The media volunteer, Jeff, set a pile of LPs on my work table. "Someone donated Italian records. Maybe you know some."
Italian-American, he meant. I doubted it. My father wanted nothing to do with his family background.
I flipped through their soft and dusty covers, and--Jimmy Roselli?
I do know him!
My parents had his album Best of Neopolitan Song. They must have played it a lot, I instantly recognized his voice on youTube.
Why him? We never listened to Frank or Dino or Tony, or Connie.
There's no one left to answer that question.
Roselli grew up in Hoboken, NJ, down the street from Frank Sinatra.
He was never as famous as Sinatra, but "every Italian family in Brooklyn played his records", according to youtube.
Martin Scorsese, (who grew up in lower Manhattan's Little Italy) put Roselli's "Mala Femmina" in his movie Mean Streets (1973).
Here, Roselli sings "Mala Femmina" on the Ed Sullivan Show, 1960.
While I was on the track, I wondered, What was that Italian song played over and over on the newest Ripley (Netflix 2024) ?
Found it: "Il cielo in una stanza", a 1960 hit in Italy sung by pop star Mina.
(Scorsese also used it too--in Goodfellas. I've never seen it. I learn from youTube comments.)
This is the scene in Ripley:
https://youtu.be/0MiQSrFEkjk?si=HsS08r2-CFLbDcYq&t=22
Tom Ripley (Andrew Scott) and Dickie Greenleaf in Naples watch Mina sing "Il cielo in una stanza" (Mina played by Italian actor Hildegard de Stefano):
Ripley doesn't care for anyone, personally, but he does respond aesthetically. There's nothing funny in the story--(the emotional flatness is a problem in an 8-part series)-- but I did laugh at the faces Ripley makes when he edits a manuscript by Dickie's girlfriend, Marge. Grimacing as he pencils over her writing is one of Ripley's few honest expressions.
A glisten in his eye watching Mina sing is another.
Below:
Marge Sherwood (Dakota Fanning) and Tom Ripley, from American Cinematographer magazine.
Shot in black and white, the series is beautiful. Too beautiful. Everything, every thing is gorgeous. Too much design, and no dirt. Italy was never this clean.
Like Ripley's emotions, the visual affect is flat. I did enjoy the series, but without contrasts, it's a little boring.
Nobody wears dirty old undershirts like in Fellini's Roma (1972).