Background
Raised in Louisville, Kentucky, Pollio is the son of the former Julia Tino, a homemaker and religious zealot, and Joseph Polio, a bookmaker and local racketeer who ran an after-hours gambling operation.
Raised in Louisville, Kentucky, Pollio is the son of the former Julia Tino, a homemaker and religious zealot, and Joseph Polio, a bookmaker and local racketeer who ran an after-hours gambling operation.
He appeared twice on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson and once in a skit on the show with Jay Leno. He also guest starred on several network sitcoms, including Night Court, Empty Nest and Blossom, in addition to co-starring in a Columbia Broadcasting System pilot produced by Dan Aykroyd, Mars Base One. Born Martin Polio, he legally changed his last name to its original ethnic Italian spelling of Pollio.
As a teenager, his weekend job was delivering the "gifts" to cops and judges for his father.
After graduating from Saint Xavier High School in Louisville, Pollio was in his third year of a four-year apprenticeship as an electrician when he quit on a whim to become an actor. While attending theatre classes at the University of Louisville, he studied movement theatre and mime with Avner Eisenberg (Avner the Eccentric) and later in Los Angeles with Israeli mime, Yaakov Noy.
His performing career began in 1977 as a roving entertainer at the theme park, Opryland United States of America, in Nashville, Tennessee. Once his act became choreographed to music, he started doing what he called, "bar mime." He performed his act, along with impressionist Bill Sacra, and magicians Mac King and Lance Burton in a Louisville landmark strip club named the Merry Go Round. Once the proliferation of comedy clubs began in the United States., he adapted his show accordingly, but is still known more for his physical comedy than his stand-up.
He performed his one-man show Prisoners of Cheese at the Montreal Fringe Festival, and released a comedy/instructional video, How To Juggle and Other Cheap Tricks, which is widely distributed by View Video.