Silvana Pampanini - actress and singer

Postwar pin-up who preceded Loren and Lollobrigida

Silvana Pampanini combined acting talent with
star quality to become Italy's best paid actress

The actress and singer Silvana Pampanini, who starred in more than 50 films and was Italian cinema’s biggest box office draw in the 1950s, died on this day in 2016 in Rome.

She was 90 years old and had been hospitalized for some weeks following abdominal surgery. Her funeral took place at the Basilica di Santa Croce in Gerusalemme, in the Esquilino district to the southeast of the city centre.

Born in Rome into a family of Venetian heritage in 1925, she had ambitions to become an opera singer, inspired by the career of her aunt, Rosetta Pampanini, a noted soprano who sang at many of the world’s great opera houses.

She enrolled at the renowned Conservatorio Santa Cecilia in Rome, where her male teacher was so struck by her physical beauty that without her knowledge he entered her for the 1946 Miss Italy contest, the first to be staged after the end of World War Two.

Though taken aback at first, Pampanini was a confident young woman and went along with it. Indeed, the audience were so appreciative of her curvy figure, green eyes and long legs that when the jury awarded the title to Rossana Martini, another future actress, there was a near riot and police had to be called to restore order. Later, the result was amended and the contest declared a draw.

Pampanini was unashamedly promoted as a sex
symbol during the 1950s Italian cinema boom

Beauty contests were fertile ground for movie makers in search of the next starlet and although Pampanini wanted to be appreciated for her singing voice as well as her visual appeal it was the latter quality that producers were so keen to exploit.

After her screen debut in 1946, her fame grew steadily and her photo frequently appeared on the front covers of Italy’s booming weekly magazines. Her father, who initially disapproved of her dream of becoming a movie star, soon changed his mind and became her agent. By 1951, when she starred alongside Delia Scala in Carlo Campogalliani’s musical comedy Bellezze in bicicletta - Beauties on Bicycles - and as the Empress Poppea in Mario Soldati’s comedy, OK Nerone, she was the highest paid actress in Italy and was making up to eight films per year.

Those titles unashamedly showcased her pin-up status but Pampanini was not without talent as an actress. Titles such as Luigi Comencini’s drama La Tratta delle bianche - The White Slave Trade - Paolo Moffa’s La principessa delle Canarie - The Princess of the Canaries - Gianni Franciolini’s Racconti Romani - Roman Tales - and Dino Risi’s Il Gaucho - The Gaucho - saw her perform opposite major actors such as Vittorio Gassman, Marcello Mastroianni, Totò and Vittorio De Sica.

La strada lungo un anno won
a Golden Globe in 1958

In 1958 she took a part in Giuseppe De Santis's La strada lungo un anno - The Road a Year Long - which won the Golden Globe award for best foreign film and was nominated for an Oscar in the same category.

She became popular as far afield as Egypt, Mexico and Japan as well as in Spain and France, where she was known as Niní Pampan. She became a worldwide symbol of Italian beauty alongside such stars as Lucia Bosè and Silvana Mangano, and later Sophia Loren and Gina Lollobrigida.

There were countless offers to take her appeal to Hollywood, but Pampanini baulked at the idea of spending hours learning English and turned them all down. 

Nonetheless, she travelled extensively, happy to be a smiling ambassador for Italian cinema In Europe, South America, North Africa and even the Soviet Union, often appearing on local TV shows or accepting invitations to be a guest panel member at film festivals. 

Although she was frequently linked romantically with co-stars such as Orson Welles, Omar Sharif, William Holden and Tyrone Power, she never married, despite having, in her own words, ‘more suitors than headaches’ in her life.

She rejected an offer of marriage from comic actor Totò because of his age - he was 27 years’ her senior. There were rumours of affairs with the Cuban leader, Fidel Castro, and Egypt’s King Farouk, who were both said to be smitten after meeting her.

Pampanini with the comic actor Totò, one of
a number of suitors she ultimately rejected

Pampanini was pursued with particular ardour by the Greek-born producer Moris Egas, who showered her with jewels and furs and other valuable items. When she ultimately rejected him, he took legal action to try to recover his gifts but lost the case.

Later, in an autobiography entitled Scandalamente perbene - Scandalously Respectable - she claimed that the love of her life had been an older man - another actor - who had died a month before they were to wed, but she declined to name him. 

Pampanini had a fiery temperament. After the Miss Italy contest that shot her to fame, she gave a radio interview alongside her joint-winner that had to be curtailed when the two began to quarrel and pull each other’s hair. Years later, at the Venice Lido Film Festival, she physically attacked a journalist who had been unkind to her in a magazine article.

Her career effectively came to an end in her mid-60s, when she gave up full-time work to look after her elderly parents. After they died, she moved for a while to Monte Carlo and lived in relative obscurity.  She made some TV appearances, the last of which was in 2002.

Rome's Parioli district is an upmarket residential
area notable for its tree-lined streets

Travel tip:

The Parioli district, where Pampanini lived at the height of her fame, is one of Rome's wealthiest residential neighbourhoods. Located north of the city centre, it is notable for its tree-lined streets and elegant houses, and for some of Rome's finest restaurants. The Auditorium Parco della Musica and the Villa Ada, once the Rome residence of the Italian royal family and surrounded by the second largest park in the city, can also be found within the Parioli district, which takes its name from the Monti Parioli hills.

The entrance to the historic
Conservatorio in Via dei Greci

Travel tip:

The Conservatorio di Santa Cecilia, where Silvana Pampanini trained as a singer, dates back to 1875. It was set up under the auspices of one of the oldest musical institutions in the world, now known as the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia, which was established in 1565. The Conservatorio can be found in Via dei Greci, not far from the Spanish Steps in central Rome. The Academy is located at the Parco della Musica in the northern part of Rome in Viale Pietro de Coubertin in the Flaminio district, close to the location of the 1960 Summer Olympic Games.

Also on this day:

Befana - Italy’s 6 January tradition

1695: The birth of oboist and composer Giuseppe Sammartini

1819: The birth of painter Baldassare Verazzi

1907: The first Montessori school opens in Rome

1938: The birth of singer and actor Adriano Celentano

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Moira Orfei - circus owner and actress

‘Queen of the Big Top’ became cultural icon

Moira Orfei rarely strayed from her trademark look, with
heavy make-up and a turban-style hairdo 

Moira Orfei, an entertainer regarded as the Queen of the Italian circus and an actress who starred in more than 40 films, was born on this day in 1931 in Codroipo, a town in Friuli-Venezia Giulia about 25km (16 miles) southwest of Udine.

She had a trademark look that became so recognisable that advertising posters for the Moira Orfei Circus, which she founded in 1961 with her new husband, the circus acrobat and animal trainer Walter Nones, carried simply her face and the name 'Moira'.

As a young woman, she was a strikingly glamorous Hollywood-style beauty but in later years she took to wearing heavy make-up, dark eye-liner and bright lipstick, topped off with her bouffant hair gathered up in a way that resembled a turban.  Her camped-up appearance made her an unlikely icon for Italy’s gay community.

Born Miranda Orfei, she spent her whole life in the circus. Her father, Riccardo, was a bareback horse rider and sometime clown; her mother, part of the Arata circus dynasty, gave birth to her in the family’s living trailer.  Growing up, she performed as a horse rider, acrobat and trapeze artist.

Posters for Circo Moira Orfei always
featured her face and first name

Her film career began the year before she was married, with minor roles in a couple of action movies based loosely on historical themes. Dino De Laurentiis, the producer of one of them, suggested she changed her name from Miranda to Moira, after which the director Mario Costa gave her a bigger part in a swashbuckling adventure movie, Queen of the Pirates.

The so-called sword-and-sandal genre, very popular in Italy at the time, remained her speciality until she was given parts in a couple of comedies written for the great Italian comic actor, Totò.

Thereafter, although the adventure epic remained her staple, her acting talent was recognised in several movies that fell into the commedia all’Italiana genre.

She was in a cast headed by Marcello Mastroianni and Virna Lisi in Mario Monicelli’s Casanova ‘70 (in which her cousin, Liana Orfei, appeared as a lion tamer), played alongside Virna Lisi again in Pietro Germi’s Signore e Signori, with Nino Manfredi and Ugo Tognazzi in Dino Risi’s Straziami ma di baci saziami (Torture Me But Kill Me with Kisses), and with Vittorio Gassman in the Dino Risi classic Profumo di donna (Scent of a Woman).

Meanwhile, Circo Moira Orfei went from strength to strength. With Nones presenting obedient lions or tigers, she presented the circus’s performing elephants.

As a young actress, Orfei was a star of
many sword-and-sandal adventure movies

Her animal acts gained silver and gold awards at the International Circus Festival of Monte Carlo in 1987, 1989 and 2004 and she became known in the circus world as Moira of the Elephants.

In 1969, she and Nones launched Circo sul Ghiaccio - Circus on Ice - a monumental production which combined a circus ring and a skating rink. A highly elaborate show featured frequent set and costume changes and an international cast of circus and stars.

Circus on Ice toured in a huge big top, the largest seen in Italy. Moving from place to place involved 10 tractors, 34 articulated buses, two special trains and more than 100 caravans.

Orfei retired from performing in the late 1990s, although she continued to supervise every detail of the business.  She suffered some setbacks, including a serious car crash in 2000 that left her with a broken leg and five broken ribs, and a stroke in 2006, which happened during a show in Reggio Calabria and required her to take more than a year off in recuperation.

Subsequently, her active participation in shows was limited, although she would usually parade round the ring at the start, welcoming the audience. Her son and daughter, Stefano and Lara, followed in the family tradition and became part of the show, he becoming one of Europe's foremost animal trainers, she a talented equestrian.

Moira Orfei died in Brescia in 2015 a month ahead of what would have been her 84th birthday, passing away in her sleep in her trailer, having continued to follow the itinerant life of the circus to the end. Her funeral was held in San Donà di Piave - 40km (25 miles) from Venice and about 60km (37 miles) southwest of Codroipo.

A crowd put at around 5,000 watched the funeral cortege, with a hearse drawn by four white Lipizzaners - the breed closely associated with the Spanish Riding School of Vienna - carrying her coffin to the tune of a marching band playing circus music.

The Villa Manin in Codroipo, once home of Ludovico
Manin, the last Doge of the Venetian Republic

Travel tip:

Codroipo, which used to be part of the Venetian Republic, is best known for the Villa Manin, once the family home of Ludovico Manin, the last Doge of the Venitian Republic, who governed from 1789 until 1797, when Napoleon Bonaparte forced him to abdicate. It was at the villa in 1797 that the Treaty of Campoformio was signed, marking Napoleon's victory, the fall of the First Coalition (of European states opposed to Napoleon), and the cession of Friuli to Austria.

A typically elegant street in the town of San Donà di Piave

Travel tip:

Elegant San Donà di Piave is one of the historical main towns of the eastern Veneto, although it needed substantial reconstruction in the early 1920s after being heavily damaged during the First World War, when the drawn out Battle of Solstizio took place on the banks of the Piave river. The municipality of San Donà had been established in 1797 as the administrative centre of one of the 15 cantons of the Treviso district. It was part of the Lombard-Venetian Kingdom from 1815 and during the Austrian domination it kept its position of county seat of the district. In the first part of the 19th century, the centre of the city underwent some development, with the building of palaces, commercial buildings and a new cathedral, dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary.

Find a hotel in San Donà di Piave with TripAdvisor

More reading:

How Dino Risi helped launch the career of Sophia Loren

Why Mario Monicelli was one of the greats of Italian film

The former pasta salesman who helped put Italian cinema on the map

Also on this day:

69AD: Vespasian becomes emperor of Rome

1401: The birth of Renaissance artist Masaccio

1872: The birth of priest and composer Lorenzo Perosi


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Peppino De Filippo - comedian, actor and playwright

Talented Neapolitan who lived in shadow of his brother

Peppino de Filippo enjoyed a successful
career on stage and screen

The playwright and comic actor Peppino De Filippo was born Giuseppe De Filippo on this day in 1903 in Naples.

A highly accomplished performer on stage in serious as well as comedy roles, De Filippo also had a list of film credits numbering almost 100, of which he is best remembered for his screen partnership with the brilliant comic actor Totò.

To an extent, however, he spent his career in the shadow of his older brother, Eduardo De Filippo, who after Luigi Pirandello was regarded as the second great Italian playwright of the 20th century.

The two fell out in the 1940s for reasons that were never made clear, although it later emerged that they had many artistic differences.

They were never reconciled, and though Peppino went on to enjoy a successful career and was widely acclaimed it annoyed him that he was always seen as a minor playwright compared with his brother.

When Peppino published an autobiography in 1977, three years before he died, he called it Una famiglia difficile - A Difficult Family. In the book he described his relationship with his sister, Titina, as one of warmth and affection, but portrays Eduardo as something of a tyrant.

Peppini, second from the right, with his father,
mother, brother and sister in about 1910

The son of Eduardo Scarpetta, one of the most prominent Neapolitan playwrights of the early 20th century, and Luisa De Filippo, he was born in a house on the corner of Via Giovanni Bausan and Via Vittoria Colonna in the Chiaia district of central Naples, about a 20-minute walk from Piazza del Plebiscito and the Royal Palace.

Yet he spent the first five years of his life being cared for by a nanny in Caivano, a small town about 14km (9 miles) northeast of Naples, and returned to his family somewhat reluctantly.

He made his stage debut at the age of six in a play written by his father, learned to play the piano and worked in various theatre companies as he grew up, meeting Totò for the first time in 1920 at the Teatro Nuovo in Naples, in the Spanish Quarter.

Married in 1929 to Adela Carloni, he became a father the following year and soon afterwards joined his brother, Eduardo, and Titina in forming the Compagnia Teatro Umoristico: i De Filippo - the De Filippos’ Humorous Theatre Company.

They were very successful, touring Italy, presenting new comedies to full theatres and enthusiastic reviews.

However, in 1944, after a number of clashes with Eduardo - one story was that Eduardo disapproved of his brother’s relationship with another woman, Lidia Maresca, who later became his second wife  - Peppino left the company.

Peppino de Filippo, right, with Totò, centre, in a scene
from their 1956 movie, La Banda degli Onesti

His own plays were lighter in tone than Eduardo’s and, some critics argued, superior work, yet he never achieved the same recognition for his writing.

On the other hand, he became a highly respected actor known for his versatility. His performances in Harold Pinter’s play The Caretaker and in Molière’s The Miser attracted glowing reviews.

Nonetheless, Peppino’s career tends to be defined by the high profile he achieved in film and on television.

His films with Totò, of which there were 16, though snubbed by the critics, were hugely successful, so much so that the popularity of De Filippo in his own right meant that several movies in which the pair collaborated, such as Totò, Peppino e la malafemmina and Totò, Peppino e le fanatiche, had his name in the title as well as that of his more famous co-star.

He worked with Federico Fellini - in Boccaccio '70, for example - and with Alberto Lattuada and also invented Pappagone, a character for a TV show, who represented a servant employed by himself, a typical character in Neapolitan theatre, whose phrases and jargon became popular sayings.

He married three times in total but had only child, his son Luigi, who maintained the family tradition by becoming an actor, director and playwright, producing and performing in many works by his father and uncle.

De Filippo died in Rome in 1980 and was buried at the Campo Verano cemetery.

The Naples waterfront to the west of the city centre - Chiaia
is the area behind the trees of Villa Comunale 

Travel tip:

Chiaia, where Peppino De Filippo was born, is a neighbourhood bordering the seafront in Naples, roughly between Piazza Vittoria and Mergellina. It has become one of the most affluent districts in the city, with many of the top fashion designers having stores on the main streets. It is the home of a large public park known as the Villa Comunale, flanked by the large palazzi along the Riviera di Chiaia on one side, and the sweeping promenade of the Via Francesco Caracciolo on the other.

An artist's sketch of the Teatro Nuovo in around 1900

Travel tip:

The Teatro Nuovo, where Peppino first met Toto, is located on Via Montecalvario in the Quartieri Spagnoli - Spanish quarter - of Naples, off the Via Toledo, a few steps from Piazza del Plebiscito. The original theatre was an opera house designed by Domenico Antonio Vaccaro completed in 1724. It specialised in the opera buffa genre and saw the world premieres of hundreds of operas in its heyday, including 15 by Cimarosa and seven by Donizetti. The theatre has twice been destroyed by fire, in 1861 and again in 1935.

More reading:

How Eduardo De Filippo captured the spirit of Naples

The brilliance of Luigi Pirandello

The versatility of Alberto Lattuada

Also on this day:

1540: The death of the artist Parmigianino

1902: The birth of Mafia boss Carlo Gambino


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Leo Chiosso – songwriter

Writer of lyrics and scripts was inspired by crime fiction

Leo Chiosso's hit Love in Portofino was the
inspiration for an album by Andrea Bocelli

Prolific songwriter Leo Chiosso was born on this day in 1920 in Chieri, a town to the south of Turin in Piedmont.

He became well known for the songs he wrote in partnership with Fred Buscaglione, a singer and musician, but Chiosso also wrote many scripts for television and cinema.

Chiosso met Buscaglione in 1938 in the nightclubs of Turin, where Buscaglione was working as a jazz singer. The formed a songwriting duo that went on to produce more than 40 songs.

However, their friendship was interrupted by the Second World War.  Chiosso was taken prisoner and deported to Poland, where he became friends with the writer Giovanni Guareschi, while Buscaglione was sent to a US internment camp in Sardinia.

It was only when Chiosso heard Buscaglione playing in a musical broadcast by the allied radio station in Cagliari that he knew his friend was still alive.

They were reunited in Turin after the war and continued to write songs together. Chiosso was an avid reader of American crime fiction, which inspired his lyrics and also suited Buscaglione’s amiable gangster image.

Chiosso's songwriting partner Fred Buscaglione
used to favour an 'American gangster' look

Their first hit was Che bambola in 1956, which turned humorous tough guy Buscaglione into a celebrity.

A subsequent hit was Love in Portofino, recently recorded by Andrea Bocelli and also the inspiration for one of his albums.

The last time the pair worked together was on the 1960 film Noi duri, which featured Buscaglione and the famous Italian comic actor, Totò. Chiosso wrote both the story and the script for the film as well as the lyrics for the songs. But while they were making the film, Buscaglione was killed in a car crash.

Chiosso’s career continued to be successful without his friend and he wrote the lyrics for many famous songs. He was involved with the making of the popular television music show, Canzonissima and he wrote stories and scripts for cinema. He wrote his last song in 2003, Quando piove sulla spiaggia - When it rains on the beach.

After having lived for more than 30 years in Rome, Chiosso returned to his home town in the province of Turin.

Chiosso died in Chieri in 2006 at the age of 86. After his death, Mondadori published a book he had been working on towards the end of his life, which was entitled simply, Fred Buscaglione.

In 2008 the Leo Chiosso Festival della Canzone was initiated.

Chieri's Duomo, the church of Santa Maria della Scala

Travel tip:

Chieri, where Leo Chiosso was born and died, is a small town about 11km (7 miles) southeast of Turin. One of the main sights is the Gothic-style Duomo built in 1037 and reconstructed in 1405, which is the largest in Piedmont and has a 13th century octagonal Baptistery. In 2002 Chieri experienced Italy’s worst civilian gun massacre when an unemployed gun enthusiast with a history of mental illness killed seven people and then shot himself in Via Parini in the town.

Piazza Castello is at the heart of 'royal' Turin

Travel tip:

Turin, the capital city of the region of Piedmont, has some fine architecture that illustrates its rich history as the home of the Savoy kings of Italy. The beautiful square Piazza Castello, with the royal palace, royal library and Palazzo Madama, which used to house the Italian senate, is at the heart of ‘royal’ Turin.

More reading:

How Andrea Bocelli conquered the worlds of opera and pop

The enduring talent of Adriano Celentano

Domenico Modugno - writer of the iconic hit Volare

Also on this day:

1173: Work begins on what would become the Leaning Tower of Pisa

1988: The birth of NBA basketball player Danilo Gallinari


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Totò – comic actor

50 years on, remembered still as Italy’s funniest performer

Antonio De Curtis - Totò - in a scene from his first film, shot
in 1937 and called Fermo con le mani (Hands off me!)

The comic actor Antonio De Curtis, universally known as Totò and still winning polls as the most popular Italian comedian of all time a half-century after his death, was born on this day in 1898 in Naples.

Totò had a distinguished career in theatre, wrote poetry and sang, but is best remembered for the 97 films in which he appeared between 1937 and his death in 1967, many of which were made simply as a platform for his inimitable talent.

Although he worked in dramatic roles for some of Italy’s most respected directors, it was for his comedy that he was most appreciated. He and the director Mario Monicelli, regarded as the 'father of the commedia all'italiana genre' enjoyed a long and fruitful partnership.

His characters were typically eccentric, his acting style sometimes almost extravagantly expressive both physically and vocally.  In his humour, he drew on his body and his face to maximum effect but also possessed an inherent sense of timing in the way he delivered his lines. Often, at the peak of his screen career with his characters so well defined, he would dispense with much of his script and simply adlib, giving free rein to the cynicism and irreverence that came naturally.

Such was his popularity that after his death from a heart attack at the age of 69 he was given funerals both in Rome, where he lived, and in his native Naples.  The crowd that witnessed his funeral procession in his home city was conservatively estimated at 250,000.

The movie poster for Guardie e ladri (Cops and
Robbers), which Totò felt was his best film

Born in Rione Sanità, a poor neighbourhood in the northern part of Naples near Capodimonte hill, he was the illegitimate son of a Neapolitan marquis, Giuseppe De Curtis, and Anna Clemente, a Sicilian woman with whom his father had an affair. The marquis wanted nothing to do with the woman's baby and refused to acknowledge Totò’s existence until his son was 37 years old.

By then, bitter at having been neglected by his real father, Totò had persuaded another marquis, Francesco Gagliardo Focas, to adopt him.  As a result, Totò inherited an extraordinary list of titles, which meant he could call himself Duke of Macedonia and Illyria, Prince of Constantinople, Cilicia, Thessaly, Pontus, Moldavia, Dardania and Peloponnesus, Count of Cyprus and Epirus, Count and Duke of Drivasto and Durazzo, although none had any real meaning and became just another source of jokes.

During his schooldays, it soon became apparent that his mother’s hopes that he would become a priest would come to nothing.  Totò spent much of his time seeking to amuse his classmates with his jokes and funny faces.  It was during his time at school that he acquired his misshapen nose, thought to have been the result of an incident in a boxing match.

By the time he was 15 he was appearing in small theatres in Naples under the stage name Clement, his act inspired by the comedy of his boyhood hero, the Neapolitan variety and café-concert actor Gustavo De Marco.

He volunteered to serve in the Italian army in the First World War, although when he was about to be sent to the French front, where so many soldiers died, he was so terrified by the warnings of homosexuality rife in the trenches that he feigned an epileptic fit and was discharged.

Totò with Franca Faldini, the girl he regarded as the
true love of his life

Returning to civilian life, he continued to seek opportunities to perform, although often the pay was poor and it was only his love of the theatre that kept him going. 

In 1922, he moved to Rome and it was there, on the recommendation of a friendly hairdresser who had a number of clients in positions to give him work, that he was given the opportunity to perform at the Teatro Sala Umberto, a prestigious variety theatre.  At the end of his debut performance, full of the touches that would become his trademarks, he left the stage to an ovation and returned for several encores.

Groomed to resemble a kind of comic Valentino, Totò took advantage of his popularity with female admirers by having a number of relationships. He had a particularly intense affair with a beautiful dancer, Liliana Castagnola, that was to end in tragedy. Jealous of the attention she received from other men, Totò decided to leave Rome to fulfil a contract he was offered in Padua, only to discover Liliana dead in her hotel room the following day from an overdose of sleeping pills, having recorded her heartbreak in a letter he found next to her body.

Totò was so stricken with grief and remorse that he arranged for Liliana to be buried in Naples in the family tomb, next to his mother and father, so that he would one day they would be reunited. When his wife, Diana Rogliani, gave birth to a girl three years later, in 1933, he insisted she be called Liliana.

It was not a lasting marriage. He filed for divorce in Hungary – it was outlawed in Italy – and they continued to live together only for the sake of their daughter.

Totò began a relationship with the actress Silvana Pampanini, who he met on the set of his first film in 1937, but it was with Franca Faldini, a beauty he saw on the cover of the magazine Oggi in 1951, that he eventually found what he claimed was his true love. Again it was a liaison scarred by tragedy. Shortly after they were married, in 1954, Franca gave birth to a son, Massenzio, who survived only a few hours.

Totò's death in 1967 was front page news

His films, many of which had his name in the title, earned him considerable wealth but he never gave up his stage performances and when his sight began to fail in his latter years it was thought that his decades of exposure to harsh theatre spotlights were a contributing factor.

He also composed poetry and songs, one of which, Malafemmena (Wayward Woman) is considered a classic of Neapolitan popular music.

Totò was buried at the Cimitero Del Pianto in the Poggioreale quarter of Naples, next to his parents, his son Massenzio and his beloved Liliana.

His films are still shown from time to time on Italian television and sell in DVD form.  His daughter has campaigned for the original family home at Via Santa Maria Antesaecula, number 109, to be turned into a museum.

Dusk in the Rione Sanità district of Naples, where Totò
grew up in the early years of the 20th century

Travel tip:

The Rione Sanità district of Naples, where Totò was born, was once home to some of the richest families in Naples, as the presence of some fine palaces is a reminder, but in more recent years has become a notorious slum area, with high unemployment and a dominant Camorra presence.  Its air of faded grandeur has attracted writers and film makers to use it as a backdrop. The director Vittorio De Sica, for example, used it as the setting for his neorealist film, The Gold of Naples (1954), in which Totò had a role, and for the comedy Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (1963), starring Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni.

Find a Naples hotel, B&B or apartment with Booking.com

The Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna is close to where
Totò settled in a well-to-do part of Rome

Travel tip:

Totò’s home in Rome was in Via dei Monti Parioli, in a leafy, upmarket residential area between the Pincio and Flaminio quarters. The area is home to several museums and art galleries clustered around the Via delle Belle Arte, including the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna (National Museum of Modern Art) in the magnificent neoclassical Palazzo delle Belle Arte (Palace of Fine Arts), designed by Cesare Bazzani and built between 1911 and 1915. The gallery houses some 1,100 paintings and sculptures of the 19^th and 20^th centuries.

Book your stay in Rome with Booking.com

More reading:

Why Mario Monicelli became known as the 'father of commedia all'italiana'

Silvana Pampanini, the postwar pinup who preceded Loren and Lollobrigida

Monica Vitti, the enigmatic star of Antonioni classics also excelled in comedy roles

Also on this day:

1564: The birth of astronomer and physicist Galileo Galilei

1910: The birth of circus clown Charlie Cairoli

1927: The birth of one-time papal candidate Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini

1944: Monte Cassino Abbey destroyed in WW2 bombing raid

(Picture credits: Rione Sanità by Alexandre; Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna by Helix84; via Wikimedia Commons)

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