Walter Chiari - actor

Talented star with taste for high life

Walter Chiari had the bonus of 
good looks on top of acting talent

The actor Walter Chiari, whose passionate affair with the American superstar Ava Gardner in 1950s Rome is said to have influenced Federico Fellini in the making of his landmark movie La dolce vita, was born on this day in 1924 in Verona.

Chiari was an accomplished stage and film actor when he met Gardner on the set of The Little Hut, a 1957 romantic comedy that was British made and with a Canadian director but was filmed largely at Cinecittà in Rome.

Gardner was still married to Frank Sinatra at the time but the pair were estranged and she was open to romance. She developed a taste for the Rome nightlife around the Via Vittorio Veneto and her relationship with the handsome Chiari soon began to dominate the gossip columns. They were constantly harassed by photographers, some of whom felt the rough edge of Chiari’s temper.

Fellini supposedly based Paparazzo, the photographer who relentlessly pursues Anita Ekberg’s character in La dolce vita, on the antics of some of the real-life snappers who followed Chiari and Gardner’s every move.

Chiari, who enjoyed much success on screen and in theatre, mostly in comedy roles, was already a high-profile figure in Rome’s glitzier clubs and bars, often stepping out with glamorous partners. Among those with whom he was romantically linked were actresses Elsa Martinelli, Silvana Pampanini and Lucia Bosè, and the pop star Mina. He reportedly had a brief fling with Ekberg herself.

In his professional life, he was best known for his film roles in the aforementioned The Little Hut (1957), Bonjour Tristesse (1958), Chimes at Midnight (1966) and The Valachi Papers (1972), which brought him international acclaim. 

He appeared opposite Anna Magnani in Luchino Visconti's film Bellissima (1951), won much praise for the quality of his performances in the commedia all’italiana genre and worked with some of Italy’s leading directors, including Mario Soldati, Mario Monicelli, Luigi Comencini, Ettore Scola, Dino Risi, Alessandro Blasetti and Damiano Damiani.

Chiari's relationship with the American star
Ava Gardner (left) dominated the gossip columns

Fluent in English and as comfortable acting on stage as he was in front of the camera, he was an accomplished performer in musical comedy and enjoyed a long run on Broadway in The Gay Life, with lyrics by Howard Dietz and music by Arthur Schwartz. 

He starred in an Italian production of Neil Simon’s The Odd Couple and, towards the end of his career, won critical approval for his performances in more serious stage roles, in plays such as Marc Terrier’s Six Heures au Plus Tard, Samuel Beckett’s Endgame and Richard Sheridan’s The Critic.

Born Walter Michele Armando Annicchiarico, Chiari spent the early part of his childhood in Via Quattro Spade in the heart of historic Verona, where his father, Carmelo, originally from Puglia, worked as a security officer for the local authority.

On finishing school he took a job as a warehouseman at a car factory in Milan, where the family had moved when he was nine. He subsequently found work as a radio technician and a bank, where - already showing a talent for acting - he was sacked after imitating Adolf Hitler while standing on a desk.

His break in acting came on a night out at the Teatro Olimpia in Milan, when the revue he had gone to see with a group of friends was on the point of being cancelled because one of the actors was absent. Urged to volunteer as a stand-in by his friends, he so impressed the director that he was invited to join the company.

Chiari had a brief marriage to the actress
Alida Chelli between 1969 and 1972

It opened the door into a career in revue theatre that flourished after he moved to Rome. He demonstrated his versatility by taking more serious roles, too, which in turn created opportunities to transfer his talents to the screen. In fact, his debut movie, in which he played the lead role in Giorgio Pastina’s Vanità (1947), won him a Nastro d’Argento award as best new actor.

Apart from his regular appearances in the gossip pages, Chiari was at the centre of other scandals. In 1970 he spent 98 days in the Regina Coeli prison in Rome after being arrested on charges of cocaine use and cocaine trafficking. He was released on payment of three million lire bail and acquitted of all but the possession charge at trial in 1971.

He received a suspended sentence for possession, but even though he had been cleared of the more serious charges the scandal severely damaged his career. The national TV channel Rai dropped him from a number of shows in which he had participated and until the late stages of his career his only television work was for minor, regional channels.

After his death, it was revealed that he had served for part of World War Two in the German army, who posted him to northern France with an anti-aircraft unit. He was captured by the Allies after being wounded soon after the D-Day landings and sent to an American prisoner of war camp in Tuscany.

Chiari was married - once and for just three years - to the singer and actress Alida Chelli. They had a son, Simone Annicchiarico, who became a TV presenter.  Chiari died from a heart attack in Milan in 1991, at the age of 67. His funeral, attended by more than 3,000 people, took place at the church of San Pietro in Sala, near Milan’s Teatro Nazionale.

His tombstone in Milan’s monumental cemetery famously is inscribed with the words: "Don't worry, I'm merely catching up with sleep".

The Via Quattro Spade in Verona,
where Walter Chiari was born

Travel tip:

Verona, where Walter Chiari was born, is the third largest city in the northeast of Italy, with a population across its whole urban area of more than 700,000. Among its wealth of tourist attractions is the Roman amphitheatre known as L’Arena di Verona, which dates back to AD30. Just a five-minute walk from Chiari’s home in Via Quattro Spade, the arena has a seating capacity of 22,000, often selling out for open air opera performances and pop concerts. Verona was chosen as the setting for three plays by William Shakespeare – Romeo and Juliet, The Two Gentlemen of Verona and The Taming of the Shrew - although it is unknown whether the English playwright ever actually set foot in the city.  Each year, thousands of tourists visit a 13th century house in Verona where Juliet is said to have lived, even though there is no evidence that Juliet and Romeo actually existed and the balcony said to have inspired Shakespeare’s imagination was not added until the early 20th century.

The church of San Pietro in Sala in the Wagner
district of Milan, which held Chiari's funeral

Travel tip:

The church of San Pietro in Sala is in the well-heeled Wagner district of Milan, which has some expensive apartments and upmarket shops but is also seen as a trendy neighbourhood. The main shopping streets, Corso Vercelli and Via Belfiore, are lined with quirky boutiques and shoe shops, while the area has a lively vibe in the evening. One attraction is the indoor food market in Piazza Riccardo Wagner, directly opposite the church. The largest food market in Milan, it stocks all manner of gourmet treats and is not to be missed by food-loving visitors to the city. Situated about 3km (1.9 miles) west of the centre of Milan, a 15-minute Metro ride from the station in Piazza Duomo.

Also on this day:

La Festa della Donna - International Women’s Day

1566: The birth of composer Carlo Gesualdo

1925: The birth of priest and politician Gianni Baget Bozzo

1949: The birth of singer-songwriter Antonello Venditti

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Valentino Garavani - fashion icon

Designer favoured by the world's best dressed women

Valentino Garavani became interested in fashion
while still at primary school

The fashion designer best known simply as Valentino was born in Voghera, a town about 70km (43 miles) south of Milan in the province of Pavia, on this day in 1932.

The favourite designer of the world’s best dressed women from the 1960s onwards, he built up a business that he eventually sold for $300 million.

Born Valentino Clemente Ludovico Garavani, he became interested in fashion while still in primary school. After working initially for his aunt Rosa, with the financial support of his parents he moved to Paris to pursue his interest, studying at the École des Beaux-Arts and at the Chambre Syndicale de la Couture Parisienne.

His first taste of working life came in the salons of Jean Dessès and Guy Laroche.  Armed with the knowledge and experience he gained at the feet of two French masters, he left Paris in 1959 to set up his first fashion house in Rome, on the fashionable Via Condotti. He quickly gained kudos for his bright red dresses, in a shade that became widely known as "Valentino red."

In July 1960, Valentino met Giancarlo Giammetti at the Café de Paris on the Via Veneto in Rome. Giammetti, a little younger than Valentino and an architecture student, gave Valentino a lift home in his Fiat, starting a friendship that turned into a business partnership and a romance. The two met again on Capri 10 days later, after which Giammetti quit his studies to become Valentino's business partner. He was faced with the immediate task of saving his new friend from bankruptcy after a disastrous first year.

Giancarlo Giammetti

Together, the pair put the business on its feet, developed Valentino SpA into an international brand. Valentino made his international debut in 1962, at the Pitti Palace in Florence, which brought his designs to the attention of socialites and aristocratic women around the world.

Within a short time, Valentino's designs were considered to be at the very top of Italian couture. His client list included Queen Paola of Belgium, the movie stars Elizabeth Taylor and Audrey Hepburn, and the Americian First Lady, Jacqueline Kennedy.

After the assassination of her husband, the US president John F Kennedy, it was Valentino to whom Jackie Kennedy turned to design the dresses in black and white that she wore for a year after her husband’s death.  When she remarried to Aristotle Onassis in 1968, Valentino designed her white wedding dress.

Valentino opened his first ready-to-wear shops in Milan and Rome and kept his ties with Florence but spent much of the 1970s in New York, where in addition to his friendship with Jackie Kennedy his friends included the artist Andy Warhol and Vogue’s editor-in-chief Diana Freeland.

Valentino and Giammetti in
the the 1960s

In the 1980s, he launched the first Valentino line in children’s clothes as well as a collection of clothing for young adults which he named Oliver, after one of many pet pugs.

In 1989, he opened the Accademia Valentino, designed by architect Tommaso Ziffer, near his first workshop in Rome, for the presentation of art exhibitions. The next year, encouraged by their friend Elizabeth Taylor, he and Giammetti created LIFE, an organisation to support of AIDS-related patients, in association with the Accademia.

Valentino became known in the fashion industry as The Last Emperor, and he and Giammetti have become renowned for their extravagant lifestyle. 

Although in times they ceased to be a couple in a romantic sense in the early 1970s, they have remained inseparable as friends, maintaining at least 10 homes around the world, including an historic villa on Via Appia Antica in Rome, a chalet in Gstaad, Switzerland, an apartment on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, overlooking central park, a 19^th century mansion in Holland Park, London, and a Louis XIII château near Paris. They also have a 152-foot yacht. All their properties have extensive art collections.

Valentino's 152-foot yacht

Aside from fashion, Valentino has an obsession with dogs, specifically pugs. After he lost Oliver, he acquired six others, named Milton, Maggie, Maude, Monty, Margot, and Molly. When they travel with him in his 14-seat jet, each dog has their own seat. On arrival at the airport, wherever in the world it is, Valentino always arranges three cars to meet him – one for himself and Giammetti, another for their luggage and staff and and a third for the five of the six pugs. The sixth, Maude, always travels with Valentino.

In 2007, Valentino announced that he would hold his final haute couture show the following year. This show, at the Musée Rodin in Paris, featured many of Valentino’s most famous models, including Naomi Campbell, Claudia Schiffer and Eva Herzigova.

Since then, Valentino has worked only on commissions for favoured individual clients, such as actress Anne Hathaway's wedding dress in 2012 and the bridal gown worn by Princess Madeleine of Sweden the following year.

Travel tip:

Voghera is a town in Lombardy with slightly fewer than 40,000 residents. It has a 14th century castle, an 11th century Cathedral and a Museum of History that has on display a car belonging to General Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa, who was killed by the Mafia in 1982, and the weapon that allegedly killed Benito Mussolini. ‘The housewife from Voghera’ (casalinga di Voghera) is a phrase used in the media and political discourse as a reference to the average, stereotypical, somewhat lower-middle class Italian voter or consumer.

The Via dei Condotti stretches out from the foot of the
 Spanish Steps in the centre of Rome 

Travel tip:

The Via Condotti – actually Via dei Condotti – is a Rome street that takes its name from the conduits that carried water to the Roman Baths of Agrippa. Beginning at the foot of the Spanish Steps, it links the Tiber with the Pincio hill. Today, it is the street which contains the greatest number of Rome-based Italian fashion retailers, equivalent to Milan's Via Montenapoleone, Paris's Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré, Florence's Via de' Tornabuoni or London's Bond Street.

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