By Melissa Rose Bernardo
Submitted by taxifan

Sitcom star Tony Danza is back - this time with microphone, tap shoes, and a song.

"So you're a player, are you?" At 9 a.m. on a Friday morning, Tony Danza and I are discussing - what else? - the piano. He's been practicing for a half hour. "I own the most beautiful Steinway you've ever seen," he says on the phone from his L.A. office. "1939, Ebony black. Not a mark on it. I can play a little bit - I've been teaching myself- but I wish I could sit down and play that baby."

It's not the conversation I expected to have with Danza. In my mind (and on Nick at Nite), I can hear him exchanging barbs with Danny DeVito on Taxi and serving hotcakes along with innuendo to Judith Light on Who's the Boss?. But there is much more to Tony Danza than his macho but lovable TV persona. For instance, there's Tony Danza, song-and-dance man.

That's the Danza who will be returning April 28-May 9 to Rainboy & Stars, where he did 21 sold-out shows in two weeks last year. (He once did three shows in one night: "I'm a machine!" he exclaims.) He's crooned in Las Vegas, Atlantic City, on the lawn of the Capitol building. But this is a side of Danza that millions of TV viewers don't know (unless, by chance, they saw a teaser of his act on a January 1997 episode of Live With Regis and Kathie Lee).

"I know everybody has two questions in their mind," he says. "One: What does he do?" That's a joke from Danza's act, which has been germinating in his mind, perhaps, ever since he was a child. "I've always dreamed of being Sammy Davis,Jr. or that Frank Sinatra guy," he reveals. "I'd always say to Buz Kohan, a great writer out here, 'Write me an act.' I was sort of half fooling, half hoping he'd say okay. Then I had a bad ski accident [in 1993], and had a lot of time to sit around and think. I called up Buz and found out what it took for him to write me an act: Hire him.

"At first it started as a comedy act with a little music," he continues. "Now it's a musical act with a little comedy. It's a variety act, in the true sense of the world. I talk about some real-life experiences. I show some film of my early fights for comic relief." (Boxing for laughs? "I look like a yo-yo. I'm up, I'm down...") "I do doo-wop, blues, a lot of tap dancing." (Tap? "I've always fancied myself a dancer - the name notwithstanding. Tony Dance-a.") "I do a Louis Prima medley, pay a little tribute to Dean Martin. My mother was a big fan of Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin. [My act] is music I've grown up with. 'Angel Eyes,' for example, is one of my favorite songs."

Theater was also a part of Danza's upbringing, in a large part thanks to a supportive teacher. "I was in South Pacific, Kiss Me, Kate, Bye Bye Birdie. He took us to a lot of plays, the ballet - things I never thought I'd see," Danza remembers. "I was a Brooklyn kid who moved to Long Island. My father was a garbage man. There weren't many plays in our family."

But it was in a boxing gym - not a theater - where Danza was discovered. Some 20 years ago, a TV producer spotted pro boxer "Tough Tony" in the ring and promptly sent him to screen test in Hollywood. Producer James Brooks was loking for a fighter for his new show Taxi; Irish fighter Phil Ryan became Italian fighter Tony Banta, and the rest is TV history. After five years behind the wheel of a yellow cab, Danza picked up a broom and dust-pan, starring for eight years as Tony Micelli, the handsome, high-strung housekeeper on Who's the Boss?.

His last two forays into prime time, however, have not been so well-received. In 1995, he starred as detective Tony Canetti on the ABC comedy Hudson Street (which he also produced); the following year for NBC he starred as sportswriter Tony Danza on The Tony Danza Show, produced by Danza's own Katie Face Productions. "I did the show that would have worked on NBC for ABC, and [vice versa]. You have to have support from the network, and I didn't get that for whatever reason," Danza says.

"I was exceptionally happy with [The Tony Danza Show], but I think it ran into a timing problem. I was doing jokes about my daughter's first phone, and the other networks are doing penis jokes. Now, I'm not a prude, but we should be able to do a family show. That's tough on NBC - the young, hip, urban comedy network. It's tough to buck that trend."

Nor has movie work come as quickly as Danza would have liked. He's had some solid made-for-cable movies (highlights were Showtime's Northshore Fish, with Peter Riegert and Merceded Ruehl, and 12 Angry Men), but theatrical releases have been few (fortunately, the success of Disney's Angels in the Outfield makes She's Out of Control forgettable). "To keep a show like Who's the Boss? on for that long, you can't go for subtlety; you have to go for laughs, and sometimes it's over the top. That's not the kind of acting they like on the big screen, so that limits you," Danza says matter-of-factly. "I haven't been able to get that part that puts you up there. I joke about having done three movies, two of them with the same monkey. That doesn't get you into the Academy."

But Danza is his own worst critic. The notoriously tough and intimidating New York audiences couldn't have been kinder during his first sold-out cabaret gig."You're in New York, so you don't know who might walk into the place. You're worried about the Times savaging you. As prepared as I was, it took me a show to get going," he says. "You get those guys sitting on their chairs saying, 'Come on, show me something.' Recently I got the chance to sing at Carnegie Hall," he recalls, referring to his appearance at Skitch Henderson's 80's birthday celebration. "I got about 15 minutes of rehearsal. I have my little tap shoes, and I'm going to do this little medley of tap songs. I looked at the New York Pops, the orchestra looked at me, and I could tell they were thinking, 'Oh, great. Another TV star who wants to sing.' I could feel it. But after we did it, guys were banging their bows on their violins."

But that wasn't the first time Danza has surprised people. He made his off-Broadway debut in 1993 with Wrong Turn at Lungfish, opposite George C. Scott and Jami Gertz. "I did it for three and a half months," recalls the actor. "The play was really something. And to work with George and [director/co-author] Garry Marshall!" He scored an Outer Critics Circle Award nomination for his portrayal of con-artist Dominic De Caesar. So perhaps Danza the stage actor isn't so farfetched: "I'm hoping I end up on Broadway one of these days in a musical," he confides. He's had offers, but claims he's "waiting for the right one."