Smilin' Valley man led moving 95 years

Life of Saverio Molezzo, who died Sunday, included bootlegging, dance hall.

By Jim Steinberg / The Fresno Bee

(Updated Saturday, March 11, 2006, 7:17 AM)

Saverio "Smilin' Sammie" Molezzo died Sunday in his sleep after an action-packed 95 years in Fresno, Selma, Porterville, Philadelphia and points between.

Farmer, bootlegger, musician, carpenter, Hanford and Fresno radio personality and dance hall operator — Mr. Molezzo did it all, including a brief stay in a Fresno jail for selling liquor during Prohibition, says a grandson, John Molezzo of Reno, Nev.

Services for Mr. Molezzo will be held at 10 a.m. today at Page Funeral Chapel in Selma, and this gathering will celebrate his life with music.

If you liked to swing on Saturday nights in the late '40s and early '50s, if you liked country western music, if you just yearned for company, chances are you headed for Manning and McCall avenues in Selma. You knew you had arrived when you saw the big neon cactus and cowboy hat.

There you would find the country western dance hall variously called the Casa Dome and Smilin' Sammie's Western Round-Up. On good nights, the place squeezed in 700 clapping, stomping fans.

"He used to tell me to always have a smile, that it was good for business," John Molezzo says.

Fans also listened to Mr. Molezzo on the radio. He entertained on station KNGS in Hanford and, for a shorter time, on KFRE in Fresno. He mixed music and down-home humor, telling listeners he was "not the man with the wiggle — the man with the giggle."

He signed off each broadcast with what his grandson calls "a maniacal laugh."

Carl Parnell began playing fiddle with Mr. Molezzo in 1947, and calls him "my father. I loved him dearly."

Parnell played with Mr. Molezzo on both radio stations and remembers his recording of a big hit, "Fried Potatoes."

"He was a big star," Parnell says. "At one time, he had an 11- or 12-piece band."

Daughter Susie O'Hara of Fresno calls Mr. Molezzo wonderful and recalls the dance hall run by Mr. Molezzo and his wife, Ona Lee, and big names in country music they attracted to their place.

"I was kind of raised there. My mother ran the business. Tex Ritter wanted to adopt me. My father said absolutely not. … I learned to dance there, the jitterbug, swing. The women were all crazy about my father."

O'Hara says her parents were married for 63 years, until Mrs. Molezzo's death in 1998.

Music and dancing were not Mr. Molezzo's only distinctions. His path to the San Joaquin Valley and musical entertainment was a story in itself, his grandson and daughter say.

He was the oldest of nine children born to Pasqualino and Christina Molezzo in Philadelphia. He left home at 15, doing carpentry and other jobs.

He made his way to Porterville, where he learned to make moonshine, and began bootlegging at 16 or 17, John Molezzo says. A sheriff warned him several times to stop or else, and it took the jail term to get Mr. Molezzo to do what the sheriff had suggested.

Mr. Molezzo left Porterville at 17 for New York, "riding the rails" underneath box cars, his grandson says in a written account:

"He said you'd face down at the track below you. Sometimes you fell asleep, a very dangerous thing to do." Mr. Molezzo told his grandson that he had seen one man fall to his death under a train.

On another cross-country trip, Mr. Molezzo crashed his 1927 Harley motorcycle and began walking and hitch-hiking. Hunger got the best of him, John Molezzo says, and Mr. Molezzo "borrowed" two eggs from a chicken coop.

Famished, Mr. Molezzo used a safety pin to poke holes at either end of each egg.

"That's the first and only time I ever sucked eggs," he would tell his grandson.

Mike Johnson took care of Mr. Molezzo during his last years in Fresno.

"We weren't related, but he was like my grandfather," Johnson says. "He took me in, and I took it to heart."

Johnson put Mr. Molezzo to bed every night and came to love that ritual:

"Every night, I'd say, 'Good night, Sweetheart.' And he'd say, 'Good night, Honey.' And we both laughed."

That happened on Mr. Molezzo's last night, Johnson says:

"We laughed, and he smiled. In the morning, he still had a little smile on his face, but I knew he was gone."

The last sound Johnson heard from Smilin' Sammie Molezzo was "that little laugh."