Tony Lo Bianco has played plenty of toughs — but the good-guy actor is turning pussycat as he heads to Italy to stage his one-man show about beloved New York City Mayor Fiorella La Guardia.
"[La Guardia] was a man of and for the people and everything he did was for the human race," Lo Bianco said Thursday on "The Steve Malzberg Show" on Newsmax TV.
"He says, listen, 'We're a bunch of immigrants, so what do we owe our ancestors for their sacrifice for coming here with nothing but offering the sweat of their brow? Sacrifice of ourselves, for others, and our country.'"
Lo Bianco will perform "The Little Flower" for U.S. soldiers stationed at bases in Italy, for an audience at the Vatican, and for anybody interested in seeing a classic slice of American big city politics.
The larger-than-life La Guardia, born in Greenwich Village to an Italian father and an Italian-Jewish mother, was mayor from 1934-1945. He famously read comics to children during a newspaper strike and helped clean up the city's corrupt political machine.
"I'm doing it as an ambassador," Lo Bianco said. "I did this show in Russia many years ago and the American ambassador said to me, 'You have done more for our country in these two hours than I have done in 10 years.'"
The 78-year-old actor, who was born in Brooklyn, has played boxer Rocky Marciano, mobster Tony (Ducks) Carallo, and appeared in such classic movies as "The French Connection" and "Serpico." And he chilled audiences as the smooth-talking slayer of little old ladies in "The Honeymoon Killers."
As an adroit observer of American politics and world affairs, Lo Bianco is not impressed with U.S. efforts to hammer out a nuclear-arms deal with Iran.
"That we're thinking of making some kind of a deal … with the absolute enemy who's killed most of our people, who is continuing to be the enemy, who talks about death to America, and we're negotiating with them and asking them to please do this and please do that?" Lo Bianco said.
"No matter what deal you make, a country who doesn't believe in signing anything that they sign … then what kind of a deal are you possibly making? A country that says, look, you want to come in and look at what we're doing? No."
Lo Bianco believes La Guardia would have handled the situation differently.
"He was a very good friend of FDR's and he was also the mayor of mayors and he was head of civilian defense during World War II, so he was very much involved — and he was a pilot," Lo Bianco said.
"He would have been tough, right up front — this is what you must do, this is the way it's done or goodbye. Everybody's saying, oh well then, we may have to go to war. Well, you're going to have to go to war one way or another, [so you] might as well start being tough now."
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