Richard Gambino, 84, deceased; Fought against discrimination against Italian Americans

Richard Gambino, the chairman of the first academic Italian American studies program in the United States and a leading critic of those who reflexively viewed Italian Americans as mafiosi and mocked them with ethnic stereotypes in popular culture, died Jan. 12 at his home in Southampton . , NY He was 84.

His death, in a hospice, was caused by lymphoma, said his daughter Erica-Lynn Huberty.

Dr. Gambino was an assistant professor of educational philosophy at Queens College in 1972 when he published a long essay on Italian Americans in The New York Times Magazine, a month after the release of Francis Ford Coppola's film “The Godfather.”

He wrote that the “nativist American mentality, born of ignorance and fueled by malice” emphasized stereotypes of Italian Americans as “spaghetti-twirling, opera-roaring buffoons in tank tops (as in the TV commercial with its famous line, 'That's a spicy meatball'), or dark, sinister hoods in flashy suits, shirts and ties.”

He added: “The incredible exploitation of 'The Godfather' is a testament to the power of the mafia myth today.”

The Mafia myth – which suggested that a significant percentage of Italian Americans were involved in or benefited from organized crime – kept Dr. Gambino in the decades after he was appointed in 1973 to head the newly formed Italian-American studies program at Queens College. It was also one of the topics covered in his well-received book 'Blood of My Blood' (1974), a personal, sociological and psychological exploration of the first, second and third generations of his ethnic group.

“The mafia image of Italian Americans is older than is commonly believed,” he wrote in “Blood of My Blood.” “It has been a cross on the shoulders of every Italian American for well over a century.”

Ms. Huberty said her father had conversations with Mario Puzo, the author of “The Godfather,” the 1969 blockbuster that was the basis for the film, about his motivations for writing the film.

Mr. Puzo “told him he knew he would make money writing about the Mafia,” Ms. Huberty said in a telephone interview. “My father wasn't exactly happy about it, but he understood it. He had a similar problem with David Chase, with 'The Sopranos.' He wouldn't look at it.”

Richard Ignatius Gambino was born on May 5, 1939 in Brooklyn. His father, Dominick, an immigrant from Palermo, Sicily, was a meter inspector for Con Edison. His mother, Catherine (Tranchina) Gambino, a first-generation Italian-American, worked in a shoulder pad factory and then as a bookkeeper.

When he attended Queens College in the late 1950s and early 1960s, he watched 'The Untouchables', the television series starring Robert Stack as Eliot Ness, the Prohibition agent who fought organized crime in Chicago in the 1930s. He noticed that many of the criminals' names were Italian.

“I remember gritting my teeth in anger and humiliation when I heard some students casually refer to the program” with a slur on Italians, he wrote in “Blood of My Blood.” He wanted to fight them, but feeling isolated on a campus with few Italian Americans, he didn't.

He graduated from Queens College in 1961 with a bachelor's degree in philosophy. He went on to earn two more philosophy degrees: a master's degree from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 1965 and a Ph.D. from New York University in 1968.

He was hired by the New York Society for Ethical Culture in Manhattan in 1965 as a leader and teacher of adult education. Two years later he moved to Queens College.

Dr. Gambino directed the Italian-American Studies Program – an interdisciplinary minor with subjects in history, political science, psychology, literature, art and music – for more than 20 years.

“He brought Italian American studies to the broader public,” Anthony Julian Tamburri, dean of the John D. Calandra Italian American Institute, also at Queens College, said by phone. “It was a way to get more working-class Italian-American and foreign Italian students into the classroom to show them the real history of Italian-Americans.”

Early in his tenure, Dr. Gambino faces overt discrimination based on his ancestry. After a neighbor was murdered, he told United Press International in 1974, a police detective questioned him about what he believed were his Mafia connections.

That year he founded the magazine Italian Americana. He continued to write throughout his academic career, and was also widely quoted in articles advocating the broadening of the cultural views of his ethnic group.

In his book “Vendetta” (1977), he wrote about the murder of eleven Italian Americans – two of them shot, nine hanged – by a frenzied mob in New Orleans in 1891, after a jury failed to find a group of Italian to condemn Americans. for the shooting of David Hennessy, the city's police chief. In his final words, Chief Hennessy reportedly blamed Italian Americans for the attack on him, using an ethnic slur.

“There was no evidence that those men or Italian Americans were responsible for Hennessy's murder,” Dr. Gambino in 1977 to The Daily News in New York. He called the incident “the largest lynching in American history.”

In 'Vendetta' Dr. Gambino notes the persistent prejudice against Italian Americans. He quoted the president Richard M. Nixon to one of his aides, John Ehrlichman, on a 1973 White House recording: “They're not like us. The difference is that they smell different, look different, behave different.”

“Vendetta” was adapted into an HBO movie in 1999 with Christopher Walken as James Houston, a lynch mob leader, and Clancy Brown as Chief Hennessy.

Dr. Gambino also wrote plays — “Camerado,” about Walt Whitman, and “The Trial of Pope Pius XII” — which were performed on Long Island in the early 2000s.

He Gambino left Queens College in 1998. From 1994 to 1997, he also taught at Stony Brook University as a visiting professor of European languages.

In addition to Mrs. Huberty, Mr. Gambino is survived by his wife, Gail (Cherne) Gambino, whom he married in 1971 and whose father, Leo Cherne, was chairman of the International Rescue Committee; another daughter, Doria Gambino; a son, Mark; a stepdaughter, Lisa Beatty; and two grandchildren. His marriage to Barbara Barnett ended in divorce.

Dr. Gambino remained alert to prejudice against Italian Americans throughout his adult life.

In 1993, he criticized Jack Weinstein, a federal district judge, for saying during the sentencing of a mob boss that “much of the young Italian-American community should be discouraged” from turning to crime.

“This is more than an example of a thoughtless, insensitive comment,” Dr. wrote. Gambino in New York Newsday; it is “another confirmation of what investigative journalist Jack Newfield has called 'the most tolerated intolerance' in the United States today: anti-Italian prejudice.”