Frankie Burke(1915-1983)
- Actor
Francis Vaselle Aiello was born June 6, 1915, in the Bedford-Stuyvesant
section of Brooklyn, New York. He worked many odd jobs after graduating
High School, including working with his father, Carmine, who owned a
tailoring shop. He earned the nickname "The earl of Warwick" because of
his persistence trying to obtain a job at the most luxurious hotel in
town, The Warwick Hotel (he sat in the lobby for weeks every day).
However, he was a "newspaper seller" when he first saw 'James Cagney'
on film and became an immediate fan. He imitated Cagney for a long time
to his friends and family, much to their approval, before deciding to
hitchhike to Hollywood to get an interview with Cagney, but this
attempt failed, so he returned home to New York. Later he tried it
again, and this time he landed a job on the vaudeville circuit doing
impressions of Cagney. A Warner Bros. talent scout saw his act and
hired him for the role of the young version of Cagney's "Rocky
Sullivan" in Angels with Dirty Faces (1938). After that he made 17 films until he disappeared
from the celebrity circuit in 1941. His whereabouts from 1941 to about
1961 are unknown, but sometime in the early 1960s, he decided to ride
the rails as what he, himself, called a "Hobo" until he became too ill
and was taken from a train when it pulled into Junction City, Kansas.
He was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer and sent to a long term care
facility in Chapman, Kansas where he passed away only weeks later on
April 7th, 1983.
