Anthony George Franciosa (; né Papaleo; October 25, 1928 – January 19, 2006), also billed as Tony Franciosa, was an American actor. He began his career on stage and made a breakthrough portraying the brother of the drug addict in the play A Hatful of Rain, which earned him a nomination for the Tony Award for Best Featured Actor in a Play. He reprised his role in its subsequent film adaptation, for which he won the 1957 Venice Film Festival Award for Best Actor, and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor.
After relocating to Hollywood he made numerous feature films, including A Face in the Crowd (1957), The Long, Hot Summer (1958), and Career (1959), the latter for which he won the Golden Globe for Best Actor. On television, he played lead roles in five television series: the sitcom Valentine's Day (1964–65), drama The Name of the Game (1968–71), Search (1972–73), Matt Helm (1975), and Finder of Lost Loves (1984). Later in his career, he acted primarily in Italy, starring in the erotic drama The Cricket (1980) and Dario Argento's giallo Tenebrae (1982).
He was born in the Little Italy district of New York to an Italian-American family. His grandparents emigrated from Melfi, Basilicata, southern Italy, in 1890. His parents separated when he was one and he was raised by his mother and aunt, adopting his mother's maiden name Franciosa.
After high school, he worked as a welder, ship steward and cook. At age 18 he was doing free dancing lessons at the YMCA, where he was offered a role in a production of The Seagull, and the experience made him want to be an actor. He studied privately for two years with Joseph Geigler. He then got a four-year scholarship at the Dramatic Workshop, which led to the New York Repertory Theatre.
In 1948, Franciosa joined the Cherry Lane Theatre Group off Broadway (at the same time as actress Bea Arthur). Within two years, he had been accepted as a member of the Actors Studio, which would prove an invaluable resource throughout his career but it would be a few years more before Franciosa could make a living from acting. In the meantime, he accepted a variety of jobs which included being a waiter, dishwasher, day laborer, and messenger boy at CBD. He worked in Theatre of the Sky on Lake Tahoe. In 1950 he was in a San Francisco production of Detective Story.
In 1953, he made his Broadway debut in End as a Man alongside Ben Gazzara, and the following year in Wedding Breakfast (1954).
Franciosa began guest starring on TV shows such as Studio One in Hollywood, Kraft Theatre, Ford Star Jubilee (an adaptation of This Happy Breed with Noël Coward), and Goodyear Playhouse.
Franciosa's breakthrough role came when cast in the Actors Studio production of A Hatful of Rain (1955–56) under the direction of Elia Kazan. He played Polo, the brother of the drug addicted Johnny (Ben Gazzara). Shelley Winters played Johnny's wife and she would marry Franciosa the following year. Franciosa was nominated for a Tony Award for his performance.
Franciosa made his film debut in Elia Kazan's A Face in the Crowd (1957) alongside Andy Griffith, Patricia Neal, and Lee Remick. He followed it in MGM's This Could Be the Night (1957) as the romantic interest for Jean Simmons, under the direction of Robert Wise. He reprised his role in A Hatful of Rain in the film version, directed by Fred Zinnemann at 20th Century Fox, with Don Murray and Eva Marie Saint playing the roles originated by Gazzara and Winters. Hedda Hopper pointed out that these three films were made before the first one had been released. His performance in Hatful of Rain earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor.
Franciosa supported Anna Magnani and Anthony Quinn in Wild Is the Wind (1957) directed by George Cukor, produced by Hal B. Wallis who put Franciosa under a multi-film contract. He then appeared with Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward in The Long Hot Summer (1958), playing Jody Varner, the son of Will Varner (Orson Welles), directed by Martin Ritt at Fox.
In December 1957, he spent 10 days in jail for hitting a press photographer in April of that year. However he was much in demand: In an interview in December, he said he owed Fox and MGM three films each over five years, Kazan two more films, and Wallis one film a year over seven years.
He played Francisco Goya in MGM's The Naked Maja (1958) with Ava Gardner, which earned Franciosa $250,000 in acting fees due to production delays. He made a second film for Wallis, Career (1959) with Dean Martin and Shirley MacLaine, then The Story on Page One (1959) with Rita Hayworth for Clifford Odets at Fox.
He was meant to star in Orpheus Descending (which became The Fugitive Kind) with Anna Magnani, but the producers decided to cast Marlon Brando, and Franciosa was paid out $75,000. He was mentioned as a possibility for one of the roles in The Magnificent Seven and for the title role in a proposed Simon Bolivar biopic that Dino De Laurentiis was going to make.
In 1959, he served 30 days at an open-prison farm for possession of marijuana. The same year, he was in a car accident.
Franciosa returned to television to appear in Heaven Can Wait, an adaptation of Here Comes Mr Jordan (1960), then in Cradle Song (1960). He supported Gina Lollobrigida in MGM's Go Naked in the World (1961), which lost money. He was top-billed in the Italian Careless (1962) with Claudia Cardinale and MGM's Period of Adjustment (1962) with Jane Fonda, Franciosa's first film for that studio which made a profit. In August 1963, he addressed a civil rights rally in Alabama alongside Marlon Brando and Paul Newman.
Franciosa guest starred on The DuPont Show of the Week, Arrest and Trial, Breaking Point, The Greatest Show on Earth, and Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre. He had supporting parts in two films for Fox: Rio Conchos (1964) with Stuart Whitman and Richard Boone, and The Pleasure Seekers (1964) with Ann-Margret and Carol Lynley.
He starred in a TV series Valentine's Day (1964–65). When that ended he had support parts in A Man Could Get Killed (1966) with James Garner and Assault on a Queen (1966) with Frank Sinatra. He was leading man to Ann-Margret in The Swinger (1966) at Paramount and Raquel Welch in Fathom (1967) at Fox. In a 1966 interview he confessed that Hollywood stardom had come a little too early: "It was an incredible amount of attention, and I wasn't quite mature enough psychologically or emotionally for it."
He starred in Universal's Fame Is the Name of the Game (1966), then a spaghetti Western at Universal, A Man Called Gannon (1968), a drama with Jacqueline Bisset at Fox, The Sweet Ride (1968), and a war film at Universal, In Enemy Country (1968). Producer David Dortort was on the verge of casting him as Cameron Mitchell's best friend and brother-in-law, Manolito Montoya, on the western, The High Chaparral, if Henry Darrow did not make it to the set in time. Darrow did.