Joseph Angelo D'Allesandro III (born December 31, 1948) is an American actor and Warhol superstar. He was a sex symbol of gay subculture in the 1960s and 1970s, and of several American underground films before going mainstream.[1]
Dallesandro starred in the Andy Warhol-produced film Flesh (1968) as a male prostitute. Rolling Stone magazine declared Dallesandro's second starring film Trash (1970) as the "Best Film of the Year", making him a star of the youth culture, sexual revolution, and subcultural New York City art collective in the early 1970s. Dallesandro also starred in the Factory films Heat (1972), Andy Warhol's Frankenstein (1974), and Andy Warhol's Dracula ( 1974), which were directed by Paul Morrissey. Dallesandro later lived in Europe for several years where he starred in both genre and art films. Having returned to the United States, he also crossed over into mainstream roles such as mobster Lucky Luciano in the film The Cotton Club (1984).
Joe Dallessandro was born in Pensacola, Florida, to Joseph Angelo D'Allesandro II, who was in the U.S. Navy. His mother, Thelma Testman, was 16 years old.[2] His parents separated soon after they moved to New Jersey when he was 2 years old.[3] Dallesandro and his younger brother Bobby were placed in foster care of Mr. and Mrs. Gary Silano in North Babylon, New York.[3]
By the time Dallessandro was five years old, his mother was serving fifteen years in a U.S. federal penitentiary for interstate auto theft.[citation needed] He was later reunited with his mother in 1970.[2]
Dallesandro was initially content living with his foster parents, but as he became a teenager he reportedly began to resent them, thinking that they were preventing him from living with his father.[4] He became aggressive and repeatedly ran away from his foster home until his father finally relented and allowed Joe to live with him.[4]
At age 13, Dallesandro and his brother moved to Queens, New York to live with their paternal grandparents and their father.[5] "I was very rebellious," he recalled.[3] "I hated the Queens school. They were so far behind the Long Island school that I just lost interest."[3] He was expelled from school for punching the school principal.[3] After this, he began hanging out with gangs and stealing cars. At age 15, Dallesandro drove a stolen car through the Holland Tunnel without paying the toll.[3] He was stopped by a police roadblock and was shot once in the leg by police who mistakenly thought he was armed. Dallessandro managed to escape being caught by police, but was later arrested when his father took him to the hospital for his gunshot wound. He was sentenced to Camp Cass Rehabilitation Center for Boys in the Catskills in 1964.[6] In 1965, aged 16, he ran away from the camp, and went to live with his father in Florida.[3] Dallessandro made his way to the West Coast with a friend and briefly worked at a pizza shop.[3] He supported himself by nude modeling for Bob Mizer's Athletic Model Guild.[7]
By 1967, Dallessandro had returned to New York. He met pop artist Andy Warhol and film director Paul Morrissey while they were shooting Four Stars (1967) in Manhattan's Greenwich Village, and they cast him in the film on the spot.[8] Warhol would later comment "In my movies, everyone's in love with Joe Dallesandro."[9]
Dallesandro appeared in Lonesome Cowboys (1968) before starring in the film Flesh (1968) as a hustler, where he had several nude scenes. Flesh became a crossover hit with mainstream audiences, and Dallesandro became the most popular of the Warhol stars. New York Times film critic Vincent Canby wrote of him: "His physique is so magnificently shaped that men as well as women become disconnected at the sight of him."[10]
After starring in Trash (1970), Dallesandro's underground fame began to cross over into the popular culture. In 1970, Newsday film critic Jerry Parker wrote that "Joe Dallesandro, who is a mere 21 is to Andy Warhol what Clark Gable once was to Louis B. Mayer."[3] Dallesandro appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone in April 1971. He was also photographed by some of the top celebrity photographers of the time: Francesco Scavullo, Annie Leibovitz, Richard Avedon.[11]
Dallesandro also starred in the films Heat (1972), Andy Warhol's Frankenstein (1974), and Andy Warhol's Dracula ( 1974), also directed by Morrissey. These last two films were shot in Europe. After filming was complete, he chose not to return to the U.S.[12] He appeared in Serge Gainsbourg's Je t'aime moi non plus (France, 1976), which starred Gainsbourg's girlfriend, British actress Jane Birkin.
Dallesandro continued to star in films made mainly in France and Italy for the rest of the decade, returning to the U.S. in the 1980s. He made several mainstream films during the 1980s and 1990s. One of his first notable roles was that of 1920s gangster Lucky Luciano in Francis Coppola's The Cotton Club (1984). Working with manager/attorney Stann Findelle, his career enjoyed a resurgence.
He had roles in Critical Condition (1987) opposite Richard Pryor, Sunset (1988) with Bruce Willis and James Garner, Cry-Baby (1990) with Johnny Depp, Guncrazy (1992) with Drew Barrymore, and Steven Soderbergh's 1999 film The Limey. He has also worked in television. In 1986, he co-starred in the ABC drama series Fortune Dane. The series lasted only five episodes. Dallesandro was also a regular for the first season (1987-1988) of the CBS crime drama series Wiseguy, appeared in three episodes of NBC's Miami Vice, and a two-hour episode of ABC's Matlock in 1990.[13]
A biography, Little Joe: Superstar by Michael Ferguson was released earlier in 2001, and a filmed documentary, Little Joe (2009), was released with Dallesandro serving as writer and producer. His adopted daughter, Vedra Mehagian, also served as a producer of the film.[citation needed]
In February 2009, Dallesandro received the Teddy Award, an honor recognizing those filmmakers and artists who have contributed to the further acceptance of LGBT people, culture and artistic vision.
He appeared in the Dandy Warhols' official video for "You are Killing Me" in 2016.[14]
In 2018 he starred as himself in Ulli Lommel's Factory Cowboys: Working with Warhol. The film was based on Lommel's own biography and partly on Dallesandro's memories of the period during which he worked with Andy Warhol.[15]
Dallesandro is openly bisexual,[16] has married three times, and has three children.[17]
Aged 18, he married his first wife, Leslie, the daughter of his father's girlfriend, in 1967. Their son, Michael, was born December 19, 1968. The marriage was dissolved in 1969. His second marriage was to Theresa ("Terry") in 1970. Their son, Joseph A. Dallesandro, Jr., was born November 14, 1970. The couple divorced in early 1978. In 1987, Dallesandro was married a third time, to Kimberly ("Kim").[citation needed] Dallesandro has a grandson and a granddaughter by his son Michael, as well as a grandson by his son Joseph.[18]
Semi-retired from acting, as of 2009 Dallesandro managed a residential hotel building in Los Angeles.[19]
