It isn't often (once every four years, in fact) that we get to add a new Leap Year Baby to Travalanche. Thus far, out of thousands of bios here, we've only got Dinah Shore, William Wellman, Tempest Storm, and Alice Davenport representing February 29. Today, we are delighted to add Alex Rocco (Alessandro Petricone Jr., 1936-2015).
I'm especially delighted because Rocco's background proves to be so rewarding, which is very often not the case. Rocco is an actor I've always liked a lot and have seen in a hundred things. The shorthand for those who don't immediately recognize the name is that he's the guy who played Moe Greene in The Godfather (1972). The character is based on Bugsy Siegel, so the casting is already quirky since Rocco was 100% Italian, just like the Five Families. What's even more interesting, though is that -- like many of the other cast members, and like many cast members in other mafia stories -- Rocco did in fact possess a criminal background. This, too, is counterintuitive. Most of the real mob guys who become actors are cast primarily for their authenticity. Many of them look their parts better than they act them. Rocco was sort of the reverse. He was an extremely good actor, good enough that you just assumed that that was all he was, a guy who studied acting, playing a role. Granted it's a niche role. With his gravelly voice and New York accent you knew he was a working class guy, but he was also clearly intelligent and articulate (and better looking then, say, Richard S. Castellano). He was the ideal actor to play the kind of guy who grew up in "the neighborhood" and then became an accountant or a doctor or something.
Anyway, we get to twist this one more time. Because, though Rocco did have a criminal background, it wasn't with the Italian Mafia. It was with Boston's Irish Mobs. The two gangs in the area at the time were the Winter Hill Gang and the Charlestown Mob. Rocco ran with the former. His time in that world came to a head in 1961 when some guy from the other crew asked his girlfriend out on a date. He and some associates beat the guy up and trashed his diner; about a month later they killed his brother, triggering a war that lasted months. Rocco did a little time for the diner trashing; there wasn't enough evidence to get him on the other crimes. Obviously, I don't condone any of it (and to be clear, he was never convicted of any murder, though he sure seems connected to one). But I like the guy in movies.
When he got out of jail, Rocco moved to Hollywood -- where he studied with fellow Boston native Leonard Nimoy, whose Star Trek fame was still years away. Most of Rocco's pre-Godfather parts were thuggish. His early movies include AIP's Motorpsycho (1965) and The St. Valentine's Day Massacre (1967). In 1967 he was on Batman, playing a henchman to a villain named Colonel Gumm, played by Roger Carmel. He also played cops and lawyers, in things like The Boston Strangler (1968) and Blood Mania (1970). On The Friends of Eddie Coyle (1973) with Robert Mitchum he played dual functions as an actor and as an adviser/liaison, by virtue of the film's Boston Mob setting
Rocco was on all the 70s cop shows: Cannon, Kojak, Barnaby Jones, The FBI, The Rockford Files, Starsky and Hutch. He was particularly gifted at comedy, hence movies like Freebie and the Bean (1974), Rafferty and the Gold Dust Twins (1975), Hearts of the West (1975), Fire Sale (1977), Rabbit Test (1978), Herbie Goes Bananas (1980), The Stunt Man (1980), Gabe Kaplan's Nobody's Perfekt (1981), and Cannonball Run II (1984). Other work included a recurring role on The Facts of Life, the TV movie Badge of the Assassin (1985), the Belushi bio-pic Wired (1989), the sitcom Sibs (1991) opposite Marsha Mason, Boris and Natasha: The Movie (1992), The George Carlin Show (1994), Get Shorty (1995), That Thing You Do! (1996), A Bug's Life (1998), a recurring role on The Division (2001-04), and scores of other credits. His last film was the horror thriller Don't Sleep (2017), released posthumously.
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