The grandson of Calabria’s greatest printing dynasty became the comic voice of Italian America. The documented Italian roots of Eduardo ‘Farfariello’ Migliaccio, from a Naples book-street to a Mulberry Street stage.
A fruit-seller’s son from the Piedmontese hills who became the first piano-accordion star of American vaudeville — the documented Italian roots of Guido Deiro, from Salto Canavese to the New York stage.
Behind Nofrio — the ragged Sicilian everyman who filled the immigrant theatres of New York — stood a Palermo actor, Giovanni De Rosalia, whose Brooklyn death certificate still anchors him to Sicily.
Before he was the King of Cool he was Dino Paul Crocetti — son of a barber from Salino di Montesilvano in Abruzzo, and grandson of two foundlings whose marriage the register still records.
The chief stone carver of Mount Rushmore — the man who cut the expression into the presidents’ eyes — was born in Meduno, in the Friulian province of Pordenone.
Before he was the great screen idol of the silent era, he was Rodolfo Guglielmi — born in Castellaneta, in the province of Taranto, to a Puglian father and a French mother.
Documented family tree & key facts Lady Gaga — Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta. b. New York City, 28 March 1986.Her Italian roots are on her father’s side: two Sicilian lines from the Province of Messina, both families of shoemakers. (Her mother Cynthia Bissett’s side is American.) Paternal grandfather’s line — Germanotta, of Naso (Messina) Antonino…
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The composer who reinvented the tango was Argentine by birth, but his roots run to two corners of Italy — the Adriatic port of Trani in Puglia, and a mountain village above Lucca in Tuscany.
Documented family tree & key facts Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen — “The Boss.” b. Long Branch, New Jersey, 23 September 1949.His Italian roots run through his mother, Adele Ann Zerilli; the Springsteen surname is Dutch, from his father Douglas. Maternal line — Zerilli, of Vico Equense (Naples) Andrea Zerilli, caffettiere (the family behind the Gran…
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In 2023 Sylvester Stallone raised his grandfather’s barber-shop key on a town-hall balcony in Puglia. Behind the actor lies a Puglian line documented, generation by generation, in the Italian archives — from Gioia del Colle and Palo del Colle back more than two centuries.
