[clapping] [music] [cheering] [music] [cheering] [music] [cheering] It's a fall Saturday night in South Philadelphia and Anthony Esposito is giving his fiancée Paula Sacchetti a serenade.

Next week is their wedding day and Anthony is professing his love Italian style just the way they've done it for centuries in the old country.

It's one example of the unique style the Italian people brought with them when they came to the new world.

Hello, I'm Bobby Rydell and this is the house where I was raised.

It's in South Philadelphia, which many Italian-Americans have called home.

Of course, we're not the only ethnic group that has ever lived here, or even the first.

Over the decades, we Italians have rubbed elbows and broken bread with our Irish, black, Polish, Jewish, and Asian neighbors, and still do today.

But I think it's safe to say that South Philadelphia draws much of its identity from the people who came here from places like Abruzzi, Campania, and Sicily.

They're the workmen and artisans who have shaped the bridges and buildings we still use, whose shops and restaurants fill the air with the aromas of garlic and olive oil, and who have put their own stamp on religion, politics, and the arts.

Join me as we tell the story of my people as they carved out their own piece of the American dream right here in South Philly.

[Music] At the turn of the century in the Sicilian countryside, a group of peasants gathered at the door of the Lord whose land they tilled.

When he demanded to know what they wanted, they responded by throwing down their shovels and declaring, "Sir, do your farming yourself.

We are going to America."

In the half century between 1875 and 1925, millions of their countrymen followed that example, trading poverty and oppression in the old world for hope and opportunity in the new world.

In the port city of Genoa, many a tear was shed as young men and women kissed their loved ones goodbye before embarking on a voyage to an alien land.

They boarded steamships of the Italia, Red Star, and American lines, and endured two weeks of stacked conditions, foul air, diseases, and seasickness.

They had a name for this experience, La Via Della Rosa, the Way of Sorrow.

I don't think they really wanted to leave their hometowns.

On the other hand, they had to.

I once saw an interview with an old gentleman who had recently died in New Jersey a few years ago.

When asked this question during his lifetime, he said that he left his family because it was the only way he could possibly have helped his family.

And I think the kind of cruel irony that's in that answer captures it for a lot of people.

One of the first interviews that I ever did in South Philadelphia was with a man who was a native of Sicily who had migrated about 50 years before and had spent most of his life in a row home in the 600 block on Wharton Street right across from a little park where many of his buddies used to hang out.

But it was such a trenchant kind of remark.

He captured so well the experience.

He said to me at a certain point, it is better to be a poor man in South Philadelphia than to be a rich man anywhere else.

Ellis Island saw the largest number of arrivals in the great wave of immigration.

But Philadelphia was also a popular destination.

More than one million pilgrims entered America at the foot of Washington Avenue until 1925, when the U.S.

Congress slammed shut the Golden Door.

I worked on several occasions with the Pennsylvania Historical Museum Commission of Pennsylvania.

And they contacted me telling me that they were planning to erect a marker at Washington Avenue and Delaware Avenue to mark the place where immigrants had entered the Philadelphia area.

And they were mostly Jewish and Italian immigrants.

And while I stood there, of course, I had some pangs because it suddenly came to me that this was where my grandfather and my mother and her brother had entered this wonderful city.

It was tremendously-- in fact, I get a little emotional even trying to talk about it.

As Italian immigrants disembarked, speaking little or no English, the lucky ones had relatives waiting for them.

Others were greeted by the "padron," labor brokers who had learned English and made their living finding work, sometimes menial, for the new arrivals.

In 1884, Antonio Palumbo and his wife Carolina founded a boarding house for fellow immigrants at 824 Catherine Street, less than a mile from the Washington Avenue pier.

Soon, the new arrivals would disembark bearing simple tags stating their destination, Palumbo, Philadelphia.

My father was 21, my mother was 15.

They were married in a little town in Sicily and came here on their honeymoon.

My father came here from Sicily to Naples, to Genoa and then 40 days on a ship to here.

I have their passport and I have everything in the papers that they came with at the time.

Well when they were getting dark, Mr.

Palumbo all of a sudden arrived and he went over to both families and says, "Do you have any relatives here, friends?"

"No."

"Well please come with me.

I will put you up.

I will feed you.

There will be no charge.

But I want you to look around, find a job, and then rent a home in the area, which after several months they did.

And that's how we are very, very favorable of the Palumbo regime.

The kindly Palumbos cut into the padroni's turf, often putting newcomers up for no charge and arranging for jobs around the country where needed.

It was a tradition of generosity that would be practiced for another century by two more generations of Palumbos.

By 1920, Philadelphia's Italian population had reached 60,000, nearly matching that of the long-entrenched Irish.

Ten years later, that number grew to 200,000.

The industrial city was bursting at the seams, and Italian laborers were busy working on such public projects as the Delaware River Bridge and the subway lines, just as their earlier cousins had done on the Broad Street and Reading stations and City Hall.

Meanwhile, other immigrants set out to work for themselves as butchers, shoemakers, tailors, and hucksters.

The majority of the Italians who came to the area were Sicilian.

And in Sicily they had push carts.

And they began to either get small amounts of olive oil or fruit or other things and take them and push them through the streets calling out their wares.

The old days we used to get up at 3, 4 o'clock in the morning and push carts with wheels on them all greared, hard to move over the cobblestones.

Go get like bananas or something, you know.

But instead of going to get to the icebox, you know, like about 20 feet away, we'd have to go to Callowhill Street, which is about a mile away.

Push the cart down there, cut them, get the bananas, these come in on big stalks, you know.

Cut them off, put them on a stand and push the stand all the way back.

And everybody did that like twice a day, three times a day.

But today, if I have my kid here, and I tell my kid to go in that ice box, get a 40-pound box of bananas, put it on a stand, they'll turn around and say, "Yo, Dad, what are you trying to do, kill me or something?"

Some of the Hucksters became prosperous enough to trade their push carts for stores along 9th Street, fast becoming the retail hub of South Philly.

One of the first was butcher Domenico Cappuccio.

1920, my mother and father got married, had their reception.

After the reception, my father had the store opened.

This has been here since September 20, 1920.

And we lived in the back.

We lived with my grandparents.

See, my grandmother and grandfather lived here, too.

You know, when we weren't going to school, my father had us in the store working.

The women worked tremendously.

And if it wasn't for the women, believe me, they were hard working people.

Women's women's rights.

No women's rights.

Women work hard in those days.

When her dad first started in 1920, he used to go to various sales and he used to buy livestock as far as Paoli and walk it in West Chester Pike, come down Chestnut Street before Chestnut Street was paved down to our slaughterhouse.

Slaughter the animals, cut them up and then bring them here and grind them in the grinder and at that time there was no electric grinder it was a hand grinder.

You do that for a day's work.

When my mother first started she was in the first butcher block and this is where my father was when I was a little girl and then when Harry and I got married in Harry's store this is his butcher block.

If you take a look at it you'll see it's very thin.

See?

It's only about six inches whereas new blocks is like like 18 inches.

This is 1927.

In other words it's been scraped, re-scraped, cut and re-cut.

Hard work and long hours spelled success for the Capuccios and their neighbors along 9th Street.

Meanwhile, right around the corner from the market, the Palumbo's fortunes were rising as well.

Antonio's son Francesco continued to run the rooming house as well as extending the family business into banking, coal, furniture and clothing manufacturing.

He and his wife Philemona had eight children including Frank Jr.

My father's father died when he was 16 and his mother had died when he was 2.

So he basically took over the operation of Palumbo's at that point and built it into the nightclub complex that it became.

And he did that sometimes with not very much money and not very much support.

I heard stories about how he would cook the spaghetti himself and sometimes he would make the beds himself and clean the boarding house himself until it became the success that it later became.

Carmen DePeepe was fresh out of high school when he joined the 29-piece Palumbo band in 1945.

He ultimately went on to be its leader, called himself Carmen D., and helped Frank Palumbo establish Athon Catherine as the nightlife capital of Philadelphia.

You'd have a line of girls open the show.

You'd have a comic come on and then maybe a magic team, a dance team.

And then they would end the show with a singer.

And it was it was real fast.

It was a great show.

Carmen D worked with the biggest names in show business over the years, bringing a touch of Vegas to South Philly.

And a few of those names were homegrown.

I don't mind mentioning that I was one of them.

Back in the 50s when boys like Bobby Rydell, Frankie Avalon, Fabian, they got their start at Palumbo's.

I remember Bobby Rydell coming in, his father setting up a set of drums and played drums.

Bobby was a nice little drummer.

And from there on he started to sing.

Frank Palumbo set up several other nightclubs around town including the 20th Century, The Cove, Ciro's and The Click.

In the midst of establishing an entertainment empire he somehow found time to pursue one of the great love affairs in Philadelphia history.

Vanda Bazzaco a South Philly girl met Frank Palumbo when she joined his chorus line at the age of 14.

Later she changed her name to Kippy Valez and went to Hollywood for a shot at film stardom.

She had gone out to California I think mostly because my father wasn't really ready to commit to her at the time.

And she had a successful career going on out there.

But I think what she was really waiting for was a marriage with my father and to be able to have children.

And as soon as he said he was ready she was back in Philadelphia ready to marry him.

Kippy Valles gave up her shot at stardom to become Kippy Palumbo.

She came home and brought glamour and elegance to South Philly.

Whatever entertainer came to Palumbo's, she was with, she sat with them through their first show and made sure that everything was fine.

That the room was okay that they were staying, the food that they were going to eat, and everything was okay and all that kind of stuff.

Kippy was such a wonderful person.

Frank Palumbo was renowned not only for his club, but his amazing generosity.

Through the years he sent thousands of underprivileged kids to the circus and the zoo, as well as donating animals for zoo displays.

His motto was "If I stop giving, I stop living," a philosophy he and Kippy imparted to their children.

For two generations, Palumbo's was the place for youngsters to hold proms, newlyweds to celebrate, politicians to wheel and deal, and civic groups to note their achievements.

But with the advent of the Atlantic City Casinos in 1978, small clubs like Palumbo's just couldn't keep up.

I saw where the big parties that we had, like the 500 people that would come for a banquet, would drop to 400 to 300.

The first thing you know, like, it'd be a hundred people.

And that's when our shows were starting to be cut down.

As tough as the casinos made it for Palumbo's, the cruelest blow of all came on February 11th, 1983, when Frank Palumbo decided to shovel snow in the midst of a raging blizzard and collapsed with a massive heart attack.

One morning I got a phone call and I said, "Yes, Frank."

That was my, every time he called I said, "Yes, Frank, what is it?"

And the caller said, "This isn't Frank."

I said, "Who is this?"

And it was a friend.

He said, "Didn't you hear about Frank?"

I said, "No, this is like 7 o'clock in the morning."

He said, "Frank Palumbo died."

And I remember there was a columnist that drew a cartoon of my father right after he died with the picture of my father standing at the gates of heaven and St.

Peter saying to my father, "Don't worry, Frank.

We're finally going to take care of you.

You don't need to take care of anybody else."

For another 11 years after Frank Palumbo's death, his son, Frank Jr., kept the restaurant and nightclub open.

But in June of 1994, as Palumbo was on the verge of selling the property, the smell of smoke seeped through the neighborhood at Ethan Catherine.

This was the entrance, a peek inside where the hottest acts once played, a red hot inferno.

The sky above provided a fiery show for this young couple.

Two months later, another blaze ravaged what was left of the Palumbo complex and burned a hole in the heart of the neighborhood.

I was sorry to see it burn.

Matter of fact, we all miss it today.

I meet people in the street that say, "We don't know where to go.

We don't know where to go."

A drugstore now occupies the spot where Palumbo's stood, bringing shelter to one generation and entertainment to another.

Gregg and Rick DiStefano are heirs to another long time South Philly legacy of good music and good food at the Victor Cafe.

It's a legacy that dates to 1908 when their grandfather John arrived in Philadelphia from Italy and found work as a waiter.

He saved his pennies and soon parlayed his love of opera into a new career as a dealer in the newfangled record business.

But it wasn't long before his career took yet another turn.

During the 20s when money was a little scarce and people really couldn't afford to spend a whole week's salary to buy a record, he would allow his customers to come in anyway and just listen to the music, the new releases and maybe have a cup of coffee or a piece of cake.

And that idea kind of flew.

Then the restaurant became a record shop/coffeehouse.

And with the repeal of prohibition became a full-blown restaurant.

In 1933.

And that's how the restaurant got its beginning.

However, my grandfather, who started the restaurant, always insisted that the music came first.

The music was religion here.

And everything else came secondary.

In fact, my grandfather wouldn't even allow any live singing to happen here at the restaurant.

However, there were some customers that did some singing here.

And they were all friends of my grandfather and my father and my uncle.

And they would come in here, it was mainly on Friday evenings, they would come in, it was known as the Friday night gang.

And they would come here to this back room, we had a long couch back here and tables.

And they would play music and they would sing along with the new releases.

And they would stay until all hours.

But the place was visited by almost all of the opera greats from Bistefano, Tegini, Martinelli, Toscanini, Jan Pierce, Cesare Siepi, De Luca.

And it was visited by Enrico Caruso himself more than once.

When I was a child, I was told that the chair he used to sit in was still here.

They knew which one it was by a big X marked underneath of it.

They used to play all these recordings so I would get up on the steps and sing with Leonard Warren or Lawrence Tibbett.

Enrico DiGiuseppe later on got up and sang with Caruso and so forth.

We sang duets with the famous opera singers.

Last time I was back there I checked on the walls and they have all the pictures of famous opera singers and you know what they're more up there of me than anyone else but I think it's because Henry was my friend who ran the place for many years.

In recent years most of the singing in the cafe has been done by aspiring opera stars who finance their careers by waiting on tables and serenading the customers.

We function typically on the same level as any other waiter would but at a certain point especially when one gets up to sing typically somewhere in the course of the evening we'll just take a little break from serving and go set up a song and ring a bell and that gets the audience's attention.

I jokingly refer to it as the shush bell.

[bell ringing] [singing] Everyone working on the floor sings opera and also loves it.

So there's a lot of camaraderie and we have a lot of fun.

We have fun with the customers.

The customers love it.

I go around and mess with the old men.

Sometimes the young men.

[laughs] They love it.

[singing in French] [applause] And occasionally the customers get into the act themselves, just as they did in the '20s and '30s.

[singing operatically] And so today, under the watchful gaze of operas and lawyers, the twin Italian passions of good food and good music continue to be honored right here in South Philly.

Prior to the great wave of immigration in the 1870s, a small contingent of Italians called Philadelphia home, by language and culture they were isolated from their neighbors.

For social as well as spiritual comfort, they turned to the Church.

The Irish that were in this country, they had their own parishes.

And where the Germans, they had their own parishes.

And I believe that they were not encouraged to go into these parishes, the Italians.

They were encouraged to have their own.

A group of Italian Catholics approached Bishop John Newman to petition for their own national parish.

The petition was approved and the result was the first Italian church in America, St.

Mary Magdalene dei Pazzi, located at 7th and Montrose Streets.

As the Italian population grew, the parish became the focal point for the community.

It was like a haven to them, you know?

It was a place where they could engage in conversation with each other, where they could exchange ideas, you know, and talk about their country, talk about their towns in Italy, and have their own little shops here to sell food.

And so it was like a mother to them, you know, that embraced them all, and they felt real at home around here.

As Italian immigrants poured into the city, more parishes sprung up to meet their spiritual and social needs.

St.

Rita of Caccia, Our Lady of Good Counsel, The Assumption, Our Lady of Mount Carmel, and St.

Donato's in Overbrook.

In the old country, every town had its own patron saint whom the citizens venerated.

That devotion was not forgotten when they became American citizens.

They brought their saints.

They brought St.

Joseph, the Blessed Mother, St.

Rita, St.

Anthony, all these saints, you know, they had devotion to these saints and so Father Soleri, he had statues made for those and when they had procession, they were put in the procession, these statues, to please the people who had devotion to the saints.

In the 20s and 30s, after Congress imposed stiff immigration quotas, the Italian influx leveled off.

The Archdiocese decided to consolidate parishes and got a big surprise.

And so Cardinal Dougherty, he thought that one of these parishes should go.

And he chose Our Lady of Good Counsel to close down.

Of course, the people, they resented that for many months.

They put a vigil there in the church.

They were armed too, with guns.

Because as a kid I used to go through there with a trolley car and I used to see these people going back and forth with holsters around their waist.

The priests of Our Lady of Good Counsel, they were made prisoners for about two or three months.

They couldn't get out at all.

They remained there.

And so, however, at the end, you know, everything was settled and Our Lady Good Council Church was demolished and right now there is a parking place right there.

Over the years, children have continued to dress up and participate in the rituals that have characterized the church for generations.

But for parishes like St.

Mary Magdalene de Pazzi, the glory days are past.

The grandchildren of Italian immigrants have been assimilated, many moving to the suburbs and their parishes far from the first ethnic enclaves.

It poses a challenge that the old parishes will have to grapple with for years to come.

For every ethnic group that comes to America, hard work and sacrifice are the norm.

But in each group, a small number turns outside the law to pursue the American dream.

Italians are no different, but all too often, Italian Americans are equated with organized crime.

It's a stereotype that people resent.

I don't think anyone would want to deny the existence of organized crime or the fact that some Italian Americans have participated in it.

However, for a great mass of Italian Americans, it is a relatively remote experience.

It is an experience that is as foreign to us as it is to other kinds of Americans.

The entrance of Italians into the organized crime scene also corresponded to the emergence of the mass media in Hollywood.

Unfortunately it left a more indelible imprint on the public consciousness than makes us very happy.

There are many neighborhoods that I represent in my district and some of the neighborhoods I go in, as soon as they know I'm Italian and from South Philadelphia, there's this attitude or a little remark from time to time, "Oh, you must be one of the mafia."

But I've been subjected sometimes, even among colleagues, saying, "Oh, you're from South Philadelphia," and they say things like "mafioso," which disturbed me a great deal.

George Anastasia has covered the organized crime beat for the Philadelphian choir for over 20 years and deals with the issue every day.

I don't want to say agonize over it but it's something I deal with all the time when I write about this because I get a lot of flack from people in South Philadelphia and the Italian American community saying why do you write about this stuff?

You're just reinforcing the stereotype that these people believe in.

My philosophy is I can't waste my time and energy worrying about someone who buys into stereotypes.

Those people aren't worth worrying about.

There's a great line in a Gay Talese short story about Frank Costello the gangster.

And he opens it with an anecdote set in Little Italy in New York where this young Italian immigrant goes running to his father because some of the other children in the neighborhood who aren't Italian were calling him a wop.

And the father pulls the boy aside and he says, "Angelo, my son, just remember, this country was discovered by one Italian who was named after another Italian, and Italians were giving art and history and culture to the world when these English were still living in caves and painting their faces blue."

I mean, as long as you know that, and I think we know that, you don't have to worry about what other people think, because somebody who buys into the stereotype is a narrow-minded person who isn't worth worrying about.

That's where I come from, from all of this, and I know everybody doesn't feel that way or agree with that, but that's the philosophy I bring to this.

I mean, I know and I'm proud of my heritage.

I know everything that Italians and Italian-Americans have accomplished.

And I don't have to go around waving a red, white, and green flag to say that.

By the 1940s and '50s, Italians had established themselves firmly in every aspect of local life, except one-- politics.

After escaping political repression in the old country, people tended to look to each other for support.

There was no one to champion the community, no political figure for Italian-Americans to look up to.

The community needed a political wake-up call, and it would get one from a big man from Rosewood Street.

Today, the memory of Frank Rizzo still looms large, especially here in South Philly.

However you felt about the man who became police commissioner and mayor, there's no denying the galvanizing effect he had on his community.

Frank Rizzo entered the Philadelphia Police Department in 1943.

Frank wasted no time making a name for himself.

April 22, 1944.

Frank Rizzo, a patrolman attached to the 22nd Street and Hunting Park Avenue Station, was burned on the hands last night when he tried to extinguish a fire in an awning on the drugstore of I.M.

Ostrom at Topahawkin and Bainton Streets.

He was treated at Germantown Hospital.

Rizzo was off duty at the time.

It was the first of thousands of times his name would appear in the media, usually for feats of daring.

But on a cold December night in 1945, three young sailors who were coming home from the war discovered another side of the tough cop.

Soon as we got off the bus at Broad and Erie, the first gentleman to walk up to us was Frank Rizzo, Officer Frank Rizzo from the 39th District.

And he said, "If you gentlemen are going to the Naval Base, you're on the wrong corner.

You have to cross over Germantown Avenue and get on a Route 20 southbound trolley, which takes you to the main gate at the Naval Base."

We said, "No, sir.

We're here.

We're on our leave.

We're coming.

We're going home for 30 days' leave."

So he asked us where we lived.

Then he got us three red cars to take us to our homes at 3 a.m.

on a bitter, bitter cold December night in 1945.

That was the very, very beginning because I went back up and I learned from other policemen that the big Italian cop was in the Blue Boy restaurant.

So now I went to him and I said, "Officers, I'd like to make your photograph."

And that's the first actual photograph I took of Frank Rizzo.

And that was the first picture he ever had made in uniform.

It was the start of a beautiful friendship for the two men.

Pissarris joined the Daily News as a press photographer and for the next 45 years he chronicled the meteoric career of Frank Rizzo.

It's like growing up together because when he needed me he'd call me or when I needed him I called him.

Rizzo slowly rose through the ranks sergeant captain and deputy commissioner building a reputation for toughness that was becoming legend.

In 1967 Mayor James Tate enhanced his re-election bid by appointing Rizzo as the police department's first Italian-American commissioner.

Fearlessness, organizing skills and that deft personal touch got Rizzo the job.

And it didn't hurt that he was enormously popular in working-class neighborhoods all over the city.

Tate, who was completing his second term as mayor, could not run again in 1971.

Everyone knew that Rizzo had his eye on the job.

I had known Frank and had met him when I was an assistant DA.

And so I was one of the first people that Mayor Rizzo called and he said to me, "Counselor, I'm going to be running for mayor and I'd like you to be involved in my campaign."

I was teaching in college at the time at Drexel University.

And I said, you know, I instantly said I'd love to be involved.

And I got, I started out figuring I'd do an hour or two a day and by, within a few weeks I was there 12 hours a day.

He was a folk hero to the people in Philadelphia.

You have to understand that South Philadelphia was used as a dumping ground for many, many years by the so-called aristocratic mayors who dumped everything down there like the stadiums and the spectrum and public housing and you know all the ideas and everything and of course it was never in Chestnut Hill.

Poor people were represented, rich people were represented, but what later became you know the middle class, working class people never were represented.

They were sort of taken for granted by everyone and Frank was the first person to stand up and say these people have rights too.

Voters in South Philly were now wide awake and they knew who they liked.

Not to be for Frank Rizzo down here said one committeeman is a sacrilege.

I was a Republican you know when he ran for mayor so it was very disheartening for me to see my friends who I'd been servicing day and night walking around with elect Frank Rizzo buttons I mean everybody was a block captain for Rizzo and it was it was a tide that you just couldn't maybe you try to fight but you couldn't win every election Eve Rizzo returned to his boyhood home on Rosewood Street and each time he was hailed as the returning hero there would literally be you know thousands of people waiting for him if he just announced that he was coming and I remember a couple of Italian women who were maybe 75 years old you know they had the shawls you know and so forth and the black dresses and so forth and when he walked down the street they got on their knees and kissed his hand and tears would come to their eyes.

The community had found its champion.

On November 2, 1971, Rizzo beat Republican opponent Thatcher Longstreth by nearly 50,000 votes, swept along on a tide of support in South Philly that in some wards reached 85 percent of the vote.

I think if we went through South Philadelphia, we would certainly find a great number of people that had an enormous fondness for Mayor Rizzo.

I think we would probably find some people who were more hesitant and somewhat critical about the mayor.

But in terms of those who did endorse and appreciate what he represented, I think he represented a great deal for them.

He represented an affirmation of their lives.

He represented a symbol that people who came from their kind of neighborhood and came from their kind of family and their kind of background could rise to a position of power, could represent something that was prestigious to them, could represent something that was success to them.

Along the way there would be controversy but one thing was certain.

Frank Rizzo's victory told the city that his people had made it.

No one would take this community for granted again.

Italian Americans have found heroes in all walks of life.

In 1921, when Frank Rizzo was one year old, Alfredo Coccoza was born in this home on Christian Street.

He was blessed with one of the sweetest, clearest tenor voices of all time.

Eventually, he adapted his mother's maiden name, Maria Lanza, and conquered the world of entertainment as Mario Lanza.

His was a talent and fame that brought honor to the community.

And today, decades after his untimely death of a heart attack, South Philly still remembers Mario Lanza.

He hung out here every day and he used to help out my grandfather and boast that someday he would pay to hear him sing.

My grandfather had befriended a lot of the people at RCA Victor, you know, that looked to him for advice on how to market their records, so on and so forth.

He had an ear for the music.

He knew who was good.

And he thought that Fred was, that Alfred Cucosa was a very good singer.

So one day on his trip to the RCA headquarters in Camden, he took Alfred along with him.

And the rest is history.

Freddy Cucosa became Mario Lanza.

Well, Mario Lanza was a young lad.

He used to go to our school.

And then one day Monsignor heard him singing over here, singing the Ave Maria.

It was really breathtaking.

Monsignor Mezzoni.

He was here and he encouraged him to continue his singing.

The first Sunday of November, the Mario Alonso Institute gathers around here and has members from all over the world, fan club members, etc., come to Philadelphia, not only for this Mass, but they also bring in maybe one or two singers who sings with our choir or sings their own particular piece.

I come from Michigan and I live in the suburb of Detroit.

Ever since I was a little boy I always just was mystified at the glorious voice of Mario Alonso and I always wished I could sing like that.

It's a great honor for me to come to Philadelphia and sing for Mario Alonso.

We do it because we have a great love for Mario and his dream and we intend for it to be perpetual.

Mario Lanz's memory is also served by a museum in his honor at the Settlement School in Queen Village.

Memorabilia from his career are displayed for visitors from all over the world.

He's one of the persons that South Philadelphia is truly proud of and I know I am.

I was glad to know him when he was Kokoza and I know him now when he's Mario Lanza.

And Mario, wherever you are, I'd love to sing a duet with you sometime.

Golden Days Earlier, Anthony Esposito and Paula Secchetti had their traditional serenade.

[applause] Today, they're a man and wife.

Unlike some newlyweds, they're not moving to the suburbs.

They're planning to live right here in their old neighborhood.

Now it's two weeks later and the newlyweds have returned to South Philly to begin their new life.

Paula's mother Lucille has welcomed them back with a classic Sunday afternoon dinner.

[Background chatter] Claudio's.

Claudio's.

My mother still goes to 9th Street.

She's 84 years old and still goes faithfully.

To buy all the fish.

On Sunday you had to have the dinner.

We came home from church at 1 o'clock.

Right.

1 o'clock in the afternoon.

Oh yeah.

What was always included in that dinner?

Macaroni.

Macaroni.

Gravy.

Sausage.

Sausage.

Rucho.

Rucho.

It was just a real close family thing.

Good food is a vital part of life for many families in South Philly.

So much so that recipes are passed down from one generation to the next.

Like Agnes Viso and her daughter Maria.

Years ago I remember as a little girl when my mom sent me off to the Italian movies on 8th and Christian.

She would send me pepper and egg sandwiches.

That's very popular too among the Italians.

Well, there are peppers, of course the peppers and the eggs.

And I use some onion and some olive oil and some fresh parsley and fresh basil.

And you saute everything together and you put the eggs and it's delicious.

When my sister makes her omelet she makes it like a pie.

I mix it up like a jumbot.

My mom made it for us because it was more or less like a lunchtime thing for us in our household because my mom worked in the business.

And it was fast, it was something that we loved.

We really enjoyed it.

And in an Italian roll, it's really as good as a broiled steak.

We did have a cantina in our home.

We had the wine press and all the barrels.

We had all the equipment.

My grandfather made homemade wine every October.

And of course, you know little fruit gnats, they'd be flying around the living room for about two or three weeks.

You really had to be a man's man to drink that.

One glass of that will put you where you want to go.

As opposed to maybe today, a Merlot or something like that, where you can do a half a bottle in.

But the alcohol content on that, if you didn't have the right winemaker, it can get you there, let me tell you.

Yeah.

Recently in the South Philly Review they had, uh, they were talking about, uh, people hanging on corners.

And I remember I used to hang at 13th and Wolf and it was never any problems.

It was never any problems.

We'd just hang there, we'd go get a soda, you know.

Well, that's what my mother... My mother always said she liked the idea that we used to hang on the street corner because she said the women felt safe, the older women.

They used to walk down the streets and they knew all the young boys were hanging out there.

We were a good... Oh, we were, yeah, sure.

Unless you wore white box.

(singing) Yeah, I'm originally a South Florida guy.

Yeah, I'm originally a South Floyd guy.

I'm half Irish, I'm half Italian.

So we hung out on the street corner.

We had the flavor was there, the echo was there.

Most of it was night time, we were hoods, we hung out.

That's how it first started.

We were young guys.

We'd just sit there and sit and sing.

And all of a sudden, my father came out one day and says, you know what, you guys sound pretty good.

And ever since he did that, we've started roaming the streets.

And every street corner had a doo-wop group.

And we just loved them.

[MUSIC - THE BATS, "LOVE"] Oh, well, all through the night, I dreamed I'd hold you tight on an island, yes, an island of love, love, love, love, alone with you on an island of love.

That's it.

I was born American, I live in America.

I never realized I was American though.

I was an Italian.

Everybody else was "Medigan" what we call the nickname.

Because Medigan ate white bread.

They went to the Acme and bought peanut butter and jelly.

We had Italian bread, we had homemade food, we had gravy, we had spaghetti homemade, things like this that the Americans never did.

Now that's not a demeaning term.

And a Medigan is just anyone who is an Italian.

Joe is the author of several books about life in South Philadelphia spanning the last 40 years.

My editor in my book has a favorite expression she always hollers at me.

Joe you don't speak English.

Why don't you?

I said no I speak South Philadelphia and go out of South Philadelphia and somebody will say you're from South Philadelphia because you said "ack" on me.

You said "across the street" you said "fifth" F-I-F-F which comes after fourth.

20 T-W-U-N-N-Y comes after 19.

Ain't he cute?

When you see a baby, what are you going to say?

Ain't he cute?

I mean, what would you say?

Expressions and mannerisms also make this neighborhood unique.

Saturday Night Live's Cherri Oteri has created a character called Rita who comes straight out of South Philly.

Well, the Rita character is loosely based on my grandmother, but it's also kind of a combination of a lot of women that I've met from South Philly.

My grandmama would say, "Okay, come on, let's go.

We're going to eat."

Or calling us in for the night.

I would always come, but my brother and my cousin, Ricky wouldn't, right away, and she would threaten to take her slipper off.

"I'm going to take it off.

It's coming off.

That's it.

It's off.

The last show I did this, I had the saying, 'cause they all have sayings that are priceless.

And I just remembered, I heard something with, it came back to me, you mess with the bull, you get the horns.

Oh, did we enjoy.

She says that all the time.

How was the funeral, Graham?

Oh, we all enjoyed.

We all enjoyed.

Oh, the flowers.

The line went forever to see her.

Another expression you'll sometimes hear in South Philly is the malocchio or malocchio, the evil eye.

It's sort of an ancient curse that's tough to get rid of.

Well, as a child, very often I would suddenly have a headache.

And I remember my mother would say, oh, you must have the malocchio, which means evil eye.

Our next door neighbor was supposed to be well versed in removing this malocchio from you.

And so my mother would quickly take me into the next door's home.

We'd go into the kitchen and out would come three bowls with water, a little container with oil.

She'd put a little oil in the spoon.

Then she would dip her little finger into the oil, drop it in the first dish, drop some in the second dish and drop some in the third dish.

Now if this oil spread, as I believe that's the way it was, if it spread then you had the malocchio.

Now some people in order to avoid the malocchio will go to the jewelry store and they will buy some little item, a little horn and they come in various sizes and then of course let's say you buy a new house and you're going to have a lot of friends come in, you're going to have a party, one of them may not want to wish you extremely good luck, maybe they'll make some little remark that's supposed to be the overlooks like they may say oh it's a wonderful house beautiful house wish you luck but they don't say God bless you along with it and of course you might get the overlooks so you hang one of these in your house and that will ward it off.

In the old days money was often scarce but kids in South Philly and other city neighborhoods found ways to have fun.

We had the amusement ride, we had the pony ride, came down from the Giovanni Stables at Tenth and Packer where the Vet Stadium is now.

Nickel around the block, that was a great thing.

The whip came around, that was a truck mounted amusement ride for the kids.

Dill runs around for special events like birthday, wedding, it has to be or I don't think it goes in the street.

Today I had my son's birthday.

I wanted to have it for my son because I had it for my daughter also because I liked it and I thought passing it down the ride and everything they would enjoy it too.

Roy coming up the street I remember him when I was younger.

We used to stand on the corner and get on the ride one at a time and he would give us bubble gum when we were away.

[music] Alright, that's it.

Okay.

Go out where it goes.

The older men in the Italians in our neighborhood played bocce ball, which is a game where they take a small black ball, pitch it down a court, and they have two sets of balls, one with an X and one without.

And the object was to get as close to the small ball, a ballet, as they could.

Sort of like horseshoes, but with balls.

Well I started playing bocce back in 1925.

I was a good bowler, but I couldn't afford the ball when I was younger.

So bocce didn't cost anything, so I started playing bocce.

It's a good clean sport.

It's an interesting game.

And it's much tougher to play bocce than it is golf.

And I remember playing on the sandlot ground.

I was playing with half bricks, like a regular sized brick half.

And I would play like that.

That's how I learned the game of bocce.

They always called this an old man's sport.

It don't have to be an old man's sport.

I started when I was young.

It's very competitive and skillful.

And I took my son in and in two years I made him one of the better players in the league and it kept him off the streets hanging with gangs.

My grandfather played, my father played, and he got me into it.

Really my friends don't, but in school they start and not too many people play.

It would be nice if they played because the game would be kept on and there would be younger blood in the game.

I want all the people to go on and pass on.

At least the game will still be kicking.

[Singing] What does the future hold for South Philly?

Maybe a hint can be taken from the work they're doing on 9th Street with improvements to the gas and sewer lines and some major cosmetic work on the building facades and their trademark awnings.

It's a bold vision of the future and just like every subject down here you get a variety of opinions.

I think everybody should fix their awnings the way they like them.

I mean we spent a lot of money on our awnings.

Why should they tear our awnings down?

No, no, no.

They're going to do something.

No, no, they can't.

You can't touch your awnings without your permission.

Well, they're not touching mine.

That's how I feel.

They're not touching mine.

We're going to be repaving our streets, our pavements, the awnings, and all the face fronts of the buildings will be done.

It's going to be really beautiful.

It's going to be a beautiful tourist attraction for Philadelphia.

We will all have choices of red white and green canopies.

So it should be quite a scene.

We'll finally have canopies that match the colorful characters underneath.

Each and every facade will also be refurbished by each property owner so that the property owner could take his or her vision and put a little colorful twist on the market that's all their own.

Whatever steps the community takes into the future there are timeless elements to South Philly that will never change.

When I go to the Italian market and I take tourists if it's around 12 o'clock I say to them if you're really lucky you're gonna hear something you just never hear anywhere else.

The Angelus is ringing at 12 o'clock.

First you'll hear the tolling of the bells.

And then you'll hear a carillon.

And you can just see them just soar when they hear it.

It's just a warm, close neighborhood and community.

I think South Philadelphia is one of the best places I could ever want to be.

I'll drink to that.

[Cheering] [Indistinct chatter] I practically grew up on this corner in South Philly.

Georgia's Ice Cream Parlor was right over there.

That's where my friends and I hung out, drinking sodas and listening to records.

And right down there was the Colonial Movie.

We'd bring our pepper and egg sandwiches and spend the entire day with John Wayne, Flash Gordon and Bugs Bunny.

Well, Georges and the Colonial are gone now, but they still bring back a lot of happy memories.

And good memories are still being created in South Philly thanks to the people we've just met.

They're your friends and neighbors and they're carrying on a great tradition that's over one hundred years old.

I'm Bobby Rydell.

Thanks for joining us.

I have waited for someone like you to adore.

Well, all through the night I dreamed I'd hold you tight On an island, yes an island of love.

Of love.

Alone with you on an island of love.

[music fades]