The reason of course for remembering Prince Spaghetti Day is that the young lad who races home for the family's pasta meal on Wednesday, Anthony Martignetti, playing himself, in what is really a famous commercial, has just passed away at 63, possibly from a severe form of sleep apnea.
The one minute commercial opens with Anthony's mother leaning out of the apartment window and calling his name twice, in a heavy, loud Italian accent. "An-tony...An-tony." Anthony, who is really not within earshot of his mother's voice, must still have the ears of a collie, or a clock in his head, because at he same time Mom's yelling his name, Anthony is running home like a guided missile, all skinny arms and legs churning in a sprint.
He races through the street market, past the bocce courts with the arguing men, and like a young colt bounds through the streets of Boston's North End and makes his way home and arrives out of breath at the top of the stairs, happy and hungry.
The commercial was set in 1969, and clearly shows that Moms had no cell phones to summon their young, and their young wandered far enough way from home to play and explore a distance that if it were to happen today would have the parent calling the police and reporting a missing person.
When I first spotted Mr. Martignetti's obit in the NYT, I wondered who on the paper could even still remember 1969? Then I saw the byline of Sam Roberts and knew that Mr. Roberts, who is as old as I am, or perhaps only slightly younger, remembers the same mayors and presidents that I do.
The genesis of the commercial is as interesting as it is familiar. Some advertising fellows scouted the area in hope of finding non-actors who could appear in a commercial for the Prince spaghetti company. They found Anthony and some of his friends, and with Anthony not giving them any lip about directions, they cast his as the youngster who races home for his meal.
When the commercial airs I always thought Anthony looked liked the Boston Bruin hockey player Phil Esposito. I still do. Phil of course came to the Bruins from the Chicago Black Hawks, and eventually wound up playing for the Rangers, in a still hard-to-fathom trade.
We used to play roller hockey in a school yard on 32nd street off Third Avenue in Manhattan on Sunday mornings. Oddly enough, the school yard was right next to the offices of New York magazine. We were a ragtag assembly of youngsters and young adults, ranging in age from perhaps 12-22. Five of the players were from the Burek family, and if they didn't show up not only was there no one to play goal, there weren't enough skaters to pass the puck (a roll of electrical tape) to. Thankfully, they usually all showed.
One Sunday a young women with a clip board wandered by the fence and started to chat us up while we took a break between periods—our own self-timed playing intervals.
She introduced herself as someone who wanted young subjects to make a Frito-Lay potato chip commercial. She didn't want the "older" ones of us; she wanted the youngsters, our Anthonys. She was legit, and soon after names were taken, permission slips signed, and a date was set, a scrum of the fellows gathered in a corner of the school yard, sticks and skates, dressed in their mis-matching hockey "uniforms" and were crunching on potato chips and telling the camera, "They're terrific."
I don't remember how much money was paid to the lads, but the commercial ran for a long time, long enough that Jimmy, Joey, Nicky and Paulie could look back at themselves and laugh.
Prince spaghetti is still around, and is part of a larger food conglomerate. I've never seen it here in New York, being exposed to Ronzoni, and now Barilla and De Cecco. Growing up it was Mueller's elbow macaroni, a Long Island City company that I'm sure folded. As a young adult I bought some Mueller's hoping to remember childhood, and tasting it I can only wonder why they weren't an epidemic of deaths.
In the Prince commercial, the woman who played Anthony's mother was really his neighbor. I didn't grow up in an Italian neighborhood, and the only time I can remember my mother calling me was when she leaned out of the front door in 1955 and told me Dodgers had just beaten the Yankees in the World Series.
She was gloating, because she knew I liked the Yankees, but not enough to watch them on TV in the afternoon, as all Series games were played in the daytime then. I can still remember being in the neighbor's driveway with my friend Archie and hearing the news.
I really didn't care that much, and was too young to be affected by the Dodger/Yankee rivalry. But one thing was for sure that day. It was not Prince Spaghetti Day for Yankee fans.
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