Joseph Petracca

Joseph Petracca (December 16, 1913 – September 28, 1963) was an American novelist, short story writer, screenwriter, and television writer of Italian descent. Born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, Petracca moved to Los Angeles after the end of World War II (during which time he worked as a machinist in the Brooklyn Navy Yard) and worked a series of full-time jobs, mainly as a steam press operator for a laundry and linen rental service, while he pursued his writing in the evenings and began raising a family with his wife Lena. In the early fifties Petracca began publishing fiction in the popular magazines of the day. Throughout the fifties Petracca wrote and collaborated on numerous films for such studios as 20th Century Fox and Paramount Pictures and in the sixties wrote episodes for such television shows as The Untouchables, Rawhide and Route 66 (TV series). Petracca is survived by a daughter, Frances Petracca, a neuroscientist and AIDS researcher, and a son, novelist and university Lecturer Emeritus Michael Petracca.

Petracca had early success as a writer of short stories for magazines such as Collier's Weekly and The Saturday Evening Post. Many of his stories featured a fictional Italian-American family, the Espositos, loosely based upon Petracca’s own family. Narrated by one of the Esposito children, Joey, these stories centered on themes of poverty, cultural alienation, and the joyful resiliency of family. Petracca used this same fictional family as the centerpiece for his first novel, Come Back to Sorrento, published by Little, Brown and Company in the United States, and Victor Gollancz in London, in 1953.

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