“Old soldiers never die, they just fade away,” General MacArthur famously said. Would that the same were true for American filmmakers who’ve made their careers exploiting crude mobster and moron stereotypes of Italian Americans in popular culture.

Such a person is David Chase (family name: De Cesare). A veteran writer of such TV shows as The Rockford Files and Northern Exposure, among others, Chase finally became a household name with his HBO series The Sopranos, a 1999 mob saga now credited by critics as being the progenitor of the new “golden age of television” via cable programming – more adult, more exciting.

In reality, the only thing new about The Sopranos was that, being shot for cable, it was allowed the free use of “F” bombs and female nudity usually reserved for theatrical features. To our community, it wasn’t new at all, but the same old, same old – in the words of Italian American activist Nick Addeo, “Italians stealing, hitting, shooting, cheating, and killing” (Mob Fatigue, The New Jersey-Star Ledger, March 5^th, 1999, Matt Zoeller Seitz).

What truly was new, however, was the show’s nearly universal acceptance: In 1999, political correctness, the father of today’s “woke” movement, was already a cultural force, yet a show featuring such crude ethnic images was embraced by intellectuals who would ordinarily cry “Foul!” if a TV show or film did the same to other ethnic, racial, religious or (now, in 2021) sexual groups.

In short, The Sopranos was a modernized form of the anti-Italian bias exhibited by so-called “yellow journalists” from turn-of-the-century America, but made palatable by Chase and company’s allegedly better-than-average writing and directorial skills. Though its central plot-line of a mobster in therapy was based on Chase’s real-life issues with his own Italian mother, The Sopranos, above all, was really a chance for Chase to pay homage to his idols, Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese, whose own mob obsessions fed his. Clearly, Chase wanted to stand next to them on the winners’ stand at the Italian Defamation Olympics, even if it meant getting just a bronze medal.

[Considering the numerous, blatant shout-outs to both The Godfather and Goodfellas on The Sopranos, it’s a wonder his medal wasn’t taken away for plagiarism.]

One would think Chase would be content with making TV history. Far from it. He now wants to mess with U.S. history. Though the death of actor James Gandolfini in 2013 deprived him of the chance to make a Sopranos feature film, Chase found a (clever? distasteful?) way to make himself relevant again. He has made a film about a real-life event, the infamous Newark, New Jersey race riots of 1967, and turned into a Sopranos prequel – that is, he has created a new fictional player, the father of a character from the show (Christopher Molisanti), and planted him in the middle of the movie. Luigi Pirandello, eat your heart out!

When Woody Allen (in 1983) put a fictional character named Zelig into newsreel footage, having him hob-nob with famous historical figures, the effect was clearly comic. Chase’s intentions are not the same – not when you’re dealing with an incident like a race riot. Not content with having perpetuated the goon-and-gangster image of Italians, Chase gets to express yet another crude stereotype: hard-core racists. This time, Chase seems to want to please Spike Lee, the African American filmmaker who created the genre.

The race riots were real. Two Italian American cops arrested a Black cab driver and allegedly beat him before locking him up. Word spread that he had been killed, which only further inflamed Newark’s Black community, already a victim (as some African Americans are today) of police brutality and discrimination. Hugo Addonizio, the Italian American mayor, was no Italian American hero – no Mario Cuomo, no Frank Serpico; he was incompetent and corrupt. And the city, like L.A. two years before, burned down

Chase’s film, The Many Saints of Newark, was originally scheduled for release in March of 2020 but was postponed because of the Coronavirus. But, just as Chase resurrected himself thirteen years after the The Sopranos ended in 2007, The Many Saints of Newark is now poised to be re-released this March, 2021, one year later. Whether Chase’s deliberate mixing of fact and fantasy will work – using his Sopranos fame and fan-base as a built-in marketing ploy to sell a “serious” movie – remains to be seen.

One certainty is that Chase isn’t out to enlighten people on the complexity of Italian American history.

For example, prior to being elected mayor of Newark in 1962, Hugo Addonizio was a U.S. Congressman and shared a Washington D.C. apartment with a fellow New Jersey Congressman, also born in Newark. His name? Peter Rodino.

Unlike Addonizio, Rodino worked for civil rights his entire career and openly mentored Black politicians as the city of Newark became majority African American.

A few years later (1973), Rodino became a household name as the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee during the famous Watergate Hearings. His leadership was such that, in early 1976, Jimmy Carter seriously considered him as a potential VP candidate

For the record: Rodino eventually pulled himself out of consideration, citing his age (67) and health reasons (failing eyesight). Yet he was still selected to give the nominating speech for Carter at the Democratic National Convention in New York. 

And you know who else was born in Newark? Marvelous Marvin Hagler, the former African American middleweight champion of the world from 1980-1987. Hagler saw the riots first-hand.

Afterward, he and his family (whose tenement apartment was destroyed) moved to Massachusetts, where Hagler joined a gym run by two Italian American brothers, Pat and Goody Petronelli.

As his skills progressed, Hagler was assisted by an Italian American sports promoter in Boston, Rip Valenti, who got him major fighting gigs. Within years, Hagler ruled the boxing world.

And do you know what Marvin Hagler did in the year 2000, after his boxing career was over? He moved to Italy, specifically, Milan. He and his Italian-born wife have lived there ever since. Hagler has made a name for himself as a beloved star in Italian action movies.

It’s a good bet that audiences who view the Italians vs. Blacks race war in The Many Saints of Newark will see what Hollywood always wants them to see: Italians behaving badly – doing crime, committing violence, spewing racial epithets. Surely the film’s title itself is vaguely self-mocking. Chase undoubtedly can’t let go of the self-loathing which seems to infect so many Italian American writers, actors, and filmmakers – a desire to continually portray our community as endless evil sinners, unworthy of being saved.

But, as they say, miracles do happen. Speriamo! (Let’s hope!) -BDC