The first time I saw Joe Mantegna in the flesh he was in the flesh, naked as a newborn baby on stage at the Shubert Theatre in a 1969 production of "Hair." It was his first professional acting job in what is now nearly 50 years of steady and acclaimed work on stage, in films and on television.

"I have been very lucky," he says on the phone from California, where he and his family have long made their home. He will, he promises, be appropriately dressed Wednesday, when he will be honored by having the southeast corner of Hudson and Armitage avenues designated Honorary Joe Mantegna Way. On that corner is the River Shannon tavern and the building above it is where Mantegna once lived.