Tony Rewards

On January 14, "Saturday Night Live" did something unexpected. They presented a comedy sketch that was actually funny and had an ending. No, that wasn't it. At the end of the broadcast, they inserted a title card with the picture of a young gentleman named Tony Rosato, as depicted above. No doubt, a number of viewers were left wondering who this guy was.

Comedian Tony Rosato was a cast regular on "SNL" for a single season, the seventh of 42 seasons (to date), from 1981 to 1982. Rosato, who died January 10, 2016, age 62, was one of only three performers to be a cast member of both "SCTV" and "SNL." Once touted as the next John Belushi, his brief tenure with the enduring NBC series came at a particularly tumultuous period in the show's durable but never dull history, which will later be revisited here in the Moviehouse.

Born in Naples, Italy, Antonio Rosato spent his childhood in Halifax, Ottawa, and Toronto, Ontario. He planned to become a chiropractor but dropped out of college after being enticed by the siren song of the muse of comedy - the ancient Greeks called her Thalia - and started performing improv at The Second City in Toronto, the comedic stomping ground for Dan Aykroyd and Gilda Radner, along with future "SCTV" regulars John Candy. Joe Flaherty, Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Catherine O'Hara, Dave Thomas, and Robin Duke (who went to high school with O'Hara in a municipality of Toronto).

Tony Rosato and Robin Duke joined the cast of "SCTV" in 1980 for the third and final season of its original broadcasts from Canada. Italian dialects came naturally to Rosato, as he demonstrated on one of the program's "Sunrise Semester" sketches as Marcello Sabastiano, a slick goombah demonstrating "Communicating in Italian" (pictured below).

Coincidentally, Marcello Sebastiano was also the name of Rosato's most popular character on "SCTV," the inept TV chef with a fondness for the grape. One episode of "Cooking with Marcello" reworked the popular slapstick "fresh" oyster stew gag familiar to any fan of The Three Stooges or Abbott and Costello as Marcello tried to prepare lobster cacciatore with an especially curmudgeonly crustacean. After taking a spit in the face from the lobster pot, Rosato even barked at it just like Curly.

One of the key differences between the comedy of "SCTV" and "SNL" was that the former, unlike the latter, didn't much care for political satire or humor with a cutting edge. The laughs generated by "SCTV" were innocent, and the creators just wanted to entertain, which is why it was an ideal home for the comedy mindset of Tony Rosato, whose humor reflected what would be remembered about him in his passing, when his longtime agent, Larry Goldhar, said, "He is truly one of the gentlest people I have ever met. He was just such a kind person."

Tony Rosato poses with fellow "SCTV" castmates
Eugene Levy, Andrea Martin, Rick Moranis, Dave Thomas,
Robin Duke, and Joe Flaherty.

Rosato's good-natured temperament actually worked against the comedian when he took a break from "SCTV" for a rare starring role in a motion picture, 1980's "Hog Wild," a Great White North variation on south-of-the-49th-parallel snobs-vs.-slobs comedies. Produced on the brink of Canada's fledgling comedy boon of the '80s, smack dab between 1979's "Meatballs" and 1981's "Porky's," "Hog Wild" featured fair-haired Alabama-born Michael Biehn - best known for saving the future world in "The Terminator," being rescued from an extraterrestrial world by Sigourney Weaver in "Aliens," and threatening to blow up the modern world with a thermonuclear warhead in "The Abyss" (all directed by James Cameron) - as a wide-eyed washout from a military academy who returns to his Midwest hometown (Quebec masquerading as Wisconsin) - where all the high school students appear to be in their 20s, if not a decade older - only to contend with a biker gang known as the Rustlers, a cartoonish assemblage of more overage actors.

Legendary Mad magazine artist Jack Davis illustrated the poster.

In the virtually plotless movie, Tony Rosato's performance as the gang's leader, the Bull, is reduced to pantomimist mugging and incoherent mumbling, mimicking Marlon Brando's role as outlaw biker Johnny Strabler in "The Wild One." It's only through interpretation by Bull's second-in-command, a Latin stereotype (unfortunately dubbed Bean), that his incoherent commands are communicated: "The Bull would like you to live a long and full life...somewhere else."

"Hog Wild" features a pair of actors from "Meatballs" - Jack Blum
(who played the nerd, Spaz) and Keith Knight (who played the hot
dog-eating champion, Fink). Sadly, Knight (pictured above, with
Tony Rosato) died of brain cancer in 2007 in Toronto, age 51.

The Bull's old lady, torn between the marble-mouthed punk and the blonde-haired goodnik, was portrayed by Patti D'Arbanville, an Andy Warhol discovery whose mainstream movies in the 1970s included "Rancho Deluxe," "Big Wednesday," "The Main Event," and "Time After Time." She and Michael Biehn did share a sweet moment in "Hog Wild," making love in a vat of honey.

All's well that ends well for Tony Rosato, Michael Biehn,
and Patti D'Arbanville in "Hog Wild."

In 1980, producer Lorne Michaels took a break from "Saturday Night Live" to pursue other interests, with the belief that the show would likewise go on hiatus in his absence. He was told that the series would continue with or without him, and associate producer Jean Doumanian took over the reins for the sixth season. The veteran cast of Jane Curtin, Garrett Morris, Bill Murray, Laraine Newman, and Gilda Radner, along with Harry Shearer, abruptly quit, as did all the writers except for Brian Doyle-Murray. Doumanian's new cast featured Denny Dillon, Gilbert Gottfried, Gail Matthius, Eddie Murphy, Joe Piscopo, Ann Risley, and Charles Rocket.

Season six would prove to be the worst in the program's history, a commercial and critical disaster. On the 11th episode of the season, Charles Rocket dropped the f-bomb live on the air. After the following week's show, Jean Doumanian was unceremoniously dismissed, and Dick Ebersol, one of "SNL's" original developers, took over as producer, promptly firing Rocket, Gilbert Gottfried, and Ann Risley. Ebersol wanted to bring in Tim Kazurinsky (personally recommended by John Belushi), Tony Rosato (after John Candy turned Ebersol down), and Catherine O'Hara as replacements.

O'Hara backed out after a disagreement with writer Michael O'Donoghue and suggested Robin Duke. Ebersol soon fired Denny Dillon and Gail Matthius, leaving Eddie Murphy and Joe Piscopo the only survivors of the dismal sixth season. After Ebersol's first episode aired, a writers' strike preempted the remainder of the season, setting the stage for season seven, when Christine Ebersole, Mary Gross, and Brian Doyle-Murray would be added to the cast.

Meet the cast of the seventh season of "Saturday Night Live":
Eddie Murphy, Robin Duke, Joe Piscopo, Christine Ebersole,
Mary Gross, Tim Kazurinsky, and Tony Rosato; not pictured -
Brian Doyle-Murray. (After Rosato and Duke, Martin Short would
become the third alum from "SCTV" to join "SNL" for season 10.)

What set Rosato's comedy in "SNL" apart from "SCTV" was that the sketches, for the most part, were character-driven and densely written, more like little plays than skits, especially in his work with Tim Kazurinsky, with whom he appeared often (pictured below).

In the mid-1980s, Tim Kazurinsky portrayed Sweetchuck, the skittish
cadet, in three "Police Academy" comedies, often playing against the
the feral antics of costar Bobcat Goldthwait. An accomplished screen-
writer, Kazurinsky co-wrote the script for the 1986 Rob Lowe-
Demi Moore romantic comedy "About Last Night..." based on
David Mamet's play "Sexual Perversity in Chicago."

Which isn't to say, Rosato didn't hesitate to dip back into his repertoire of dialects and ethnic characterizations (pictured below, with Brian Doyle-Murray).  Rosato also impersonated Captain Kangaroo, Yasser Arafat, and Ed Asner, in character as a grumbling Lou Grant, reduced to forecasting the weather.

Tony Rosato was also at home doing bits with his "SCTV" castmate Robin Duke, who, like Tim Kazurinsky, became a frequent sketch partner (pictured below).

Before the start of the eighth season, Rosato, who had also been on the writing staff, left the show, allegedly due to differences with producer Ebersol. Brian Doyle-Murray and Christine Ebersole were also dismissed; Robin Duke and Tim Kazurinsky were let go after the ninth season. Before the 11th season, in 1985, Lorne Michaels was rehired as producer, a position he continues to hold.

From 1985 to 1989, Tony Rosato had a recurring role as a street informant named Whitey on the Toronto-based crime series "Night Heat," starring Scott Hylands, which was popular on both Canadian and American networks.

Rosato was also in demand as a voice actor, particularly as Luigi in various animated adventures of the Super Mario Bros. He provided assorted voices for the U.S.-Canadian-French animated series "The Busy World of Richard Scarry" that aired on Showtime and Nickelodeon in the mid-1990s and lent his voice to the video game "Resident Evil 3: Nemesis." In 1995, he had a rare dramatic role as Special Counsel to the President Charles Colson in the TV movie "Kissinger and Nixon," starring Ron Silver and Beau Bridges.

In May 2002, Tony Rosato joined Joe Flaherty, Robin Duke, and Dave Thomas in a ceremony honoring "SCTV" on downtown Toronto's Walk of Fame (pictured below).

On May 5, 2005, Tony Rosato was arrested and charged with criminal harassment of his wife, Leah. Rosato had phoned Toronto and Kingston, Ontario police repeatedly, complaining that his wife and infant daughter had been replaced by imposters. Leah asserted that his deteriorating mental health was endangering the safety of himself and their child. An expert psychiatrist diagnosed Rosato with Capgras delusion, a misidentification syndrome marked by the sincere belief that a person, pet, object, or even place has been substituted with an exact duplicate.

Inspired by the Red Scare paranoia in the U.S. during the Cold War, the psychological disorder actually became a popular motif in such science-fiction films of the 1950s as "Invaders from Mars," "It Came from Outer Space," "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," and "I Married a Monster from Outer Space," as well as episodes of "The Twilight Zone." It has become generally accepted that Capgras delusion has a complex, physically organic basis, associated with neuroanatomical damage.

Rosato, who denied suffering from mental illness and refused an insanity plea, was incomprehensibly held at a maximum security detention facility for two years without bail. The case finally went to trial in the fall of 2007, at which Rosato pleaded not guilty. The news media attributed the inordinate gap between his arrest and trial to his obstinance and the punitive approach of Canadian authorities.

The courtroom attracted a large number of Tony's supporters, including Dan Aykroyd and a number of Toronto's Second City performers. The trial was over in a month, and although he was spared a criminal conviction, Rosato served the next 19 months in a psychiatric residence. He was released in March 2009 but remained on probation until September 2010.

According to a 2009 post on the Toronto Star's website, Rosato's "demons have been vanquished by anti-psychotic medication." Tony had reconciled with his wife, prompting her to tell the Star that she was falling in love with him again, "except it's better."

A 2009 file photo visibly shows the toll of what Tony Rosato
described as "four years being inside." He looked forward to
"starting to feel free again. But it's shaking off the time spent
inside that's the difficult part."

Rosato was anxious to get his "chops together again." Hammering out old ideas on a vintage typewriter, he said, "My main concern is getting back to work."

Rosato's first major film role after his newfound freedom was in a 2013 crime drama called "Real Gangsters," which came about as a result of his friendship with Nick Mancuso, a venerable Canadian character actor who enjoyed brief American TV celebrity in the mid-1980s as the tough-guy star of the Stephen J. Cannell action series "Stingray." Mancuso, who starred as a deputy on a Hopi Indian reservation in the 1979 vampire bat-Native American lore hybrid "Nightwing" and portrayed a Mick Jagger-like rocker connecting with an illegitimate teen son in 1984's "Blame It on the Night" (not so coincidentally based on a screen story by Mick Jagger, who originally had the opportunity to star in the picture), was probably most familiar to U.S. audiences as CIA Director Tom Breaker in Steven Seagal's "Under Siege" films.

In 2013, Muncuso, as a co-producer, was helping put together a cast for a Canadian beverage entrepreneur, Frank D'Angelo, who had aspirations to write, produce, direct, and act in feature motion pictures. "Real Gangsters" cast Mancuso and first-time actor D'Angelo as cousins vying for control of a powerful crime family in New York City (with Toronto subbing for the Big Apple). Besides Tony Rosato, the supporting cast featured Steven Bauer ("Scarface"), Art Hindle ("Porky's"), Margot Kidder, Robert Loggia, Michael Paré ("Eddie and the Cruisers"), and John Savage ("The Deer Hunter").

Tony Rosato, Art Hindle, Frank D'Angelo, and Nick Mancuso
speak at a press conference promoting "Real Gangsters" at
D'Angelo's supper club, Forget About It! (oh, we didn't mention
D'Angelo is also a restauranteur?).

Frank D'Angelo has since directed and starred in five additional movies, frequently working with the same actors, including Tony Rosato, who made four more films with the Toronto-based auteur. To date, D'Angelo's most ambitious project has been 2016's "The Red Maple Leaf," a political thriller about the abduction of a U.S. ambassador's daughter in Ottawa. The impressive cast featured James Caan, Robert Loggia (his final performance), Martin Landau, Paul Sorvino, Kris Kristofferson, Mira Sorvino, Armand Assante, Daniel Baldwin, Margot Kidder, Michael Paré, Doris Roberts (her final performance), and Eric Roberts.

Tony Rosato and his wife, Leah, eventually divorced. His girlfriend, Tanya Moore, discovered he had died, apparently from a heart attack. She posted on Facebook, "Tony, my beautiful, loving and precious boyfriend passed away last night. I will love you forever and as you said so many times to me with all my heart." He was survived by his daughter, Giulietta Rosato.

The Toronto chapter of Second City released this statement to Facebook:

“We were deeply saddened to learn today of the passing of Tony Rosato, beloved friend and colleague. Tony was a warm, wonderful and extremely funny man. He graced both the Second City stages and the SCTV screen, creating memorable characters and developing friendships which have lasted a lifetime. In the last few years, Tony returned to Second City as a student and performer, sharing his wealth of experience, humour and charm with our students. He was truly loved by the students and faculty with whom he shared a stage. Our condolences go out to his family, peers and so many friends.”

On Twitter, Tim Kazurinsky wrote, "Arrivederci, Tony Rosato. God you were funny. More important...you were gentle, kind and loving."