Tony ony Danza Danza By John Rizzo
LEAD ROLE IN THE MEL BROOKS MUSICAL “THE PRODUCERS”
“I’m not going to tell that story again,” said Tony Danza, the irritation in his tone unmistakable. “I was working out in a gym, an agent saw me and got me on TV. Everybody asks me about that. It’s not about my soul.” When politely requested to expound on his “soul,” he responded, “I leave that up to the writers!” Danza was of course referring to how he segued into show business from boxing. We can assume that every single interviewer has asked him about that and we can understand that it must be indeed tiresome to rehearse this issue ad nauseum. But it is also understandable why people keep inquiring about his professional metamorphosis. As a youngster, Antonio Ladanza never dreamed of an acting career. The New Yorker from Brooklyn instead envisioned himself the next Rocky Graziano. Changing his name to “Dangerous” Tony Danza, he entered the New York Golden Gloves in 1975. Shortly afterwards, on Aug. 13, 1976, he started his professional boxing career. Fighting as a middleweight, Danza became a crowd favorite for his walk-in slugging style. He compiled a record of 9-3 with nine knockout victories, seven in the first round. It was during a gym workout that he was discovered for the part of “Tony Banta” on the TV show, “Taxi” (1978). Danza still had hopes of being a world champion and scored knockouts in 1978 and 1979 but unable to secure a title shot, retired from boxing to dedicate himself totally to his acting career. Where he quite obviously has made a success in this which is now his passion.
If before he became a famous TV star Danza had been anything but a boxer – a doctor, lawyer, garbage man, interior decorator or any other kind of an athlete – it is likely that there would be little interest in his preshowbiz activities. Boxing, however, has a certain mystique that evokes a universal fascination with the sport itself and those who participate in it. Virtually the object of boxing intrigues everyone, which is to inflict as much physical pain as possible on your opponent until he can take no more and either quits or is rendered unconscious. And it takes a singular kind of fearless, intensely disciplined, athletically gifted and super-aggressive person who deeply desires to prevail, and one who also willingly accepts the possibility of being publicly humiliated and having his own brains beat out. Naturally, the entire experience is magnified on the professional level. Boxing as a spectator sport goes back to the Pythian and Olympic games of ancient Greece, as does wrestling, a related form of hand-tohand combat, in which Tony Danza also excelled as a young man. There were fewer rules in the Classical era and it was very common for the loser of a match to also lose his life, but to the winner went untold glory and the highest esteem of his countrymen. The sport and the unique kind of personality it takes to compete in this way has routinely stirred the imagination of prominent artists, most recently in celebrated films like Champion (1949) with Kirk Douglas, Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956) with Paul Newman and Raging Bull (1980) with Robert De Niro. Another fine movie, Golden Boy (1939) with William Holden, explored the internal conflict at work in a man who was not only a tough boxer, but a talented violinist as well. At the same time the drama contrasted the types of emotional impact on the audience derived from a violent and gory boxing exhibition and a brilliantly performed concert. 2 AMICI / Winter 2007/2008
Clearly, although exciting to watch, a brutal display of fisticuffs does not usually appeal to the better angels of our nature, whereas many kinds of musical and dramatic performances can be spiritually uplifting. But the main theme of writer Clifford Odets was that there was not room enough in one personality for both boxer and artist and ultimately one or the other would have to go. This is what happened with Tony Danza. When Tony Danza quit the ring for good, he was on the way to becoming another luminary in a legendary line of Italian-America pugilists including Jake La Motta, Rocky Graziano, Carmen Basilio and Rocky Marciano. Even after he had fulfilled a one-in-a-million show business dream by landing a regular role on the hit TV sitcom Taxi, he was still boxing professionally and toying with the idea of going after the World Middleweight title. Before things got too serious, however, Tony decided to retire from boxing because, as he put it, “I was worried about my nose.” One can only wonder what would have happened to Danza’s acting career if his handsome and photogenic facial features had become grotesquely rearranged. This would be of no concern to a one-dimensional person, focused single-mindedly on boxing, but for the multifaceted Tony Danza, it was at this point that the artist in him had won out over the prizefighter. Yet it is tempting to conclude that the entire boxing-wrestling experience was a kind of proving ground for the stormy world of show business. “I always liked competition,” says Tony, and can you think of any more competitive spheres of activity than boxing or show business? The combatant and the artist coexisted in the soul of Tony Danza from early on. While he participated in varsity wrestling at his Long Island high school, he also performed in the student production of South Pacific. “I was always musical,” he claims, as if it’s the most natural thing in the world to be both wrestler and singing actor. It was the same phenomenon