By Eric Sherman
Submitted by taxifan

Tony Danza Shows who’s boss-he’s the perfect combination of cuddly and macho. TV’s huskiest housekeeper talks about what’s most important to him-his family, his hit shows and his future.

Tony Danza looks like one man you don’t’ want to anger. If the tattoo stretched across his wall-to-wall biceps isn’t enough to intimidate you, his background as a professional boxer and his conviction on an assault charge should do the trick.
But there is a gentler side to the thirty-five-year-old he-man housekeeper from the hit ABC sitcom Who’s the Boss? A devoted father to his fifteen-year-old son, Marc, and a doting husband to his wife of eight months, twenty-eight-year-old interior designer Tracy Robinson, the actor has ideals that are surprisingly old-fashioned. And with his unquenchable enthusiasm, across almost as cuddly as he is rugged-a real-life Smurf in boxing trunks.
"To me, being a man is more than just being macho," he says, as he relaxes in his dressing rom during a break in shooting the series. "My father taught me that a man is someone who stands up for what he believes in, who give someone his word and sticks to it. That’s what I want to be-not just some guy who looks like Thor."
In fact, Tony is using his television appeal to try to act as a role model for teenagers. A former street fighter from Brooklyn, he knows how tough growing up can be if there isn’t someone to help.
"I’m very worried for our kids today," Tony says. "They’re faced with so many problems-drugs and drinking and sex and getting into trouble-and there’s more peer pressure than ever before. All it takes is one mistake to get them messed up or killed."
As a parent, Tony has let his son know that he can come to him with any problems, rather than give in to pressure from friends. As an entertainer, he advocated teaching teenagers responsibility through TV and films. He works with the writers of Who’s the Boss? To create episodes that will encourage parents to make themselves seem approachable to their children. He also scans each script to make sure there is nothing in it he would not want his own son to see.
"All kids hear about today is sex," Tony says. "Every day, it’s drummed into their heads-sex and drugs and violence. Just look at who they’re listening to for guidance-Rambo and Madonna. It’s time the entertainment industry started taking responsibility for what they’re turning out."
As Tony leans back on his dressing-room couch props his Reebok-clad feet up on the glass coffee table, and opens a beer, it’s easy to picture him in the tougher parts of Brooklyn. Forget the perfect California tan he’s gotten since moving out to Hollywood; his accent still makes him sound like he should be playing stick ball in New York.

Tough-guy roots
Tony grew up in an Italian neighborhood, where quick wits and sure fists were essential. "I was a street kid in an area that really wasn’t very pretty," he says. "We’d fight all the time-for no reason, really. It was just something you did."
At four-foot-eleven in high school, Tony was smaller than most other kids, but he won nearly every street fight he got into. His father, a garbage man, taught him how to throw a devastating right hook, but he made it clear what would happen to his son if he got into any real trouble.
"My father was a real tough guy-very, very strict,"Tony remembers. "He was much stricter than I am. Sometimes I worry that I’m not being strict enough with Marc and that he’ll think because I don’t punish him that I don’t love him. When I was a kid, there was no problem with that. As soon as I did anything wrong, I knew how much my father loved me. He kicked the crap out of me."
Tony’s mother was also a disciplinarian, forcing her son to do his homework and help with the cooking and housework. In fact, Tony wasn’t allowed out on Saturday nights until his room was throughly cleaned. "My mother would say to my older brother and me, ‘If you don’t want to go to school with your clothes wrinkled, you’d better learn how to iron them,’" Tony says. "Believe me, we learned to iron."
Tony credits his parents’ attitude with keeping him out of serious trouble. He also realizes how fortunate he was that his family moved to quiet, suburban Long Island when he was fifteen. "I was lucky enough to get our of our part of Brooklyn before it was too late," he says. "A lot of my friends weren’t so lucky-they ended up in jail, and some of the are still there. I’d go visit one friend in jail, and I’d end up seeing two or three other guys I know in there. That’s what the streets do to you."
At his mother’s prodding, Tony applied to college and he won a wrestling scholarship to the University of Dubuque, in Iowa. While there, Tony met and married his first wife, Rhonda, another student. After graduation, they moved back to Long Island, where Marc was born. But the marriage didn’t last long. "I was too immature," Tony explains. "Could you imagine being married to me, as wild as I was when I was eighteen? Look back now, I feel sorry for Rhonda."
While he was married, and in the years after his divorce, Tony drifted from one job to another. He sld jeans out of the trunk of his car. He worked for a moving company, a car wash and a catering service. He was gong to apply for a cabbies’s license, but his mother wouldn’t let him. "She yelled: ‘I sent you to college, and now you want to drive a cab? No way!’" he says. "Of course, she didn’t know I’d end up getting my big break in acting playing a cabbies years later on Taxi."

A knockout start
Tony was working as a bartender when a friend entered him in a boxing competition as a joke. He participated anyway-and advanced to the semifinals. He then began fighting professionally. A producer was in the crowd for one of his bouts and convinced Tony to take a screen test. He won some small parts in a couple of forgettable TV movies before landing the role of boxer-cabdriver Tony Banta of Taxi. After the shows’ five year run, Tony appeared in some other less-than-memorable TV movies and was unemployed for two years. Finally, Who’s the Boss? came his way, and his career seemed on the upswing.
But several months before shooting of the series was to begin, in 1984, Tony and a friend were out drinking in a restaurant in New York. A security guard later claimed the two men were being loud and abusive and were having a food fight. When he tried to quiet them, he said, Danza decked him.
The security guard sued for $16 million, and Tony recently agreed to an out-of-court settlement of $85,000. Earlier, Tony had been convected of assault in the incident, but instead of a jail term, he was sentenced to 250 hours of community service. He fulfilled most of his sentence at the Jewish Home and Hospital of the Aged, in New York City.
"Working there was one of the greatest experiences of my life," Tony says. "I went into it not wanting to be there, but I met a lot of wonderful, inspiring people. Other people have a tremendous dignity that seems almost alien to us today. I grew to love them all."
As he got to know the residents, he threw his enthusiasm into keeping them active and trying to make them feel young again. He held a talent show, in which an eighty-six-year-old woman stretched out across the top of a piano and sang "Can’t Help Loving That Man of Mine," as the audience howled its approval. Tony also staged a production of The Wizard of Oz, starring a ninety-two-year-old spitfire in a wheelchair as the Wizard and a class of third-graders from a nearby school as Dorothy and the Munchkins.
"I brought the kids in because they go perfectly with the elderly," he explains. "Kids make you feel young and full of energy." Tony is active in a number of causes that benefit children-including the Special Olympics and the Variety Club, which aid handicapped youngsters. He also gives financial support to two underprivileged boys in Oklahoma and frequently writes them letters.
"It used to be that the only thing I did for society was file my taxes," he says with a laugh. "Now I want to give something back. Kid are all we have. They are our future, and we can’t close our eyes to their problems."
One of the biggest reasons Tony is son concerned about young people-and one of the reasons he and his show are so likable-is that Tony Danza is a kid at heart. There’s always a glint of mischief in his eyes and a Mickey Mouse watch on his wrist. At a recent Hollywood party of the California Youth Theater, he spent of his time giving piggyback rides to the young members of the group.
"I may still be a kid in a way," he admits, "but I’m beginning to grow up. Now that I’m married again, and Marc has come to live with me, I think I’m finally becoming an adult. I’m more relaxes, happier, more mature."
Marc had been living with his mother since Tony and Rhonda divorced over a decade ago, but two years ago the teenager asked to live with his father. (The couple’s three-year-old daughter, Gina, born after a brief reconciliation, still lives with her mom in Albuquerque.) Tony was thrilled to have his son stay with him. "I’ll tell ya," he says proudly, "there may be a bit of parental bias here, but I think I have the best kid in the world-he just brightens up my life."
Tony and Marc are so close, in fact, that they have even double-dated. One evening, father and son went to Spago, the swank Los Angeles restaurant, where, Tony says, each hld hangs with his date under the table.
Now that he’s married to Tracy, Tony’s dating days are over. Once a notorious ladies’ man (he dated Taxi co-star Marilu Henner, actress Teri Copley and former Playboy bunny Sandi Lee, among others), he’s more than happy to settle down and put his single lifestyle behind him.
"Before I married Tracy, I was partying, staying out late, going to bars and looking for women," he says. "But even though I had a lot of dates, I was lonely and unhappy. Deep down, I thought I’d never find anyone to settle down with , to share my life with. I was too damm picky-no matter what, I’d find something wrong with the girl. I guess I was afraid of making a commitment and giving up my freedom."