Joey Gallo was born and raised in the Red Hook section of Brooklyn, New York. His parents were Umberto and Mary Gallo. A bootlegger during Prohibition, Umberto did nothing to discourage his three sons from becoming criminals. He dropped out of school as a freshman at Brooklyn High School of Automotive Trades. In 1949, after viewing the film Kiss of Death, Joe Gallo began mimicing Richard Widmark's gangster character "Tommy Udo" and reciting movie dialogue. Gallo was nicknamed "Joey the Blond" because of his full chest of blond hair. In 1950, after an arrest, Gallo was temporarily placed in Kings County Hospital Center in Brooklyn, where he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Albert A. Seedman, the head of New York's detective bureau, called Gallo "That little guy with steel balls".