Your Tabs header gif today is taken from the 1969 television advertisement for Prince Spaghetti. The ad ran for nearly fourteen years, so if you are “of a certain age” and were a television watcher back in the 70’s, you are probably familiar with the Italian-American mom yelling out her window over the din of her city neighborhood, calling her son to Wednesday dinner and son Anthony eagerly rushing home. For you see, Wednesday was Prince Spaghetti day and Anthony’s favorite dinner of the week.
Anthony Martignetti was a boy who did indeed live in Boston’s North End neighborhood. He was “discovered” by agents scouting a location for their “realistic Italian American” advertisement in 1969. The scouts approached a group of boys looking for directions. The boys responded rudely to the query, but Anthony sweetly provided the information they requested. The men, taken with the charm of the young man, immediately determined that Anthony would play the key role in their commercial.
Anthony immigrated to the United States with his parents from Candida, a hilltop town in southern Italy, when he was eight years old. He was twelve when he was selected for the advertising role. His parents spoke very little English, so his older brother Andy acted as interpreter when the scouts followed Anthony home to request permission for him to be in the commercial. Andy tried to pitch himself for the role, claiming that he could eat more pasta, but the ad men were smitten with young Anthony.
Never intending to pursue a career in television, Anthony continued to live and work in the Boston area. To locals, he remained an unofficial brand ambassador, the Prince spaghetti boy, a role he forever enjoyed. As detailed in the Washington Post:
For Mr. Martignetti, it would in large part define his life. With his cherubic countenance remaining recognizable for decades, he became a keeper of the flame, preserving the authentic, wholesome image that he and Mary Fiumara, who played his mother, had created.
“I always understood that it was larger than me, that I had a responsibility to preserve what that commercial meant to people,” he told The Boston Globe last year. “I knew that if I got into trouble, little Anthony from the spaghetti commercial would be all over the paper.”
Mr. Martignetti passed away in 2020. He was 63 years old.
New York Times: Anthony Martignetti (‘Anthony!’), Who Raced Home for Spaghetti, Dies at 63
A sweet story. Thanks, I needed that.