Mario Carotenuto - actor

Roman from theatrical family made more than 100 films

Mario Carotenuto forged a career
as a character actor in comedies

The actor Mario Carotenuto, who became one of the most familiar faces in the commedia all’italiana genre of Italian film, was born on this day in 1916 in Rome.

Carotenuto, who was active in the movie industry for more than 30 years having started in the theatre and on radio, acted alongside some of the greats of Italian cinema, including Totò, Alberto Sordi, Vittorio De Sica, Sophia Loren and Monica Vitti.

More often than not, he was cast in supporting roles rather than as the star, yet became respected as one of Italy’s finest character actors in comedy, winning a Nastro d'argento award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of The Professor in Luigi Comencini’s 1973 comedy-drama Lo scopone scientifico - The Scientific Card Player - which starred Sordi, Silvana Mangano and the American Bette Davis.

Carotenuto was born into an acting family. His father, Nello, made a living in Italian silent movies, while his older brother, Memmo, also had a long career in films. His nephew, Bruno, and his niece, Nennella, also entered the acting profession.

He made his stage debut at the age of eight but is said to have had a rebellious nature as a child and his involvement in petty crime and antisocial behaviour saw him receive part of his education in a reform school.

As he matured, he became fascinated with theatre and acting and alongside various jobs he took in order to earn money he was always on the lookout for opportunities to act, one of which came with a radio station in Florence, where he was given parts in radio drama productions.

Carotenuto's acting style was perfect for the 
highly popular commedia all'italiana genre

After the end of the Second World War, in which he claimed he joined the Italian Waffen SS in order to avoid being imprisoned by the Germans, he set up his own small theatre company in Milan before being discovered in 1956 by the director Giorgio Strehler, who wanted to entrust him with the part of Peachum, the king of beggars, in Bertolt Brecht's The Threepenny Opera. 

Carotenuto’s interpretation of the role gained the approval of Brecht himself and won him the San Ginesio Prize, awarded by a Milan-based magazine. He went on to have roles in plays by Shakespeare, Pirandello, Molière, Harold Pinter and Tennessee Williams.

After making his film debut in 1950, his ability to portray a broad range of characters soon saw him an actor much in demand, particularly in the comedy genre, working for famous directors such as Alberto Latuarda, Dino Risi, Mario Monicelli, Luigi Comencini, Luigi Zampa and Ugo Tognazzi. 

Ultimately, his most popular roles were those in which his character was one with which many Italians could identify in the years after the war, a character looking to make his way in a changing society in which generally people looked forward with optimism.

Carotenuto's simple memorial at 
the cemetery of Grottammare 

Federico Fellini used him as the voice of the actor Mario Cannochia in Otto e mezzo (8 ½).

Carotenuto had many television credits as well as his long list of movie roles but ceased to be active in either medium in the early 1980s, dividing his time between Rome and the seaside town of Grottammare in Marche, the home of his second wife, theatre actress Gabriella Cottignoli.

He had been married previously to Luisa Poselli, an actress, singer and dancer, with whom he had a daughter, Claretta, who went on to become an actress and director.

He died in Rome in the Aurelia Hospital in April 1995 at the age of 79, having for many years been ill with lung cancer.  His funeral took place in the Basilica of Santa Maria del Popolo - the 'church of the artists' - and was attended by many personalities of cinema and entertainment. His body was then taken to be buried in the municipal cemetery at Grottammare.

Rome's principal opera house, the Teatro dell'Opera
di Roma, was originally the Teatro Costanzi

Travel tip:

Carotenuto made his stage debut at the Teatro Costanzi in Via del Viminale, a short distance from Piazza della Repubblica. Today the theatre has a different identity as the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma - Rome’s main opera house. Built in 1879-80, it takes its name from Domenico Costanzi, a contractor, who financed the project. It was designed by the Milanese architect Achille Sfondrini, a specialist in the building and renovation of theatres. Built on the site of the house of the Roman emperor Elagabalus, the theatre was inaugurated in November 1880 with a performance of Semiramide by Gioachino Rossini.  Sfondrini paid particular attention to the acoustics of the theatre, the dome of which was adorned with frescoes by Annibale Brugnoli. As well as the world premiere of Pietro Mascangi's Cavalleria rusticana, the theatre staged the first production of Tosca by Giacomo Puccini in January 1900 and introduced Roman audiences to Puccini’s La fanciulla del West, Turandot and Il trittico as well as Richard Wagner’s Parsifal and Modest Mussorgsky’s Boris Godunov.

Piazza Peretti is the central square of the older part
of Grottammare, which sits above the resort

Travel tip:

Grottammare, where Carotenuto is buried, is one of the beach resorts that make up the Marche region’s Riviera delle Palme, a stretch of coastline around the larger town of San Benedetto del Tronto. It is notable for a fine, sandy beach but also for the well preserved remains of a fortress overlooking the town that was built following the sacking of Grottammare by the Montenegrin Princes of Dulcigno in 1525.  The centre of the older part of the town is Piazza Peretti, a square enclosed by the Church of San Giovanni Battista, the Town Hall, Municipal Tower and Teatro dell'Arancio.  A peculiarity of which the administration of Grottammare takes pride is that it sits on the 43º parallel, the line of latitude that also passes through the cities of Assisi (Italy), Santiago de Compostela (Spain), Lourdes (France), Medjugorje (Bosnia), Vladivostok (Russia), Sapporo (Japan), Buffalo and Milwaukee (United States).

Also on this day:

1961: The birth of novelist Gianrico Carafiglio

1986: The birth of heiress Allegra Versace

First Martyrs Day

Home

Raimondo Vianello - actor and TV host

Big-screen star who conquered television too

For many years, Raimondo Vianello was
host of Sunday night sports show Pressing

Raimondo Vianello, who enjoyed a career that brought success on the big screen and small screen in equal measure, was born on this day in 1922 in Rome. 

Vianello first rose to fame in the 1950s through a satirical TV show in which he starred with the great commedia all’Italiana actor Ugo Tognazzi, which was eventually banned.

From television he moved into movies, appearing in no fewer than 79 films in the space of just 21 years, between 1947 and 1968, some with Tognazzi, but also alongside other stars such as Totò and Virna Lisi.

His notable successes included his portrayal alongside Raffaella Carrà of a hopeless secret agent in Mariano Laurenti’s 1966 film Il vostro superagente Flit - a parody of Our Man Flint, an American production that was in itself a parody of the James Bond movies - and Michele Lupo’s comedy Sette volte sette (Seven Times Seven) in 1968, in which he portrayed an inmate in a London prison.

Vianello’s ban from television in 1954 followed a sketch on he and Tognazzi’s popular show Un due tre, broadcast by the Italian state network Rai, in which they sent up an incident at La Scala opera house in Milan the night before, when the Italian president Giovanni Gronchi suffered an unfortunate accident, lowering himself to sit in a chair next to the French president Charles de Gaulle without noticing the chair had been moved.

Vianello (left) with Ugo Tognazzi in a sketch from their
1950s satirical TV show Un due tre

Gronchi was not amused, however, and ordered the show to be cancelled. All was forgiven in time, though, and by the late 1960s Vianello was back on the small screen, this time in the company of his wife, the actress Sandra Mondaini.

Together, they hosted a series of Saturday shows on Rai which made them an extremely popular couple.

The next time Vianello left Rai, it was of his own volition, lured away to work on the commercial networks, which had become major players with the involvement of entrepreneur and future prime minister Silvio Berlusconi.

Vianello and Mondaini fronted quiz shows such as Zig Zag and Il gioco del 9 on Canale 5, and for eight years Raimondo was the host of Pressing, a Sunday night sports talk show on Italia 1. He also hosted the 1998 edition of the Sanremo Music Festival alongside Eva Herzigová and Veronica Pivetti.

But it was his best-known and longest-lasting TV programme, Casa Vianello, a sitcom which aired from 1988 to 2008 in Canale 5 and later Rete 4 in which he and Mondaini performed as fictionalised versions of themselves, based on light and never-vulgar humour. It became a show beloved among Italians of all ages.

Vianello and his wife Sandra Mondaini presented many
different shows together, including a long-running sitcom

Born in Rome, the son of Guido Vianello, an Admiral in the Italian Navy of Venetian heritage, he was brought up in Pula in what is now Croatia but which then was in Italian-controlled Istria.

As a young man he joined Mussolini’s Italian Social Republic, the Fascist state established in northern Italy after the country’s surrender to the Allies in 1943. He served as a non-commissioned officer in the Bersaglieri corps. In 1945, he was captured by American troops and detained in the Coltano prison camp near Pisa.

After his long career, he died in 2010, a month short of what would have been his 88th birthday. His funeral took place at the in the Chiesa di Dio Padre in Milano Due, the new town within the Milan suburb of Segrate built by Berlusconi. After the funeral the body was transferred to Rome, to be buried in the family tomb at the Verano cemetery.

Pula's first century Colosseum is one of many Roman
 relics in the former Italian city in Istria

Travel tip:

Pula is a seafront city on the tip of Croatia’s Istrian Peninsula, known for its protected harbour, beach-lined coast and some of the most impressive Roman ruins outside Italy, including a first-century Roman amphitheatre, whose imposing outer walls are the best preserved after Rome’s Colosseum, and the Temple of Augustus. The Colosseum hosts the centrepiece of Pula’s annual calendar, the glitzy two-week film festival. The streets of Pula’s historic centre contain a historical jumble of Byzantine chapels, weather-beaten Venetian townhouses and grand Hapsburg palaces.

Waterways are a feature of the environment created at
Silvio Berlusconi's Milano Due complex

Travel tip:

The town of Milano Due was the project that launched Silvio Berlusconi as a media magnate. Built by Berlusconi's construction company Edilnord in the 1970s, it is a residential centre close to the Segrate area of suburban Milan conceived by Berlusconi as a place for families to live in a safe environment, a system of walkways ensuring that its residents could reach any part of the community without encountering any vehicular traffic.  The town features many parks and waterways and every house or apartment was connected to a cable television system run by another Berlusconi company,  TeleMilano, Italy's first private television channel. TeleMilano was the project from which the tycoon would eventually grow his national TV company, Mediaset.



More reading:

How Ugo Tognazzi became a star of commedia all'Italiana

Virna Lisi, the screen siren who turned her back on glamour roles

Pippo Baudo, the TV presenter who became the record-breaking face of Sanremo

Also on this day:

1917: The birth of Sistine Chapel Choir director Domenico Bartolucci

1976: The birth of rugby star Andrea lo Cicero

1983: The birth of Olympic archery champion Marco Galiazzo



Home

Renato Rascel - actor, singer and songwriter

Film and TV star who wrote the iconic song Arrivederci Roma

Renato Rascel enjoyed a remarkable career as a
singer, songwriter and actor

Renato Rascel, whose remarkable career encompassed more than 60 movies, a hit 1970s TV series, representing Italy at the Eurovision Song Contest and writing one of the most famous Italian songs of all time, was born on this day in 1912 in Turin.

Rascel was Italy’s entry at Eurovision 1960 in London, singing Romantica, with which he had won the Sanremo Music Festival earlier in the year. Romantica finished eighth overall in London.

He is arguably most famous, however, for the song Arrivederci Roma, which he wrote for the 1955 film of the same name, in which he starred with the Italian-American tenor and actor Mario Lanza, which was subsequently released for English and American cinema audiences with the title Seven Hills of Rome.

Arrivederci Roma quickly became a favourite Italian song and scores of big-name singers recorded cover versions, including Bing Crosby, Connie Francis, Dean Martin, Dionne Warwick, Nat King Cole, Perry Como and Vic Damone.

Only a year earlier, Rascel had written the best-selling Italian song of 1954 in Te voglio bene tanto tanto (I Love You So Much).

Rascel performing at the Eurovision Song
Contest in London in 1960

Yet, those achievements were just one part of Rascel’s career in the entertainment business, a life he was born into literally. His mother, Paola Ranucci, gave birth to him backstage in a theatre in Turin, where he and her husband, Cesare, both opera singers, were performing.

As Renato Ranucci, he grew up in his parents’ home city, Rome, and sang in a choir at St Peter's Basilica.  At the age of 14, he began to play drums in ballrooms around Rome before breaking into the growing comedy revue scene as an actor, dancer and clown. His first major stage role was in the operetta Al cavallino bianco, by the Austrian composer Ralph Benatzky.

In 1941 he launched his own theatre company and he began to develop a distinctive kind of humour that became known as ‘non-sense’ and which won him huge popularity. He made play of his small stature - he was only 5ft 2ins tall - becoming known as the il piccoletto nazionale - The Tiny Italian - and exaggerated his smallness by wearing oversized coats.

One of the characters he created for his stage act was called ‘Il Corazziere’, an irony based on the fact that the Corazziere division in the Italian army recruited only soldiers over six feet tall.

His style of humour was seen as ideal for the big screen, where comic characters were all the rage. His movie debut came in 1942 in Pazzo d’amore (Crazy For Love) and began a new phase in his career that saw him appear in more than 60 comedy or drama features.

Renato Rascel starred in Alberto Lattuada's 1952
film Il cappotto (The Overcoat) 

These included Figaro here, Figaro there alongside the king of comic actors, Totò, Alberto Lattuada’s Il cappotto (The Overcoat), which won Rascel a Nastro Argento award for his performance in the lead role, The Secret of Santa Vittoria, in which he had played alongside Anthony Quinn and Anna Magnani.

Rascel continue his film career well into his 60s, appearing as the blind man in Franco Zaffirelli’s Jesus of Nazareth in 1977.

He also made his mark in a big way in television. When Rai began broadcasting as Italy’s first national TV network in the 1950s, Rascel was chosen as host for the first Saturday night variety shows, among them Rascel la nuit and Stasera Rascel City.

In the 1970s he achieved fame all over again when he was chosen to play the crime-solving priest Father Brown in a series based on the character created by the English novelist G K Chesterton. The series ran for several seasons.

Rascel died in Rome of heart failure at the age of 78 in 1990.

Carlo Mollino's modern auditorium is a feature of the
rebuilt Teatro Regio in Turin

Travel tip:

The main opera venue in Turin is the Teatro Regio, which opened originally in 1740 and was re-opened in 1973 after a long closure following a fire. Architect Carlo Mollino created a striking contemporary interior design behind a reconstruction of the original facade. One of the oldest and most important theatres not only in Turin but in Italy is the Teatro Carignano in Turin, which is believed to date back to 1711, although it has been rebuilt several times over the centuries. Today it is owned by the city of Turin and is used mainly to stage plays.

The facade, designed by Carlo Maderno, of the vast
St Peter's Basilica in Rome

Travel tip:

From conception to completion, St Peter's Basilica in Rome, where Rascel sang in a choir as a schooboy, took more than 150 years to build.  Suggested by Pope Nicholas V in about 1450, at which time the original St Peter's was near collapse, it was not finished until 1615.  Although the principal design input from the laying of the first stone in 1506 came from Donato Bramante, Michelangelo, Maderno and Bernini, contributions were also made by Giuliano da Sangallo, Fra Giocondo, Raphael and Antonio da Sangallo.  Michelangelo became involved with reluctance, ironically, after Pope Paul III's first choice as architect, Giulio Romano, died before he could take up the post and second choice Jacopo Sansovino refused to leave Venice.

More reading:

Why Totò is still remembered as Italy's funniest performer

The Oscar-winning talents of Anna Magnani

Mario Monicelli - the father of Commedia all'Italiana

Also on this day:

1937: The death of left-wing intellectual Antonio Gramsci

1942: The birth of the entrepreneur and film producer Vittorio Cecchi Gori

2014: The canonisation of Popes John XXIII and John Paul II


Home

Renato Carosone – singer-songwriter

Composer revived popularity of the traditional Neapolitan song

Renato Carosone wrote such classic songs as
 Tu vuo' fa' l'Americano and Mambo Italiano

Renato Carosone, who became famous for writing and performing Neapolitan songs in modern times, was born Renato Carusone on this day in 1920 in Naples.

His 1956 song Tu vuo’ fa’ l’Americano - 'You want to be American' - has been used in films and performed by many famous singers right up to the present day.

Torero, a song released by him in 1957, was translated into 12 languages and was at the top of the US pop charts for 14 weeks.

Carosone studied the piano at the Naples Conservatory of San Pietro a Majella and obtained his diploma in 1937, when he was just 17. He went to work as a pianist in Addis Ababa and then served in the army on the Italian Somali front. He did not return to Italy until 1946, after the end of the Second World War.

Back home, he had to start his career afresh and moved to Rome, where he played the piano for small bands.

Carosone's Tu vuo' fa' l'Americano featured
in a 1958 movie starring Totò

He was asked to put together a group for the opening of a new club and signed Dutch guitarist, Peter van Houten and Neapolitan drummer, Gegè di Giacomo, with whom he launched the Trio Carosone.

When Van Houten left to pursue a solo career, Di Giacomo remained with Carosone and they recruited more musicians to form a new band.

The band was popular both in Italy and abroad during the 1950s and the songs Carosone composed, many inspired by his native city, achieved high sales after being recorded.

In 1957, Carosone and his band started off a US tour with a concert in Cuba and finished off with a triumphant performance at Carnegie Hall in New York.

In 1960, Carosone made the shock announcement that he was retiring. He was at the height of his career and his decision caused uproar. It was even suggested that he had received criminal threats, but nothing was ever proved. Away from the music business, Carosone took up painting.

He made a comeback in 1975 in a televised concert. He then performed in live concerts and at the Sanremo Music Festival, continuing to make TV appearances until the late 1990s.

Carosone retired from the music scene in 1960 but made
a comeback at the 1975 Sanremo Music Festival

His biggest hits, such as Tu vuo’ fa’ l’Americano, Mambo Italiano and Torero were written in collaboration with the Neapolitan lyricist Nicola Salerno, who was known as Nisa. They developed a perfect understanding and it was said that after just a few words from Carosone, Nisa could write a funny story based on them.

Carosone's original version of Tu vuo' fa' l'Americano was performed by him in the film Totò, Peppino e le fanatiche (directed by Mario Mattoli, 1958). The song was featured in the 1960 Melville Shavelson film It Started in Naples, in which it was sung by Sophia Loren. It was also performed by Rosario Fiorello in the 1999 film The Talented Mr. Ripley.

The melodies of Carosone, influenced by jazz and swing, helped revive the popularity of Neapolitan songs, which he presented in a modern manner.

Carosone died in 2001 in Rome at the age of 81 and was buried in the Flaminio Cemetery in the city.

Carosone's boyhood home in Naples was in a street close
to the historic square, the vast Piazza Mercato

Travel tip:

Carosone lived as a child in Vico dei Tornieri, in the historic centre of Naples near Piazza Mercato, which is now a lively commercial area, but was once the setting for the city’s important executions. He studied the piano at the Naples Conservatory, which has been housed in a monastery next to the Church of San Pietro a Majella since 1826. The church and monastery are in Via San Pietro a Majella, which leads off the top of Via dei Tribunali.

The Cimitero Flaminio in Rome, where Carosone was
buried, is the largest cemetery in the city

Travel tip:

Carosone was laid to rest in the Cimitero Flaminio in Via Flaminio in Rome, which is also known as Cimitero di Prima Porta, and is the largest cemetery in the city. Prima Porta is a suburb of Rome on the right bank of the Tiber. An important marble statue of Augustus Caesar was discovered in the area in 1863.

More reading:

The classic songs of Cesare Andrea Bixio

Giambattista De Curtis - the man behind Torna a Surriento

Why Totò is still regarded as Italy's finest funny man

Also on this day:

1698: The birth of poet and librettist Pietro Metastasio

1929: The birth of film director Sergio Leone

1952: The birth of politician Gianfranco Fini

Watch Renato Carosone and his musicians perform Tu vuo' fa' l'Americano

Home

Angela Luce – actress

Film star and singer was born in Spaccanapoli

The actress Angela Luce has worked with
some of Italy's leading directors

Neapolitan actress and singer Angela Luce was born Angela Savino on this day in 1937 in Naples.

She has worked for the theatre, cinema and television, is well-known for singing Neapolitan songs, and has written poetry and song lyrics.

At 14 years old, Angela took her first steps toward stardom when she took part in the annual music festival held at Piedigrotta in the Chiaia district of Naples, singing the Neapolitan song, Zi Carmeli.

Her cinema career began in 1956, when she was only 19, when she appeared in Ricordati di Napoli, directed by Pino Mercanti. Since then she has appeared in more than 80 films and has worked for directors including Luchino Visconti, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Mario Amendola, Luigi Zampa and Pupi Avati.

Angela won a David Donatello award for L’amore molesto directed by Mario Martone and was also nominated for the Palma d’Oro at Cannes.

She has acted opposite such illustrious names as Marcello Mastroianni, Vittorio Gassman, Alberto Sordi, Vittorio de Sica and Totò.

Angela Luce (right) in a scene from Franco Rossi's
1960 film Morte di un amico

Her voice has been recorded in the historic archives of Neapolitan songs and she has won prizes for her singing. She wrote the lyric for the song Voglia, which, set to the music of Angelo Fiore, was awarded the Premio Unicef in 1984.

Angela has been quoted as saying she was ‘discovered’ by the Neapolitan dramatist Eduardo De Filippo. She has interpreted many significant roles from his plays in the theatre and appeared with him on Italian television in his play, Il contratto.

During a newspaper interview given last year on her 80th birthday, Angela said the occasion was a good opportunity to ‘thank God for giving her strength and health and a loud, clear voice’, so that she was able to sing without a microphone and, in church, without an orchestra.

The colourful street known as Spaccanapoli is close
to where Angela Luce was born

Travel tip:

Angela was born in Via Mezzocannone in the part of Naples known as Spaccanapoli, a lively area, rich with churches, historic buildings and bars. Close to her home is the main building of the Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II, known as Gesu Vecchio, which was built in the 16th century as a Jesuit College and became home to the University in the 18th century.

The church of Santa Maria di Piedigrotta
is in the fashionable Chiaia district of Naples

Travel tip:

Angela made her first appearance as a singer at the annual song-writing competition the Festival of Piedigrotta, held near the Church of Santa Maria di Piedigrotta in the Chiaia neighbourhood on the seafront of Naples. The competition was held to judge songs written in Neapolitan dialect and over the years inspired such classics as O sole mio, Funiculi, Funicula, Torna a Surriento and Santa Lucia.


More reading:

What made Vittorio de Sica a maestro of Italian cinema

How Vittorio Gassman was once called 'the Olivier of Italian actors'

Eduardo De Filippo and the 'essence' of Naples

Also on this day:

1596: The birth of violin maker Nicolò Amati

1911: The birth of film music composer Nino Rota

1947: The birth of controversial Lega Nord politician Mario Borghezio


Home

Fred Buscaglione - singer and actor

Fifties sensation who died tragically young

Fred Buscaglione sports the 'gangster' look for
 which he was famous in the film I ladri (1959)

The singer and actor Fred Buscaglione, a nightclub singer who became huge star of the pop world in 1950s Italy, was born on this day in 1921 in Turin.

Buscaglione’s style - he portrayed himself tongue-in-cheek as a sharp-suited gangster with a taste for whiskey and women - caught the imagination of an Italian public desperate to be entertained after the austerity of Fascism, when all ‘foreign’ music was banned.

He formed a partnership with the writer Leo Chiosso after their first collaboration, on a song called Che bambola (What a Babe!), resulted in more than one million record sales, catapulting Buscaglione to fame.

They had several more hits, including Love in Portofino, which was covered by Andrea Bocelli in 2013 as the title track from an album.

Born Ferdinando Buscaglione, he was from a creative family. His father was a painter and his mother a piano teacher. They enrolled their son at the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory in Turin at the age of 11 but by his teens Buscaglione had adopted jazz as his passion.

The songwriter Leo Chiosso collaborated with
Fred Buscaglione in his musical and movie career

His career as a singer and musician was going well and Chiosso was one of the friends he had made through his appearances in night clubs around Turin.  Their relationship was interrupted by the Second World War, which saw both taken prisoner. Chiosso was sent to Poland and Buscaglione to an American camp in Sardinia.

Although he was an enemy prisoner, his captors recognised his musical talent and he was allowed to play in the orchestra of an American radio station broadcasting from Cagliari. The experience gave him the chance to learn much about American music, particularly swing and the big band sound.

After the war, he made his way back to Turin, living in an apartment in Via Eusebio Bava in the Vanchiglia district a short distance from the centre of the city. He formed his own group, the Asternovas, and married a girl he met while on tour in Switzerland.

He and Chiosso became reacquainted, the latter having returned to Turin with memories of hearing Buscaglione performing on forces radio. It was Chiosso, an avid reader of American crime fiction, who encouraged him to develop his ‘gangster’ persona, for which he began sporting a Clark Gable mustache.

Buscaglione's wrecked Ford Thunderbird after the
collision in Rome that cost him his life

After Buscaglione became a popular nightclub performer, Chiosso arranged a date for them at a recording studio, after which Che bambola was released on a 78rpm shellac disc in 1956. With little publicity beyond word of mouth it sold more than one million copies.

Buscaglione made the most of his fame.  He had more hits from the pen of Leo Chiosso with such songs as Teresa non sparare (Theresa, Don't Shoot!), Love in Portofino and Whisky facile (Easy Whiskey), signed commercial advertising contracts and appeared in TV show and movies, including the 1960 comedy Noi duri (Tough Guys), which Chiosso scripted and which starred the Italian comic maestro Totò, as well as a beautiful young Italian actress, Scilla Gabel, with whom Buscaglione was romantically linked.

He appeared to have the world at his feet but tragedy struck in the early hours of February 3, 1960 when his lilac Ford Thunderbird convertible was in collection with a truck on a street in Rome, near the US Embassy.  He was taken to hospital but his injuries were so severe he could not be saved.

Only a few hours earlier, he had been out for dinner with friends and had met the upcoming star Mina Mazzini to discuss possible collaboration. Mina would go on to become Italy’s all-time biggest selling female artist.

Buscaglione’s funeral took place in Turin with tens of thousands of fans lining the streets. His body was buried at the Monumental Cemetery in the city.

The futuristic Luigi Einaudi Campus of the University of
Turin dominates the Vanchiglia neighbourhood

Travel tip:

The Vanchiglia neighbourhood of Turin, where Buscaglione lived immediately after his return from captivity in Sardinia, is an historic district a few streets away from the Palazzo Reale and the Mole Antonelliana. It is best known for the presence of the Luigi Einaudi Campus of the University of Turin and therefore has a high student population. With this has come an explosion in the number of bars and cafés and a growing music scene.

The Via Vittorio Veneto was one of Rome's most
fashionable streets in its heyday

Travel tip:

Rome's US Embassy is on Via Vittorio Veneto, commonly known as the Via Veneto, is one of the capital's most famous, elegant and expensive streets. The street is named after the 1918 Battle of Vittorio Veneto, a decisive Italian victory of World War I, and immortalised by Federico Fellini's 1960 film La Dolce Vita, which celebrated its heyday in the '50s and '60s when its bars and restaurants attracted Hollywood stars and jet set personalities.  Some of Rome's most renowned cafés and five star hotels, such as Café de Paris, Harry's Bar, the Regina Hotel Baglioni and the Westin Excelsior are located in Via Veneto.

More reading:

Leo Chiosso - the other half of the hit-creating 1950s partnership

The comedic genius of Totò

Italy's all-time biggest-selling female star

Also on this day:

1553: The birth of botanist Prospero Alpini

1941: The birth of actor Franco Nero

1955: The birth of composer Ludovico Einaudi

Home

Mario Monicelli - film director

Life’s work put him among greats of commedia all’italiana

Mario Monicelli directed his first film in 1949, which also
marked the start of his successful relationship with Totò

Mario Monicelli, the director who became known as ‘the father of commedia all’italiana’ and was nominated for an Oscar six times, was born on this day in 1915 in Viareggio.

He made more than 70 films, working into his 90s.  He helped advance the careers of actors such as Vittorio Gassman, Marcello Mastroianni and Claudia Cardinale, and forged successful associations with the great comic actors Totò and Alberto Sordi.

Commedia all’italiana was notable for combining the traditional elements of comedy with social commentary, often addressing some of the most controversial issues of the times and making fun of any organisation, the Catholic Church in particular, perceived to have an earnest sense of self-importance.

The genre’s stories were often heavily laced with sadness and Monicelli’s work won praise for his particular sensitivity to the miseries and joys of Italian life and the foibles of ordinary Italians. He claimed the lack of a happy ending actually defined Italian humour and that themes drawn from poverty, hunger, misery, old age, sickness, and death were the ones that most appealed to the Italian love of tragi-comedy.

Monicelli continued to direct films
into his 90s

He was part of a golden generation of Italian directors including Luchino Visconti, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Bernardo Bertolucci, Dino Risi and Luigi Comencini, and many of his films were hailed as masterpieces, including the caper comedy I soliti ignoti (1958), which was packaged for American audiences as Big Deal on Madonna Street, the satire La grande guerra (The Great War, 1959), which won him Venice's Golden Lion award, and the bitter-sweet drama I compagni (The Comrades, 1963), also known as The Organizer.

Monicelli was the son of a noted journalist, Tommaso Monicelli, and had two older brothers, one a writer and translator, the other a journalist. He attended the universities of Pisa and Milan, where he studied literature and philosophy, and after graduation became became a film critic and amateur film-maker. At the age of just 20 he made a feature-length film, I ragazzi della via Paal, which won an amateur prize at the Venice Film Festival  in 1935.

He spent 12 years as scriptwriter and assistant director, collaborating on some of the most celebrated Italian films of the 1940s, including Giuseppe De Santis’s Riso Amaro (Bitter Rice, 1949).

Monicelli’s debut as a director came in a collaboration with Steno (real name Stefanio Vanzina) on Totò cerca casa (Totò looks for a house, 1949), the first of several popular films the pair made starring Totò over the next four years, including Guardie e Ladri (Cops and Robbers, 1951) and Totò e i Re di Roma (1952). 

Totò cerca casa was typical of the genre, a farce set against the background of Italy’s desperate housing shortage. Guardie e Ladri caused controversy because it was about the friendship between a thief and a policeman, two men from similar backgrounds sharing similar problems, a concept considered so revolutionary that Monicelli had to appear personally before the sensors before it could be released.

Alberto Sordi (left) and Vittorio Gassman in a scene
from the tragic Italian movie La grande guerra

Totò e Carolina (1955), which depicted a young suicidal girl being helped by Communists, was actually banned for a year and a half, and was ultimately granted a certificate only after Monicelli had made 34 cuts.

I soliti ignoti, sometimes called Italian cinema's first true Commedia all'Italiana film, was his first hit. Starring Totò, it gave early comedy roles to Mastroianni, Gassman and Cardinale. Despite the lack of a happy ending, it was a success both in the United Kingdom, where it was titled Persons Unknown, and in the US, where it was also turned into a Broadway musical.

Next came Monicelli’s bravest and possibly most controversial film, the funny but poignant La grande guerra, a scathing satire of the First World War with Sordi and Gassman as peasants thrust into the bewildering world of battle, which opponents claimed would defile the memory of the 600,000 Italians who died in the conflict but once released was seen as a triumph, a film that at last dared to say that so many men, poor men who were badly dressed, badly fed, ignorant and illiterate, had gone to fight a war that had little to do with them and was ultimately pointless.  The film won the Golden Lion award at Venice, and, like I soliti ignoti, was nominated for an Oscar as best foreign film.

Totò (left) and Aldo Fabrizi in a scene from Guardie
e Ladri. They worked together in numerous films. 

I Compagni brought his second Oscar nomination and in 1968 came a third, for La Ragazza con la pistola (Girl with the Gun), which starred Monica Vitti as a girl who travels from Sicily to London intending to murder her unfaithful lover.

Amici miei (My Dear Friends, 1975), a tale of ageing friends who play jokes on one another to camouflage the realities of disillusionment, loneliness and failure, proved one of his greatest hits, breaking records in Italy and France. The following year he won his final Oscar nomination, for another Mastroianni hit, Casanova '70. 

His last feature film was Le rose del deserto (Rose of the Desert, 2006), the story of a group of soldiers in Libya during the Second World War, which he directed at the age of 91. Yet he had still not finished working, in 2008 directing a documentary entitled Monti, about his adopted neighbourhood in Rome.

A lifetime supporter of left-wing parties, he remained politically active until late in life, in 2009 calling on students to protest against the government's proposals to cut the culture budget. He described Italy's then prime minister Silvio Berlusconi as “a philistine” and "a modern tyrant".

Monicelli’s father, Tommaso, had committed suicide and when he was diagnosed with terminal prostate cancer in 2010, he decided he would end his life the same way, dramatically jumping from a window on the fifth floor of the San Giovanni Addolorata Hospital in Rome.

Italy's President Giorgio Napolitano said Monicelli would be "remembered by millions of Italians for the way he moved them, for how he made them laugh, and reflect."

Viareggio's Grand Hotel is a throwback to its heydey

Travel tip:

Viareggio, the seaside resort in Tuscany in which Monicelli was born, has an air of faded grandeur, its seafront notable for the Art Nouveau architecture that reminds visitors of the town's heyday in the 1920s and '30s. Thanks to its wide, sandy beaches, however, the resort remains hugely popular, especially with Italians. In addition, it boasts a colourful Carnevale, featuring a wonderful parade of elaborate and often outrageous floats, that is second only to the Venice carnival among Italy’s Mardi Gras celebrations.

Via dei Serpenti, looking towards the Colosseum

Travel tip:

One of Rome's oldest and most charming residential neighbourhoods, Monti retains a bohemian flavour with chic cafes and street food and alternative fashion shops. Occupying the area between the Quirinal Hill and the Colosseum, in Roman times the area was home to craftsmen but also to prostitutes and good-for-nothings and was hidden from the more refined areas of the city by a large wall. Nowadays, it is popular with architects, screenwriters and other creative types as one of Rome’s most fashionable central areas.  Monicelli’s former home in Via dei Serpenti is marked with a plaque.

Also on this day:

1945: The birth of business tycoon and former Inter chairman Massimo Moratti

1974: The birth of top-selling singer-songwriter Laura Pausini


Home

Pippo Barzizza - band leader

Musician was an Italian pioneer of jazz and swing 

Pippo Barzizza became known in Italy as the
'king of jazz' in the 1930s

The musician and bandleader Giuseppe ‘Pippo’ Barzizza, who helped popularise jazz and swing music in Italy during a long and successful career, was born on this day in 1902 in Genoa.

Barzizza was active in music for eight decades but was probably at the peak of his popularity in the 1930s and 40s, when he led the Blue Star and Cetra orchestras.

He continued to be a major figure in popular music until the 1960s and thereafter regularly came out of retirement to show that his talents had not waned.  He died at his home in Sanremo in 1994, just a few weeks before his 93rd birthday.

As well as arranging the music of others, Barzizza wrote more than 200 songs of his own in his lifetime, and helped advance the careers of such singers as Alberto Rabagliati, Otello Boccaccini, Norma Bruni, Maria Jottini and Silvana Fioresi among others.

In addition to his skills as a writer, conductor and orchestra leader, Barzizza was an accomplished player of a range of instruments, including violin, piano, saxophone, banjo and accordion.

A child prodigy on the violin, Barzizza was able to play a Mozart symphony almost before he could read. He listened to his father’s records - in those days phonographic cylinders - and had an enthusiasm for classical music and opera.

Barzizza, third from the right, with members of his
famous Blue Star orchestra

He continued to study music through secondary school and college, while at the same time obtaining high level qualifications as an engineer. By then he had acquired an increasing fund of musical knowledge and was at home on the piano or in the brass section as on the violin. While not studying, he was lead violinist at the Teatro Politeama in Genoa and played music to accompany the silent movies at the cinema near his home.

Living in Genoa meant there were opportunities to play not only in theatres but on cruise ships and ocean liners and it was when he sailed to New York that he first heard jazz and swing music.

In 1922 he joined the orchestra of Armando di Piramo, a famous conductor and arranger of the day, and though his career was immediately interrupted by national service he put his time in the Italian Army to good use by founding a military orchestra. After he was demobbed, he settled in Milan.

There he made his first recording, on the saxophone, and began to write music both for Di Piramo and others. In 1925 came the foundation of the Blue Star orchestra, which was to make him famous. Composed of musicians Barzizza had hand picked, applying exacting standards for their musical proficiency, Blue Star made their debut at the Sempioncino variety theatre in Milan in July 1925.

Alberto Rabagliati, the singer Barzizza
turned into a major star

By the early 1930s, Barzizza was already considered the "king of Italian jazz", his arrangements combining American swing with the traditions of Italian popular songs. He and Rabagliati, a young vocalist who was his discovery, were in the vanguard of a surging revival in Italian music in the 1930s and 40s.

Their fame accelerated by the popularity of radio in Italy, Blue Star toured in France and Switzerland and even Constantinople, generating financial rewards for Barzizza that enabled him to buy an apartment in the upmarket Pegli neighbourhood of Genoa for his parents and a smart Fiat car for himself.

After Blue Star broke up, Barzizza spent several years mainly in the recording studios. Then, in 1936, came an invitation from the state radio broadcaster EIAR - forerunner of RAI - to conduct the Cetra Orchestra, based in Turin, which soon became known as the best Italian jazz orchestra.

EIAR headquarters suffered serious damage during bombing in the Second World War, forcing the orchestra to move to Florence, but they were back in Turin by the end of 1943, although EIAR had been commandeered by the Germans.

After the war, Cetra’s activity continued and Barzizza began also to compose film soundtracks, working with great comic actor Totò among others. In 1948 he composed the soundtrack for Fifa e Arena, starring Totò and his own actress daughter, Isa Barzizza. The song Paquito Lindo, taken from the film, set a sales record for 78 rpm recordings.

Barzizza with his daughter, Isa, who would become a movie
actress, and son Renzo, a future director and producer

In 1951 he moved to Rome, the Cetra Orchestra ended and until 1954 he conducted The Modern Orchestra, with 50 musicians, whose number included a young Ennio Morricone.

Over the next few years Barzizza worked in London and Paris as well as Rome, while spending more time with his wife, Tatina, in Sanremo, where they had settled.

He continued to enjoy success. Indeed, while working with a line-up of 36 musicians in Rome in the 1960s he felt he produced some of the best work of his career, helping him overcome two losses in his personal life when the death of his father in December 1959 was followed only a few months later by a road accident that killed his son-in-law, Isa's husband, the screenwriter and director Carlo Alberto Chiesa. 

As the years began to take their toll on his own health, Barzizza nonetheless continued to work in a studio he built at his home, doing some recording but largely teaching.  He died at the age of 92 in 1994.

The resort of Sanremo, with the harbour in the foreground

Travel tip:

Sanremo in Liguria, the Italian Riviera resort that is famous as the home of the Sanremo Festival, is a historic Italian holiday destination that was one of the first to benefit when the phenomenon of tourism began to take hold in the mid-18th century, albeit primarily among the wealthy. Several grand hotels were established and the Emperor Nicholas II of Russia was among the European royals who took holidays there. The Swedish chemist Alfred Nobel, founder of the Nobel Prize, made it his permanent home.

The promenade at Pegli, an upmarket area of Genoa

Travel tip:

Pegli is still a mainly residential area of Genoa but boasts a lively seafront promenade and a number of hotels. There are good links by road, rail and boat to the central area of Genoa, a bustling commercial city built around its busy port, but which offers many historic attractions, the most notable of which is probably the Cathedral of San Lorenzo, with its striking black slate and white marble exterior, originally built in the sixth century.

Home

Mimmo Jodice - photographer

Camera work with shades of metaphysical art

Mimmo Jodice celebrates his
84th birthday today

Domenico ‘Mimmo’ Jodice, who has been a major influence on artistic photography in Italy for half a century, was born on this day in 1934 in Naples.

Jodice, who was professor of photography at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Napoli from 1969 to 1996, is best known for his atmospheric photographs of urban scenes, especially in his home city.

Often these pictures reflected his fascination with how Italian cities habitually mix the present and the future with echoes of the past in their urban landscapes, with the incongruous juxtapositions of ancient and modern that were characteristic of metaphysical art occurring naturally as part of urban evolution.

His books Vedute di Napoli (Views of Naples) and Lost in Seeing: Dreams and Visions of Italy have been international bestsellers and he has exhibited his work all over the world.

Born in the Sanità district of Naples, Jodice was the second of four children. His father died when he was still a boy and the requirement that he find work as soon as he was able meant he had only a limited education.

Jodice is best known for his photographs of Naples

Nonetheless, he was drawn towards art and the theatre, classical music and jazz and read as much as he could to expand his knowledge. He also taught himself to draw and paint.

He took up photography in the late 1950s and became part of the avant-garde revival that took hold in Italy in the 1960s.  Through his friendship with the Naples gallerist Lucio Amelio, he was introduced to artistic styles such as Pop art, Arte Povera and Fluxus, becoming acquainted with important contemporary artists such as Andy Warhol, Joseph Beuys and Robert Rauschenberg.

He exhibited his work for the first time at Libreria La Mandragola in Naples in 1967 and took a collection to the Teatro Spento in Urbino the following year. As interest in his photography spread, he began to take his work to many more locations in Italy, and eventually beyond.

Having at one time specialised in portraits and nudes, he began using his photography to highlight the poor conditions in which some people lived in Naples, particularly after the city’s widespread social deprivation sparked a cholera outbreak in 1973.

The disease was linked to poor sanitation and the consumption of seafood caught in waters badly polluted by the city’s antiquated sewerage system.

Jodice's collection Vedute di Napoli was a bestseller

Jodice’s focus on social conditions continued until the 1980s, when he began to concentrate more on urban landscapes, where buildings and ancient relics became the focal point of his work rather than people.

His Vedute di Napoli, published in 1980, was the first of many collections which captured the spirit of his home city.  He also took wonderfully atmospheric pictures in Venice and Paris and many other settings.

He worked with the concept of time connecting the old with the new, run-down monuments with modern cities.  His tour de force, Lost in Seeing: Dreams and Visions of Italy, which brought together photographs from his urban and rural collections in Italy, was described by one reviewer as “photos representing metaphysical visions interweaving signs of the past as they return to inhabit the present”.

In the 1990s, Jodice became also a photographer of art and architecture, producing series that highlighted the works of such giants as Michelangelo and Canova, and backdrops such as Paestum, Pompei and historic Naples.

Jodice grew up in the Rione Sanità  neighbourhood 

Travel tips:

The Rione Sanità area of Naples, also known as Stella, to the north of the city near Capodimonte hill, has been alternately wealthy and poor. Once the chosen location for aristocratic Neapolitans to build villas, in more recent times it has had the reputation as one of the most run-down neighbourhoods, rife with crime and with high unemployment. But there are projects under way to try to give the area new life, to which Mimmo Jodice has contributed with fund-raising exhibitions. As well as being his home, it was also the area in which the comic actor Totò grew up.

Hotels in Naples by Booking.com

The Accademia di Belle Arti in Naples

Travel tip:

The Accademia di Belle Arti is in the San Lorenzo district, north of Piazza Dante. Founded in 1752, it is one of the oldest academies in Europe. Situated in Via Santa Maria di Costantinopoli, it is at the heart of an area rich in cultural attractions, including the National Archaeological Museum, the Prince of Naples Gallery, the conservatory of San Pietro a Majella and the Teatro Bellini.

Search for a Naples hotel with Tripadvisor

More reading:

How Giorgio de Chirico founded the scuola metafisica

The futurist visions of Carlo Carrà

Felice Beato - the world's first war photographer

Also on this day:

1926: The birth of satirical playwright Dario Fo


Home