\n<\/p>\n
Tony Lo Bianco, an actor whose film roles<\/a> included villains in \u201cThe French Connection\u201d and \u201cThe Honeymoon Killers\u201d and whose stage career earned him stellar reviews for an Arthur Miller tragedy and an Obie Award for a baseball drama, died on Tuesday at his home in Poolesville, Md. He was 87.<\/p>\n The cause was prostate cancer, his wife, Alyse Lo Bianco, said.<\/p>\n Mr. Lo Bianco made a vivid impression in \u201cThe Honeymoon Killers\u201d (1970), a low-budget black-and-white film, based on a true story, that came to be regarded as a cult classic. With a heavy Spanish accent and serious sideburns, he played Raymond Fernandez, a con man who courted, married and murdered lonely women for their bank accounts, passing off his real lover (Shirley Stoler) as his sister. The Guardian called the film the movies\u2019 first \u201csuper-realist depiction of the banality of evil.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n A United Press International writer once labeled Mr. Lo Bianco \u201ca natural-born heavy\u201d because of his dark hair, bushy eyebrows and sharp features. In \u201cThe French Connection\u201d (1971), moviegoers saw him as the owner of a modest Brooklyn diner, Sal and Angie\u2019s, dressed to the nines and driving a car with European plates, courtesy of international drug money. In \u201cThe Seven-Ups\u201d (1973), he was a mortician at one of the Mafia\u2019s favorite funeral homes.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n But Mr. Lo Bianco was a stage actor at heart. He won an Obie Award in 1975 for \u201cYanks 3, Detroit 0, Top of the Seventh<\/a>,\u201d in which he played Duke Bronkowski, a baseball player with age and time breathing down his neck who is trying to pitch a perfect game during his 14th season in the major leagues.<\/p>\n In 1983, Mr. Lo Bianco triumphed on Broadway in Arthur Miller\u2019s \u201cA View From the Bridge\u201d as a Brooklyn longshoreman destroyed by his obsession with his 17-year-old niece. The performance brought him a Tony Award nomination for best actor in a play.<\/p>\n Frank Rich, in his New York Times review<\/a>, called it a \u201ctumultuous star performance\u201d and described Mr. Lo Bianco as \u201csuch a dynamic and enveloping force\u201d that the audience never questions the play\u2019s action. He \u201clooms up,\u201d Mr. Rich wrote, \u201cto make the theater shake.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Lo Bianco\u2019s success stemmed in part from previous experience with the role, which he had played in summer stock in the 1960s. \u201cI knew 20 years ago this would happen,\u201d he said of the play\u2019s reception. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t surprise me at all. I knew the power of this play.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Anthony Lo Bianco was born in Brooklyn on Oct. 19, 1936. His parents \u2014 Carmelo Lo Bianco, a taxi driver, and Sally (Blando) Lo Bianco \u2014 were first-generation Italian Americans. Anthony attended a vocational high school, where a speech and drama teacher suggested that he study acting.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n First, he tried out for the Brooklyn Dodgers in high school, though he felt sure he wasn\u2019t a good enough baseball player. \u201cI was too short for first base, I don\u2019t think I had a strong enough arm for pitching, and I wasn\u2019t fast enough for the outfield,\u201d he told The Times in 1975. \u201cI was left\u2010handed, so that left out the infield and catching.\u201d<\/p>\n Instead, he enrolled in the Dramatic Workshop of the New School and, in 1963, created the Triangle Theater Company, where he directed productions and appeared in \u201cThe Adding Machine,\u201d \u201cNature of the Crime,\u201d \u201cThe Threepenny Opera\u201d and other plays. His Broadway credits included \u201cTartuffe,\u201d \u201cIncident at Vichy,\u201d \u201cThe Royal Hunt of the Sun\u201d and \u201cThe Ninety-Day Mistress.\u201d<\/p>\n In 1970, Clive Barnes of The Times dismissed the play \u201cNature of the Crime<\/a>\u201d as puzzling and murky. But, he wrote, \u201cMr. Lo Bianco acts with a naturalness that defeats the script,\u201d adding, \u201cHis whole manner is so convincing that once in a while you can believe the impossibilities of his role and revel in the author\u2019s moral rectitude.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Lo Bianco made his television debut as Dr. Joe Corelli on the daytime drama \u201cLove of Life\u201d in the early 1970s and went on to play more than 90 other TV roles. He was the heavyweight boxing champion Rocky Marciano in \u201cMarciano\u201d (1979) and Frankie Carbo, a Mafia-connected boxing promoter, in \u201cRocky Marciano<\/a>\u201d (1999). He appeared in television movies like \u201cJesus of Nazareth\u201d (1977) and \u201cBella Mafia\u201d (1997); the Italian mini-series \u201cLa Romana<\/a>\u201d (1988), with Gina Lollobrigida; and series including \u201cPolice Story,\u201d \u201cLaw & Order,\u201d \u201cPalace Guard\u201d and \u201cHomicide: Life on the Street.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n His films also included \u201cBloodbrothers\u201d (1978), \u201cF.I.S.T.\u201d<\/a> (1978), John Sayles\u2019s \u201cCity of Hope<\/a>\u201d (1991), Oliver Stone\u2019s \u201cNixon\u201d (1995) and his last, \u201cSomewhere in Queens\u201d (2022), a comedy-drama starring and directed by Ray Romano. He also taught acting at the Stella Adler Studio.<\/p>\n Mr. Lo Bianco was married and divorced twice \u2014 to Dora Landey, a theater actress at the time, with whom he had three daughters, from 1964 to 2002; and to Elizabeth Eileen Natwick, from 2002 until 2008. He married Alyse Best Muldoon, a writer, in 2015. They <\/strong>had homes in Poolesville and on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.<\/p>\n In addition to his wife, he is survived by two daughters from his first marriage, Yummy Helmes and Nina Landey; a brother, John; two stepchildren, Tristan Hamilton and Lanah Fitzgerald; six grandchildren; and four step-grandchildren. Another daughter from his first marriage, Anna Lo Bianco, died of breast cancer in 2006.<\/p>\n Fiorello La Guardia, New York\u2019s flamboyant mayor in the 1930s and \u201940s, became Mr. Lo Bianco\u2019s favorite subject. He originated the role in \u201cHizzoner!<\/a>\u201d in an Albany theater in 1984; it had a short run on Broadway in 1989 and won a local Emmy when it was filmed for the New York PBS station WNET.<\/p>\n He returned to the role again and again, in the United States and abroad, in rewritten versions called \u201cLaGuardia\u201d and \u201cThe Little Flower.\u201d And he talked about La Guardia as a role model more than he talked about his own character.<\/p>\n \u201cHe was a man of action,\u201d Mr. Lo Bianco told Newsday in 2005. \u201cHe was a dreamer and a doer. I want people to be inspired.\u201d<\/p>\n Alex Traub contributed reporting.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n