Julie Bovasso Movies, TV Shows, and Filmography
Julie Bovasso
Acting
Biography
Julia Anne Bovasso (August 1, 1930 – September 14, 1991) was an American actress of stage, screen, and television. Bovasso was born in Brooklyn, New York and raised in the Bensonhurst neighborhood of this borough, the daughter of Angela Mary (née Padovani) and Bernard Michael Bovasso, a teamster. She was Albanian-Italian-American. She attended The High School of Music & Art in Manhattan. Bovasso appeared in numerous films, including Saturday Night Fever (1977) as Florence Manero, the mother of John Travolta's character, Tony Manero. She reprised the role in the film's 1983 sequel Staying Alive. Before Saturday Night Fever, she appeared in the 1970 Otto Preminger film Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon. In addition to Staying Alive, she was in a number of films in the 1980s, including Willie & Phil (1980), The Verdict (1982), Daniel (1983), Off Beat (1986), Wise Guys (1986), Moonstruck (1987). In the 1990s, Bovasso was seen in Betsy's Wedding (1990) and My Blue Heaven (1990). On-stage, Bavasso wrote and appeared in avant-garde productions off-Broadway such as Jean Genet's The Maids. For the latter, she won the first Best Actress Obie (Off-Broadway) Award in 1956, presented to her by Shelley Winters. Before her film work, Bovasso established the experimental Tempo Playhouse at 4 St. Marks Place in Manhattan during the 1950s. There, she introduced works of the Theater of the Absurd, including works by the playwrights Jean Genet, Eugene Ionesco and Michel de Ghelderode, to the professional theater in the United States. Bovasso also performed with The Living Theater and had a longstanding relationship with La Mama Experimental Theatre Club. From 1968 to 1975, she directed many of her own original works at La MaMa, including Gloria and Esperanza, Schubert's Last Serenade, The Moondreamers, Standard Safety, and The Nothing Kid. In addition to her work as a director and actor, her playwriting credits include the four-hour play Gloria and Esperanza, which Village Voice theatre critic Jerry Tallmer described as "a miracle, a mythopoetic fireworks display." A sought-after acting coach, Bovasso was known as an exacting instructor and her private New York workshops regularly included prominent performers. As per the DVD commentary, Bovasso coached both Cher and Olympia Dukakis on their Brooklyn accents in the film Moonstruck. In earlier performances, she played Rose Corelli Fraser in the short-lived soap opera From These Roots. She was fired from that show due to a disagreement with producers.
Filmography Movies
Acting
Moonstruck
37-year-old Italian-American widow Loretta Castorini believes she is unlucky in love, and so accepts a marriage proposal from her boyfriend Johnny, even though she doesn't love him. When she meets his estranged younger brother Ronny, an emotional and passionate man, she finds herself drawn to him. She tries to resist, but Ronny, who blames his brother for the loss of his hand, has no scruples about aggressively pursuing her while Johnny is out of the country. As Loretta falls for Ronny, she learns that she's not the only one in her family with a secret romance.
Saturday Night Fever
Tony spends his Saturdays at a disco where his stylish moves raise his popularity among the patrons. But his life outside the disco is not easy and things change when he gets attracted to Stephanie.
Just Me and You
A salesman travels cross country with a quirky New Yorker.
Article 99
Dr. Richard Sturgess leads a team of compassionate doctors at a veteran's hospital. Along with Drs. Morgan, Handleman and Van Dorn, he fights to deliver adequate care to needy veterans in the face of funding cuts and a corrupt administration. To succeed, the staff may have to bend the rules and circumvent the villainous "Article 99," a bureaucratic loophole that prevents veterans from receiving the benefits they deserve.
The Verdict
Frank Galvin is a down-on-his-luck lawyer and reduced to drinking and ambulance chasing, when a former associate reminds him of his obligations in a medical malpractice suit by serving it to Galvin on a silver platter—all parties are willing to settle out of court. Blundering his way through the preliminaries, Galvin suddenly realizes that the case should actually go to court—to punish the guilty, to get a decent settlement for his clients... and to restore his standing as a lawyer.
Wise Guys
Harry Valentini and Moe Dickstein are both errand boys for the Mob. When they lose $250,000, they are set up to kill each other. But they run off to Atlantic City and comedy follows.
Betsy's Wedding
Offbeat fashion student Betsy Hopper and her straight-laced investment-banker fiancé Jake Lovell just want an intimate little wedding reception, but Betsy's father Eddie, a Long Island construction contractor, feels so threatened by Jake's rich WASP parents that he blows the ceremony up into a bank-breaking showpiece, sending his wife Lola into a financial panic.
Off Beat
Joe Gower's job is skating through library shelves, fetching books. A police officer/friend of his is chosen to participate in a charity dance performance. Gower agrees to take his place in the show by posing as a police officer. He falls for a female officer in the show and gets into various scrapes with fellow cops and also crooks. And he dances.
Daniel
The fictionalized story of Daniel, the son of Paul and Rochelle Isaacson, who were executed as Soviet spies in the 1950s. As a graduate student in New York in the 1960s, Daniel is involved in the antiwar protest movement and contrasts his experiences to the memory of his parents and his belief that they were wrongfully convicted.
King Crab
Two brothers take over the family seafood business, and battle each other for control of the company - and their father's attention.
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