My dad wasn't a movie star; he was just plain Al Ciaccia. When I was a child, he was often mistaken for the singer Tony Bennett, and that's as close as he got to stardom. He could do impressions, all of which were pathetic: Charles Laughton saying "Mr. Christian" from Mutiny on the Bounty in the most bizarre voice; the character actor Henry Armetta, which consisted of walking fast with a limp; and an approximation of Cary Grant saying "Judy, Judy, Judy," which Grant never said. He was known among the smaller nieces and nephews for his break-dancing — putting one finger in the air, bowing his head, and turning in a circle. The only thing from a movie that made him weep was Ricky Shroeder sobbing to Jon Voight in The Champ, "Champ, Champ, wake up!" I reveled in his childhood stories of asking his mother for money to go to the movies: "Ma, can I have a nickel for the show? One shoe. Ma, can I go to the show? The other shoe." When shoes came flying instead of nickels, he snuck in, and even went to see A Midsummer Night's Dream because Jimmy Cagney was in it. When I saw the Nicholas Brothers perform on the Oscars, I asked him if he had ever seen them in films. "No," he replied. "I couldn't afford the musicals." Because of him, I know every big band sound and song in existence and of course the entire oeuvre of one Francis Albert Sinatra, aka "God."
My dad with me (left) and my sister, 1952
My dad pretended that he had a reputation as a babe magnet. Certainly Tyrone had nothing on him. He was fond of telling us that at his wedding, women leapt from the choir loft in devastation that he was out of commission. When a sports star had well-publicized woman trouble, my father mused that those sports stars had women throwing themselves at them all the time — they must have, he said, because without being a sports star, he suffered from the same problem. He was full of it.
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