Sitcoms Online Photo Galleries - Joe And Sons: Richard Castellano

Joe And Sons aired from September 1975 until January 1976 on CBS.

The only TV series set in Hoboken, N.J., Joe and Sons was a situation comedy about a widower and his two sons. Italian-American widower Joe Vitale ( Richard Castellano), lived in Hoboken , N.J. with his two teenage sons, Mark and Nick ( Barry Miller, Jimmy Baio) His best friend ,Gus Duzik ( Jerry Stiller), worked with him at the Hoboken Sheet and Tube Company. As a typical middle-class factory-worker, Joe did the best he could to raise his boys, hold his job, and conduct some semblance of a social life, though the latter was rather limited. Helping him with the boys , and cooking an occasional meal for the entire family , was Estello ( Bobbi Jordan), the cocktail-waitress who lived in the apartment across the hall.

Here's how Time Magazine described Joe and Sons on September 15, 1975

Verbal Flights. The unlikely source of optimism is a little-publicized ethnic comedy called Joe and Sons (CBS, Tuesday, 8:30 p.m. E.D.T.). Here, too, the principals are Italians, and the first episode, like that of Doc, involves getting a doubter to return to church. The earnest efforts of the title character (played by Richard Castellano, who gives us an unprecedented figure, a phlegmatic Italian) and his buddy (Jerry Stiller) to save an errant soul are at once hilarious and touching. They engage in wild verbal flights to prove that you can believe in someone invisible ("You've never seen Howard Hughes, have you?"), and that the evidence of God's spirit is everywhere. "God writes all the songs!" Stiller cries triumphantly at one point. "You mean to say God wrote Zippity-Do-Dah?" a puzzled, momentarily shaken Castellano asks. Pace and construction are as good as the gags on this show. More important, anyone−regardless of race, creed or income−can readily sympathize with the characters. When seriously dealing with an adolescent, who has not found his rhetoric rising, his eager arguments backing him into absurd corners? In short, Joe and Sons features human beings, comically exaggerated, to be sure, but solid and recognizable.

Here is Richard Castellano's Obituary from The New York Times

Richard Castellano Is Dead at 55; An Actor of Stage, Screen and TV

Published: December 12, 1988

Richard Castellano, a character actor noted for his portrayals of Italian-Americans, died of a heart attack on Saturday at his home in North Bergen, N.J.. He was 55 years old.

Mr. Castellano won wide praise for his performance as a Mafioso, Clemenza, in Francis Coppola's 1972 film, ''The Godfather.'' Earlier, he was nominated for Tony and Academy Awards for his performances in the stage and film comedy ''Lovers and Other Strangers'' by Renee Taylor and Joseph Bologna.

Reviewing ''Lovers'' in The New York Times in August 1970, Roger Greenspun offered this conclusion: ''My greatest pleasure is in Richard Castellano, who plays the bridegroom's father, a lower-middle-class Italian, with superb, befuddled, heavy-set delicacy and solemn good humor - and who, for all his retiring modesty, very nearly steals the film.'' In 'A View From the Bridge'

Off Broadway, Mr. Castellano gave 643 performances as the protagonist, a frustrated dock worker, in Arthur Miller's ''View From the Bridge,'' which opened in 1965. Among his Broadway credits were ''The Investigation'' in 1966 and his film appearances included ''A Fine Madness'' in 1966 and ''Night of the Juggler'' in 1979.

On television, Mr. Castellano was the main character, Joe Girelli, in the 1972 situation comedy ''The Super'' and he was Joe Vitale, a factory worker, in the 1975-76 sitcom ''Joe and Sons,'' playing a single parent raising two boys with occasional help from a neighboring cocktail waitress. In television drama, he was Giuseppe (Joe the Boss) Masseria in the 1981 series ''The Gangster Chronicles,'' which was about the Prohibition era.

The actor specialized in playing overweight characters, but his wife, Ardell Sheridan, an actress, said yesterday that his normal weight was barely 200 pounds, and that producers invariably insisted that he gain at least 50 pounds for roles. She played the role of his wife in ''The Super.''

Mr. Castellano was born in the Bronx on Sept. 4, 1933, attended public schools in Manhattan and took courses at Columbia College. He ran a construction company in New Jersey until 1961, when he began studying Method acting with Brett Warren at the Ansonia Hotel in Manhattan and started performing in Mr. Warren's touring company, which staged plays for the elderly and physically handicapped.

His survivors, besides his wife, are a daughter, Margaret Moller of Belleville, Ill., and a sister, Diann Zecca of East Hanover, N.J.

For more on Joe and Sons go to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_and_Sons

For a website dedicated to Jerry Stiller go to http://www.arlo.net/jerry/

For a Website dedicated to Jimmy Baio go to http://www.geocities.com/lianelavender/