{"id":667068,"date":"2025-05-05T06:47:38","date_gmt":"2025-05-05T03:47:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/charley-scalies-actor-on-the-wire-and-the-sopranos-dies-at-84\/"},"modified":"2025-05-05T06:47:38","modified_gmt":"2025-05-05T03:47:38","slug":"charley-scalies-actor-on-the-wire-and-the-sopranos-dies-at-84","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/charley-scalies-actor-on-the-wire-and-the-sopranos-dies-at-84\/","title":{"rendered":"Charley Scalies, Actor on \u2018The Wire\u2019 and \u2018The Sopranos,\u2019 Dies at 84"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n\tCharley Scalies, the Philadelphia-bred character actor who portrayed the stevedore and union guy Thomas \u201cHorseface\u201d Pakusa on the second season of The Wire<\/em> and Tony\u2019s high school football coach in a dream sequence on The Sopranos<\/em>, has died. He was 84.<\/p>\n

\n\tScalies died Thursday in a nursing facility in Phoenixville, <\/strong>Pennsylvania, after a long battle with Alzheimer\u2019s, his daughter Anne Marie Scalies told The Hollywood Reporter<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\n\tScalies app<\/a>eared on all 12 episodes of HBO\u2019s The Wire<\/em> during its second season in 2003 as Horseface, an incarcerated former IBS Local 1514 longshoreman from the Port of Baltimore who\u2019s devoted to his crooked boss, Frank Sobotka (Chris Bauer).<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAs with all the other characters I\u2019ve been blessed to portray, Horseface lives inside of me,\u201d he said<\/a> in a 2019 interview. \u201cI invite him out to play as needed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tScalies was back on HBO the next year on the fifth-season Sopranos<\/em> installment \u201cThe Test Dream,\u201d where he stood out as Coach Molinaro. His hard-nosed character shows up in a dream<\/a>, berating James Gandolfini\u2019s vengeful Tony for taking \u201cthe easy way out\u201d by becoming a criminal and squandering his potential.<\/p>\n

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\t\t\t\t\tCharley Scalies and James Gandolfini on the set of \u2018The Sopranos.\u2019 <\/span><\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCourtesy Anne Marie Scalies<\/cite><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

\n\tThe youngest of three children, Charles Joseph Scalies Jr. was born in Philadelphia on July 19, 1940, and raised in South Philadelphia in a home above his father\u2019s pool hall, where he entertained patrons with jokes and Al Jolson impressions as a kid.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn high school and at St. Joseph\u2019s College, he and a friend had a stand-up comedy act \u201cand played every Beef and Beer [joint] we could find,\u201d he recalled<\/a> in a 2015 interview. \u201cLike every other comedy duo of the time, we patterned our act after [Dean] Martin & [Jerry] Lewis.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tAfter college, Scalies landed a job as director of sales and contracts at Clifton Precision, a manufacturing company, then established his own consulting firm, focusing on auditing and quality management systems.<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the early 1990s, he returned to the stage in community and dinner theater productions, playing Nicely-Nicely Johnson in Guys & Dolls<\/em>, Billy Flynn in Chicago<\/em> and the Cowardly Lion in The Wizard of Oz<\/em> for the St. Francis Players in Springfield, Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n

\n\tScalies went on casting calls, leading to bit parts in the 1995 movies<\/a> Condition Red<\/em>, the Al Pacino-starring Two Bits<\/em> and Terry Gilliam\u2019s 12 Monkeys<\/em>. He then played a cop on two 1996 episodes of NBC\u2019s Homicide: Life on the Street<\/em>, produced by The Wire<\/em> creator David Simon.<\/p>\n

\n\tScalies\u2019 r\u00e9sum\u00e9 included the films Liberty Heights<\/em> (1999), directed by Homicide<\/em> producer Barry Levinson, and Kevin Smith\u2019s Jersey Girl<\/em> (2004), and guest spots on Law & Order<\/em>, Law & Order: SVU<\/em> and Cold Case<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\n\tHe also wrote a screenplay titled It Takes Balls<\/em>, inspired by his dad\u2019s pool room.<\/p>\n

\n\tSurvivors include his wife of 62 years, Angeline; his children, Chuck, Angeline, Tony, Christa and Anne Marie; and his grandchildren, Charles IV, Christopher, Domenic and Amelia. \u201cHis favorite audience,\u201d his family noted<\/a>, \u201cwas always seated around the dinner table.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tDonations can be made in his name to the Greater Pennsylvania Chapter of the Alzheimer\u2019s Association<\/a> or to the PCS Theater<\/a> in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Charley Scalies, the Philadelphia-bred character actor who portrayed the stevedore and union guy Thomas \u201cHorseface\u201d Pakusa on the second season of The Wire and Tony\u2019s high school football coach in a dream sequence on The Sopranos, has died. He was 84. Scalies died Thursday in a nursing facility in Phoenixville, Pennsylvania, after a long battle…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":667069,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.hollywoodreporter.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/Charley-Scalies-obit-temp-publicity-H-2025.png?w=1296&h=730&crop=1","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[147647,5200,57833,67708],"class_list":["post-667068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-social-mediaa","tag-homicide-life-on-the-street","tag-obituaries","tag-the-sopranos","tag-the-wire"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/667068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=667068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/667068\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/667069"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=667068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=667068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=667068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}