Joe Dallesandro
Encyclopedia
Joseph Angelo D'Allesandro (born December 31, 1948), better known as Joe Dallesandro, is an American actor
Actor
An actor is a person who acts in a dramatic production and who works in film, television, theatre, or radio in that capacity...

, and Warhol superstar
Warhol superstar
Warhol superstars were a clique of New York City personalities promoted by Andy Warhol during the 1960s and early 1970s. These personalities appeared in Warhol's artworks and accompanied him in his social life...

. Although he never became a mainstream film star, Dallesandro is generally considered to be the most famous male sex symbol of American underground film
Underground film
An underground film is a film that is out of the mainstream either in its style, genre, or financing.-Definition and history:The first use of the term "underground film" occurs in a 1957 essay by American film critic Manny Farber, "Underground Films." Farber uses it to refer to the work of...

s of the 20th century, as well as a sex symbol of gay subculture.

Dallesandro starred in Flesh
Flesh (film)
Flesh is a 1968 film directed by American filmmaker Paul Morrissey.Flesh is the first film of the "Paul Morrissey Trilogy" produced by Andy Warhol. The other films in the trilogy include Trash and Heat. All three have gained a cult following and are noted examples of the ideals and ideology of the...

 as a teenage street hustler. Rolling Stone magazine in 1970 declared his second starring vehicle, Trash, the "Best Film of the Year", making him a star of the youth culture, sexual revolution
Sexual revolution
The sexual revolution was a social movement that challenged traditional codes of behavior related to sexuality and interpersonal relationships throughout the Western world from the 1960s into the 1980s...

 and subcultural New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...

 art collective of the 1970s.

A photograph of his crotch bulge encased in a tight-fitting pair of jeans is featured on the cover of the Rolling Stones 1971 album, Sticky Fingers
Sticky Fingers
-Personnel:The Rolling Stones*Mick Jagger – lead vocals, acoustic guitar on "Dead Flowers", electric guitar on "Sway", percussion*Keith Richards – electric guitar, six & twelve string acoustic guitar, backing vocals...

. It was taken by Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol
Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...

.

Early life

He was born in Pensacola, Florida
Pensacola, Florida
Pensacola is the westernmost city in the Florida Panhandle and the county seat of Escambia County, Florida, United States of America. As of the 2000 census, the city had a total population of 56,255 and as of 2009, the estimated population was 53,752...

. His father, Joseph Angelo D'Allesandro II, was an Italian-American sailor, and his mother was 16-year-old Thelma Testman. By the time Dallesandro was five, his mother was serving five years in a Federal Penitentiary for interstate auto theft. His parents divorce
Divorce
Divorce is the final termination of a marital union, canceling the legal duties and responsibilities of marriage and dissolving the bonds of matrimony between the parties...

d soon afterward. Dallesandro and his brother, Bobby, were taken to New York with their father, who worked as an electrical engineer. Both boys were eventually placed into the Angel Guardian Home in Harlem
Harlem
Harlem is a neighborhood in the New York City borough of Manhattan, which since the 1920s has been a major African-American residential, cultural and business center. Originally a Dutch village, formally organized in 1658, it is named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands...

, prior to being fostered by a couple in Brooklyn
Brooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...

. The senior Dallesandro would visit them about once a month at their foster parents' home.

Dallesandro attended a Catholic
Catholic
The word catholic comes from the Greek phrase , meaning "on the whole," "according to the whole" or "in general", and is a combination of the Greek words meaning "about" and meaning "whole"...

 school until second grade. He and his brother lived with the family until they ran away and were removed from the family by social services. At the age of 14 Dallesandro and his brother moved to Queens
Queens
Queens is the easternmost of the five boroughs of New York City. The largest borough in area and the second-largest in population, it is coextensive with Queens County, an administrative division of New York state, in the United States....

 to live with their paternal grandparents. He was kicked out of school for punching the principal, who had insulted his father.

As a teenager, Dallesandro supported himself by prostitution
Prostitution
Prostitution is the act or practice of providing sexual services to another person in return for payment. The person who receives payment for sexual services is called a prostitute and the person who receives such services is known by a multitude of terms, including a "john". Prostitution is one of...

 and later nude modeling
Model (person)
A model , sometimes called a mannequin, is a person who is employed to display, advertise and promote commercial products or to serve as a subject of works of art....

, appearing most notably in short films and magazine photos for Bob Mizer
Bob Mizer
Robert Henry Mizer , known as Bob Mizer, was an American photographer and filmmaker who was known for pushing societal boundaries in his work...

's Athletic Model Guild
Athletic Model Guild
The Athletic Model Guild, or AMG, was founded by gay pornography pioneer Bob Mizer in December 1945. During those post-war years, United States censorship laws allowed women, but not men, to appear in various states of undress in what were referred to, with a wink, as “art” photographs. Mizer began...

. Dallesandro also appeared in at least one gay pornography
Gay pornography
Gay pornography is the representation of sexual intercourse between men with the primary goal of sexual arousal in its audience. There is also a tradition, and continuing considerable output, of lesbian pornography....

 film. In a later interview, Dallesandro said: "My hustling days were more about trying to take care of myself. Having met those people kind of calmed me down. They showed me a different part of life. My attitude was that it widened my life experience... I realized later that I was looking for a father figure and someone to love me." The street-wise young hustler "Ned" who appears in Martin Duberman
Martin Duberman
Martin Bauml Duberman is an American historian, playwright, and gay-rights activist. He is Professor of History Emeritus at Lehman College and the Graduate School of the City University of New York and was the founder of the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at the CUNY Graduate School...

's memoir Cures has been assumed to be Dallesandro.

Career

Dallesandro met Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol
Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...

 and Paul Morrissey
Paul Morrissey
Paul Morrissey is an American film director, best-known for his association with Andy Warhol.Morrissey attended Ampleforth College, a private Roman Catholic boarding school and Fordham University, both Roman Catholic schools, and later served in the United States Army...

 in 1967 while they were shooting Four Stars
Four Stars (film)
Four Stars is a 1967 avant-garde film by Andy Warhol, actually consisting of 25 hours of film . In typical Warhol fashion of the period, each reel of the film is 35 minutes long, or 1200 ft...

, and they cast him in the film on the spot. Warhol would later comment "In my movies, everyone's in love with Joe Dallesandro."

Dallesandro played a hustler in his third Warhol film, Flesh
Flesh (film)
Flesh is a 1968 film directed by American filmmaker Paul Morrissey.Flesh is the first film of the "Paul Morrissey Trilogy" produced by Andy Warhol. The other films in the trilogy include Trash and Heat. All three have gained a cult following and are noted examples of the ideals and ideology of the...

 (1968), 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
Vincent Canby
Vincent Canby was an American film critic who became the chief film critic for The New York Times in 1969 and reviewed more than 1000 films during his tenure there.-Life and career:...

 wrote of him: "His physique is so magnificently shaped that men as well as women become disconnected at the sight of him."

As Dallesandro's underground fame began to cross over into the popular culture
Popular culture
Popular culture is the totality of ideas, perspectives, attitudes, memes, images and other phenomena that are deemed preferred per an informal consensus within the mainstream of a given culture, especially Western culture of the early to mid 20th century and the emerging global mainstream of the...

, he graced the cover of Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone
Rolling Stone is a US-based magazine devoted to music, liberal politics, and popular culture that is published every two weeks. Rolling Stone was founded in San Francisco in 1967 by Jann Wenner and music critic Ralph J...

 in April 1971. He was also photographed by some of the top celebrity photographers of the time: Francesco Scavullo
Francesco Scavullo
Francesco Scavullo was an American fashion photographer best known for his work on the covers of Cosmopolitan and his celebrity portraits.-Biography:...

, Jack Robinson
Jack Robinson (photographer)
Jack Robinson, Jr. was an American photographer and stained glass designer. Robinson was freelance photographer for Vogue and The New York Times from the 1950s to the early 1970s before he left New York to return home to the American South and pursue a career as a stained glass...

, Richard Avedon
Richard Avedon
Richard Avedon was an American photographer. An obituary published in The New York Times said that "his fashion and portrait photographs helped define America's image of style, beauty and culture for the last half-century."-Photography career:Avedon was born in New York City to a Jewish Russian...

.

Dallesandro also appeared in Lonesome Cowboys
Lonesome Cowboys (1968 film)
Lonesome Cowboys is a film by American filmmaker Andy Warhol. Written by Paul Morrissey, the film is a satire of Hollywood westerns. The film features Warhol superstars Viva, Taylor Mead, Eric Emerson and Joe Dallesandro...

 (1968), Trash
Trash (film)
Trash is a 1970 American film directed and written by filmmaker Paul Morrissey.The movie stars Joe Dallesandro, transsexual Holly Woodlawn and Jane Forth. Dallesandro had previously starred in several other Andy Warhol/Paul Morrissey films such as The Loves of Ondine, Lonesome Cowboys, and Flesh...

 (1970), Heat
Heat (1972 film)
Heat also known as Andy Warhol's Heat, is an American film written and directed by Paul Morrissey, produced by Andy Warhol, and starring Joe Dallesandro, Sylvia Miles, and Andrea Feldman....

 (1972), a sardonic re-imagining of Sunset Boulevard
Sunset Boulevard
Sunset Boulevard is a street in the western part of Los Angeles County, California, that stretches from Figueroa Street in downtown Los Angeles to the Pacific Coast Highway at the Pacific Ocean in the Pacific Palisades...

 with Sylvia Miles
Sylvia Miles
-Early life and career:Miles was born Sylvia Reuben Lee in New York City, the daughter of Belle and Reuben Lee, a furniture maker....

, Andy Warhol's Frankenstein and Andy Warhol's Dracula (both 1974) also directed by Morrissey. These last two films were shot in Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...

, and, after the films were completed, Dallesandro chose not to return to the U.S. He continued to star in films made mainly in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

 and Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 for the rest of the decade, returning to America in the 1980s. He made several movies without Warhol and Morrissey, and is known for his portrayal of 1920s gangster Lucky Luciano
Lucky Luciano
Charlie "Lucky" Luciano was an Italian mobster born in Sicily. Luciano is considered the father of modern organized crime in the United States for splitting New York City into five different Mafia crime families and the establishment of the first commission...

 in Francis Coppola's The Cotton Club
The Cotton Club (film)
The Cotton Club is a 1984 crime-drama, centered on a famed Harlem jazz club of the 1930s, the Cotton Club.The movie was co-written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola, choreographed by Henry LeTang, and starred Richard Gere, Diane Lane, and Gregory Hines...

. Working with manager/attorney Stann Findelle, his career enjoyed a resurgence, appearing in major motion pictures as Steven Soderbergh's "The Limey", as a religious zealot in John Waters' "Cry-Baby
Cry-Baby
Cry-Baby is a 1990 American teen musical film written and directed by John Waters. It stars Johnny Depp as 1950s teen rebel "Cry-Baby" Wade Walker, and also features an expansive ensemble cast that includes Amy Locane, Iggy Pop, Traci Lords, Ricki Lake, Kim McGuire, David Nelson, Susan Tyrrell, and...

", "Sunset" with Bruce Willis and James Garner, "Critical Condition" with Richard Pryor, "Gun Crazy" with Drew Barrymore, and with an all-star cast in Mika Kaurismäki's "L.A. Without A Map" plus TV series "Fortune Dane and multiple appearances on "Wiseguy", "Miami Vice" and "Matlock."

Dallesandro wrote and produced a documentary film called Little Joe in 2009. John Waters
John Waters (filmmaker)
John Samuel Waters, Jr. is an American filmmaker, actor, stand-up comedian, writer, journalist, visual artist, and art collector, who rose to fame in the early 1970s for his transgressive cult films...

 has praised him as "A wonderful actor who forever changed male sexuality on the screen."

A Walk on the Wild Side

Dallesandro has a famous "jailhouse" style tattoo
Tattoo
A tattoo is made by inserting indelible ink into the dermis layer of the skin to change the pigment. Tattoos on humans are a type of body modification, and tattoos on other animals are most commonly used for identification purposes...

 on his upper right arm that reads "Little Joe", and was portrayed as the hustler "Little Joe" in Lou Reed
Lou Reed
Lewis Allan "Lou" Reed is an American rock musician, songwriter, and photographer. He is best known as guitarist, vocalist, and principal songwriter of The Velvet Underground, and for his successful solo career, which has spanned several decades...

's hit 1972 song "Walk on the Wild Side", which was about the characters Reed knew from Warhol's studio, The Factory
The Factory
The Factory was Andy Warhol's original New York City studio from 1962 to 1968, although his later studios were known as The Factory as well. The Factory was located on the fifth floor at 231 East 47th Street, in Midtown Manhattan. The rent was "only about one hundred dollars a year"...

. During a live performance of the song in 1978, recorded on his infamous Take No Prisoners
Live: Take No Prisoners
Live: Take No Prisoners is Lou Reed's third live album. Released in 1978, it was Reed's contribution to the double live album era. It was recorded at the Bottom Line in New York, and there is no overdubbing...

 album, Reed made some scathing remarks about Dallesandro: "Little Joe was an idiot, I don't know if any of you know that..You talk with him for two minutes, you hear he has an IQ of 12...He's the only guy I know who went to Italy to be a movie star, and it is not happening...I mean, everybody is ready to go to bed with him, make him a star...He can barely tie his shoes and dress...I say, 'Joe you're getting older,' he says, 'I know, I'll make a Warhol film,' but you can't do that anymore, man!" In his 2009 film Little Joe Dallesandro answers the Reed's denigrating remarks.

Album covers

A Warhol photograph of the large crotch bulge of Dallesandro's tight blue jeans graces the famous cover of the Rolling Stones album Sticky Fingers. Dallesandro explained to biographer Michael Ferguson, “It was just out of a collection of junk photos that Andy pulled from. He didn't pull it out for the design or anything, it was just the first one he got that he felt was the right shape to fit what he wanted to use for the fly.”

The 1980s British
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 band The Smiths
The Smiths
The Smiths were an English alternative rock band, formed in Manchester in 1982. Based on the song writing partnership of Morrissey and Johnny Marr , the band also included Andy Rourke and Mike Joyce...

 would later use a still photograph of Dallesandro from the film Flesh as the cover of their eponymous debut album
The Smiths (album)
Before their debut album, single "What Difference Does It Make?" was released in January 1984. The track peaked at number 12 on the UK Singles Chart. Released in February 1984, The Smiths debuted at number two on the UK Albums Chart....

.

Personal life

Dallesandro, who identifies
Sexual identity
Sexual identity is a term that, like sex, has two distinctively different meanings. One describes an identity roughly based on sexual orientation, the other an identity based on sexual characteristics, which is not socially based but based on biology, a concept related to, but different from,...

 himself as bisexual, has been married three times. His first wife was named Leslie (the daughter of his father's girlfriend); they had a son, Michael, circa 1968. His second wife was named Terry (Theresa), with whom he has another son, Joseph A Dallesandro Jr, born November 14, 1970; Terry divorced Joe in early 1978. He has since married again to Kim (Kimberly). He has a grandson and a granddaughter by Michael and a grandson by Joseph.

He currently manages a hotel in the heart of Hollywood, where he lives with his wife and cat Booky. He has said: "I've lived such a full life. I've had such great things. There were some hardships, but overall everything has been great."

Filmography

  • Four Stars
    Four Stars (film)
    Four Stars is a 1967 avant-garde film by Andy Warhol, actually consisting of 25 hours of film . In typical Warhol fashion of the period, each reel of the film is 35 minutes long, or 1200 ft...

     (1967)
  • Lonesome Cowboys
    Lonesome Cowboys (1968 film)
    Lonesome Cowboys is a film by American filmmaker Andy Warhol. Written by Paul Morrissey, the film is a satire of Hollywood westerns. The film features Warhol superstars Viva, Taylor Mead, Eric Emerson and Joe Dallesandro...

      (1968)
  • The Loves of Ondine (1968)
  • Flesh
    Flesh (film)
    Flesh is a 1968 film directed by American filmmaker Paul Morrissey.Flesh is the first film of the "Paul Morrissey Trilogy" produced by Andy Warhol. The other films in the trilogy include Trash and Heat. All three have gained a cult following and are noted examples of the ideals and ideology of the...

      (1968)
  • Trash
    Trash (film)
    Trash is a 1970 American film directed and written by filmmaker Paul Morrissey.The movie stars Joe Dallesandro, transsexual Holly Woodlawn and Jane Forth. Dallesandro had previously starred in several other Andy Warhol/Paul Morrissey films such as The Loves of Ondine, Lonesome Cowboys, and Flesh...

      (1970)
  • Heat
    Heat (1972 film)
    Heat also known as Andy Warhol's Heat, is an American film written and directed by Paul Morrissey, produced by Andy Warhol, and starring Joe Dallesandro, Sylvia Miles, and Andrea Feldman....

      (1972)
  • The Gardener (1974)
  • Flesh for Frankenstein
    Flesh for Frankenstein
    Andy Warhol's Frankenstein or Flesh for Frankenstein is a 1973 horror film directed by Paul Morrissey and produced by Andy Warhol, Andrew Braunsberg, Louis Peraino, and Carlo Ponti and starring Udo Kier, Joe Dallesandro, Monique van Vooren and Arno Juerging...

      (1974)
  • Blood for Dracula
    Blood for Dracula
    Blood for Dracula is a 1974 film directed by Paul Morrissey and produced by Andy Warhol and Andrew Braunsberg. It stars Udo Kier, Joe Dallesandro, Maxime McKendry, Stefania Casini, and Arno Juerging...

      (1974)
  • Donna E Bello (1974)
  • Il Tempo Degli Assassini  (1974)
  • L'Ambizioso  (1975)
  • Black Moon  (1975)
  • Calore in Provincia  (1975)
  • Fango Bollente  (1975)
  • Je T'Aime Moi Non Plus
    Je t'aime... moi non plus (film)
    Je t'aime moi non plus is a 1976 feature film directed by Serge Gainsbourg, starring Jane Birkin, Hugues Quester and Joe Dallesandro, and featuring a cameo by Gérard Depardieu.- Plot introduction :...

      (1975)
  • La Marge
    La Marge
    The Margin is a novel by André Pieyre de Mandiargues published in 1967, which won the Prix Goncourt the same year. It was first published in the UK as The Margin in 1970, translated by R...

      (1976)
  • L'Ultima Volta  (1976)
  • Un Coure Semplice  (1977)
  • Merry-Go-Round
    Merry-Go-Round (1981 film)
    Merry-Go-Round is a 1981 film by Jacques Rivette, starring Maria Schneider and Joe Dallesandro....

      (1978/1983)
  • Sour Omicidi  (1978)
  • Queen Lear  (1978)
  • 6000 KM Di Paura (1978)
  • Vacanze Per Un Massacro  (1979)
  • Tapage Nocturne  (1979)
  • Parano  (1980)
  • The Cotton Club
    The Cotton Club (film)
    The Cotton Club is a 1984 crime-drama, centered on a famed Harlem jazz club of the 1930s, the Cotton Club.The movie was co-written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola, choreographed by Henry LeTang, and starred Richard Gere, Diane Lane, and Gregory Hines...

      (1984)
  • Critical Condition
    Critical Condition (film)
    Critical Condition is a 1987 comedy film starring Richard Pryor.-Synopsis:Pryor plays Kevin Lennihan, a con man who is framed in a jewel robbery. In order to escape custody, he fakes insanity, then poses as surgeon Dr. Eddie Slattery at a local hospital when he switches places with the...

     (1987)
  • Sunset
    Sunset (film)
    Sunset is a 1988 film released by TriStar Pictures. Written and directed by Blake Edwards, the movie stars Bruce Willis as legendary western actor Tom Mix and James Garner as legendary lawman Wyatt Earp....

      (1988)
  • Double Revenge  (1989)
  • Hollywood Detective" (1989)
  • Private War  (1990)
  • Cry-baby
    Cry-Baby
    Cry-Baby is a 1990 American teen musical film written and directed by John Waters. It stars Johnny Depp as 1950s teen rebel "Cry-Baby" Wade Walker, and also features an expansive ensemble cast that includes Amy Locane, Iggy Pop, Traci Lords, Ricki Lake, Kim McGuire, David Nelson, Susan Tyrrell, and...

      (1990)
  • Almost An Angel
    Almost an Angel
    Almost an Angel is a 1990 comedy film directed by John Cornell and starring Paul Hogan. The original music score was composed by Maurice Jarre. The film's tagline is: "The guy from down under is working for the man upstairs."...

      (1990)
  • Guncrazy
    Guncrazy
    Guncrazy is a 1992 American crime/drama/thriller film starring Drew Barrymore. It was directed by Tamra Davis and written by Matthew Bright. It is a loose remake of the 1950 film noir of the same name.- Plot :...

      (1992)
  • Bad Love  (1992)
  • Wild Orchid 2: Two Shades of Blue  (1992)
  • Sugar Hill
    Sugar Hill (1994 film)
    Sugar Hill is a 1994 American crime film starring Wesley Snipes and Michael Wright as brothers Roemello and Raynathan Skuggs. The film focuses on the two brothers, who are major drug dealers in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City.-Plot:...

      (1994)
  • Theodore Rex
    Theodore Rex
    Theodore Rex, also known as T. Rex, is a 1996 buddy cop/science fiction/family film starring Whoopi Goldberg. Though originally intended for theatrical release, the film went direct-to-video, and consequently became the most expensive direct-to-video film ever made at the time of its release.The...

      (1996)
  • Pacino Is Missing  (1998)
  • LA Without a Map  (1998)
  • The Limey
    The Limey
    The Limey is a 1999 American crime film, directed by Steven Soderbergh and written by Lem Dobbs. The film features Terence Stamp, Lesley Ann Warren, Luis Guzmán, Peter Fonda and Barry Newman.Filming locations included Big Sur and L.A.-Plot:...

      (1999)
  • Citizens of Perpetual Indulgence
    Citizens of Perpetual Indulgence
    Citizens of Perpetual Indulgence is a gay-themed comedy/drama/art film. The film features an appearance by singer/actress Stacey Q. The title is a pun on the name of the organization of gay "nuns" known as the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence....

      (2000)
  • 3 Stories About Evil
    3 Stories About Evil
    3 Stories About Evil is a 2008 short, experimental narrative film directed by Michael Frost and photographed by Andrew K. Sachs. It was written by Walter Reuben and stars Mink Stole, Erica Gavin, Joe Dallesandro, and Billy Drago.-Premise:...

      (2008)

External links

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