47 pages • 1 hour read
Al PacinoSonny Boy: A Memoir
Nonfiction | Biography | Adult | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Summary
Background
Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Key Figures
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Index of Terms
Important Quotes
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BetaChapters 1-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 1 Summary: “A Blade of Grass”
As a little boy, Pacino loved going to the movies with his mother and would imitate the performances he saw with his own “acting” at home. Pacino’s parents were very young when he was born, and they soon divorced, leaving a toddler Pacino to move around with his single mother, who tried to support them both. As an adult, Pacino learned that when he was a baby he spent eight months living with his paternal grandmother, as the state temporarily removed him from his mother’s care.
Pacino spent most of his early childhood living with his mother and maternal grandparents in their rental apartment in the Bronx, which they often shared with other family members or boarders. It was crowded, with 6-7 people sometimes sharing a room. Pacino’s mother’s parents were from Sicily originally, making them the only Italians in their neighborhood. Due to World War II, there was some stigma around being Italian. Pacino’s mother experienced mental health problems, attempting death by suicide when Pacino was six and then spending some time in an institution. This was hard for him to understand.
From a young age Pacino spent most of his free time with his three best friends Cliffy, Bruce, and Petey. The boys played outside, using the overrun Victory Gardens in their neighborhood as baseball fields, and playing street games like ringolevio, stick ball, and kick the can. Pacino has fond memories of this time, remembering the intense bond between him and his friends and the constant adventures and mischief they would get into together. With little supervision, the kids loved to pursue dangerous hobbies like running around the tenement rooftops or exploring the abandoned Dutch houses and overgrown lots on Boone Avenue. Some of Pacino’s friends, especially Cliffy, were more risk-taking. By his early teens Cliffy was doing drugs and had stolen many cars, including a city bus and a garbage truck.
He and his friends did not only enjoy each other’s company, they also needed it. Without each other’s protection they would be “defenseless” in their impoverished neighborhood. Pacino remembers being surrounded by young, armed thugs one day after baseball, and how they stole his baseball glove from him. This was a devastating experience, as his grandfather had bought the glove for him and could not afford to replace it.
The author reveals that all three of his close friends died young from drug use. As an adult, he realized that his mother kept him from meeting the same end, as she put limits on his free play and enforced a strict curfew. While he still had many unsupervised adventures, he feels his mother “kept a lid” on his escapades and helped him avoid “delinquency, danger, and violence” (27).
Pacino’s father sometimes contacted him, and tried to spend time with him. However, Pacino did not like going to his house and did not feel at home there. Looking back, Pacino recognizes his luck that he simply had an absentee father rather than an actively abusive one, like many of his friends. He feels that he turned out the way he did because of his mother and grandparents.
In elementary school and junior high, Pacino enjoyed acting in plays but did not take it too seriously. His junior high teacher, Blanche Rothstein, recognized his talent and encouraged his acting, even telling his mom and grandparents that acting would be his “future” (33). As a 13-year-old, he had a large role in a play and both of his parents came to see it. Afterwards, they took him out to a diner, and Pacino was overjoyed to see his parents happily enjoying each other’s company, something he had not realized he had longed for. He felt as though his acting had brought his family together, albeit for only one evening.
Chapter 2 Summary: “A Change”
After seeing the play The Seagull by Anton Chekhov, Pacino became obsessed with Chekhov’s work and carried his books around with him. Pacino became more interested in theater and earned a spot at the High School of Performing Arts in Manhattan, along with his friend Cliffy. Pacino began to realize that acting was a calling which most people did while working a conventional job to pay the bills.
One day Cliffy groped their teacher and was expelled from the school. Soon after he was kicked out of his home, and Pacino no longer saw him anymore but heard about his “antisocial” behavior. Pacino remained at the school until the age of 16, when his mother had a mental health episode after being abruptly abandoned by her fiancé. She needed expensive psychological treatment and encouraged Pacino to drop out of school to work and earn money for the family. Pacino was happy to leave school, which he never felt was for him, and immediately found work as a bike messenger and office assistant.
As an 18-year-old Pacino began to consider acting as a serious career path. He wanted to get into the Herbert Berghof Studio acting school, where he had heard good things about the teacher, Charlie Laughton. After meeting Charlie at a nearby bar, Pacino immediately took a liking to him, and enrolled in the school. Since he was penniless, he cleaned the school in exchange for tuition. At 19, his teacher Charlie told him he would be a “big star” and Pacino simply replied, “I know” (54)—he was already confident that he could make a living as an actor. Pacino met Martin Sheen at school, where he was a fellow student. Sheen became Pacino’s roommate and the two began volunteering at the Living Theater together as cleaners and set decorators. Pacino loved doing the job, as he got to watch people’s performances and absorb more of theater life.
While attending acting school he worked to support himself, which was always a struggle. He had a job as a mover with a friend of his, but lost work at a restaurant when he was caught eating leftovers. In his free time Pacino would read for hours in the local cafes, or walk the streets, reciting Shakespeare’s great monologues to himself as he walked. Pacino remembers how he avoided the draft into the Vietnam War because he was still supporting his mother financially, but many of his friends were not so lucky. Cliffy served for a short time and developed a heroin dependency. When he came back to the neighborhood he would visit Pacino, who eventually had to tell him to stop visiting and using drugs in his apartment. Cliffy later died of an overdose.
At around this time, Pacino suddenly lost his mother too, who died taking pills in her parents’ apartment. Pacino reflects on whether his mother’s death was intentional or accidental; he prefers to think that it was a tragic accident. Pacino felt guilty that his mother had suffered so much and died before he could provide for her properly. He wished that he had assured her that he would soon “make it” and be able to give her all the care she needed.
While he mourned her death he felt like a “zombie,” and was forgetful and confused, but Pacino kept working. He had stints as an usher and a newspaper deliverer. During this time he was depressed and used alcohol to calm his mind, which he feels was very beneficial for him. His grandfather died that same year, adding to Pacino’s grief. Pacino reflects on how his grandfather had always been a kind, warm man who had resisted being pulled into their neighborhood’s gangs, instead perfecting his craft as a plasterer.
Pacino continued to act in any venue he could, including children’s theater and his friend’s small plays in his apartment. Over time he earned parts in plays like Tiger at the Gates and Creditors. One night Pacino felt that he had a transcendental experience onstage, feeling the “power of expression” (68). He realized that he could let go of all the fear of succeeding or failing, and he knew that he wanted to act no matter what happened.
Chapter 3 Summary: “A Tiger and An Indian”
While Pacino’s acting teacher Charlie Laughton was always supportive of him, the head of the school, Herbert Berghof, did not like Pacino’s acting style, which was more forceful and organic. Pacino credits Marlon Brando with changing the way actors approached their work, making it “threatening” and “captivating,” something he admired (75). Pacino reminisces about how Dustin Hoffman became a big name at this time, inspiring him and other young actors with his performance in The Graduate.
Meanwhile, Pacino and Martin Sheen were still doing theater work in New York. Sheen was always kind and generous to Pacino, and could see that he was struggling to get by. He offered him the part of his understudy in an off-Broadway play The Wicked Cooks, which Pacino gladly accepted. However, things soon soured when the director took a dislike to Pacino’s method acting, and when Sheen became ill Pacino revealed he had failed to learn the script and could not go on. He later learned that Sheen had paid him to be understudy out of his own pocket to help him, and Pacino felt bad that he let his friend down.
Pacino continued to struggle to make ends meet, and moved around a lot. His friend arranged for him to maintain a rental building, so he could earn 14 dollars a week and have a small, free room in the building. He played one of the leads in The Indian Wants the Bronx, a play which ran successfully for a year. When a new producer wanted to stage the play off-Broadway in a different theater, Pacino had to re-audition for the part of Murph, a part he felt he had created. Though he was frustrated, Pacino gamely re-auditioned, and got the part. His performance was well-reviewed and gained him the attention of famous actors and agents. Pacino was approached by agent Marty Bregman, and accepted his representation.
At the age of 25 he went to Boston to do repertory theater, which felt like a welcome change, since he could earn a good living for the first time. His performances attracted positive and negative attention, and he learned how to deal with criticism and poor reviews. In one play, Does a Tiger Wear a Necktie? Pacino had to play a troubled character who is lost in a life of crime and drug use. The character was intriguing to him, because he was so similar to many friends from his youth, and spoke to some of Pacino’s own childhood problems. However, the role was also upsetting to play night after night. Though the play didn’t have a long run, Pacino won a Tony award for his performance. Pacino felt that he was making a name for himself and wondered nervously what fame would be like.
Chapters 1-3 Analysis
In his opening chapters, Pacino uses a simple, accessible narrative style as he reflects on his upbringing and earliest experiences. Pacino credits the love of his family for his survival and success. Even though his mother had her own problems, Pacino knows she did her best to guide and protect him. He writes, “Petey, Cliffy, Bruce—they all died from drugs. I was not exactly under strict surveillance, but my mother paid attention to where I was in a way that my friends’ families didn’t […] I believe she saved my life” (27). Pacino honors his friends’ memories by reflecting on their lives and their close bond. Rather than building suspense or sensationalizing their deaths, Pacino simply states, “I made it out alive, and they didn’t” (12), crediting his family’s love with helping him find a productive path in life.
He also credits his grandfather with being an important male role model for him, writing that he was “the first real father figure [he] had” (8), and reflecting, “I’m so lucky I had my grandfather” (31). In speaking of these positive influences, Pacino offers an account of his upbringing that balances the hardships of poverty and being a child of divorced parents with the love and adventure his family and neighborhood offered him. In doing so, Pacino avoids dramatizing his impoverished upbringing, instead emphasizing that there were people and aspects of even his difficult years that he cherished.
Pacino’s love of his family ties in with his theme on Overcoming Loss and Hardship. Discussing the loss of his mother and grandfather in his early adulthood, Pacino reflects on how this grief profoundly affected him. His “unfathomable” loss caused him to go through “a hard period of mourning, wandering around zombielike” (61). Although he reflects on these painful events, Pacino downplays his own resilience, and instead credits alcohol and his friends for comforting him through the emotionally and financially difficult times of his early 20s. However, his constant efforts to study with acting coaches, work and volunteer in theater, and his willingness to do a variety of odd jobs suggest that Pacino was determined to overcome his grief and continue moving forward. He admits, “Something was driving me. I had to make it, because that was the only way I would survive in this world” (61).
Pacino presents himself as humble and self-aware, considering his shortcomings and mistakes as he grew older and embarked upon The Search for Identity. For instance, he considers how he could have been more supportive to his mother when her boyfriend unexpectedly dumped her. He recalls, “She was shattered. Nasty boy that I was, I actually said to her, ‘I knew that was too good to be true.’ Those were ugly words” (44). In recounting a moment that presents him in a bad light, Pacino attempts to create a sense of intimacy with the reader by appearing candid about his personal failings. Similarly, while describing his first serious romance with Jill Clayburgh he says, “I don’t think that I was a good companion to Jill. I was neglectful of her. I drank and drugged, and she didn’t, and she had to deal with me when I did” (92). Pacino thus emphasizes that, while the love and support of other people were essential for his development, he did not always fully recognize or appreciate them at the time.
His self-awareness also extends to more light-hearted parts of his youth and personality. For instance, he recalls how he was obsessed with storytelling and the arts, but had little awareness of global issues as a young man in the 1960s: “My grasp of the state of global affairs was that Hitler was gone and that was a good thing. Other than that, I had no idea what was going on” (82-83). Pacino also considers his own personality and outlook, admitting that people used to be turned off by his guarded persona. He writes, “I’ve since developed a personality that is more open, but back then I was lacking a certain kind of social behavior” (88). Pacino’s self-awareness allows him to reflect maturely on his youth and how he has changed, reinforcing the work’s intimate and revealing tone. These reflections, while showcasing his humility and self-awareness, also show how he had to learn new habits and traits as he grew into adulthood.
These chapters also begin to give some insight into Pacino’s film career in Hollywood, introducing the key theme of Performance as an Art and a Career. Pacino characterizes his younger self as a dedicated theater actor who was ambivalent, or even repulsed by, the filmmaking process and Hollywood itself. He remembers visiting Hollywood and thinking, “‘I better get out of this place’” (93). These revelations show that while Pacino felt that acting was a calling for him, he did not consider Hollywood a necessary destination, but instead was content to be a “theater person” (107). He writes, “I knew acting would be my profession, but somehow the whole business eluded me and my lifestyle” (107).
Coming from the intensity of in-the-moment theater work, Pacino was unimpressed with the strange, micromanaged reality of filmmaking: “[Y]ou do it covered in wires and facing a camera with a lot of people around breathing and getting in your eye range” (107). Thus, while he would soon have his breakthrough role in The Godfather, Pacino sets up a distinction early in his memoir between the film acting he undertook for the sake of money and wider fame, and his true passion for the theater.
