I actually didn't know any of the details about Dylan mentioned thus far. Only became aware of him during the hippie days, when he had already written, recorded and released many of his most memorable songs.

1. I was born in 1882 in Italy and emigrated to the US in 1903 landing in Boston.
2. I spent the ensuing 15 years between Boston and Montreal with a couple of stretches in prison for forgery and smuggling illegal immigrants.
3. In 1919 I began a very brief but meteoric business venture.

Lucky Luciano?

Not Mr. Luciano.

I was not involved with organized crime.

After a number of failed business ventures, I struck upon a potential arbitrage situation in which I could buy international postal reply coupons (a sort of prepaid international stamp) from outside the US and cash them in the US for more than I paid for them pocketing a tidy profit.

Since finances seem to be involved, is it Charles Ponzi?

Indeed it is Charles Ponzi.

It’s remarkable that in less than a year, Ponzi took his idea and turned it into millions of dollars from tens of thousands of investors. Ponzi never even tried to implement his arbitrage. At first he promised 50% returns in 90 days and later 50% in 45 days. For awhile it appeared he could do it, paying early investors with the money received from new investors.

Within a year the whole scheme came crashing down taking a number of banks and about 70 cents of every investor dollar with him. After serving his debt to society, Ponzi moved to Florida where he took to fraudulently selling swampland and was again arrested and again served time. Upon his release, Ponzi was promptly deported.

And it's amazing how many people since then have been bankrupted by the same scheme ...

I was born in 1933 to a poor family.

My father worked at a fish market and my mother was a cook and cleaner. I was raised in my mom's Protestant faith.

Sometime after my mother died, my younger brother and I learned we had an elder half-brother who suffered from severe epilepsy and had been kept in a mental institution his entire life. Although our mother regularly visited her first son there, even her husband (my dad) did not know the child existed.

At the age of 10, I acted in a school play production of Cinderella.

I left school at 16 and found work as a filing clerk.

I served in the army between 1952 and 1954, first in West Germany, and then on active service during the Korean War.

I was appalled by the human-wave attacks practiced by North Korea and China, which left me with the sense that their governments did not care about their citizens.

I got nothing.

No one else? OK, I'll give some more clues:

During the war I experienced a situation where I thought I was going to die, the memory of which stayed with me and formed my character.

I have stated that I would like to see the return of compulsory military service to help combat youth violence. Believing, in effect, that when you learn how to defend your country, you have a sense of belonging, rather than a sense of violence.

My acting career began at the age of 20, when I responded to an advertisement for an assistant stage manager who would also perform small walk-on parts for a repertory company.

Thought of Harrison Ford, but I am pretty sure he’s too young.

Sidney Poitier?

I described the first nine years of my career as "really, really brutal" as well as "more like purgatory than paradise.”

My first film role was as an army private in the 1956 film A Hill in Korea.

After that I appeared regularly on television in small roles.

Alan Alda?

In 1963, I tested for the part of a private in an upcoming feature film. The director thought I looked more like an officer than a private, and gave me the part of the officer instead.

Vic Morrow?