Sitcoms Online Photo Galleries - Tony Danza Show: Cast Photo

The Tony Danza Show aired from September until December 1997 on NBC.

There were hugs and cliches galore in this rather pedestrian single-father sitcom. Tony ( Tony Danza) was a freelance Manhattan sportswriter who was recently seperated from his wife Susan, and got to raise their two daughters-awkwardly. Tina ( Majandra Delfino) was the usual self-centered teen , prone to truancy, and Mickey ( Ashley Malinger)the brainy young one with a thousand neuroses and phobias ("Dad, I'm writing a poem. What rhymes with cholera?") Tony had a phobia of his own, namely the computer on which he was supposed to write, so sexy computer whiz Carmen ( Maria Canals) was frequently around helping out, and periodically ranting in Spanish. Tony's old-world dad Frank ( Dean Stockwell) owned a bakery in Little Italy where he offered incomprehensible advice. Stuey ( Shaun Weiss) was the pudgy, mooching doorman who also wandered in and out of the apartment. The theme song was something about "We got love...every day..."

A Review from The New York Times

New TV Season in Review

By WILL JOYNER
Published: September 23, 1997

One-parent, two-parent and multi-generational sitcoms about families are crowding onto television. Here are reviews of several with premieres today and tomorrow.

A Sports Columnist Coping
With Deadlines and Daughters
'The Tony Danza Show'
NBC, tomorrow night at 8
(Channel 4 in New York)

The bounds of the sitcom don't usually mark off a congenial environment in which an actor can grow safely from youth to middle age. Perhaps Tony Danza has already gone through his share of sitcom luck. Perhaps the less said about his new show, the better. Suffice it to say that it's no ''Taxi.'' In fact, it's no ''Who's the Boss?''

As Tony DiMeola, a New York sports columnist and single parent of two daughters, Mr. Danza, a deft if limited purveyor of domestic humor, struggles mightily to make something genuine out of a situation at once mundane and bizarre. In the premiere tomorrow night, DiMeola must file his column while tending to his daughters, one a sullen teen-ager (Majanda Delfino) who hates her private school, the other a sour, hypochondriacal 11-year-old (Ashley Malinger). Wow, imagine that.

We are told that the father and mother recently separated, but Mom makes no appearance and the nature of the parents' conflict isn't explained. To add an older female presence and, apparently, urban grit, DiMeola is given a feisty editorial assistant, Carmen Cruz (Maria Canals), who comes to his home to help him because -- try to believe this in 1997 -- he can't operate the computer that dominates his living room.

This mix of the overly familiar and the ludicrous is especially unfortunate because it forces a cast that deserves better to strain in an embarrassing way. This cast includes the eccentric Dean Stockwell as Grandfather Frank DiMeola, a baker intent on reminding Tony of where he comes from. But here, even a plea for authentic values doesn't sound authentic. WILL JOYNER

A Review from The Hollywood Reporter
Published on September 24, 1997

Tony Danza is an extremely likable actor who, of course, creates very likable characters.

His incessant good nature has served him well on television, helping him to pump up already good material and to float above the bad -- the latter, of course, virtually absent from his two successful sitcoms, "Taxi" and "Who's the Boss?"

Danza's new series is a mix of the mostly good and the here-and-there bad -- a promising premise that now and again bumps into a disease that can strike down any sitcom: too many throwaway one-liners. That can make mincemeat of scripts and characters.

Yet a sitcom worth its weight in the ratings can rise above the affliction, and for much of its half-hour, "The Tony Danza Show" steers past some tense moments when the disease looks likely to settle in. Some of the characters get caught with throwaways, but the story compensates for those times.

Danza plays a single dad named -- you guessed it, Tony -- who's recently separated from his wife and has gotten custody of his two daughters, the teenager (Majandra Delfino) and the almost-teenager (Ashley Malinger).

In one of the show's early embarrassing moments, Tony takes time to explain the details of the custody arrangement to his dad, Frank (a late-added and very good Dean Stockwell), who, judging from their intimate relationship, would already be familiar with the details of his son's life. But every sitcom has its ups and downs, and intros have to be made.

Tony is a free-lance sportswriter (one who's computerphobic -- go figure) trying to raise his daughters. But most of all he's an anxious, bewildered mess trying to keep his head on when confronting one crisis after another.

His younger daughter is already a full-blown neurotic, worried about her health at every turn. She has much potential, if the writers can develop her in an original way. The older daughter suffers from the typical teenage angst -- along with a disorder called stock-characteritis, something a little more difficult to cure then trying to decide whether or not to attend public or private school, as she must do in this pilot.

The other member of the family is Tony's secretary (Maria Canals), the peppiest one in the bunch who adds as much spice as she can muster while ducking her often-silly one-liners.

Danza's infectious good nature might have to do double time now and then to get this sitcom off the ground. He's a friendly face in a rather ordinary, joke-driven script that sometimes goes for the serious side of its situations and lifts the story up high. Hopefully, the jokes will fly less frequently and character development will take off. Then we'll have something.

An Article from USA Weekend

STRAIGHT TALK
By Jeffrey Zaslow
Issue date:
Nov. 7-9, 1997

Tony Danza:
How did he survive a bad accident, a quake and his mother's death? He made the most of second chances.

When his mom was dying of brain cancer four years ago, actor Tony Danza moved home to Malverne, N.Y. For six months he cared for her, retiring each night to his childhood bedroom. He was a loving son, "but after she died, I wished I could do it over. I knew I could do better. I wanted another shot."

He dealt with his emotions in 1995 by producing, writing and acting in a 28-minute film about a son looking after his dying mother. He shot it at his mom's house. "In one scene, the son says, 'When will this be over?' Then he realizes what he's said." Danza, 46, says life is all about looking for "another shot." The former boxer has done that on many levels.

After hitting it big in two sitcoms, Taxi and Who's the Boss?, he flopped in 1995's Hudson Street. Now he's back with The Tony Danza Show. At press time, it was struggling in the ratings, but he vows it will remain a family sitcom that his daughters can watch. (Danza and wife Tracy have two girls, Katie, 10, and Emily, 4; he has a son, Marc, 26, from his first marriage.)

And when the show ends? He dreams of hosting a television variety show. "You have to hear this!" he says, playing a rare recording of Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. in concert. Recently, Danza has gotten good reviews singing and shticking at casinos and supper clubs. He's a Rat Pack wannabe. "It's every Italian's dream: a microphone, a tuxedo and a stool."

His smile fills his face, and he says bad times can remind you to embrace life's possibilities. He talks of his '93 skiing accident, when he slammed into a tree, collapsing his lung, crushing his ribs and pulling his leg from his hip socket. A month later, the Northridge earthquake destroyed his L.A. home. He has built a new house he says is so solid it's virtually quake-proof. "In an earthquake, I shouldn't run out of the house -- I should run into it."

Get a second chance, you can do things right, Danza promises.

"My theory on parenting": "Hold back the tide. Keep your kids innocent as long as possible. It's like a dike and you've got your fingers and toes in the holes, holding back an unending amount of [inappropriate] information." Danza has two daughters, 4 and 10, and a grown son.

Get comfortable with middle age: "Don't try too hard to be young. Be who you are. I did Vibe [the syndicated talk show] and I felt old and paternal. I've got ties older than people in that audience. I had a talk with myself. I said, 'You've got to deal with this better.' ''

The younger generation is gaining on you: "You can't help but see a lot of young people storming the fort. It's hard for the guy who's been around 20 years to be the hot guy."

"Keep your mind on what you're doing": Moments before his 1993 skiing accident, Danza says, "I was thinking about my mother instead of skiing. It was my first Christmas without her. I was having a big-time blah. Then -- boom!"

For a Website dedicated to Tony Danza go to http://www.angelfire.com/celeb/tonydanza/

For the Oficial Website of Majandra Delfino go to http://www.majandra.com/

For a Website dedicated to Majandra Delfino go to http://www.mad-online.org/

For a Website dedicated to Dean Stockwell go to http://www.geocities.com/hollywood/boulevard/5328/

For a Dean Stockwell Collectable Site go to http://www.deanstockwell.com/

For the Dean Stockwell Appreciation Society go to http://stockwellsassies.tripod.com/

For the Dean Stockwell Photo Album go to http://members.tripod.com/dean_stockwell/