Tony Lo Bianco

Born to first-generation Italian American parents in New York City, Lo Bianco began his career in theater, appearing in several Broadway productions throughout the 1960s.

The one-man play was subsequently staged on Broadway in 1989, and Lo Bianco went on to perform several other Off-Broadway iterations of it, including LaGuardia (2008) and The Little Flower (2012–2015).

The grandson of Sicilian immigrants, Anthony LoBianco was born October 19, 1936, in Brooklyn, New York, the son of a housewife mother and a taxi driver father.

[1] Lo Bianco was a contending Golden Gloves boxer and also founded the Triangle Theatre in 1963, serving as its artistic director for six years and collaborating with lighting designer Jules Fisher, playwright Jason Miller and actor Roy Scheider.

From 1974–76, he played a lead role in six episodes of Joseph Wambaugh's anthology television series Police Story in the mid-1970s, four times alongside former NFL star qarterback Don Meredith.

[4] Lo Bianco first portrayed the larger-than-life mayor of New York City from 1933 to 1945, Fiorello H. La Guardia, in the one-man show Hizzoner!, written in 1984 by Paul Shyre.

Lo Bianco won a local Daytime Emmy Award for the WNET Public Television version of the play, which was filmed at the Empire State Institute for the Performing Arts in Albany.

[10] A New York Times profile in 2015 reported that Lo Bianco was at work on a one-man show playing himself and a film script about his early life.