Dreams on Parade

Tony Danza taps his way onto the City Opera House stage

Tony Danza, actor? Of course, with starring roles on two hit shows—Taxi and Who’s the Boss?—as well as several other television shows, movies, and Broadway plays.

Tony Danza, boxer? He sported an 8-3 record as a professional boxer before turning to acting.

Talk show host? Teacher? Author? Song and dance man? Yes, yes, yes, and absolutely.

As the lattermost, Danza is bringing his pipes, his tap shoes, and his four-piece band to the City Opera House Oct. 11. “Tony Danza: Standards & Stories” features the 73-year-old entertainer singing tunes from the Great American songbook, doing a little tap, playing his ukulele, and telling stories from his rich acting life.

Second Chance Songs

Reached by phone from his home in New York, Danza says his love of the music of Hoagy Carmichael, Jimmy Van Heusen, Lieber & Stoller, and the like stems from his childhood. He would help his mother clean their home and she would be playing music by Frank Sinatra and others.

But it wasn’t until 1993, following the conclusion of Who’s The Boss? a year earlier, that Danza turned toward the music. The change in tune came after he suffered a horrific skiing accident.

“I was skiing in Deer Valley and hit a tree, going backwards,” he recalls. “I broke eight ribs, my back, lacerated my liver and kidney, had a collapsed lung—I was in intensive care for three and a half weeks. I got that ‘You’ll never do this, do that again’ stuff.”

Refusing to accept that prognosis, Danza worked to recover all his abilities. “I was getting a second chance. So what do you want to do?”

Danza thought back to the music he’d grown up with. He had begun tap dance lessons the last year of Taxi, and decided to take his musical ambitions seriously—including playing ukulele. “The Thought of the Day calendar [said] if you get a ukulele and play 30 minutes a day, you’ll entertain yourself and your friends,” Danza jokes.

So armed, he set out to entertain himself, his friends, and audiences as well, with a show heavy on songs he and others in their 60s, 70s, and beyond grew up hearing by singers like Jerry Vale, Tony Bennett, Sarah Vaughan and Sinatra.

At first, Danza took a cue from the shows by the entertainers in the big showrooms with their large-scale productions. “My first job was for Merv [Griffin] in Atlantic City. I had a lot of trappings—my [tap] teacher, four other dancers, videos, a big band. Little by little, I shed the trappings. Now it’s me and a four-piece band,” he says.

In his show, he intersperses the songs with stories about his personal life and career. He credits his family with keeping him grounded, as when his mother would say to him, “Hey bigshot, when you introduce me to Sinatra, then you’re a star.”

“That’s so emblematic of her. My mother was a big influence,” he tells Northern Express. “Then I got to be around Sammy Cahn [“Come Fly With Me,” “My Kind of Town”] in Los Angeles. The Great American Songbook along with films is the greatest legacy of American culture.”

From Educator to Entertainer (and Back Again)

Danza didn’t set out to be an entertainer. He attended the University of Dubuque on a wrestling scholarship, training to be an educator. As a joke, some friends entered him in the New York City Golden Gloves Tournament after graduation. Danza was sporting a real black eye from sparring when he auditioned for a role on a new sitcom as a boxer turned cabbie and won the role.

Eventually he turned back to his college plans, working in a Philadelphia high school. In 2009, Danza taught 10th grade English at that city’s Northeast High School. It resulted in the documentary series Teach on A&E and his book, I’d Like to Apologize to Every Teacher I Ever Had.

He also wrote a family cookbook with his son, actor Marc Danza, entitled Don’t Fill Up On the Antipasto.

Now he’s able to sell out the Café Carlyle in New York, the famed cabaret where stars from Bobby Short to Eartha Kitt, Rufus Wainwright, and Judy Collins have performed. “I sing, dance, play the ukulele, get some laughs—it’s a whole thing,” he says.

That Danza is still able to do everything he loves gives him joy. Following his interview, he was off to continue filming Raising Kanan, where he plays Italian crime boss Stefano Marchetti. He still talks regularly with his Taxi co-stars and appeared with them on an episode of The View late last year.

Danza refers to a line from the tune “Please Be Kind” by Cahn as both a favorite and one that signifies how grateful he is for the life he’s lived. “This is all so grand, my dreams are on parade,” he sings. “I know that.”

For tickets to the Oct. 11 show ($40-$145), visit cityoperahouse.org/node/595. Photo by Jesse Brauer

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