Italian American Herald - May 2022

ACHIEVER
Manor College president: ‘Good people can’t be idle’
PAGE 6
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MAY 2022
A MONTHLY NEWSPAPER SERVING THE ITALIAN-AMERICAN COMMUNITY WWW.ITALIANAMERICANHERALD.COM
Festival season back at last
By Ken Mammarella
The theme for this year’s St. Anthony’s Italian Festival in Wilmington is simply benvenuti: Welcome back, after two years of the world torn asunder by the pandemic.
The festival – expected to draw tens of thousands people to St. Anthony of Padua Church on June 12-19 – succeeds because of extensive planning and the commitment of people to the parish, its leaders say. It is one of a more than a dozen recurring Italian festivals in the greater Delaware Valley.
See FESTIVALS - page 4
St. Anthony's will feature five major food plazas.
A little puppet goes a long way
Tuscan folk tale from 1881 gave the world Pinocchio
ADOBESTOCK.COM
By Jeanne Outlaw-Cannavo
The expression “don’t lie or your nose will grow” became a common saying after Walt Disney released the film “Pinocchio” in 1940.
Pinocchio was a popular series written by Carlo Collodi that first appeared on July 7, 1881, in the Italian Giornale dei Bambini (Children’s Magazine). The story
was titled “Le avventure di Pinocchio: storia di un burattino” (The Adventures of Pinocchio: The Story of a Puppet). Collodi later published the series as a book in 1883. The author, the son of a cook and a maid, was 55 at the time. He was working as a censor for the theater when gambling losses prompted him to draft a story for the children’s journal.
Pinocchio is a beloved character for
children and adults. Like many Tuscan folk tales, his story had important moral lessons for children and remains a timeless classic. Carlo Collodi, born Carlo Lorenzini, spent part of his childhood in the 12th century medieval village of Collodi in Tuscany and changed his pen name to that of the town he remembered so fondly.
See PINOCCHIO - page 9
Legendary entertainer Bobby Rydell passes away at age 79
By Al Kemp
ABINGTON, Pa. - Bobby Rydell, a one-time teen idol who achieved lasting fame as a singer and actor, died on April 5 in Abington Jefferson Hospital. He was 79. The news was announced on the entertainer’s website.
Rydell, born Robert Ridarelli in Philadelphia, rose to fame after being discovered in 1950 as a young entertainer on Paul Whiteman’s TV Teen Club. In 1959, his first hit single with Cameo-Parkway,
“Kissin’ Time,” landed on Billboard’s Hot 100 Hits, launching him into stardom. His recording career resulted in the sale of over 25 million albums, and awarded him 34 top 100 hits, placing him in the top five artists of his era.
Despite worldwide fame, he never strayed far from his roots in Philadelphia, or in Wildwood, N.J., where he spent summers as a boy. Both cities have named streets in his honor.
News of his death sent reverberations
See MUSIC ICON - page 3
Bobby Rydell performs in New Orleans in 2013.
BOBBYRYDELL.COM
Vol. 9 / No. 5