Alan Irwin Menken and Calogero Lorenzo Palminteri grew up music-loving New York City boys, separated by exactly four years, 11 miles and one murder. Palminteri witnessed that killing on Belmont Avenue in the Bronx. He kept his mouth shut when the cops asked if the neighborhood boss shot a guy to break up a fight, and that decision has paid off for more than half a century – not in currency, because the wise-guy life soon lost its allure, but in drama.

He turned the story of his youth into “A Bronx Tale,” a one-man show off-Broadway 30 years ago that established him as an actor to watch. Robert De Niro saw it and agreed to direct the 1993 film, with Palminteri — now Chazz — as charismatic gangster Sonny and De Niro as Lorenzo, the boy’s straight-arrow dad. (Calogero, pronounced “Ca-LO-jeh-roh,” is the Italian equivalent of Charles, which shortens to Chazz.)