Jun 6, 2008

Where's Gino?

The Wall Street Journal searches for the disco-dancing man Boston Celtics fans know only as "Gino" and discovers he might have roots in San Bernardino:

"I was like, 'Oh my God, it's Joe Massoni!'" says Ms. Izen, who says she is the redhead to the right of him in the video.

Ms. Izen, who is now 52 and is involved in theater, was a regular dancer on "American Bandstand" in the mid-1970s. She says didn't know Mr. Massoni very well but lent him the tight Gino Vannelli T-shirt. But she did remember stopping by his family's Italian restaurant in Rialto, Calif., between shootings one day.

So when she set out to find him, she began calling Rialto's Italian restaurants. No luck. She turned to the white pages of the phone book. On the second try, she reached a woman who said she was Mr. Massoni's brother's mother-in-law.

The news couldn't have been sadder. Mr. Massoni, the woman said, passed away 18 years ago from pneumonia... A spokeswoman for the San Bernardino, Calif., coroner's office confirmed that a man named Joseph R. Massoni passed away in 1990 at age 34 in Fontana, Calif.

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