Perfectly Frank

Actor Frank Vincent died September 13 after open heart surgery. Who? As The Washington Post so adroitly put it, he was "less a household name than a household face, instantly recognizable for his many gangster roles."

He was also recognizable from a series of brutally violent onscreen confrontations with costar Joe Pesci, in "Raging Bull," "Goodfellas," and "Casino," all, not coincidentally, directed by the maestro of mob movies, Martin Scorsese.

Salvy (Frank Vincent) wears reminders of the beat-down by
Joey LaMotta (Joe Pesci) in "Raging Bull."

The funny thing is, Frank Vincent and Joe Pesci were pals since the late 1960s, when Pesci joined drummer Vincent's Aristocats trio as a guitarist.

As a child in a New Jersey grammar school, Frank Vincent discovered music as his passion. "A lot of guys I know went to jail," he recalled. "Music saved my life." Skilled at drums, piano, and trumpet, he became a bugler in the Jersey City Department of Recreation's drum and bugle corps before joining St. Joseph's Cadets of Newark and taking part in national competitions. He landed gigs as a session drummer on records by Paul Anka and Del Shannon.

We're not sure as to when in his burgeoning show biz career Frank
Vincent met Tiny Tim, but the moment was too precious to overlook.

He drummed live with a combo called Bobby Blue and the Aristocats, eventually taking over what became a trio and replacing Blue's name with his own. The clubs he performed in were, in his words, "more or less, run and owned by the guys that I portray in the movies."

Frank Vincent (lower left) poses with his Aristocats, including
Joe Pesci (center), and their 1970s mustaches.

In 1969, Vincent hired Joe Pesci on guitar. "We had a such a chemistry," Vincent remembered. "Not just playing. We'd do bits back and forth. We both got a lot of laughs, and before you know it, we're doing two hours of comedy a night."

Prior to hooking up with Frank Vincent, Joe Pesci (second
from left) was part of a doo-wop quartet featuring Hank
Majewski, who was later a member of Frankie Valli's
proto-Four Seasons ensemble called The Four Lovers.

Vincent would compare his relationship with Pesci to "a husband and wife" who "broke up many times. Every night we'd argue over every word. We would never say who's the boss but we were two very creative people." The partnership dissolved in 1975, but a year later, Joe Pesci got Frank Vincent a costarring role in a low-budget "The Godfather"-inspired melodrama called "The Death Collector."

Gritty, straightforward, and starkly filmed in New Jersey locations, the modestly budgeted picture stars Joe Cortese as a cocky, hot-headed collections thug for a small-time hoodlum who's not really very good at his job. Cortese, a reputable actor of stage and screen, recently appeared in "The Bronx Bull," a direct-to-video Scorsese knockoff that served as a prequel/sequel to "Raging Bull," with William Forsythe, Joe Mantegna, Tom Sizemore, Paul Sorvino, Robert Davi, and Cloris Leachman. One of Cortese's best known roles was as LAPD Captain Rasmussen in 1998's "American History X" (pictured below, with Avery Brooks).

"The Death Collector" featured supporting performances by Joe Pesci and actor-comedian Bobby Alto as a pair of wise guys (pictured below) who aid Cortese in an ill-fated super market heist.

In a surprisingly touching scene, Joe Pesci has a brotherly heart-to-heart with Bobby Alto over the fact that since potentially future capers will result in more and more money and a more luxuriant lifestyle, Alto has to give up wearing sneakers, "not even new ones."

Frank Vincent shows up as a sleazy hood who tries to hold out on a $47 thousand debt. After being persuaded otherwise by Cortese's Mauser with a silencer (pictured above), Vincent reneges on the payment, only to have a leg broken. Ultimately, seated on a toilet, Vincent is shot in the leg cast and neck by a hitman.

Oddly, "The Death Collector" was the sole movie written and directed by a filmmaker named Ralph De Vito, who was reportedly killed in a 1983 shooting.

Despite skimpy production values, "The Death Collector" does contain a couple of gems worthy of Martin Scorsese, such as a bit when flatulence interferes with the gang's casing of the grocery store from the front seat of a car, and a scene in which Pesci, Alto, and Cortese gleefully pelt a campy lounge singer with nuts as he hisses into his lyrics, "Stop with the friggin' peanuts!"

Speaking of Martin Scorsese, it was Robert De Niro who saw "The Death Collector" and initially recommended Scorsese cast Joe Pesci and Frank Vincent in 1980's "Raging Bull" (pictured below).

Following "Raging Bull," Frank Vincent had a costarring role in 1982's "Dear Mr. Wonderful," an obscure Jersey-filmed German production featuring Joe Pesci as a small-time lounge singer with a little bowling alley and big dreams. The supporting cast included Richard S. Castellano, best known as the portly Corleone capo Clemenza in "The Godfather."

Sporting a bad toupee and a porn-star 'stache, Joe Pesci croons the
Van Heusen-Cahn tune "Come Fly With Me" in "Dear Mr. Wonderful."

In 1983, Vincent had an uncredited walk-on role as a mobster in the comedy "Easy Money," which paired Joe Pesci with Rodney Dangerfield. Among other roles in the 1980's, Vincent played a mobster in "Wise Guys," a black comedy starring Danny DeVito and Joe Piscopo as low-level gangland bottom feeders who aspire to open a Jewish-Italian deli. The supporting cast featured Harvey Keitel, Ray Sharkey, Dan Hedaya, Patti LuPone, and professional wrestling manager Lou Albano.

Despite a cleverly barbed screenplay by George Gallo (best known for scripting "Midnight Run"), the picture was a misstep for director Brian De Palma, a filmmaker better known at the time for rehashing Hitchcock ("Obsession," "The Fury," "Dressed to Kill," "Body Double," "Blow Out") than for displaying any flair for comedy. Well, let's face it, any movie starring Joe Piscopo was a misstep (remember "Dead Heat"?).

Frank Vincent (with his back to the camera) appears in "Wise Guys."

It was Frank Vincent's Sicilian and Neapolitan heritage, along with an aura of self-assurance and don't-f***-with-me comportment, accompanied by a consistently natty wardrobe, all set off by chiseled features framed (as he got older) by silver hair and black caterpillar eyebrows, that not only made him a natural casting choice as a gangster but convinced audiences that he was genuinely connected.

Vincent once talked about typecasting, explaining, "It is a pigeonhole and Hollywood has a tendency to do that to you. They don't want to give you the chance to stretch. But as a working actor, you have to work, you do what you can do."

In the late 1980s and early '90s, Frank Vincent was cast against type in a pair of films written and directed by Spike Lee. In "Do the Right Thing," he appeared as an overheated motorist in the Bed-Stuy neighborhood of Brooklyn (pictured above). In "Jungle Fever," he portrayed the troubled father of Annabella Sciorra (pictured below).

Frank Vincent had a momentous run-in onscreen with his old pal, Joe Pesci, in Martin Scorsese's "Goodfellas" (1990). Portraying "Billy Batts," an alias for made man William Bentvena, Vincent runs afoul of Pesci's loose cannon, Tommy DeVito (based on real-life hot head Tommy DeSimone), after ridiculing Tommy's past as a shoeshine boy ("Now go home and get your f***in' shinebox!").

After stomping several new mud holes in Billy with the help of Jimmy (Robert De Niro) and Henry (Ray Liotta), Tommy has to finish the job with a large carving knife from the kitchen of his doting mother (delightfully played by Martin Scorsese's mama).

Frank Vincent finally gave Joe Pesci his comeuppance in 1995's "Casino" as he and his goons work him over with aluminum baseball bats and bury him alive in a cornfield (pictured below).

Vincent later reprised his "Casino" role of Frankie Marino (based on real-life Vegas enforcer Frank Cullotta, who worked on the film as a "technical adviser") in a music video for Nas' "Street Dreams" (pictured below), which led Vincent to serving as an acting coach for such rap recording artists as DMX and Method Man.

In 2006, Frank Vincent published A Guy's Guide  to Being a Man's Man, offering, in a humorous fashion, advice on how to eat, date, entertain, listen to music, and smoke cigars like a man. Not surprisingly, Vincent also sold his own brand of hand-rolled cigars.

"The Sopranos" star James Gandolfini
wrote the introduction to Vincent's book.

Truth be  told, it was "Goodfellas" that inspired TV writer-producer-director David Chase to create "The Sopranos" in 1999. He declared, "'Goodfellas' is the Koran for me." Running for six seasons, the Jersey-based series was hailed for creating a new era in mob movies in a departure from the clichéd depiction of Hollywood gangsters, favoring a subtler, more realistic depiction of not only gangland life but, as well, the dynamics of an Italian-American family.

Because of Frank Vincent's already established familiarity with audiences, David Chase was initially reluctant to approach him for a role in "The Sopranos."  In a 2006 interview, Vincent said Chase "didn't want to hire me...because 'Goodfellas' was too popular and the character Billy Batts was too known to put him into that mix." Chase ultimately relented, casting the actor as rival mob boss Phil Leotardo in the final two seasons of the series.

Tony Soprano derisively dubbed Phil Leotardo "The Shah" because of his supposed resemblance to the ousted Shah of Iran.

Vincent's character had the dubious honor of being the final victim murdered onscreen in "The Sopranos," when he is whacked in the temple at a gas station, only to suffer the indignity of having his unattended SUV roll over his head with a sickening pop (pictured below).

In 2003, Frank Vincent and Vincent Pastore (best known as "Big Pussy" Bonpensiero on "The Sopranos") were featured in a mob-meets-internet heist melodrama, "This Thing of Ours," the title of which is derived from the term for the Mafia "Cosa Nostra" (translated as "Our Thing"). The film, which included a cameo by "The Godfather's" Sonny Corleone, James Caan, was co-written and directed by its star, Danny Provenzano, a grandnephew of Anthony Provenzano, a former Teamster vice president and captain in the Genovese crime family nicknamed "Tony Pro." The younger Provenzano himself subsequently served time for racketeering and tax evasion.

"This Thing of Ours" costars Vincent Pastore
and Frank Vincent clown for the camera.

Vincent received top billing as an aging hitman seeking one last hurrah in 2009's "Chicago Overcoat." The supporting cast of seasoned veterans included Kathrine Narducci (familiar to fans of "The Sopranos" as Carmella Soprano's old friend Charmaine Bucco), Mike Starr, Stacy Keach, and Armand Assante.

The title "Chicago Overcoat" was a Prohibition era slang term
for "coffin," not unlike "cement shoes" or "sleeping with the fishes."

Even when his visage wasn't on the screen, Frank Vincent still managed to establish a gangland presence as the voice of mob boss Don Salvatore Leone in a series of "Grand Theft Auto" video games from 2001 to 2005 (pictured below).

Probably the most peculiar incarnation of Frank Vincent can be found in the pages of bizarre comic book creator Alan Robert's "Killogy" series of graphic novels, featuring the likenesses of Vincent, punk rock musician Marky Ramone, and "Heroes" actress Brea Grant as murderers who share a prison cell in the midst of a zombie apocalypse.

In an email, Joe Pesci remarked, "He was a great drummer, a great actor to work with. The only comedian to make me laugh."

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