"Hero" sandwich (1950?)(continued)

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   An excellent article is "The Hero" by Arthur Steuer, NEW YORK magazine section of the NEW YORK HERALD TRIBUNE, 12 April 1964, pages 17 and 18.
   From Page 18, Col. 1:

   Hero experts are unanimous in agreement that the sandwich by some other name appeared as a sideline of the corner delicatessen in Italian neighborhoods.  Its genealogy beyond that is obscure.  The Italian Consulate emphatically denies any derivation from contemporary cuisine known to that salubrious peninsula.  Signor Bruno Bernabo of Mama Leone's throws up his hands in disinheritance of the Hero.  "It would be like serving meat and spaghetti in the same course.  If you ask for that in Italy they would shoot you."

   From Page 18, Col. 2:

   Ralph Marotta, who is generally given credit for introducing the Hero abroad, so to speak, was born 49 years ago in Basalicota, brought to this country as a baby, and raised in New York and Fresno, California. (...)
   "So I figure if there is that much business in sandwiches, who needs to run a grocery store?"  And so it was that in the year 1950 Ralph Marotta opened what to the best of knowledge, was the first sandwich shop devoted exclusively to the Hero, at 27 Varick Street.  Four years later he moved down the block from his original 13- by 14-foot quarters to the old Western Cafeteria, still one of the largest producers of Heroes in the world, rolling them out at a rate of 1,500 a day.