Sylvester Stallone — actor with roots in the Russian Empire
Sylvester Stallone was born in New York in July 1946 to Frank Stallone, a hairdresser who had emigrated from Gioia del Colle in Apulia, and Jacqueline Labofish, later known as Jackie Stallone, a dancer, gym owner and, in her last decades, a professional astrologer.
The Russian line is maternal, and the emigrants are his great-grandparents. Jackie Labofish was the daughter of John Paul Labofish, a Washington lawyer, and Jeanne Clerec, a Frenchwoman from Brittany whom he met while serving with the US Navy there after the First World War. John Paul Labofish's own parents, Charles Labofisz and Rose Lamlec, were Jewish emigrants from Odessa in the Russian Empire. They are Stallone's maternal great-grandparents, and the connection is recorded at that distance. Jackie Stallone later travelled to Odessa to trace the family, and spoke about the Jewish background in interviews without ever going into detail.
He wrote Rocky in three days in 1975, after watching Chuck Wepner last fifteen rounds with Muhammad Ali, and refused to sell the script unless he could play the part. The film cost roughly a million dollars, took over two hundred, and won the Academy Award for Best Picture. Stallone was nominated for both Best Actor and Best Original Screenplay, a double that before him only Charlie Chaplin and Orson Welles had achieved.
He wrote or co-wrote most of the films in both franchises that followed. Rocky ran to six films; First Blood and the Rambo sequels defined the shape of the 1980s action picture and, in the first film, were adapted from a novel considerably bleaker than what the series became. The later career has been more durable than anyone expected: Creed in 2015 brought a Golden Globe and a third Academy Award nomination, thirty-nine years after the first, and The Expendables and the television series Tulsa King have kept him working into his late seventies.
Charles Labofisz and Rose Lamlec left Odessa for Washington, DC. Their son, John Paul Labofish, was born in 1891 and practised law there.
"Charles Labofisz and Rose Lamlec emigrated from Odessa to Washington, DC"
Migration storyTracing the roots — Odessa (Ukraine)
The Russian line is maternal. Stallone's mother, Jacqueline Labofish, was the daughter of John Paul Labofish, a Washington lawyer whose own parents, Charles Labofisz and Rose Lamlec, were Jewish emigrants from Odessa in the Russian Empire. His father's family was Italian Catholic, from Campania.
Maternal great-grandparents Charles Labofisz and Rose Lamlec were Jewish emigrants from Odessa in the Russian Empire. Their son John Paul Labofish (1891-1956), a Washington lawyer, was the father of Jackie Stallone. His father's family was Italian Catholic, from Gioia del Colle in Apulia.
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Odessa (Ukraine). At the time, this region lay within the Russian Empire, which spanned from Poland to the Pacific.