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Mario Brega
Biography
Mario Brega (25 March 1923 – 23 July 1994) was an Italian character actor. His heavy build meant that he regularly portrayed a thug in his films, particularly earlier in his career in westerns. Later in his career, however, he featured in numerous Italian comedy films. Brega stood at 6 feet 4 inches (1.93 m) and well over 250 pounds (110 kg) at his heaviest but after the 1960s slimmed down significantly.
Brega was born in Rome. He was a butcher before he drifted into acting, where his heavy physique ensured him a plethora of character roles. Debuting with director Dino Risi, he then played some minor roles in Sergio Leone's Spaghetti Western movies: A Fistful of Dollars, as Chico; For a Few Dollars More, as Niño; The Good, the Bad and the Ugly as Corporal Wallace; and also as a gangster in Once Upon a Time in America. He appeared in many other Spaghetti Westerns, including Death Rides a Horse, The Great Silence, and My Name is Nobody. Later in his career he had comical roles with director Carlo Verdone, such as in Un sacco bello and Talcum Powder.
He died of heart attack in Rome in 1994.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Mario Brega, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Lorenzo Robledo
Biography
Lorenzo Robledo (3 July 1918 – September 2006) was a Spanish film actor, who made over 85 appearances in film between 1956 and 1982. He is a familiar face in Italian westerns, having appeared in a total of 32 Spaghetti Western films throughout the 1960s and early 1970s.
Robledo is probably best known for his roles in Sergio Leone's Spaghetti Western films of the 1960s and 1970s, portraying minor characters in the trilogy of films A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966), and Once Upon a Time in the West in 1968. He acted in many other westerns prolifically including the tortured sheriff in Four of the Apocalypse (1975).
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Angelo Novi
Biography
Angelo Novi (9 June 1930 – 6 May 1997) worked for thirty years as the exclusive photographer with some of the most known Italian film directors of his time, such as Bernardo Bertolucci, Sergio Leone, and Pier Paolo Pasolini. He studied at the Brera Academy in Milan, and from 1952 on, started to work as a photojournalist. The ability to capture the decisive moment, inspired by idols like Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Capa, is an important gist for his photographic style, which later honed in his work as a set photographer.
Novi told his own story through the scenic action captured by his photographs. Emphasis on the decisive moment, the contrast of proximity and distance, and the black and whites, are all attributes of Novi's work. With his photographs, Novi has made a comprehensive contribution to the cultural memory of the golden era of the Italian cinema. As a silent observer, he captured the moments at the film sets both behind the scenes and in action, revealing intimate aspects that cannot be found on the screen.
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Colin Davis
Biography
Sir Colin Rex Davis CH CBE (25 September 1927 – 14 April 2013) was an English conductor, known for his association with the London Symphony Orchestra, having first conducted it in 1959. His repertoire was broad, but among the composers with whom he was particularly associated were Mozart, Berlioz, Elgar, Sibelius, Stravinsky and Tippett.
Davis studied as a clarinetist, but was intent on becoming a conductor. After struggling as a freelance conductor from 1949 to 1957, he gained a series of appointments with orchestras including the BBC Scottish Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Orchestra and the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra. He also held the musical directorships of Sadler's Wells Opera and the Royal Opera House, where he was principal conductor for over fifteen years. His guest conductorships included the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic and the Staatskapelle Dresden, among many others.
As a teacher, Davis held posts at the Royal Academy of Music, London, and the Landesgymnasium für Musik "Carl Maria von Weber" (preparatory school for music) in Dresden. He made his first gramophone recordings in 1958, and his discography over the next five decades was extensive, with many studio recordings for Philips Records and a substantial catalogue of live recordings for the London Symphony Orchestra's own label.
Davis was born in Weybridge, Surrey, the fifth of seven children, to Reginald George Davis (a bank clerk) and Lillian Constance (Colbran) Davis. The family was musical, and he was exposed to music from an early age. He recalled: "I can still see Sargent conducting the first concert I ever attended. I can still hear Melchior in the final scene of Siegfried – an old 78 playing on my father's gramophone. … I can also remember the moment I decided to make music my life. I was 13 or 14 at the time and the performance was of Beethoven's Eighth. Doors were suddenly opened. I became totally involved, even obsessed by music, although I was frightfully enclosed by my likes and dislikes. Today I'm game for anything."
With financial assistance from his great-uncle, Davis was educated at Christ's Hospital in Sussex and then won a scholarship to the Royal College of Music in London, where he studied the clarinet with Frederick Thurston. His fellow-students included Gervase de Peyer, but Davis developed a greater interest in conducting. He was, however, not eligible for the conducting class at the college, because he could not play the piano. ...
Source: Article "Colin Davis" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA.
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Aina the End
Biography
Born in Osaka, Aina the End has a natural husky voice and unique expressions. In 2021, she released her first album "THE END," featuring entirely self-written and composed songs, marking the beginning of her solo career. In June 2023, she left BiSH, and is currently active as a solo artist.
In 2022, she took on the lead role of Janis Joplin in the first-ever Japanese production of the Broadway musical "Janis." In October 2023, she made her film debut as the lead in the movie "Kirie no Uta," directed by Shunji Iwai. In the film, she not only performed as an actress but also wrote lyrics and composed songs, releasing an album titled "DEBUT" under the name "Kyrie."
In January 2024, she held their first solo live performance since leaving BiSH at LINE CUBE SHIBUYA, with tickets selling out the day they went on sale. From March 2024, she embarked on a solo tour titled "Grow The Sunset."
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Claudio Scarchilli
Biography
Claudio Scarchilli (10 February 1924, Rome – 25 July 1992) was an Italian film actor who appeared in films throughout the 1960s. He acted in nearly twenty films within that decade.
He is best known in world cinema for his small roles in several of Sergio Leone's films, portraying Pedro, member of Tuco's gang, in the Spaghetti Western The Good, the Bad and the Ugly in 1966, and Once Upon a Time in the West in 1968.
His brother Sandro Scarchilli was also an actor and also appeared in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly in 1966.
He made his last appearance in 1970.
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Enzo Petito
Biography
Enzo Petito (24 July 1897 – 17 July 1967) was an Italian film and stage character actor. A theatre actor under Eduardo De Filippo in the 1950s in the Teatro San Ferdinando of Naples, with whom he was professionally closely associated, Petito also appeared in several of his films, often co-starring Eduardo or/and brother, Peppino De Filippo, brothers who are considered to be amongst the greatest Italian actors of the 20th century. Petito played minor roles in some memorable commedia all'Italiana movies directed by the likes of Dino Risi and Mario Monicelli in the late 1950s and early 1960s, often appearing alongside actors such as Nino Manfredi, Alberto Sordi, Peppino De Filippo, Anna Maria Ferrero, and Totò.
Although never a leading actor, he made a number of small appearances as character actors alongside Italy's leading film stars in films throughout the early to mid-1960s and is arguably best known in world cinema for his role as the store keeper in the Sergio Leone classic Spaghetti Western film The Good, the Bad and the Ugly in 1966. His roles ranged from storekeepers and cobblers to priests and homeless men. His role of most esteem, however, is perhaps as Napoleon in Sergio Corbucci's comedy Chi si ferma è perduto in 1963.
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Arcelia Ramírez
Biography
Arcelia Ramírez (born 7 December 1967) is a Mexican actress who appeared in over 50 films and television shows since 1985. At a young age she became interested in acting. She studied acting at the Centro Universitario de Teatro (CUT), from where she was prepared for several plays produced by the same institution, including La pasión de Pentesilea, La séptima morada, La noche de Hernán Cortés, Las mujeres sabias, Freda y otras griegas and Relaciones peligrosas. She lived in France from 2007 to 2011, a period in which she kept up her work pace, coming to Mexico to film movies as diverse as Arturo Ripstein's "Las razones del corazón" and Victor Avelar's "Cómo no te voy a querer". Meanwhile, her life in Paris was like that of a nameless woman who was beginning to raise a family.
Throughout her career, which began in 1985 with the film "El centro del laberinto", she has been nominated for important awards, such as the Ariel, at the Cannes Festival, at the Havana Festival, at the Latin American Film Festival in Lérida, among others. She has been nominated four times for the Ariel Award, twice for Best Actress (1997, 2000) and twice for Best Supporting Actress (2001 and 2003).
The first actress attended the Cannes Film Festival 2021 for her performance in the film "La civil", first fiction of the Belgian-Romanian director Teodora Mihai. In the film she plays Cielo, a mother searching for her daughter kidnapped by organized crime in northern Mexico. After the screening on July 10 at the Debussy Hall, Ramirez received an eight-minute standing ovation from the audience. An unprecedented and almost unbelievable experience for Arcelia Ramírez, she explained, so much so that it marked her life and brought tears to her eyes.
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Lee Van Cleef
Biography
Clarence LeRoy "Lee" Van Cleef Jr. was an American actor best known for his roles in Spaghetti Westerns such as For A Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly. Hatchet-faced with piercing eyes, he had declined to have his nose altered to play a sympathetic character in his film debut, High Noon, and was relegated to a non-speaking outlaw as a result. For a decade he was typecast as a minor villain, his sinister features overshadowing his acting skills. After suffering serious injuries in a car crash, Van Cleef began to lose interest in his apparently waning career by the time Sergio Leone gave him a major role in For a Few Dollars More. The film made him a box-office draw, especially in Europe.
Military service:
After basic training and further training at the Naval Fleet Sound School, Van Cleef was assigned to a submarine chaser and then to a minesweeper, USS Incredible, on which he worked as a sonarman.
After leaving the Navy, Van Cleef read for a part in Our Town at the Little Theater Group in Clinton, New Jersey and received his first stage role. From there, he continued to meet with the group and audition for parts. The next biggest part was that of the boxer, Joe Pendleton, in the play Heaven Can Wait. During this time, he was observed by visiting talent scouts, who were impressed by Van Cleef's stage presence and delivery. One of these scouts later took him to New York City talent agent Maynard Morris of the MCA agency, who then sent him to the Alvin Theater for an audition.
Van Cleef's screen debut came in High Noon. During a performance of Mister Roberts in Los Angeles, he was noticed by film director Stanley Kramer, who offered Van Cleef a role in his upcoming film. Kramer originally wanted Van Cleef for the role of the deputy Harvey Pell, but as he wanted Van Cleef to have his "distinctive nose" fixed, Van Cleef declined the role in favor of the part of the silent gunslinger Jack Colby. He was then cast mostly in villainous roles, due to his sharp cheeks and chin, piercing eyes, and hawk-like nose, from the part of Tony Romano in Kansas City Confidential (1952), culminating 14 years later in Sergio Leone's The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966)
Despite suffering from heart disease from the late 1970s and having a pacemaker installed in the early 1980s, Van Cleef continued to work in films until his death on December 16, 1989, at age 64. He was buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery, Hollywood Hills, California, with an inscription on his grave marker referring to his many acting performances as a villain: "BEST OF THE BAD". Description above from the Wikipedia article Lee Van Cleef, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Eli Wallach
Biography
Eli Herschel Wallach (December 7, 1915 – June 24, 2014) was an American film, television and stage actor, who gained fame in the late 1950s. For his performance in Baby Doll he won a BAFTA Award for Best Newcomer and a Golden Globe nomination. One of his most famous roles is that of Tuco in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966). Other roles include his portrayal of Don Altobello in The Godfather Part III, Calvera in The Magnificent Seven, and Arthur Abbott in The Holiday. Wallach has received BAFTA Awards, Tony Awards and Emmy Awards for his work. Wallach also has a cameo as a liquor store owner in Clint Eastwood's Mystic River. Wallach received an Honorary Academy Award at the 2nd Annual Governors Awards, presented on November 13, 2010.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Eli Wallach, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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