Victor L’Episcopo Anfuso

Victor L’Episcopo Anfuso (March 10, 1905 – December 28, 1966) was an American lawyer, World War II veteran, and Democratic politician who served five terms as a member of the United States House of Representatives from New York. He represented his constituents in Congress from 1951 to 1953 and again from 1955 to 1963, participating in the legislative process during a significant period in American history and contributing to the work of the House over the course of five terms in office.

Anfuso was born in Gagliano Castelferrato, Sicily, Italy, on March 10, 1905, the son of Salvatore Anfuso and Mariannina L’Episcopo. He immigrated to the United States in 1914 as a child, part of the early twentieth‑century wave of Italian migration to New York. Growing up in his adopted country, he pursued his education in New York and prepared for a professional career in the law.

Anfuso attended Columbia University and went on to study law at Brooklyn Law School, from which he graduated in 1927. After his admission to the bar, he entered the practice of law in New York. On June 15, 1930, he married Frances Stallone. His legal training and early professional experience laid the foundation for his later roles in public service and elective office.

During World War II, Anfuso served his adopted country in the Office of Strategic Services, the United States’ wartime intelligence agency and a predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency. From 1943 until 1945 he was assigned to the Mediterranean Theater of Operations, where the OSS was heavily engaged in intelligence, resistance support, and other covert activities in support of Allied military campaigns in Italy and the surrounding region. His wartime service added to his public profile and experience in international and governmental affairs.

In 1950, Anfuso was elected as a Democrat to the United States House of Representatives from New York and took his seat in the Eighty‑second Congress, serving from January 3, 1951, until January 3, 1953. After an interval out of Congress, he was appointed city magistrate of Brooklyn in February 1954, a judicial position he held until his resignation in July 1954. Later that year he was again elected to Congress and returned to the House in the Eighty‑fourth Congress, serving from January 3, 1955, until January 3, 1963. Over these five terms, he represented his New York district during an era marked by the early Cold War, the beginnings of the modern civil rights movement, and significant domestic policy debates, and he participated fully in the democratic process on behalf of his constituents.

Following his congressional service, Anfuso continued his career in public life on the bench. In 1962 he was elected to the New York Supreme Court, the state’s trial court of general jurisdiction, and he served as a justice of that court from 1963 until his death in 1966. His judicial service extended his long involvement in law and government at both the federal and state levels.

Anfuso also had occasional appearances in popular culture. On March 5, 1957, while serving in Congress, he appeared in the first segment of the television program “To Tell the Truth” as an imposter for Steve Martini, who was then known as President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s personal barber. This appearance reflected the growing intersection of politics and mass media in the mid‑twentieth century.

Victor L’Episcopo Anfuso suffered a heart attack during a meeting at the Warwick Hotel in Manhattan and died soon afterward in New York City on December 28, 1966, at the age of 61. He was interred at St. John Cemetery in Queens, New York. His papers are preserved at the Center for Migration Studies of New York, documenting the life and career of an immigrant who rose to serve in the United States Congress and on the New York Supreme Court.