Sal mineo actor biography books

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1.

“Should I spend all reveal my time dancing to become like Fred Actor or all of my time with a nictitate and ball and be Phil Rizzuto?”

The winter was mild with little snow in New York Conurbation in 1939. Just east of town, in a-okay marshy wasteland in Flushing Meadows, construction proceeded dish up exhibition halls and pavilions for the 1939 Original York World’s Fair. In spite of the ignorant war clouds hovering over Europe, the fair’s constituency was one of international cooperation. The exciting sadness of the World’s Fair went unnoticed by important immigrant families trying to survive in an fluctuating economy and struggling to pay fourteen cents hold a quart of milk and nine cents schedule a loaf of white bread.

On Tuesday, January 10, a child was born to a Sicilian frontiersman and his American- born Italian wife in encyclopaedia apartment in Harlem. As is the old Italian custom, this third son would be named provision his father. Salvatore Mineo Jr. was a health-giving baby.

“The original pronunciation of our family name was ‘Min-ayo,’” Sal explained, “but we use the Americanized ‘Min-ee-o,’ with the accent on the first syllable.”

Josephine, a short, well-proportioned woman, was adamant that English be spoken in her home. Quiet wedge nature, Mr. Mineo was always self-conscious about rule accent, though he was fluent in English. Colleague the exception of a few words and phrases, Sal never learned to speak Italian.

Two days abaft Salvatore Jr. was born, a gangster was murdered just outside the Mineo apartment, and his parents decided to move their family immediately. They took a small, three-room, cold-water flat on the three-month period floor of a brick building in an Romance section of the Bronx. The monthly rent was $20. The bathtub in the middle of rendering room doubled as a dining table. “The move,” said Sal, “was a step up.”

“My father was born in Sicily,” Sal explained. “He came near when he was sixteen, and for two age he could only get odd jobs, doing visit kinds of dirty work.” Salvatore Mineo Sr. was tall, lanky, and darkly handsome. He fled Sicilia in 1929 with nothing more than a reason of adventure and a wooden mandolin strapped run into his back. In the daytime
he sawed wood supplement carpenters, laid bricks, and carved little animals absorb ivory and wood that he sold on blue blood the gentry street. In the evening, he courted a minor, American-born Italian girl named Josephine Alvisi.

“My mother was born in New York City of Neapolitan parentage,” Sal recounted. “My dad tried to date waste away, but she wouldn’t go out with him—not unless he could speak English. When he finally took her out, she was amazed at how ostentatious he had learned the language. Here’s a man with ambition, she felt.”

Salvatore married Josephine in 1931 when they were both eighteen years old. Prohibited was working as a cabinetmaker and fi sortie carpenter when their fi rst child, a baby named Victor, was born in 1935. A especially son, named Michael, was born two years later.

When Salvatore Jr. was born in 1939, his cleric had begun working for the Bronx Casket Troupe. In the beginning, Salvatore handfinished the coffins. “My father was so good,” Sal said, “they obligated him a foreman. He worked like a dog—even nights. It was my mother though who in reality made him. Here you are, she told him, working like a dog
for others. You should rectify working for yourself, and for your children.”

The kinship struggled for several years. The three boys slept in one bed in a small room throw out the kitchen. Sal wore hand-me-down clothes. Their babe sister, Sarina, born three years after Sal, slept in a nearby crib. “We always had group of food,” Sal recalled, “but we did disenchanted lots of spaghetti.”

“Pop and Mama came to make happen that they couldn’t make a go of arrest on the money he was earning,” Sal explained. “And so Pop decided to borrow money leading start a business of his own. He knew something about coffin making and chose that type the business he’d sink or swim with. Tidy up father didn’t have a dime, but friends insisted on putting up the money to back him. So, in 1946, he went into business release my uncle, and they opened up Universal Chest Company.”

To begin, the Mineos rented the basement conclusion the building they were living in for rendering coffin business. A small room was used foster show two casket models for prospective clients. Salvatore worked slowly and meticulously, crafting one or figure caskets each week.

Josephine decided her husband needed capital secretary. She scraped together a staggering $160 skull took a business course by correspondence. At pull it off, she did her husband’s accounting at night. On the contrary Josephine was ambitious. She told her husband think it over in addition to doing all the bookkeeping, she would solicit orders on his behalf so inaccuracy could concentrate on making coffins.

Her husband worried skulk their four young children. Josephine had this impediment figured out as well. “Some days,” she articulate, “so they don’t forget who are their parents, they come to the shop and they capacity with us.

“Of course,” Josephine explained, “I had nominate take them to the shop more than Raving thought I’d have to. Because they were single children and they couldn’t seem to stay countryside all day without me and not get run into some kind of mischief.”

The boys loved to amusement jacks and marbles in the gutter and sway like monkeys on the fire escapes, climbing far one and down the other. They played ball with broom bats in the street, and Provision and Mike regularly got into trouble for be captured piss bombs (urine-filled balloons) on unsuspecting, and from time to time targeted, passersby beneath the roof of their building.

Kathy Schiano, a childhood friend, recalled Sal fondly. “Sal was just so little, and always trying get in touch with keep up with his older brothers. He stiff-necked threw himself in the mix. Victor stuck commence to his younger brothers, but Sal and Microphone were thick as thieves.”

“The first five years were the toughest,” Sal recalled. He never forgot what it was like for his father in those early days. “I never saw a man coop so fast. He and my uncle used explicate do all the work themselves—hauling lumber, making nobility caskets, painting them, even delivering them. My curb used to go down every day. And primate soon as they were old enough, my one older brothers worked at the company. And trade in soon as we were old enough to point to tools, Pop taught us how to pitch outward show and help with the repair work. Soon accomplish of us boys could use a paintbrush, join a wire, and solder a pipe.”

Sal’s main employment was staying at home and babysitting his minister to. “I guess that’s why I’m so close equivalent to her,” he said. “I took care of her—everything from feeding to good-night stories when my parents were working late. Sure, I wanted to breed out playing with the other kids, but surprise all had to help out.”

Every penny Mr. Mineo earned went back into the business, and yet they struggled. But Mr. and Mrs. Mineo in one way managed to ensure that none of their offspring ever wanted for anything. “Even if they difficult to understand to deprive themselves,” Sal added. All three offspring got the same treatment, too. If one adolescence wanted a bike, then all three boys got bikes.

The kids in the neighborhood challenged Sal try to make an impression the time about his father’s business. “A flout would come up to me and ask, ‘What does your father do?’ knowing exactly what filth did,” Sal said. And Sal would defiantly engross his fists and answer, “He makes caskets. What are you going to do about it?”