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COLUMBIA COLLEGE TODAY CLASS NOTES
The lights come up.
The gravelly voice
rumbles from behind
the curtain.
“All the world’s a stage,”
intones Joe Sirola ’51, strolling
into view, black pullover
and dark slacks highlighting his
rough-hewn, tanned face and
silver hair. “And all the men and
women merely players ... ”
It is, of course, Jaques’ soliloquy
from As You Like It. Before
the evening is out, Sirola will
deliver 23 monologues from
11 of Shakespeare’s plays,
assaying characters as diverse
as Caliban, Petruchio, Hotspur,
Macbeth, Hamlet, Lear and
Prospero. For good measure,
he will dispense three sonnets
as well.
This is Ages of Man, a solo
piece first performed by John
Gielgud in 1957. Today, Sirola
does it for free in school auditoriums,
libraries, private clubs
and other venues for students,
scholars and anyone else who
craves a dose of the Bard.
(Those who can’t catch him
live can always get the DVD.)
It is the culmination of some
50 years of acting, during which
time Sirola has worked with
Clint Eastwood, Rock Hudson,
Eve Arden, Ed Begley Sr. and
Gina Lollobrigida, and appeared
in such familiar fare as NYPD
Blue, Rhoda, the original Hawaii
Five-O, The Untouchables and
The Man From U.N.C.L.E.
Ages also is a sly evocation
of Sirola’s undergraduate days.
“At Columbia they said to me,
‘Go home on Wednesday, read
Julius Caesar, and come back on
Friday,’” he recalls, laughing. “If
I’d had this DVD in class, I would
have appreciated it more.”
Sirola was not a natural-born
thespian. In fact, he says, “I had
no desire to act in my life.” The
son of Croatian immigrants —
his father was a carpenter and
his mother ran a 15-room board -
ing house at 363 W. 19th St. in
Chelsea — Sirola graduated
from Stuyvesant H.S. At the
College he majored in business
Joe Sirola ’51 Is an Actor for All Seasons
B y t h o m a s V I n c I g u e r r a ’85, ’86J, ’90 gsas
Actor Joe Sirola ’51 (left) with fellow actor David McCallum (NCIS,
The Man From U.N.C.L.E.) on Sirola’s terrace in Manhattan in June at
his annual “Champagne and Roses” party, where guests greet the
blooming of his 18 bushes.
PHOTO: RUSS WEATHERFORD
under what was then called the
professional option; outside of
class he was on the swimming
and freshman baseball teams.
He also played football; his
position, he recalls, was “on the
bench.”
After a 15-month stint in
Korea, Sirola joined Kimberly-
Clark as a sales promotion
manager. But the work was
boring and his girlfriend told
him, “You’re much more than
a salesman.” So at 28, he quit
and took several arts courses
at Hunter College, including
one in acting and directing.
“We worked eight hours a day
and my instructor said, ‘Make
your mistakes on stage.’”
And he did. In 1958, Sirola
debuted Off-Broadway for $15
a week in Song for a Certain
Midnight. “It was terrible. One
reviewer called it Song for a
Wrong Key. But Brooks Atkinson
said, ‘Attention should be paid to
Joe Sirola, who combined brutishness
with tender remorse.’”
Almost immediately Sirola’s
career took off; within two years
he was on Broadway in The
Unsinkable Molly Brown while
also starring in the CBS soap
opera The Brighter Day. “Tallulah
Bankhead said I was her favorite
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actor. She had it written into her
contract that during her rehearsals,
she had to stop working
between 3:00 and 3:30 so she
could watch the show.”
Since then, Sirola’s motion
pictures have included The
Greatest Story Ever Told and
Hang ’Em High; among his
small-screen roles have been
two villains on Get Smart (notably
the evil Bronzefinger, who
paints his victims to death) and
the voice of Dr. Doom on the
animated The Fantastic Four.
Sirola is proudest, though, of
two appearances on Steve
Allen’s talk show, Meeting of
Minds, which depicted historical
figures engaging in verbal
sparring: He played both Tom
Paine and Sir Thomas More.
One thing that has eluded
him is a continuing TV series.
Sirola had high hopes for his
part as the patriarch of an
Italian-American family in the
1975 series The Montefuscos,
the brainchild of Bill Persky and
Sam Denoff, who created That
Girl. “I thought it was a sure
thing. We did eight shows and
got great reviews. But they put
us opposite The Waltons. Then
in 1989 I was in Wolf and they
put us opposite Roseanne. So
my luck hasn’t been too good.”
Actually, it has been very
good in another area: The Wall
Street Journal once dubbed
Sirola “King of the Voiceovers”
for his ubiquitous narration of
radio and TV commercials. He
has pitched for Mobil, Ford,
GE, Hertz, Vicks, Boar’s Head,
Wendy’s and many others. He
is even the voice of the Empire
State Building Tour. He broke
through, he says, by eschewing
the avuncular tone that
other pitchmen had used. “Not
knowing any better, I used the
mic as a person. I spoke to the
audience rather than at them.
I went from $3,200 a year to a
million a year for 20 years.”
“Joe, as far as I know, is the
most successful voiceover
artist ever,” says Morrow
Wilson ’61. “I met him 30 or 40
years ago when we were both
doing voiceovers for Prell. He
had the 60-second spot and I
was doing the 30-second one.
Enter Joe with a box full of
every kind of imaginable muffin
and donut, plus coffee. In that
effervescent way of his, he
offered it to everyone in the
room. I remember thinking, ‘My
God, no wonder this guy works
all the time. Apart from having
this wonderful, sonorous voice,
he gives everyone breakfast!’”
These days, when not declaiming
as Richard III or serving
as VW spokesperson “Sluggy
Patterson,” Sirola can often
be found holding forth with
Wilson and other friends at the
Players, a private theatrical club
on Gramercy Park. When he is
dressed up, he often sports a
red rose in his lapel that he has
clipped from one of the bushes
in his penthouse garden on East
66th Street. “I wear one all the
time,” he says. “Except when I
do cowboys.”
Thomas Vinciguerra ’85, ’86J,
’90 GSAS is a regular contributor
to The New York Times
and editor of Backward Ran
Sentences: The Best of Wolcott
Gibbs from The New Yorker.