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Former resident, actor Al Mancini, dies at 74; played in 'Dirty Dozen'
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
By Dean Shipley
Press Staff Writer
Award-winning actor, beloved teacher, dear brother and friend Al Mancini died Monday from complications of Alzheimer’s disease. He was 74.
Mancini’s career spanned more than 50 years and two continents. He remained active as an actor until age 72 as if in defiance of a disease that robs a person of memory. Memories of Mancini are vast and far reaching.
Mancini played roles in numerous venues on live stage, in films, in a studio as a voice-over actor. But one of his most beloved roles was as a teacher of young actors seeking to fulfill an acting dream.
One of those dreamers, Leslie Durso, met Mancini the first day she arrived in Los Angeles from San Diego. She had come to learn the craft and came straight to Mancini’s class at the Beverly Hills Playhouse.
“I’m Italian, he’s Italian, we clicked instantly,” said Durso, recalling her initial meeting with Mancini on Nov. 1, 2000.
Durso admitted she was unsure of herself when she arrived “off the boat,” as she put it. But Mancini did his best to remove that unsurety from her.
“He encouraged me from Day One,” said Durso Tuesday in a phone interview.
From that day forward Durso grew as an actor under the tutelage of Mancini, whom she described as “brilliant.”
In fact, it was a phrase he used to say, according to Durso.
“I would ask him how he was doing today, and he would say ‘outrageously brilliant’,” she said. By saying the phrase, he believed even if a person did not feel that way, it wouldn’t be long after saying the words they would believe it.
Durso became Mancini’s stage manager in his classes, and began working very closely with him. She saw how he could take up a script “and make it come alive.”
A man with a “wild, creative mind,” Mancini would propose some apparently “insane” ideas for his students to try with the script.
“And when you did it, it was brilliant,” Durso said.
She described Mancini as the most beloved teacher in the school. Mancini lavished encouragement and love on his students as his way to give them the confidence to pursue that next audition.
She had received “hundreds” of phone calls following the news of his death. Durso was in the midst of organizing a memorial service for Mancini.
Born in Steubenville in 1932 to Marino and Elizabeth Mancini, they moved to London shortly thereafter. He attended St. Patrick School and London High School, where his friends included Roger Dillion and William Shag Stidham.
Stidham said he and Mancini often rode around town in Stidham’s Model A Ford.
Dillion said Mancini was often the shortest fellow in the group, which made him the subject of being picked on. But “not enough to hurt him. He was one helluva nice fella.”
Following graduation he attended Kent State University, where he studied commercial art. But he had acted in school plays, said his sister, Rose Morse, two years his junior.
His acting “blossomed” when he left college Morse said.
His career took him to England, where for 12 years he was on the David Frost satire program, “That Was the Week That Was.”
His list of filmography is a long one. Stidham remembered him for being one of the dozen in the 1967 film “The Dirty Dozen.” It was the story of 12 dead-end soldiers, who faced either life imprisonment or the death penalty for crimes committed in the army. Mancini, as Tassos Bravos, played opposite the likes of Ernest Borgnine, Lee Marvin, Robert Ryan, Telly Savalas, Charles Bronson, Jim Brown, Donald Sutherland, Clint Walker, and Richard Jaeckel.
Morse recalled her brother having a lot of fun making that film on location in England. Their parents visited Mancini on the set.
Despite being around Hollywood stars, Dillion and Stidham both recognized that Mancini remained the same and knew where home was.
His final role in 2005 was as Grandpa God in “Joan of Arcadia.”
One of his highest honors was bestowed in 2002. He received the L.A. Ovation award for theatre for his role in “The Time of Your Life.”
He is survived by his sister, Rose, her husband, Clint, their six children and grandchildren. See page two for full obituary and services information.





Thursday, November 15, 2007

Alfred B. Mancini

Alfred B. Mancini, 74, of London, died Monday, Nov. 12, 2007, at 7:50 p.m. in the Madison County Hospital.

He was born on Nov. 13, 1932, in Steubenville, the son of Marino and Elizabeth J. (DiFederico) Mancini.

Al was an acting coach at the Beverly Hills Playhouse in California for 30 years; was on the “That Was the Week That Was” for 12 years; was a featured actor in the play “The Time of Your Life”; was involved in several movies including the “Dirty Dozen,” where he acted as one of the “Dozen”; was a 2002 Theatre L.A. Ovation Award winner; and was a member of the Screen Actors Guild.

Al is survived by his sister and brother-in-law, Rose and Clint Morse of London; nieces and nephews, Matthew Morse of Chicago, Vincent Morse of Boca Raton, Florida, Rachel Sirca of Marysville, Roberta Nichols of Springhill, Tennessee, Andrew Morse of Marysville, Nicolas Morse of Delaware; several great-nieces and nephews.

He is preceded in death by his parents.

The family invites friends to call at the RADER-LYNCH AND DODDS FUNERAL HOME, 124 E. High St., London, from 4-7 p.m. on Friday, Nov. 16. Mass of Christian Burial will be held at 10 a.m. Saturday, Nov. 17, 2007, at Saint Patrick Catholic Church. Father Ted Sill will be officiating. Interment will follow at Saint Patrick Cemetery.

Al’s family has requested that memorial contributions be made in his memory to the Alzheimer’s Association. Envelopes will be available at the funeral home.
(Madison Press)

julian_craster

The Independent Obituary
Al Mancini: Actor in TW3 and 'The Dirty Dozen'

Published: 22 December 2007

Alfred Benito Mancini, actor: born Steubenville, Ohio 13 November 1932;
married 1965 Denny Dayviss (marriage dissolved), 1973 Carlyn Clayton
(marriage dissolved); died London, Ohio 12 November 2007.


His move from New York to the London stage with the satirical revue The
Premise was the catalyst that brought Al Mancini the recognition that had
eluded him in his homeland after a decade of acting. The television producer
Ned Sherrin, who was planning That Was the Week That Was, the groundbreaking
satirical BBC programme that stormed on to television screens in 1962,
spotted Mancini in The Premise at the Comedy Theatre in the West End. As a
result, Mancini joined TW3 - as it came to be known - which had David Frost
as its host and a cast that included Willie Rushton, Kenneth Cope, Lance
Percival, Roy Kinnear, the singers Millicent Martin and David Kernan, and
the political commentator Bernard Levin.

The sharp wit provided in scripts by writers such as Christopher Booker,
Bill Oddie, Keith Waterhouse, Willis Hall, Dennis Potter and the Labour
MP-to-be Gerald Kaufman bit hard into the Establishment, with the
Conservative government of Harold Macmillan then in its death throes,
Britain's empire crumbling and the country awaking to the new dawn of the
Swinging Sixties. The fresh-faced group of actors, mostly new to television,
appeared both together as a team in sketches and individually in monologues.
Mancini is best remembered for his solo effort as a vicar espousing, in
reverential tones, the benefits of London's first Hilton hotel.

When the team did a tribute to John F. Kennedy following the American
president's assassination, the whole programme was given over to it. For
once, it was entirely serious and delivered with solemnity and sincerity,
and the cast was subsequently flown to the United States to do it all over
again in Madison Square Garden, New York.

After the abrupt departure of That Was the Week That Was at the end of 1963,
when the BBC got cold feet with a general election looming, Mancini stayed
on in Britain, taking character roles in many popular television series. But
he became best known for the Second World War film The Dirty Dozen (1967),
in which he played Tassos Bravos, one of two soldiers who die defending a
crossroads from a German platoon in the climactic battle scene.

Directed by Robert Aldrich and based on the novel by E.M. Nathanson, with
its subtle references to themes relevant at the time of the Vietnam War, the
film told the story of 12 Americans - all in prison or on death row - being
trained as commandos to mount an attack on German officers. They are
promised pardons if they survive. Mancini appeared alongside big-name stars
such as Lee Marvin, Ernest Borgnine, Telly Savalas and Charles Bronson.

Born in Steubenville, Ohio in 1932, to parents of Italian descent, Mancini
was brought up across the state in London. His shoemaker father, Marino,
acted in amateur theatre during his spare time. This hobby rubbed off on Al
Mancini, who graduated in commercial art from Kent State University, Ohio,
but decided he wanted to go on the stage professionally, having acted at
school and college.

Moving to New York, he began to get work in the theatre, then started to
land small roles on television, in programmes such as I, Don Quixote
("DuPont Show of the Month", 1959), before moving to Britain. Following TW3,
Mancini appeared in several films, including the thrillers The Dirty Game
(starring Henry Fonda and shot in Germany, 1965) and Madame Sin (with Bette
Davis and Robert Wagner, 1972), and the comedy Don't Raise the Bridge, Lower
the River (playing a Portuguese chauffeur, alongside Jerry Lewis and
Terry-Thomas, 1967).

On television, he was in various plays, as well as episodes of the cult hit
The Prisoner (as a radio announcer, 1967), Department S (1969), the producer
Gerry Anderson's live-action, sci-fi series UFO (1970-71), The Protectors
(1972) and Special Branch (1974). In several episodes of Colditz (1974), he
played an American Officer, Captain Harry Nugent.

Mancini also had a successful stage career in Britain, most prominently as
the gay prison inmate Queenie in the John Herbert play Fortune and Men's
Eyes (Open Space Theatre, 1967-68, Comedy Theatre, 1968).

Returning to the United States in the mid-1970s, Mancini continued to take
character roles on the small screen, in popular programmes such as Rhoda
(1976), All in the Family (1977) and NYPD Blue (1996). His voice was heard
as a storyteller in Jackanory (1971) and a feisty fish in the film Babe: Pig
in the City (1998).

Among his many film parts was Tic-Tac in Miller's Crossing (1990), which
provided him with one of the lines much-quoted by aficionados of that
Prohibition-era mob drama: "I told you to put one in his brain, not in his
stinkin' face!"

For 30 years, Mancini also performed and taught drama at the Beverly Hills
Playhouse and, in 2002, he won the Los Angeles Ovation Award for his
performance in The Time of Your Life.

Anthony Hayward