Tony Lo Bianco, a New York cabdriver’s son who brought a gritty realism to his portrayal of cops, boxers and all manner of tough guys, memorably playing a mobster in “The French Connection” and starring as one of his hometown’s most irascible mayors, Fiorello La Guardia, in a one-man show that he performed around the world, died June 11 at his horse farm in Poolesville, Md. He was 87. He had prostate cancer, said his wife, Alyse Lo Bianco.
A former Golden Gloves fighter who grew up near the Brooklyn waterfront, Lo Bianco was attending vocational school, daydreaming through his classes, when one of his teachers encouraged him to enter a declamation contest. He won, and went on to launch a six-decade acting career in which he appeared in Broadway plays and more than 100 movies and television shows, typically in macho parts where he flashed a sly smile – along with a gun – while operating on the wrong side of the law. For his breakthrough role, in the acclaimed crime film “The Honeymoon Killers” (1970), he oozed what New York Times journalist William Grimes described as “a thrillingly disgusting smarminess,” adopting a Spanish accent to play a con man who targets single women while going on a murderous rampage with his partner (Shirley Stoler).
The next year, he appeared in “The French Connection” as Sal Boca, who uses his Brooklyn diner as a front while helping a criminal syndicate smuggle heroin from overseas. Starring Gene Hackman and Roy Scheider as a.
