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After college, Washington and several of his closest friends, including bassist Stephen “Thundercat” Bruner, drummer Ronald Bruner Jr., pianist Cameron Graves, trombonist Ryan Porter, and multi-instrumentalist Terrace Martin, among others, began performing weekly at the Piano Bar in Hollywood, an engagement that lasted several years.

Part video karaoke, part piano bar floor show, part infomercial for his own singular stardom, the evening showcased Rainbow’s many colors.

Nominally about a plain but lucky-in-adultery piano bar singer and the wealthy Milanese, salt-of-the-earth Romans and tuxedoed bons vivants who surround him, the film previewed decades of gleefully vulgar, broad and formulaic Christmas comedies that earned a fortune and came to be known, after the cakes Italians devour during the season, as “Cinema Panettone.”

“When I walked into that theater and saw her, I knew she was the one,” said Russo, who sat with his wife of five years at the piano bar, waiting for the music to begin and for their friend Roz Walanka to join them.

“Mostly they were saloons, and it wasn’t all ragtime either. Some of them were piano bars. When you work a piano bar, you’d better know 1,500 tunes. You’re playing requests. It was Gershwin. Cole Porter. Rodgers and Hart.”