Lorella De Luca

Lorella De Luca

Lorella De Luca in the film Il bidone
Born (1940-09-17)17 September 1940
Florence, Tuscany, Italy
Died 9 January 2014(2014-01-09) (aged 73)
Civitavecchia, Rome, Italy
Other names Hally Hammond
Occupation Actress
Assistant director
Years active 1955–1984
Spouse(s) Duccio Tessari (m. 1971–94)
Children Federica Tessari
Fiorenza Tessari

Lorella De Luca (17 September 1940 – 9 January 2014) was an Italian film, television, and voice actress. One of the most recognized ingenues of Italian cinema during the mid-to-late 1950s, she is best known for having played naive young girls in dramas and comedies.

She was born in Florence, Italy and, following her "discovery" at age 14, made her acting debut in the Federico Fellini film Il bidone (1955). De Luca's breakout role, however, came a year later following her performance in Dino Risi's comedy Poor, But Beautiful (1956) and continued on in the genre, with appearances in Mario Monicelli films A Tailor's Maid (1957) and Doctor and the Healer (1957), as well as in Duccio Tessari's Spaghetti Westerns A Pistol for Ringo (1965) and its sequel The Return of Ringo (1965) with Giuliano Gemma.

Biography

Lorella De Luca was born in Florence, Italy on September 17, 1940. "Discovered" at the age of fourteen by a director who followed De Luca home, and convinced her father that she should be in films,[1] she made her feature film debut in Federico Fellini's Il bidone (1955) as Patrizia, the young daughter of middle-aged con man Augusto (Broderick Crawford).[2][3][4][5] She subsequently attended the prestigious "Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia" (Experimental Cinematography Centre) in Rome, and the following year appeared in what would be her breakout role in Dino Risi's Poor, But Beautiful (1956) alongside other young actors Marisa Allasio, Renato Salvatori and Maurizio Arena.[6][7] The success of the film made De Luca one of the most popular ingenues of Italian cinema; her freshness and grace endeared her to the public.[8]

De Luca was one of several women romantically involved with her Poor, But Beautiful co-star Maurizio Arena.[9] She co-starred with Arena in Il principe fusto (1960), a film which he co-wrote, produced and directed. Their relationship created a minor scandal when it was revealed by the Italian media that Arena, after publicly announcing his intention to wed Anna Maria Pierangeli, was also engaged to De Luca.[10]

She specialized in the character of the naive young girl, a kind of an Italian Sandra Dee, and appeared in a series of hit comedies: Fathers and Sons (1957)[11] and The Doctor and the Sorcerer (1957) by Mario Monicelli, the latter starring Vittorio de Sica and Marcello Mastroianni, Sunday Is Always Sunday (1958) by Camillo Mastrocinque, First Love (1958) by Mario Camerini,[12] Gianni Franciolini's romantic comedy Love on the Riviera (1958),[13] and many others.[8] In 1958, De Luca joined Alessandra Panaro and Mario Riva as a show girl in the popular TV quiz show Il Musichiere (The Musician). She also had minor roles in "sword-and-sandal" and "muscleman" films, often being cast as a princess or slave girl, such as Sheba and the Gladiator (1959) and Sign of the Gladiator (1965).[5]

With the beginning of the 1960s, De Luca received more and more roles in commercial films. She had a brief, but memorable, foray into the Spaghetti Western genre. In 1965, under the pseudonym "Hally Hammond", she had supporting roles in A Pistol for Ringo[14][15] and its sequel, The Return of Ringo, both directed by her future husband Duccio Tessari. De Luca appeared in nine other films directed by her husband, most notably, Una voglia da morire (1965) and Kiss Kiss...Bang Bang (1966),[16][17] between 1965 and 1978. After 1967, with the birth of their two daughters Federica and Fiorenza Tessari, in addition to her losing interest as a character actor, she accepted only occasional parts during the next decade.

Her last acting roles were in The Fifth Commandment (1978)[8] and the 1984 television miniseries Nata d'amore. She was actively involved in her husband's later career and was first assistant director in his final film There Was a Castle with Forty Dogs (1990). De Luca made one last appearance in Bonus malus (1993) and retired from the film industry after Tessari's death the following year.

Marriage

De Luca starred in a total of nine films directed by Tessari, whom she married in 1971, in addition to working behind the scenes as an assistant director.

Death

De Luca died on 9 January 2014, aged 73, after a long battle with a brain tumor, which had caused her to lose her vision sometime before her death.[18][19][20]

Filmography

As an actress
Year Film Role Notes
1955 Il Bidone Patrizia
1956 Sette canzoni per sette sorelle Giulietta
Napoli sole mio! Lorella
Roland the Mighty Alda/Aude
1957 Poor, But Beautiful Marisa
L'ultima violenza Lisa Carani
Gente felice Gioia
Dinanzi a noi il cielo Amichetta di Tom
A Tailor's Maid Marcella Corallo
I misteri di Parigi Maria, la Cantante
Doctor and the Healer Clamide
Poor Girl, Pretty Girl Marisa
1958 Tuppe tuppe, Marescià! Maria Paoletti
Sunday Is Always Sunday Maria Luisa Gastaldi
El hombre del paraguas blanco Esperanza
Il bacio del sole Teresa
Love on the Riviera Lina
1959 Poveri milionari Marisa
First Love (1959) Francesca
Agosto, donne mie non vi conosco Anna Moriconi
Sheba and the Gladiator Bathsheba, the Vestal
Ciao, ciao bambina! Proietti, Gloria
Costa Azzurra Lisa
La duchessa di Santa Lucia Fernanda, la nipote di Carmela
Quanto sei bella Roma
1960 Il principe fusto Angela
Caccia al marito Giulia
1961 Apolytrosis Eleni
Beauty on the Beach
1962 Charge of the Black Lancers Samal
La notte dell'innominato
1963 Taras Bulba, il cosacco Natalia
The Shortest Day Erede Siciliana
Shéhérazade
1964 Le fils de Tarass Boulba Nadia
1965 Una voglia da morire Marisa
A Pistol for Ringo Miss Ruby as Hally Hammond
The Return of Ringo Helen Brown/Hally Fitzgerald as Hally Hammond
1966 Kiss Kiss...Bang Bang Frida Kadar
1967 Per amore... per magia...
1971 The Bloodstained Butterfly Marta Clerici
1974 Tough Guys Anne Lombardo
1976 La madama
1978 The Fifth Commandment Mutter Redder
1993 Bonus malus Signora Altoviti
2009 A Greek Western Tragedy Herself Video documentary short
As an assistant director
Year Film Role Notes
1978 La morte risale a ieri sera (assistant director)
1978 Winged Devils (assistant director)
1990 There Was a Castle with Forty Dogs (first assistant director)

Television

Year Title Role Notes
1984 Nata d'amore TV mini-series

Video games

Year Title Role Notes
2009 Empire: Total War Campaign advisor (voice)

References

  1. ↑ "Discovery of Lorella De Luca." Cosmopolitan. Sept. 1961: 52+. ("Discovery of Lorella De Luca (left) reads like script: at fourteen, she was spotted by director, who followed her home, convinced father she should be in, films. Now 21, she is a talented actress.")
  2. ↑ Sadoul, Georges. Dictionary of Films. Trans. Peter Morris. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1972. (pg. 32) ISBN 0-520-02152-5
  3. ↑ Alpert, Hollis. Fellini, a life. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000. (pg. 104) ISBN 0-7432-1309-2
  4. ↑ Bondanella, Peter E. A History of Italian Cinema. New York: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2009. (pg. 150) ISBN 1-4411-6069-8
  5. 1 2 Hughes, Howard. Once Upon a Time in the Italian West: The Filmgoers' Guide to Spaghetti Westerns. New York: I.B. Tauris & Co., 2004. (pg. 20) ISBN 1-85043-896-X
  6. ↑ Rondi, Gian Luigi. Italian Cinema Today, 1952–1965. New York: Hill and Wang, 1966 (pg. 157).
  7. ↑ Cowie, Peter, ed. International Film Guide 1983. London: The Tantivy Press, 1983.
  8. 1 2 3 "Lorella De Luca". Biografia. MyMovies.it. Retrieved 8 January 2012.
  9. ↑ Gundle, Stephen. Death and the Dolce Vita: The Dark Side of Rome in the 1950s. Edinburgh: Canongate Books, 2011. (pg. 227) ISBN 0-85786-049-6
  10. ↑ Allen, Jane. Pier Angeli: A Fragile Life. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., 2002. (pp. 159–160); ISBN 0-7864-1392-1 ("The press claimed they were inseparable. However, when Arena publicly announced his intention of marrying Anna Maria Pierangeli, it was revealed that he already had a fiancée, a starlet named Lorella De Luca")
  11. ↑ Cardullo, Bert. Vittorio De Sica: Director, Actor, Screenwriter. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., 2002. (pg. 120) ISBN 0-7864-1135-X
  12. ↑ Maltin, Leonard. Leonard Maltin's Movie and Video Guide 2001. New York: Plume, 2000. (pg. 460); ISBN 0-452-28187-3
  13. ↑ Blum, Daniel. Daniel Blum's Screen World 1965. Vol. 16. New York: Crown Publishers, 1966. (pg. 185); ISBN 0-8196-0306-6
  14. ↑ Frayling, Christopher. Spaghetti Westerns: Cowboys and Europeans from Karl May to Sergio Leone. 2nd ed. London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 1998. (pg. 263) ISBN 1-86064-200-4
  15. ↑ Hughes, Howard. Once Upon a Time in the Italian West: The Filmgoers' Guide to Spaghetti Westerns. London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2006. (pg. 31); ISBN 1-85043-896-X
  16. ↑ Parish, James and Michael Pitts. The Great Spy Pictures II. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow, 1986 (pg. 178); ISBN 0-8108-1913-9
  17. ↑ Mavis, Paul. The Espionage Filmography: United States Releases, 1898 through 1999. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., 2001 (pg. 168); ISBN 0-7864-0861-8
  18. ↑ Obituary, hollywood.com; accessed 16 January 2014.
  19. ↑ Notice of death of De Luca; accessed 14 January 2014.
  20. ↑ Notice of death of De Luca; accessed 14 January 2014.

Further reading

External links

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