Joe Dallesandro

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Joe Dallesandro
Born Joseph Angelo (Joe) D'allesandro
December 31, 1948 (1948-12-31) (age 59)
Pensacola, Florida

Joseph Angelo D'allesandro III (born December 31, 1948) is an American actor. Although he never became a mainstream film star, Dallesandro is generally considered to be the most famous male sex symbol of American underground films of the 20th century. He starred in "Flesh" as a teenage street hustler. Rolling Stone magazine in 1970 declared "Flesh" the "Best Film of The Year", making D'allesandro a star of the youth culture, sexual revolution and New York art scene of the 1970's.[citation needed]

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[edit] Early life

He was born in Pensacola, Florida. His father, Joseph Angelo D'allesandro II, was an Italian-American sailor, and his mother was 16-year-old Thelma Testman. By the time Dallesandro was five, his mother was serving five years in a Federal Penitentiary for interstate auto theft. His parents divorced soon afterward. Dallesandro and his brother, Bobby, were taken to New York with their father, who worked as an electrical engineer. Both boys were eventually placed into the Angel Guardian Home in Harlem, prior to being fostered by a couple in Brooklyn. The senior Dallesandro would visit them about once a month at their foster parents' home.

Dallesandro attended a Catholic school until second grade. He and his brother lived with the family until they ran away and were removed from the family by social services. At the age of fourteen Dallesandro and his brother moved to Queens to live with their paternal grandparents. He was kicked out of school for punching the principal, who had insulted his father.

As a teenager, Dallesandro supported himself by prostitution and later nude modeling, appearing most notably in short films and magazine photos for Bob Mizer's Athletic Model Guild. Dallesandro also appeared in at least one gay pornography film. In a later interview, Dallesandro said: "My hustling days were more about trying to take care of myself. Having met those people kind of calmed me down. They showed me a different part of life. My attitude was that it widened my life experience... I realized later that I was looking for a father figure and someone to love me."[1] The street-wise young hustler 'Ned' who appears in Martin Duberman's memoir Cures has been assumed to be Dallesandro.

[edit] Career

Dallesandro met Andy Warhol and Paul Morrissey in 1967 while they were shooting The Loves of Ondine, and they cast him in the film on the spot. Warhol would later comment "In my movies, everyone's in love with Joe Dallesandro."

Joe Dallesandro on the cover of The Smiths' eponymous debut album; still from the Warhol film Flesh.
Joe Dallesandro on the cover of The Smiths' eponymous debut album; still from the Warhol film Flesh.

Dallesandro played a hustler in his third Warhol film, Flesh (1970), where he had several nude scenes. Flesh became a crossover hit with mainstream audiences, and Dallesandro became the most popular of the Warhol stars. New York Times film critic Vincent Canby wrote of him: "His physique is so magnificently shaped that men as well as women become disconnected at the sight of him." Apart from his voluptuous beauty, and relaxed attitude to nudity, his on-screen presence has a compelling enigmatic quality. This derives from what often seems (especially in his Warhol films) a bored or surly withholding, and almost comical physical inertia.

As Dallesandro's underground fame began to cross over into the popular culture, he graced the cover of Rolling Stone in April 1971. He was also photographed by some of the top celebrity photographers of the time: Francesco Scavullo, Jack Robinson, Richard Avedon.

Dallesandro also appeared in Lonesome Cowboys (1968), Trash (1968), Heat (1972), Andy Warhol's Frankenstein and Andy Warhol's Dracula (both 1974) also directed by Morrissey. These last two films were shot in Europe, and, after the films were completed, Dallesandro chose not to return to the U.S. He continued to star in films made mainly in France and Italy for the rest of the decade, returning to America in the 1980s. He made several movies without Warhol and Morrissey, and is known for his portrayal of 1920s gangster Lucky Luciano in Francis Coppola's The Cotton Club. He also appeared as a religious zealot in Cry-Baby by John Waters.


Dallesandro has a famous tattoo on his upper right arm that reads "Little Joe", and was portrayed as the hustler "Little Joe" in Lou Reed's hit 1972 song "Walk on the Wild Side", which was about the characters Reed knew from Warhol's studio, The Factory. A Warhol photograph of the large crotch bulge of Dallesandro's tight blue jeans graces the famous cover of the Rolling Stones album Sticky Fingers. Dallesandro explained to biographer Michael Ferguson, “It was just out of a collection of junk photos that Andy pulled from. He didn't pull it out for the design or anything, it was just the first one he got that he felt was the right shape to fit what he wanted to use for the fly.”[2] The 1980s British band The Smiths would later use a still photograph of Dallesandro from the film Flesh as the cover of their eponymous debut album.

John Waters has praised him as "A wonderful actor who forever changed male sexuality on the screen."[3]

[edit] Personal life

Dallesandro's brother Bobby died in an autoerotic asphyxiation-related accident on December 31, 1977.

Dallesandro has been married three times. His first wife was named Leslie (the daughter of his father's girlfriend); they had a son, Michael, circa 1968. He has one other son, Joseph A Dallesandro Jr, born November 17, 1970 by his second wife Terry (Theresa), who divorced him in early 1978. He has since married again to Kim (Kimberly), and has a grandson by his son Joseph, a grandson and a granddaughter by his first son, Michael.

He currently manages a hotel in the heart of Hollywood, where he lives with his cat Booky. He has said: "I've lived such a full life. I've had such great things. There were some hardships, but overall everything has been great."[4]

[edit] Films

[edit] References

  1. ^ Interview magazine, October 1994
  2. ^ Album Cover Joe
  3. ^ Joe Dallesandro.com
  4. ^ Interview magazine, October 1994

[edit] External links