Richard Gambino, president of the first academic Italian American studies program in the United States and a leading critic of those who reflexively view Italian Americans as the Mafia and ridicule them with ethnic stereotypes in popular culture. He died on January 12th at his home in Southampton. , New York He was 84 years old.
His daughter Erica-Lynn Huberty said his death was caused by lymphoma while in hospice care.
Dr. Gambino was an assistant professor of educational philosophy at Queens College in 1972, one month after the release of Francis Ford Coppola’s film The Godfather, when he published a long essay on Italian Americans in New York.・Published in Times Magazine.
He argues that “a xenophobic American mentality born of ignorance and nurtured by malice” has led to stereotypes of Italian Americans as “spaghetti-spinning, undershirt-wearing, opera-snarling clowns.” (as in the famous line from the TV commercial, “That’s what I call spicy meatballs”), or a black, sinister hood in a flashy suit, shirt, and tie.
He added: “The amazing exploits of ‘The Godfather’ demonstrate the power of today’s mafia mythology.”
For decades after Dr. Gambino was named director of the newly established Italian American Studies Program at Queen’s University in 1973, Dr. Gambino continued to explore the mafia myth — that a significant proportion of Italian Americans were involved in organized crime. They were obsessed with the idea that they were involved in or profiting from organized crime. This is based on his well-received book, The Blood of My Blood, which depicts a personal, sociological, and psychological exploration of the first, second, and third generations of his ethnic group. It was also one of several topics covered in 1974).
“The image of the Italian-American Mafia is older than most people realize,” he writes in Blood of My Blood. “It has been a cross that has been carried on the shoulders of every Italian-American for more than a full century.”
Huberty said her father had talked with Mario Puzo, author of the 1969 blockbuster novel “The Godfather,” on which the film is based, about his motivation for writing.
Mr. Huberty said in a telephone interview that Mr. Puzo “told me he knew he could make money writing about the Mafia.” “My dad wasn’t particularly happy, but he understood. He had similar problems with David Chase from The Sopranos. He wouldn’t look at it. ”
Richard Ignatius Gambino was born on May 5, 1939 in Brooklyn. His father, Dominic, was an immigrant from Palermo, Sicily, and was a meter checker for Con Edison. His mother, Katherine (Trunchina) Gambino, was born in the United States, and she worked in a shoulder pad factory and then as a bookkeeper.
While attending Queen’s College in the late 1950s and early 1960s, he watched the television series “The Untouchables,” in which Robert Stack played Eliot Ness, a Prohibition agent who fought organized crime in Chicago in the 1930s. He noticed that many of the criminals’ names were Italian.
“I remember gritting my teeth in anger and humiliation when I heard some students casually refer to this program,” he said, using a slur against Italians. I wrote it in “Blood”. He wanted to fight them, but felt isolated on a campus with few Italian Americans and did not.
He graduated from Queen’s University in 1961 with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy. Afterwards, he further earned two degrees in philosophy. He received his master’s degree from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1965 and his Ph.D. in 1965. He received his Ph.D. from New York University in 1968.
He was hired by the New York Ethical and Cultural Institute in Manhattan in 1965 as an adult education instructor and teacher. He moved to Queen’s University two years later.
Dr. Gambino directed the Italian American Studies program, an interdisciplinary minor that included courses in history, political science, psychology, literature, art, and music for more than 20 years.
“He brought Italian American studies to a broader public,” Anthony Julian Tamburri, director of the John D. Calandra Institute of Italian American Studies, also at Queen’s University, said by phone. “This was a way to get more working-class Italian Americans and foreign Italian students into the class and show them the real history of Italian Americans.”
Early in his tenure, Dr. Gambino faced blatant discrimination based on his heritage. After his neighbor was murdered, he told United Press International in 1974 that police detectives questioned him about what connections he thought he had with the Mafia.
In the same year, he founded the magazine Italian Americana. He continued his writing throughout his academic career and was also widely cited in articles advocating the expansion of his people’s cultural views.
In his book Vendetta (1977), he describes how 11 Italian Americans were murdered by a rampaging mob in New Orleans in 1891 after a jury failed to convict a group of Italian Americans. I wrote about the deaths (two of whom were shot dead and nine of whom were hanged). The shooting death of City Police Chief David Hennessy. In his final words, Secretary Hennessy is said to have used an ethnic slur to accuse Italian Americans of attacking him.
Dr. Gambino told the New York Daily News in 1977 that there was “no evidence that any of those men or any Italian-Americans were involved in Hennessy’s murder.” He called the incident “the greatest lynching in American history.”
In “Vendetta,” Dr. Gambino focused on the deep-rooted prejudice against Italian Americans. He quoted President Richard M. Nixon telling one of his top aides, John Ehrlichman, on a 1973 White House tape: The difference is that they smell different, look different, and act different. ”
“Vendetta” was made into an HBO film in 1999, starring Christopher Walken as lynch mob leader James Huston and Clancy Brown as Chief Hennessy.
Dr. Gambino also wrote plays about Walt Whitman, including “Camerard” and “The Trial of Pope Pius XII,” which were performed on Long Island in the early 2000s.
He dropped out of Queen’s College in 1998. Also, from 1994 until 1997 he taught as a Visiting Professor of European Languages at Brooke University.
In addition to Ms. Huberty, Dr. Gambino is survived by his wife, Gail (Churn) Gambino; Dr. Gambino married in 1971, and his father, Leo Chern, was chairman of the International Rescue Committee. another daughter, Doria Gambino; son mark. stepdaughter Lisa Beatty; and two grandchildren. His marriage to Barbara Barnett ended in divorce.
Throughout his adult life, Dr. Gambino remained aware of incidents of prejudice against Italian Americans.
In 1993, he criticized U.S. District Judge Jack Weinstein for saying during the sentencing of a mob boss that “the majority of the Italian American youth community should not engage in crime.” .
“This is not just an example of thoughtless and insensitive statements,” Dr. Gambino wrote in New York Newsday. It’s “another confirmation of what investigative journalist Jack Newfield calls ‘the most tolerated form of intolerance’ in America today: anti-Italian bigotry.”