# Joe Dallesandro

Joseph Angelo D'Allesandro III (born December 31, 1948) is an American actor and Warhol superstar. He was a sex symbol of gay subculture in the 1960s and 1970s, and of several American underground films before going mainstream.
Dallesandro starred in the Andy Warhol-produced film Flesh (1968) as a male prostitute. Rolling Stone magazine declared Dallesandro's second starring film Trash (1970) as the "Best Film of the Year", making him a star of the youth culture, sexual revolution, and subcultural New York City art collective in the early 1970s. Dallesandro also starred in the Factory films Heat (1972), Andy Warhol's Frankenstein (1974), and Andy Warhol's Dracula (1974), which were directed by Paul Morrissey. Dallesandro later lived in Europe for several years where he starred in both genre and art films. Having returned to the United States, he also crossed over into mainstream roles such as mobster Lucky Luciano in the film The Cotton Club (1984).

## Early life

Joe Dallessandro was born on December 31, 1948 in Pensacola, Florida, to Joseph Angelo D'Allesandro II, who was in the U.S. Navy. His mother, Thelma Testman, was 16 years old. His parents separated soon after they moved to New Jersey when he was 2 years old. Dallesandro and his younger brother Robert "Bobby" Dallesandro were placed in foster care of Mr. and Mrs. Gary Silano in North Babylon, New York.
By the time Dallessandro was five years old, his mother was serving fifteen years in a U.S. federal penitentiary for interstate auto theft. He was later reunited with his mother in 1970.
Dallesandro was initially content living with his foster parents, but as he became a teenager he reportedly began to resent them, thinking that they were preventing him from living with his father. He became aggressive and repeatedly ran away from his foster home until his father finally relented and allowed Joe to live with him.
At age 13, Dallesandro and his brother moved to Queens, New York to live with their paternal grandparents and their father. "I was very rebellious," he recalled. "I hated the Queens school. They were so far behind the Long Island school that I just lost interest." He was expelled from school for punching the school principal. After this, he began hanging out with gangs and stealing cars. At age 15, Dallesandro drove a stolen car through the Holland Tunnel without paying the toll. He was stopped by a police roadblock and was shot once in the leg by police who mistakenly thought he was armed. Dallessandro managed to escape being caught by police, but was later arrested when his father took him to the hospital for his gunshot wound. He was sentenced to Camp Cass Rehabilitation Center for Boys in the Catskills in 1964. In 1965, aged 16, he ran away from the camp, and went to live with his father in Florida. Dallessandro made his way to the West Coast with a friend and briefly worked at a pizza shop. He supported himself by nude modeling for Bob Mizer's Athletic Model Guild.

## Career
### Underground film career

By 1967, Dallessandro had returned to New York. He was married at the age of eighteen, and he was hustling around Times Square to pay for his drug habit.
He met pop artist Andy Warhol and film director Paul Morrissey while they were shooting Four Stars (1967) in Manhattan's Greenwich Village, and they cast him in the film on the spot. Dallesandro began working at the Factory as Warhol's bodyguard, general factotum, and occasional actor.
Dallesandro appeared in Lonesome Cowboys (1968) before starring in the film Flesh (1968), a story of a male hustler—based on Dallesandro's experience—where he had several nude scenes. Flesh became a crossover hit with mainstream audiences, and Dallesandro became the most popular of the Warhol stars. Warhol would later comment "In my movies, everyone's in love with Joe Dallesandro."
The Warhol and Morrissey films did not usually have a script so the actors improvised while the cameras were rolling. In 1970, Dallesandro told After Dark: "Sometimes they yell at me and say, 'Joe, you're really messing it up. Stop trying to act,' and then I usually do a good job. But if you watch carefully you'll see that my best performing comes when I have my clothes off. When I'm dressed I really don't give very good performances, but when I am not I really do a great job."
After starring in Trash (1970), Dallesandro's underground fame began to cross over into the popular culture and he was viewed as a sex symbol. New York Times film critic Vincent Canby wrote of him: "His physique is so magnificently shaped that men as well as women become disconnected at the sight of him." Newsday film critic Jerry Parker wrote that "Joe Dallesandro, who is a mere 21 is to Andy Warhol what Clark Gable once was to Louis B. Mayer." Dallesandro appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone in April 1971. He was also photographed by some of the top celebrity photographers of the time: Francesco Scavullo, Annie Leibovitz, Richard Avedon.
According to Dallesandro, Francis Ford Coppola wanted him to screen test for the role of Michael Corleone in The Godfather (1972). However, the offer fell through when Warhol told Coppola's entourage that Dallesandro was a drug addict.
Dallesandro also starred in the films Heat (1972), Andy Warhol's Frankenstein (1973), and Andy Warhol's Dracula (1974), directed by Morrissey. The latter two were filmed in Rome. After filming was complete, he remained in Europe and capitalized on his reputation as a cult figure in a series exploitation films in France and Italy. He appeared in Serge Gainsbourg's Je t'aime moi non plus (1976), which starred Gainsbourg's girlfriend, British actress Jane Birkin.

### Mainstream career

The death of Dallesandro's brother in 1977 sent him into a deep decline and his marriage dissolved in 1978. After his return to the U.S. in 1979, he resided in a trailer park close to Seattle with his estranged mother and indulged in excessive drinking. After relocating to Los Angeles, he cleaned himself and got a job as a taxi driver before returning to acting.
He made several mainstream films during the 1980s and 1990s. One of his first notable roles was that of 1920s gangster Lucky Luciano in Francis Coppola's The Cotton Club (1984). Working with manager/attorney Stann Findelle, his career enjoyed a resurgence.
He had roles in Critical Condition (1987) opposite Richard Pryor, Sunset (1988) with Bruce Willis and James Garner, Cry-Baby (1990) with Johnny Depp, Guncrazy (1992) with Drew Barrymore, and Steven Soderbergh's 1999 film The Limey. He has also worked in television. In 1986, he co-starred in the ABC drama series Fortune Dane. The series lasted only five episodes. Dallesandro was also a regular for the first season (1987-1988) of the CBS crime drama series Wiseguy, appeared in three episodes of NBC's Miami Vice, and a two-hour episode of ABC's Matlock in 1990.
A biography, Little Joe: Superstar by Michael Ferguson was released earlier in 2001, and a filmed documentary, Little Joe (2009), was released with Dallesandro serving as writer and producer. His adopted daughter, Vedra Mehagian, also served as a producer of the film.
In February 2009, Dallesandro received the Teddy Award, an honor recognizing those filmmakers and artists who have contributed to the further acceptance of LGBT people, culture and artistic vision.
He appeared in the Dandy Warhols' official video for "You are Killing Me" in 2016.
In 2018 he starred as himself in Ulli Lommel's Factory Cowboys: Working with Warhol. The film was based on Lommel's own biography and partly on Dallesandro's memories of the period during which he worked with Andy Warhol.

## Personal life

Dallesandro is openly bisexual. He has been married three times and has two children.
Aged 18, he married his first wife, Leslie, the daughter of his father's girlfriend, in 1967. Their son, Michael, was born December 19, 1968. The marriage was dissolved in 1969. His second marriage was to Theresa ("Terry") in 1970. Their son, Joseph A. Dallesandro, Jr., was born November 14, 1970. The couple divorced in early 1978. In 1987, Dallesandro was married a third time, to Kimberly ("Kim"). Dallesandro has a grandson and a granddaughter by his son Michael, as well as a grandson by his son Joseph.
Dallesandro's younger brother Robert Dallesandro died in 1977. He had worked for Warhol as a chauffeur, also appeared in the films Flesh and Trash.
Semi-retired from acting, as of 2009 Dallesandro managed a residential hotel building in Los Angeles.

## In popular culture

* In Lou Reed's song, "Walk on the Wild Side", about the characters Reed knew from Warhol's studio, The Factory, the verse about Dallesandro used his nickname, Little Joe.
* A Warhol photograph of the crotch bulge of Dallesandro's tight blue jeans is on 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 first editions of that album cover physically incorporated a functional metal zipper fly into the photo.
* The 1980s British band The Smiths used a still photograph of Dallesandro from the film Flesh as the cover of their eponymous debut album.
* Norwegian pop band Briskeby had a 2005 single called "Joe Dallesandro".

## Selected filmography

| Year | Title | Role | Notes |
| 1967 | Four Stars | College Wrestler | Alternative title: The 24 Hour Movie |
| 1968 | San Diego Surf | Joe | |
| 1968 | The Loves of Ondine | College Wrestler | |
| 1968 | Flesh | Joe, The Hustler | Alternative title: Andy Warhol's Flesh |
| 1968 | Lonesome Cowboys | Joe "Little Joe" | Alternative title: Ramona and Julian |
| 1970 | Trash | Joe Smith | Alternative title: Andy Warhol's Trash |
| 1972 | Heat | Joey Davis | |
| 1973 | Andy Warhol's Frankenstein | Nicholas, The Stableboy | Alternative title: Flesh for Frankenstein |
| 1974 | Blood for Dracula | Mario Balato, The Servant | Alternative title: Andy Warhol's Dracula |
| 1974 | The Gardener | Carl, The Gardener | Alternative titles: Garden of Death, Seeds of Evil |
| 1975 | The Climber | Aldo, The Climber | Alternative title: L'ambizioso |
| 1975 | Black Moon | Brother Lily | |
| 1975 | Savage Three | Ovidio Mainardi | Alternative title: Fango bollente |
| 1975 | Season for Assassins | Pierro Giaranaldi | Alternative title: Il tempo degli assassini |
| 1976 | Je t'aime moi non plus | Krassky | Alternative title: I Love You, I Don't or I Love You ... Neither Do I |
| 1976 | The Margin | Sigismond | Alternative title: The Streetwalker |
| 1976 | Born Winner | Pericle | Alternative title: L'ultima volta |
| 1978 | Safari Rally | Joe Massi | Alternative title: 6000 km di paura |
| 1978 | Killer Nun | Dr. Patrick Roland | Alternative titles: Suor Omicidi Deadly Habits |
| 1980 | Madness | Joe Brezzi | Alternative title: Vacanze per un massacro |
| 1981 | Merry-Go-Round | Ben | |
| 1982 | Queen Lear | Joseph Kunz, The Father | |
| 1984 | The Cotton Club | Charlie "Lucky" Luciano | |
| 1984 | Miami Vice | Vinnie DeMarco | Episode: "One Eyed Jack" |
| 1986 | Fortune Dane | Tommy "Perfect Tommy" Nicautri | 5 episodes |
| 1987 | Critical Condition | Stucky | |
| 1987 | Miami Vice | Alfredo Giulinni | Episode: "Down for the Count: Part 2" |
| 1987 | Wiseguy | Paul "Pat The Cat" Patrice | 5 episodes |
| 1988 | Sunset | "Dutch" Kieffer | |
| 1988 | The Hitchhiker | Gerard | Episode: "Fashion Exchange" |
| 1988 | Double Revenge | Joe Halsey | |
| 1989 | The Hollywood Detective | Eddie Northcott | Television movie |
| 1990 | Matlock | Bobby Boyd | 2 episodes |
| 1990 | Almost an Angel | Bank Hood Leader | |
| 1990 | Cry-Baby | Mr. Hackett | |
| 1991 | Inside Out | Richard | Segment: "The Diaries" |
| 1991 | Wild Orchid II: Two Shades of Blue | Jules | |
| 1992 | Guncrazy | Rooney | |
| 1992 | Love Is Like That | The Boss | |
| 1994 | Sugar Hill | Tony Adamo | |
| 1995 | Theodore Rex | Rogan | Direct-to-video release |
| 1998 | L.A. Without a Map | Michael | |
| 1999 | The Limey | John "Uncle John", The Hitman | Credited as Joe Dallessandro |
| 2000 | Beefcake | Cameos, old footage | |
| 2002 | Pacino Is Missing | Sal Colletti | |
| 2008 | 3 Stories About Evil | Jean Maries | Short film |
| 2022 | Babylon | Charlie the Photographer | |