A professor emeritus at Queens College, City University of New York, Gambino pioneered the field of Italian-American studies in the 1970s.
Richard Gambino grew up in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn, New York; his father was an Italian immigrant.
That same year, he co-founded Italian Americana with Ernest Falbo and Bruno Arcudi.
[5] In 1999, HBO made a fictionalized film, Vendetta, based on Gambino's non-fiction book by the same name, about the March 14, 1891, lynchings of Italians in New Orleans.
Gambino's play about Walt Whitman, Camerado, and another about Pope Pius XII, were performed in the Hamptons on Long Island.