HOLLYWOOD MOM: CATHERINE SCORSESE

Catherine Cappa was a native of Little Italy, Manhattan, New York City. Her father worked as a stage coordinator in theatre. By the 1930s, Catherine was working as a machinist in the Garment District. In 1933, she married the actor Luciano Charles "Charlie" Scorsese who was also working in the garment industry at the time. The bride was 21-years-old, while the groom was 20-years-old. The couple had three children, including film director Martin Scorsese.

Scorsese made her film debut in her son's short film "It's Not Just You, Murray!" (1964). She also played maternal roles in "Who's That Knocking at My Door" (1967), "The King of Comedy" (1983), "Easy Money" (1983), "Goodfellas" (1990), and "Casino" (1995). She had bit parts in several other films. She appeared as herself in the documentary "Italianamerican" (1974), about the experiences of Italian American immigrants.

While directing his mother in "Goodfellas" (below), Martin didn't tell her that her character's son had just killed someone, and the body was in the trunk of his car. He only told her that her son was home for dinner, and to cook for them. The dinner scene as Tommy's mother was almost completely improvised, including Joe Pesci as Tommy asking his mother if he could borrow her butcher's knife and Jimmy's "hoof" comment.

The painting that Catherine's character brings out was actually painted by "Wiseguy" author Nicholas Pileggi's mother and is based on a picture from the November 1978 National Geographic.
Catherine often she cooked meals for cast and crew members of her son's films. She was working at the time on her cookbook "Italianamerican: The Scorsese Family Cookbook." It was completed and published in 1996, months before her death. It was her only published work...

RIP: PAUL SORVINO

Paul Sorvino, the tough-guy actor — and operatic tenor and figurative sculptor — known for his roles as calm and often courteously quiet but dangerous men in films like “Goodfellas” and television shows like “Law & Order,” died on Monday. He was 83.

His publicist, Roger Neal, confirmed the death, at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Fla. No specific cause was given, but Mr. Neal said that Mr. Sorvino “had dealt with health issues over the past few years.”

Mr. Sorvino was the father of Mira Sorvino, who won a best supporting actress Oscar for Woody Allen’s “Mighty Aphrodite” (1995). In her acceptance speech, she said her father had “taught me everything I know about acting.”

“Goodfellas” (1990), Martin Scorsese’s acclaimed Mafia epic, came along when Mr. Sorvino was 50 and decades into his film career. His character, Paulie Cicero, was a local mob boss — lumbering, soft-spoken and ice-cold.

“Paulie might have moved slow,” says Henry Hill, played by Ray Liotta, his neighborhood protégé in the film, “but it was only because he didn’t have to move for nobody.” (Mr. Liotta died in May at 67.)

Mr. Sorvino almost abandoned the role because he couldn’t fully connect emotionally, he told the comedian Jon Stewart, who interviewed a panel of “Goodfellas” alumni at the 2015 Tribeca Film Festival. When you “find the spine” of a character, Mr. Sorvino said, “it makes all the decisions for you.”

Paul Anthony Sorvino was born on April 13, 1939, in Brooklyn, the youngest of three sons of Fortunato Sorvino, known as Ford, and Marietta (Renzi) Sorvino, a homemaker and piano teacher. The elder Mr. Sorvino, a robe-factory foreman, was born in Naples, Italy, and emigrated to New York with his parents in 1907.

Paul grew up in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn and attended Lafayette High School. His original career dream was to sing — he idolized the Italian American tenor and actor Mario Lanza — and he began taking voice lessons when he was 8 years old or so.

In the late 1950s, he began performing at Catskills resorts and charity events. In 1963, he received his Actors Equity card as a chorus member in “South Pacific” and “The Student Prince” at the Theater at Westbury on Long Island. That same year, he began studying drama at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in New York.

Acting jobs were elusive. Mr. Sorvino’s Broadway debut, in the chorus of the musical “Bajour” (1964), lasted almost seven months, but his next show, the comedy “Mating Dance” (1965), starring Van Johnson, closed on opening night.

Mr. Sorvino worked as a waiter and a bartender, sold cars, taught acting to children and appeared in commercials for deodorant and tomato sauce. After his first child, Mira, was born, he wrote advertising copy for nine months, but the office job gave him an ulcer.

Then his luck changed. He made his film debut in “Where’s Poppa?” (1970), a dark comedy directed by Carl Reiner, in a small role as a retirement-home owner. Then “That Championship Season” came along, starting with the Off Broadway production at the Public Theater.

The film role that first won him major attention was as Joseph Bologna’s grouchy Italian American father in “Made for Each Other” (1971). Mr. Sorvino, almost five years younger than Mr. Bologna, wore old-age makeup for the role.

He appeared next as a New Yorker robbed by a prostitute in “The Panic in Needle Park” (1972) but did not fall victim to the cops-and-gangsters stereotype right away. In 1973. he was George Segal’s movie-producer friend in “A Touch of Class” and a mysterious government agent in “The Day of the Dolphin.”

Mr. Sorvino later played an egotistic, money-hungry evangelist with a Southern accent in the comedy “Oh, God!” (1977) and God Himself in “The Devil’s Carnival” (2012) and its 2015 sequel. He was a down-to-earth newspaper reporter in love with a ballerina in “Slow Dancing in the Big City” (1978). In “Reds” (1981), he was a passionate Russian American Communist leader just before the Bolshevik Revolution.

Mr. Sorvino continued to sing professionally, making his City Opera debut in Frank Loesser’s “The Most Happy Fella” in 2006.

Mr. Sorvino’s final screen roles were in 2019. He played a corrupt senator in “Welcome to Acapulco,” a spy-comedy film, and the crime boss Frank Costello in the Epix series “Godfather of Harlem.”...

RIP: RAY LIOTTA

 Ray Liotta, the actor known for his roles in “Field of Dreams” and the Martin Scorsese mob classic “Goodfellas,” has died.

He was 67.

“Ray was working on a project in the Dominican Republic called ‘Dangerous Waters’ when he passed. He passed in his sleep. He is survived by his daughter, Karsen and his fiancée, Jacy Nittolo,” his publicist Jennifer Allen told CNN.

Born in Newark, New Jersey, Liotta was the adopted son of Alfred and Mary Liotta, who also adopted a daughter, Linda.

He attended Union High School where he excelled at sports and went on to attend the University of Miami. He studied drama and was cast in his first play, “Cabaret.”

Following his college graduation, Liotta moved to New York City where he got work in commercials and was cast as Joey Perrini on the daytime soap opera “Another World,” in which he appeared from 1978 to 1981.

His performance as crazed ex-con Ray Sinclair in the 1986 film “Something Wild” proved to be a breakthrough role for the actor.

Liotta followed that with an acclaimed performance as baseball player “Shoeless” Joe Jackson in the box office hit “Field of Dreams” with Kevin Costner.

His most memorable role, perhaps, was as real-life mobster Henry Hill in the 1990 film “Goodfellas,” which cast him opposite heavy hitters Robert De Niro and Joe Pesci.

Lorraine Bracco, who co-starred as Liotta’s wife in “Goodfellas,” paid tribute to him on Thursday.

“I am utterly shattered to hear this terrible news about my Ray,” Bracco wrote in a tweet. “I can be anywhere in the world & people will come up & tell me their favorite movie is Goodfellas. Then they always ask what was the best part of making that movie. My response has always been the same…Ray Liotta.”

When asked by The Guardian in 2021 why he never worked with Scorsese again given the director’s propensity for using some of the same actors in different projects, Liotta responded “I don’t know, you’d have to ask him. But I’d love to.”

Not that he didn’t find plenty of work over the years.

Liotta’s many film and television credits include “John Q,” “Blow,” “Operation Dumbo Drop,” “Shades of Blue” and “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.”

More recently, Liotta narrated the TV docuseries “The Making of the Mob” and starred in “The Many Saints of Newark,” the prequel film to the hit television mob series “The Sopranos.”

Despite playing plenty of tough guys, that was not Liotta’s true persona.

“I have never been in a fight at all, except for during sports, and that’s just pushing and goofy kid stuff,” he told People magazine last year.

Liotta was currently cast in multiple projects, according to his IMDB profile.

“It’s weird how this business works, because I’ve definitely had a career that’s up and down,” he added. “For some reason, I’ve been busier this year than I have in all the years that I’ve been doing this. And I still feel I’m not there yet. I just think there’s a lot more.”

MY FIVE FAVORITE FILMS OF ALL-TIME

I am starting a new series talking about my five favorites in a particular genre. Hopefully this will spark some interest, as well as cause spirited discussion amongst the blog readers. For this first post in the series, I wanted to go big and spotlight my five favorite films of all-time. I have watched many movies from the earliest silent films to today's overbudgeted hits. I don't really consider myself an expert as much as I do a film lover, and these favorite films of mine I can never get tired or watching. If I could only watch five movies, these are the ones I would want to watch:

5. BIG FISH (2003)
Director Tim Burton is mostly known for his overblown remakes. I enjoy his movies though. The movie Big Fish was one of his original masterpieces. The movie centered around a dying father (Albert Finney) who told tall tales to his son. Even though he told tall tales there were truth and lessons in every story he told. I think the reason why this movie touches me everytime I see it is because my father in law died the year this movie came out. It is one of the few movies that can make my wife cry.

4. ARSENIC AND OLD LACE (1944)
Because Cary Grant was so good looking, I think his acting ability was largely overlooked. He could do it all from drama to comedy, and the movie Arsenic And Old Lace is the best example of his comedy. As he discovers his loving aunts are really murderers his own life is turned upside down, and you can see the change in Cary Grant just by looking at the craziness he conveys in his eyes. Raymond Massey also gives the best performance of his long career as well.

3. WHITE HEAT (1949)
Like Cary Grant, James Cagney could play any role. However, Cagney's best role was as ruthless gangsters. There was no one more crazed and ruthless than the character of Cody Jarrett. The character had it all - a mother complex, mental illness, and a thirst to kill. The ending of the movie with Cagney screaming "top of the world, ma" is one of the best scenes ever filmed in Hollywood.

2. GOODFELLAS (1990)
It seems like Goodfellas is on television all of the time now. It is one of the movies that when it is on, I have to watch it. The film is nearly perfect especially Robert DeNiro and Ray Liotta as mobsters. Liotta plays mobster turned rat Henry Hill. I got to see what the real Henry Hill looked like, and he was no Ray Liotta but the film was great. The movie makes me wish I was more than 25% percent Italian so I could be "made" as well.

1. JAWS (1975)
Yes, this movie is my favorite film of all-time. I have seen it a total of 70 times now. When I first saw Jaws as a child, I was afraid to let my legs dangle over my bed at night for fear that a shark would come around and bite my feet. I grew to love this film, and the best part of the movie is not seeing the shark. The shark was broken so much for young director Steven Speilberg that he had to rewrite most of the film. It made for a different movie, and probably made the film as suspenseful as it was. As for the acting, you can not get much better than Roy Scheider, Robert Shaw, and Richard Dreyfuss. The film continues to remind me to never go back into the water!