Dom Deluise and Shakespeare

Dom Deluise has died.

In tribute, I went looking to see if the man had ever done any Shakespeare.  The closest I could find was Baby Geniuses. :)

However, I did find this interview where he brings up the subject:

I had to audition for the High School of Performing Arts because they wanted to see if you could, in fact, carry on and, you know, act a little. So my brother, who was older than me and not as wise as I thought, said the thing that I should learn was Shakespeare. So here I was talking, just barely talking when I was a young person, and my brother said you should learn "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women are merely. They have their entrances and their exits and in their lives they play many parts. The mewing puking child…" And so here I tried to do… can you imagine, a Shakespeare thing? Then they said, "Now we're going to improvise. Find that book on the table and there's a piece of paper in it, and just ad lib." So I looked at the book and looked around and I said, "Oh, a letter!" And I took the piece of paper and I said, "If you don't pass your…" I was reading the letter. "If you don't pass your audition, you'll never get into the High School of Performing Arts."

So I’m guessing that he never thought of himself doing Shakespeare.  Oh, well.  He might have made a good Henry VIII?  Falstaff’s an easy guess for a big jovial type, but I don’t think Mr. Deluise ever did “serious”.  Perhaps Merry Wives of Windsor?