He spent three years in the Army after high school, then joined the Chicago police department in 1967. Then, over the wire, he says to my dad, “Poetry, ain’t it, Jim?”įarina was a working actor for 30 years, but he didn’t start until he was 37. But my dad takes advantage of the moment and asks Farina if he’ll do “Take him out. Eventually the client will decide not to use Farina after all. My dad’s in a control room in San Francisco Farina’s being piped in from somewhere else, maybe Chicago, via then-newfangled fiber-optic technology.
THIEF 1981 CAST TV
Back in the ’90s, when he was a full-time ad guy, he had occasion to audition Farina as a potential voice for some radio and TV spots. To this day, we’ve never had a conversation about Farina that didn’t involve one of us repeating the words Lombard cold-bloodedly intones to one of his thugs, regarding the disposal of a traitorous lackey: “Take him out. My dad loved Miami Vice, whose first-season finale featured Farina as the mob boss Al Lombard. I’m the second-biggest Dennis Farina fan in my family. On Monday, when I read that the craggy ex-cop turned character actor Dennis Farina had died of lung cancer in Scottsdale, Arizona, the first person I e-mailed was my dad.