Tommy DeVito

Tommy DeVito may refer to:

Tommy DeVito (musician)

Tommy DeVito (born June 19, 1928) is an American Musician and singer, best known as a founding member, baritone vocalist, and lead guitarist of the rock band The Four Seasons. Devito is the youngest of nine children.

Early Years

DeVito grew up in Belleville, N.J., the youngest of nine children of Italian immigrants. During the Depression his family lived with an uncle in a cold-water flat in a tough neighborhood. “You did anything to survive,” DeVito says. “You’d steal milk off of porches.”

At 8, he taught himself to play his brother’s guitar by listening to country music on the radio. “I was so small I couldn’t hold the guitar in my lap so I put it on the floor on its side and leaned over and played it that way,” he says.

By the time he was 12, he was playing for tips in neighborhood taverns. “My parents were elated that we were bringing home eight bucks a night or so. That’s basically how I got started in music.”

He quit school after the eighth grade. (Belleville High made him an honorary graduate in 2007.) By 16 he had his own R&B band and was making $20 or $25 a night.

Goodfellas

Goodfellas (or GoodFellas) is a 1990 American crime film directed by Martin Scorsese. It is a film adaptation of the 1986 non-fiction book Wiseguy by Nicholas Pileggi, who co-wrote the screenplay with Scorsese. The film narrates the rise and fall of mob associate Henry Hill (the first-person narrator in the film) and his friends over a period from 1955 to 1980.

Scorsese initially named the film Wise Guy and postponed making it; later, he and Pileggi changed the name to Goodfellas. To prepare for their roles in the film, Robert De Niro, Joe Pesci, and Ray Liotta often spoke with Pileggi, who shared research material left over from writing the book. According to Pesci, improvisation and ad-libbing came out of rehearsals wherein Scorsese gave the actors freedom to do whatever they wanted. The director made transcripts of these sessions, took the lines he liked best, and put them into a revised script the cast worked from during principal photography.

Made on a budget of $25 million, Goodfellas grossed $46.8 million domestically. It received positive reviews from critics and was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director, and it won for Pesci in the Best Actor in a Supporting Role category. Scorsese's film won five awards from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts, including Best Film and Best Director. Additionally, Goodfellas was named Best Film of the year by various film critics groups.