By Frank Melcori
Bacarella became a Chicago police officer in 1969, and for the next three years he walked a beat at night while attending classes during the day at the Chicago Academy of Fine Art, where he met his wife, Lois. Encouraged by her support he quit the police force to pursue his dream of working in motion pictures. The pair moved to Los Angeles, and Bacarella made the rounds for seven months before finally being taken on as a makeup man at NBC. He got a taste of backstage life, shooting the breeze with the likes of Sid Caesar, John Travolta, and Jonathan Winters, and he made friends with a small group of makeup and special-effects artists. But Hollywood began to bother him–he saw it feeding off stereotypes.
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He finally drew the line in 1992, when The Untouchables TV series began shooting in Chicago. “That series brought in a lot of money for a lot of people. We all needed it, but…I just couldn’t see myself doing that type of thing anymore. I had to start saying no because it was all I was ever going to do. An agent called and asked me to audition for the role of a fat Jewish gangster. I told her no, that I wasn’t going to do that role and that I didn’t want to be considered for that type of role. I lost a lot of work, I know, because of that decision. What can I say? I had to take a stand.”
Bacarella tried to find public forums for himself and his friends to present their arguments, yet there were no takers. “We tried everyone…Oprah, Donahue. We were told it wasn’t important enough. Not an issue. They can bring on the Klan, skinheads, whatever. But not us. Meanwhile Hollywood just keeps cranking out the same garbage it always has about Italian-Americans in this country.”
