venerdì 18 ottobre 2013

My Exclusive Interview with BRIDGET DOBSON - Part Four




We’re coming to the fourth part of my interview with Bridget Dobson. If you have missed the previous parts, you can read them by clicking here. Finally we have come to SANTA BARBARA. As Bridget Dobson recalls, “NBC-TV called to ask if we were to own a show, if we were to be in complete charge of every creative aspect of a show, from sets and costumes and hairstyles and music to every minute detail of the production, acting and writing, would we be willing to work again? Nobody in history had ever been asked this question.  Not before and not since. We were being offered total creative control of an hour a day television drama five days a week.” Ms. Dobson is about to tell us how SB was born, how they convinced Dame Judith Anderson to star on SB and everything about the birth of a series that has made worldwide television’s history. Did you know that one of the four SB families was not part of the Dobsons’ original idea? Reading this interview is the only way to find out which family I’m talking about… Enjoy!




We finally come to the “mountain to climb”. When you and your husband conceived the idea of SB, what was your starting point – a particular character? A certain plot? How was Santa Barbara born?

The mountain was indeed in front of us, once the contract with NBC-TV was signed.  At that point in time, I had started to outline a novel, which Warner Books was interested in publishing, but we knew we couldn't do both the tv serial and the book.  It was an easy decision to use the basic structure of the book, two somewhat competitive (though quite different) families and an ethnic (Mexican) family, in the soap. The characters seemed indigenous to Santa Barbara: they were the people we saw in a daily way, and they were seemingly as one with the sunshine, the ocean, the architecture, the air.  They belonged to the land as much as the land belonged to them.  
The challenge was to make the characters fascinating (each in his own right) and the stories riveting.  To strengthen our own experience in drama, we turned to great examples of literature and theater. Day after day, little by little, we scoured and devoured most, if not all, of Shakespeare, Greek tragedy, early cinema, Tennessee Williams, among many others.  We gradually eschewed the examples of “typical” families we had experienced on other soaps.  Relationships were never simple, always complicated by all the rivulets of emotion that infiltrate much of classic literature. Inundated, we made background notes on our favorite dramatic and psychological themes. With this huge and intense spectrum of dramatic precedent which had survived through the ages, with the further understanding (reading Freud, Jung, and more) that these themes were still being repeated in every modern culture on this planet (not to mention our own lives), we began to mold our own drama around the Capwells, the Lockridges, and the Andrades
Dame Judith Anderson, a diminutive woman of towering ...even booming...personal strength, was a small but important part of the social fabric of our lives at the time.  We had attended a few of the same parties, barely spoken a few words to her. She was also a neighbour.  We jogged past her house every day.  Jerry and I had seen her performances in “Medea” and “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof”, and we, like most people, were utterly awed. Early on, before the show was fully formed, we knew we wanted to have her be part of SB. But how dare we?  It was a dream, that's all, a wish, a fantasy. This woman had been knighted by Queen Elizabeth for her abilities as an actress.  She was universally revered. Not only was the thought verboten, it was presumptuous beyond belief. Inviting her to be part of our regular cast would be like inviting Hoover Dam to dance.  And so it began.....


I felt a similar emotion when I dared to ask you for an interview, except that I am a humble fan. How did you manage to convince her to accept the role?

Fearful - indeed, practically certain - of rejection, Jerry and I flipped a coin to see who would be the unlucky one to visit “DJ” (Dame Judith) and speak to her about being a regular on our show.  I won.  Jerry had to go to her house.  He was gone a very long time. Hours and hours.  When he came home, his left hand was bleeding heavily and looked like a ball of ground beef.  He explained that DJ's much adored little dog had spent the entire interview on Jerry's lap, chewing on his flesh.  He didn't complain -not so much as a grimace or groan, and he didn't throw the little bitch out the window, which may have been his inclination - because he didn't want to do anything to irritate DJ.  He was successful.  Though he had a (temporarily) non-functioning left hand, with literally dozens of puncture wounds, and blood stained clothes, we had our first cast member. The only thing Jerry had to promise her, creatively, was that she could "still be sexy" and she could carry a riding crop (she wanted a whip, but he talked her out of it) at all times.
Next problem: her contract.  DJ had no agent or lawyer.  Jerry and I never negotiated contracts (other than our own).  So she negotiated on her own behalf with our attorney in NY.  (Our attorney was very impressed that this senior citizen - she lied about her age, said she was 74 - was tough and astute in every conversation he had with her.) They came to terms in a few weeks. Except for one major detail, which was a deal-breaker:  she wanted the services, in her own home, one day per week, of the Dobson's full-time maid.  Take it or leave it.  


In addition to the riding crop, she was allowed to change the name of her character, from Birdie to Minx, maybe not everybody knows that. However, casting the patriarch of the Capwells was more complicated. Lloyd Bochner, your first choice, suffered a heart attack a few days after the first shooting. So he was replaced by Peter M. Richman, then briefly  by Paul Burke, later by Charles Bateman and finally by Jed Allan. Why was it so difficult to find the right CC Capwell?

There are frequent casting complications on daytime dramas.  Actors become sick or pregnant or, perhaps, they aren't as good as they were first thought to be.  Sometimes an actor can't handle the volume of memorization required on a soap.  It is not unusual - certainly not unheard of - to make more than one change in the casting. Four different actors is not what anyone wants, but considering health problems, and the need to make rapid changes, and the outsized demands of a daily hour-long drama, I am not surprised.


At the beginning the show consisted of a representative microcosm – the wealthy Capwells, the eccentric Lockridges, the Mexican Andrades and, from the middle class, the Perkins. In addition, to balance the tension linked to the murder of Channing Junior, there were the young players (Ted, Laken, Danny and Jade) off to Hollywood, and also the pungent irony of Minx. Soon the Perkins, the Andrades and Minx began to appear less often. Was that just the normal adjustment of a new show or were there other reasons?

The Andrades
Successfully writing a soap requires constant adjustments.  It would be a very bad idea to plan a show in your office, not watch the show, and follow your blueprint to the letter. Instead, you watch and listen, and you are guided by your instincts.  What's working?  What isn't working?  Should the emphasis be here or there?   By fine tuning as you go along, you minimize “mistakes” and maximize the stories and characters that are creating the best drama.  This may happen more often on a new show, but it also happens, in a daily way, on an established show.  The writers who are emotionally tuned to the progress of the show, and who are most willing to adjust when the emotions are even slightly off kilter,  are the most successful writers; they are the ones who learn as they go along. Adjustments are normal; without them, a show will falter and fail.  Having said that, television writers are in a business, and sometimes politics seem to transcend the drama of the moment.  For example, a network executive may plead for, even insist on, a character or a storyline being included. This situation is also normal, and it can become a kind of wrestling match.  If the writer has enough experience to know that a “trial run” of the character or the story won't “kill” the show and will placate the executive, then it may be included, for a short period of time.  If  it works, hooray.  If it doesn't, with luck, the executive will learn from his errors.  I have yet to live long enough to see that happen. But I advance it to you as a hypothetical theory.


And here “subtext speaks louder than text”. When you wrote the stories, how did you decide on the right balance between drama and humor? Are there unwritten rules?

Lane Davies
I don't think there is a formula for the relationship of humor to drama. We learned the “serious drama” kind of soap writing primarily from P&G  (though I don't want to downplay the importance of studying creative writing at Stanford).  It had been well-established through the years on all the daytime shows.  But it felt a little somber, a little drab.  Our instincts were to trust our instincts: we felt the audience might  be more receptive, as we were, to drama laced with humor.  And though we had experimented with humor earlier, on GL and on ATWT (P&G was cautious of it at first, then accepting, then trusting), we had carte blanche to use it on SB.
Almost parenthetically, I need to say that humor is, quite naturally, a HUGE part of Jerry’s personality, our marriage, and our lifestyle. It is part of the air we breathe. SB, by extension, was known for its humor.  My paintings, according to more than one critic, look like Santa Barbara.  It's something that exists within each of us.  It can’t be added to or subtracted from either one of us.  We're blessed - or, more accurately, stuck - with it.
Back to the soap opera:  there can be humor both in plot and in character.  In my opinion, every character should have humorous qualities, but it always needs to be integrated with and intrinsic to the character. You wouldn't fall in love with each character, know what thrills and pains each character, if the tenor of humor were the same for each.  On SB, Mason's was the darkest, the most intellectual, the driest humor and it stemmed, in part, from pain he carried within. Though he may have joked about it, you know by his wry words that Mason was competitive with, or felt diminished by, CC.  Humor can intensify pathos. When he was inebriated, speaking to a fish, muttering “Alas, poor Yorick”, did you want to  laugh or cry or both? Did each emotion intensify the other?  It did for me, both writing it and watching it, until I almost thought I'd explode.  Thus, the arrogance of instinct and how it can (with luck) blindside an audience.


Shakespeare’s Yorick, like the fish, has never had a voice, he speaks through the voices of others. He is the fool, the voice of a different truth: MEMENTO MORI. This leads me to the function that I believe Mason has on the show: I believe that Mason personifies the Greek chorus. He was a much beloved character while being evil sometimes. In the Greek tragedy chorus has a precise function: to express the tragic poet’s feelings. But it expresses the feelings of the people, too, of the audience, to make them feel themselves as part of the story. I can see all of this in Mason’s character. Maybe we forgive Mason because we are Mason. Could it be so?


The character Mason was created to function as a kind of Greek chorus.  You are quite right.  It is the term we used when the show was first being conceptually delineated, long before his character was developed and melded into the storyline. And though we hoped the audience identified closely with him, we wished that the audience would also identify with each of the other characters.  I agree that Mason had a unique perspective, sometimes tragic, sometimes ironic, sometimes comedic.  To me, he was the most fascinating of all.




giovedì 10 ottobre 2013

Cult Soap for the Nineties: SANTA BARBARA

- Soap Opera Digest _ July 11, 1989 - 


SANTA BARBARA is unquestionably the biggest cult soap since DARK SHADOWS. Its ratings never make headlines, but one would never know that by the way the show’s followers talk about it. This is a loyal, vocal group that literally salivates over all the day-to-day action. 3ddly enough, many of these viewers are the same folks who have watched ALL MY CHILDREN or AS THE WORLD TURNS for years, but they discuss the happenings on these shows in more reserved tones.

Of course, there is a fundamental difference between DARK SHADOWS and SANTA BARBARA. While DARK SHADOWS was obvious camp (a Gothic horror poof with werewolves, vampires and time warps), SB doesn't fit neatly into any one category. Through most of its five years on the air, it has been an unlikely blend of Hamlet, MARY HARTMAN, MARY HARTMAN, SOAP, WHEEL OF FORTUNE and Waiting for Mr. Goodbar.

Sure there have been serious moments. Cruz and Eden Castillo (A Martinez and Marcy Walker) dealt with Eden’s rape with new level of dignity and maturity for daytime television — no soapy histrionics here. either Michael (Frank Runyeon) struggled convincingly as he questioned his commitment to the cloth (this was not a “guilt” storyline).

Nonetheless, SANTA BARBARA became known mostly for its raunchier, funnier elements. Gina (Robin Mattson) wasn't just a vamp, she was an exhibitionist. Mason Capwell (Lane Davies) put away an average of a fifth of scotch per episode, yet was never too tongue-tied to deliver an erudite dig. And who could forget the much missed Lionel and Augusta Lockridge (Nicolas Coster and Louise Sorel), who proved that sex was not only alive after forty, but could be more fun than ever?

In the past year, the show got even nuttier. Gina became entangled with a crossdresser named Bunny (Joe Marinelli). Mason was felled with amnesia and took on the alter-ego of redneck Sonny Sprocket. It was a hoot, but one began to wonder how much farther SB would go just to get laughs. We half expected Gina to become a nun, or Redd Foxx to show up as a long lost brother to millionaire C.C. Capwell (Jed Allan). Also, for far too long, the Capwells were the only family in town, and the writers seemed capable of writing for only one couple — Cruz and Eden.
           
But then, SB shifted gear and turned into a good old-fashioned romance, reinstating a classic soap ingredient — the love triangle. In their search for infant daughter Adriana, Cruz and Eden crossed paths with psychic Sandra Mills (Miranda Wilson), who is obsessed with Cruz. Feisty Sophia (Judith McConnell) is rethinking her independence from C.C. with the advent of romance novelist Megan Richardson (Meg Bennett). Mason, recently married to Julia (Nancy Grahn), has been facing his drinking problem with the very interested support of Lisa DiNapoli (Tawny Kitaen). Dr. Scott Clark (Vincent Irizarry) is caught between Heather (Jane Rogers), who is pregnant with his child, and a rekindled high school romance with Lisa's ex-hooker sis, Celeste (Signy Coleman). Michael — minus the collar — is reminded of his past with Laura Asher (Christopher Norris), wife of suspender-clad DA Ethan Asher (Leigh McCloskey).

For SANTA BARBARA, this is pretty conservative stuff. Now that affairs of the heart have taken over, characters once again are allowed to sit and philosophize occasionally to examine their relationships without flippancy or risk of interruption. At the same time, the show never gets dreary. Mason and Julia enjoy sexual romps at the office; Gina still hurls her barbs; it is still great fun, but no longer absurd.

Charles Pratt jr.
This turn of events is largely due to the show's head writer, the underrated Charles Pratt, Jr., who has brought back the values that Bridget and Jerome Dobson (SB’s creators) instituted at the beginning. The relationship between C.C. and Mason has always been tragic. It is a classic representation of millions of fathers and sons who never really accepted one another; whose attempts to connect were marred by mutual disapproval and distrust. As C.C. bares his soul to Megan for biographical purposes, and Mason looks at his life through out-of-body experience in Heaven (followed by AA), this relationship shows signs of a new beginning. And thank goodness for the humanizing of Gina. She's still one sexy wench, but she is once again being portrayed as a survivor whose one constant in life is her love for her son, Brandon (Justin Gocke). She, too, is looking at her circumstances through a new set of glasses; envying the simplicity and innocence of the people around her. When she and Brandon were held hostage by the psychotic Kirk Cranston (played chillingly by Joseph Bottoms), Gina showed fortitude and savvy in setting Kirk up for Cruz's trap. The woman may like sex and money, but she's not a total dingbat.

           
These are examples of the wonderful “gray areas” that have made SB's characters so fascinating. Also better than ever is the overall caliber of the acting ensemble. Until recently, the cast was a combination of hits and misses. No more. The newcomers appear to be as strong as the veterans. Signy Coleman is absolutely endearing. Tawny Kitaen is one smashing lady — commanding in a self-assuredly feminine (never brash) way. Marcy Walker, Nancy Grahn and Judith McConnell also make for this brand of heroine.

SB's male actors are equally strong. A Martinez proves that TV cops can be vulnerable and believable. Todd McKee (Ted Capwell) is an appealing young actor who deserves more challenging material than the cutesy stuff he is often given. Frank Runyeon and Vincent Irizarry seem far more focused and comfortable with their characters than they were on their previous soaps (ex-Steve, ATWT; ex-Lujack, GL, respectively), and they have proven they can be super male leads. Lane Davies? This is a master. He is the pathetic clown, the sardonic Greek chorus, the idealistic lawyer, the mischievous lover. Give this guy an Emmy.

SANTA BARBARA has given its audience many moments of fun in what some consider to be a dour medium. And it’s still fun. The show is simply growing.


martedì 8 ottobre 2013

ATTENTION, PLEASE: URGENT APPEAL TO ALL THE Santa Barbara FANS



Dear SB fans,

Over the years we’ve had a lot of fun watching the stories of our beloved characters and we still are loyal to our heroes and heroines. Well, who better than A Martinez’s Cruz Castillo could keep us stuck in front of the TV? Easy answer: N o b o d y . He’s done a lot for us. Today, all of us together, we can do something for him. He did not ask me to do this. This is my idea.

I know that A Martinez has a project he’s been working as an actor, writer and director: Before your Eyes has completed roughly 60% of its principal photography.  The cast includes such accomplished veteran actors as Laurie O'Brien, Carl Weintraub, Leigh McCloskey (yes, Zack/Ethan Asher on SANTA BARBARA) , A Martinez and David Hayward, and a company of talented young actor/musicians portraying the members of a large band and their half-crazed would-be managers. 

But to complete the project, he needs to raise $ 15,000 (this is the bare minimum to cover editing and post-production costs).


What I ask you, my friends, is to contribute, as much as you can and want, to help reach the amount required for this project. I’ve already made a pledge . Even one dollar is enough. 

No payment is required for a couple of months -- just a pledge --  if he reaches his goal. If he doesn’t, your pledge will be cancelled

If we are united, we can multiply our dollars and help A Martinez to realize his project.

Remember –  we can help him in two ways:

 1 - by giving the amount that you consider most appropriate

 2 - by  sharing the above link anywhere you want


Over the years, A Martinez has given us all a lot of fun giving life to our SuperHero Cruz Castillo. I would like to repay him by doing something tangible for him. And you?



mercoledì 2 ottobre 2013

As SANTA BARBARA's Bunny, JOE MARINELLI is winning the Battle of Sexes

- Soap Opera Digest _ July 11, 1989 - 


Marinelli as Bunny
I don’t understand high heels.”
Joe Marinelli is discussing the finer points of women’s fashions. Panty hose, bugle beads, gold lame. He’s not shopping for a present for his girlfriend or his sister. He’s telling me how some of these items fit him — the three-quarter gloves, the evening gowns — and how playing “mobster/cross-dresserBunny Tagliatti on SANTA BARBARA has changed his life.

Understand that there is nothing androgynous about Joe’s appearance. He has a broad face and nose, a stocky build, heavy beard, hairy arms — features not usually associated with women, but that's exactly why Marinelli got the part. “I asked the producers if they wanted [Bunny] to be a little feminine,” says the actor. Absolutely not was the answer. “They wanted somebody who was absolutely masculine. Bunny's got a heart of gold, but he will kill anybody.” Marinelli’s research into the phenomenon of cross-dressing gave him an education in one of the strangest of all sexual subcultures: heterosexual transvestites.

Marinelli as Bonnie
It’s hard to understand,” Joe admits in his dressing room. “There are men who admire women so much that they enter the world of femininity. With Bunny, he’s trying to understand women better so he dresses up like them. If you’re rejected enough as a man, you can become the woman who does the rejecting. Bunny doesn’t want to be with another man, he just wants to be a woman and have that feeling of power that he thinks a woman has. There are groups, a couple of heterosexual groups, most of them in the East. They get together and talk about gender relief, as they call it, because of the pressure of the masculine world. [Cross-dressing] is a release of anxiety from that masculine role. A lot of them come after marriage, breakups, stuff like that where people feel like, ‘What did I do wrong? Maybe I’m not masculine enough.’ The men usually give the person they dress up as a name and they call her their sister. I call [Bunny's after ego] Bonnie. Bunny's going to take Bonnie out for a drink.” The asexual aspect of this type of masquerade still puzzles the Connecticut-born actor. “For a heterosexual [transvestite], it’s a lot more bizarre. It's truly deviant behavior, whereas I think of a homosexual doing it, there would be humor in it. There would be more sexuality in it.

McConnell as Dominic
The transformation of Bunny to Bonnie involves some technical magic from SANTA BARBARA’s makeup and costume departments. It takes two and a half hours to make up Marinelli, reports makeup artist John Maldonado. On days where both characters appear in the script, Joe's scenes in drag are taped first. His beard disappears with the help of Max Factor, his eyebrows are blocked out with spirit gum. “I leave some of his own eyebrows and I seal it with wax or with the spirit gum and then a fixative, which seals it so that it won't soak in,” says Maldonado. “It's a whole process.” It took some time for Joe to get used to the application of all these cosmetics. “At first his eyes kept moving back and forth and if people were talking, he'd move,” Maldonado remembers. “And I'd say, 'C'mon, you've got to work with me here, we're doing a woman's makeup so I've got to have your full attention.'” John, who had previous experience making up one of the cast as a member of the opposite sex when Judith McConnell (Sophia) masqueraded as Dominic, adds, “It's kind of tough to have a pencil going on your eyelid. Joe's getting better and better at it. I want to make him as pretty as possible.

           
SANTA BARBARA hair stylists report that Marinelli is very fond of the red wig he wears when he crosses over into female territory as Bonnie.
Wigs cover Marinelli’s low hair line and the wardrobe has not been a problem at all. SANTA BARBARA’s costume designer, Richard Bloore, terms Joe “a perfect size fourteen. There are plenty of clothes to choose from. The only problem was getting the panty hose on, that was a little difficult.” When he was all put together (red wig, bugle beads, and three-quarter gloves to cover those hairy arms), Marinelli reports that the resident actors made something of a fuss over him. “The men reacted with a laugh,” he says, “and the women, they were in awe, touching me, touching my gloves, patting me on the ass.” He startled delivery boys in the hallway and had his niece believing he was only dressed this way for Halloween. For a guy who never paid much attention to clothes, playing Bunny and Bonnie has given Marinelli an appreciation of fashion. “It's like the first time you've ever tasted a really good wine,” he says. “You go, 'Ah, forget Gallo;'” He loves Bunny's silk pajamas, suits and monogrammed slippers. The role also inspired him to get his first manicure.

His success as Bunny/Bonnie comes after ten years of frustrating unemployment as an actor. Trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London, Joe was naturally resentful at being ignored for so long. “Last year I was auditioning for The Sacramento Theater Company,” he says. “The auditions were done at The Old Globe in San Diego. I was falling asleep before the audition out on the grass in front of the theater, just dozing off a little, and I thought how the roles that I wanted to play — Macbeth, Othello — had diminished through the ten years and how they seemed so far away. But dreams can turn around. They can come back and happen.

Marinelli as Joan Crawford
Now that he's proven himself to the show’s producers as well as the audience, Joe has been called upon to send up some very butch legends of the silver screen. His Joan Crawford was an absolute hoot. She served as God's receptionist when Mason (Lane Davies) went to Heaven in a memorable fantasy sequence. When Mason mistook Joan (in one of those flaming red wigs that wardrobe reports Marinelli especially likes) as the star of Mommie Dearest, Marinelli derisively snorted, “That was Faye Dunaway!” To prepare for his day as Joan, Joe rented a cassette of Crawford’s Oscar-winner Mildred Pierce. “I didn't want to imitate her,” he says. “I just wanted to note qualities about her voice, her intensity.”

J. Marinelli & R. Mattson
This spring, he played former Cross-Your-Heart bra saleswoman and movie star Jane Russell in a zany reworking of the comedy classic Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Bunny’s sometime girlfriend Gina (Robin Mattson) showed up as Russell’s co-star Marilyn Monroe. With her beloved sidekick Justin Deas (ex-Keith) gone, Mattson’s especially thrilled to have another outrageous companion. “I think Joe's very sweet and fun to work with,” she says. “They definitely did not want to bring in someone to compete with Justin or try to take his place. They decided to go in a totally different direction and I think that makes sense. And I’m glad not to be left in the lurch, but to be in a situation where they’re trying to find other venues for Gina. My story line has opened way up. I loved Justin Deas, but much of what I had to do on the show hinged on him and what he was doing and his schedule and his projects, and the writers were never 100 percent sure if he was going to be there and it made them, I think, a little afraid to write for us.”

SANTA BARBARA has moved away from the transvestite story to concentrate on Bunny’s very own soap opera triangle with Gina and Vanessa (Denise Gentile), the granddaughter of a hitman who tried to kill Sonny Sprocket. Vanessa did her own masquerading as a man — Vance — and Bunny renounced his own mob connections to be with her. Joe notes ironically that while the press has spilled plenty of ink about the romantic angles of Bunny/Bonnie’s life, they “never print that I don't have a girlfriend.

Not that he’s worried. “I’ve waited ten years for an acting career to take off so....” For now, it’s the “full swing career” that’s taking up his time. He no longer has to support himself as a carpenter or cab driver. “As an actor I knew I wanted to create a lot of characters,” Joe Marinelli says with a smile. “I never knew I'd be creating a lot of female characters.” On a show as unpredictable as SB, his next female incarnation is anybody’s guess. It could be anybody from Carol Channing to Lady Bird Johnson. There is someone, however, Joe would like to try on for size: Bette Davis. That means more high heels. Joe groans at the thought. “They're fine for a couple of hours,” he says, “but at the end of the day, it's like....”


Millions of women can relate.

martedì 1 ottobre 2013

Where are they now: JOE MARINELLI


Current Age: 56

Age at the SB time: 31

Survival threshold on the show: October 1988 – October 1990

Character’s Highlight:

he takes pleasure in regularly disguise himself as a woman. Following a mission where he had to dress as a woman, Bunny got to like beautiful dresses and clothes with glitter.

Character’s Farewell:

He left the town after his fiancé, Annie DiGirolamo, was arrested for having kidnapped him. Yes. True.


Joe Marinelli began his acting career in 1984, starring on the series CAGNEY & LACEY. Later he got his first big role as as the gangster transvestite Bunny Tagliatti on NBC’s soap opera SANTA BARBARA. He portrayed the role from 1988 to 1990. Following that success, he appeared as Pauly Hardman on the CBS soap GUIDING LIGHT in 1994. Following that, he was hired for the role of Joseph Sorel on ABC soap GENERAL HOSPITAL in 1999, and appeared for a few years as that character. Joe has had many guest-starring roles on syndicated night-time series, like E.R. (1997), JAG (2000), WEST WING (2002), HOUSE (2008), CASTLE (2009), DESPERATE HOUSEWIVES (2011) and he has appeared in commercials and documentaries as well. Joe Marinelli has been awarded a prestigious Soap Opera Digest Award for Best Comic Performance in a Soap Opera (as Bunny Tagliatti). Today Joe Marinelli is 56 years old, lives in Los Angeles and he’s still acting.



CHI E' COLLEGATO?