. He attended William E. Grady CTE High School, a vocational school in Brooklyn, where a teacher encouraged him to audition for plays and sparked his interest in acting. After graduating, he studied acting and theater production at the Dramatic Workshop.

Before establishing himself on Broadway, Lo Bianco founded the Triangle Theatre in 1963 and served as its artistic director for six years, collaborating during that period with lighting designer Jules Fisher, playwright Jason Miller, and actor Roy Scheider. He was also a contending Golden Gloves boxer. His early stage work included serving as an understudy in a 1964 Broadway production of Incident at Vichy, followed by a supporting role in a 1965 Broadway production of Tartuffe. From late 1965 through the spring of 1966, he starred on Broadway as Fray Marcos de Nizza in The Royal Hunt of the Sun.

Lo Bianco's Broadway credits also included The Goodbye People, The Ninety Day Mistress, and two productions that became central to his stage legacy: A View from the Bridge and Hizzoner! In 1983, he portrayed Eddie Carbone in the Broadway revival of Arthur Miller's A View from the Bridge, earning both a Tony Award nomination for Best Actor in a Play and the Outer Critics Circle Award for the performance. Six years earlier, in 1975, he had won an Obie Award for his Off-Broadway portrayal of Duke Bronkowski in the baseball-themed play Yanks-3, Detroit-0, Top of the Seventh.

Lo Bianco first took on the role of New York City mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia in the one-man show Hizzoner!, written by Paul Shyre in 1984. A television version of the production, filmed at the Empire State Institute for the Performing Arts in Albany for WNET Public Television, earned him a local Daytime Emmy Award. The play reached Broadway in 1989, where it ran for twelve performances. Lo Bianco subsequently purchased the rights to the play from the estate of Paul Shyre and rewrote it multiple times, returning to the role in a 2008 Off-Broadway revival titled LaGuardia and again in a limited Off-Broadway run in October 2012 under the title The Little Flower. He performed the show in Moscow in 1991, shortly before the fall of the Soviet Union, and staged it at LaGuardia Community College in May 2015, with a scheduled performance in Italy that same year.

Alongside his stage work, Lo Bianco built a substantial film career beginning with his debut in The Sex Perils of Paulette in 1965. He appeared as a murderer in the semi-biographical crime film The Honeymoon Killers in 1970, then as Salvatore Boca in William Friedkin's The French Connection in 1971, and starred as a police officer in Larry Cohen's God Told Me To in 1976. He also appeared in the Lee Van Cleef crime comedy Mean Frank and Crazy Tony in 1973 and had a minor role in Oliver Stone's Nixon. In 1995, he played Jimmy Jacobs in the HBO biographical film Tyson, and the following year appeared as Briggs in Sworn to Justice alongside Cynthia Rothrock.

His television work included a lead role across six episodes of Joseph Wambaugh's anthology series Police Story between 1974 and 1976, four of which featured former NFL quarterback Don Meredith. He also appeared in Franco Zeffirelli's miniseries Jesus of Nazareth in 1977 and in Marco Polo in 1982.

Lo Bianco was previously the national spokesperson for the Order Sons of Italy in America. His humanitarian work earned him numerous recognitions, including a Man of the Year Award from the State of New Jersey Senate, a Lifetime Entertainment Award from the Columbus Day Parade Committee, the 1997 Golden Lion Award, and a Humanitarian Award from the Boys' Town of Italy. He was married three times: to Dora Landey from 1964 to 1984, with whom he had three daughters; to Elizabeth Fitzpatrick from 2002 to 2008; and to Alyse Best Muldoon from June 2015 until his death. Lo Bianco died of prostate cancer on June 11, 2024, at his farm in Poolesville, Maryland, at the age of 87.