Tony Danza: From the Boxing Ring to the Television Screen
By “Big” Bill Bradshaw
It’s 2015 and if Hollywood was to be believed, we would be jetting off to the pub on our hover-boards and flying home in the Delorean of our designated driver. JAWS 19 would be playing in cinemas and we’ve been rooting for the shark for the past sixteen episodes…we just want him to eat the producers; the rest can go back to starring in day time soaps. I was such a fan of the Back to the Future movies and I rank the trilogy right up there with LOTR for sheer entertainment. But then, Christopher Lloyd rarely disappoints and, his brilliant portrayal of the ultra tense ‘Taber’ in One Flew over the Cuckoos Nest set the bar for the disconnected characters he would play over the coming decades. But it was as the weird and wonderful Reverend Jim Ignatowski in the hit TV show “Taxi” that Lloyd became a household name.
Of course, the show would be the launching pad for the careers of many struggling actors. Danny DeVito as Louie De Palma, Judd Hirsch as Alex Reiger, the man on the moon Andy Kaufman as the bumbling Latka Gravas, the late and enigmatic Jeff Conaway as Bobby Wheeler and Tony Danza as the fighter down on his luck, Tony Banta. I had coffee with a friend recently and we discussed Danza. It surprised me to hear that he hadn’t known Tony was once a genuine boxer who had, in fact, been fighting as a pro during the first two series of the show. I think his screen persona had generated rumors and counter rumors so I’m taking this time to set the record straight.
Antonio Salvatore Ladanza was born in Brooklyn on April 21st 1951. His mother, Anne Cammisa, was an immigrant from the town of Campobello di Mazara in the Sicilian province of Trapani and worked as a Bookkeeper when Tony was a boy. His father, Matty Ladanza, was of Italian ancestry and he worked as a garbage man. He had a younger brother, Matty, who later became a Los Angeles restaurant owner. When Tony was 14, the family moved to Malverne on Long Island where Danza went on to earn a Bachelor’s Degree in history from the University of Dubuque.
But there was a wild card in him that wouldn’t be quelled by mere respect or normality. Looking back over his college days, Tony describes himself as “a bad student” and he notes that he attended University courtesy of a wrestling scholarship. He believed there was a Rocky Graziano hidden deep inside of him and he was going to let that scrapper out. “Dangerous” Tony Danza had his pro debut on August 13th 1976 in New York City. He disposed of his opponent, Earl Harris, within a round and, over the next 3yrs, he would fight 12 times as a middleweight winning 9 and winning each one by way of knock out. He believed he would get a shot against the likes of Sugar Ray Seales who had won the NABF Middleweight title and had taken the USBA Middleweight title in 1978. But, even with the goods, there would be a huge amount of work involved in taking his career that far down the line and, when he was spotted by a producer in a New York gym, his options became far more interesting.
Initially Danza was signed up to play a character called Phil Banta but, due to his inexperience, it was felt that he would respond better if the character were called Tony and so Tony Banta was born. Danza stayed with the boxing game for a while but, as he said years later “We did 112 shows and we had 112 parties”, hardly the backdrop to a successful boxing career. It was with a genuinely heavy heart that Danza officially retired following his 3rd round KO of Johnny Heard in 1979.
The show would prove to be a huge success and other roles would come. Danza would go on to play colorful characters with names like Pony Lambretta in Murder Can Hurt You, Bud O’ Hara in The Love Boat, Louie Crisci in A Brooklyn State of Mind, Tony Canetti in Hudson Street and Tommy Silva in The Practice but, other than Taxi, Danza would be best remembered for playing retired baseball player turned housekeeper Tony Micelli in Who’s the Boss and, of course, sportswriter Tony DiMeo in The Tony Danza Show.
He has been married and divorced twice and, in 2005, he became a grandfather. In 2008, Danza and his son Marc published a cookbook called “Don’t Fill up on the Antipasto: Tony Danza’s Father-Son Cook book”. On January 10th 2015, ABC News published a piece about Tony’s latest stage endeavour, the new Broadway musical “Honeymoon in Vegas” adapted from the 1992 movie starring James Caan, Nicholas Cage and Sarah Jessica Parker. Danza, who’s other Broadway credits include “The Iceman Cometh” and Arthur Miller’s “A View from the Bridge” was initially reluctant to take on the project but he now relishes the opportunity to sing and he pays respect to his hero and close friend Frank Sinatra every time he goes on stage. The article went onto say that Danza was on the streets promoting the show and that he wowed the public with his boyish charm and Brooklyn accent. He is quoted as saying “The joke I wanted to put into the promo for this show, was to have a guy come up and say “Hey Tony, I love your show. I’ve watched you every night since you started” and then I’d say “Ah so you’re the one”.
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