Vittorio Gassman

Vittorio Gassman, Knight Grand Cross, OMRI (born Vittorio Gassmann; 1 September 1922 – 29 June 2000), popularly known as Il Mattatore, was an Italian theatre and film actor and director. He is considered one of the greatest Italian actors and is commonly recalled as an extremely professional, versatile, magnetic interpreter, whose long career includes both important productions as well as dozens of divertissements (which made him greatly popular). --- He was born in Genoa to a German father, Heinrich Gassmann, and a Pisan Jewish mother, Luisa Ambron. While still very young he moved to Rome, where he attended the studies at the Accademia Nazionale d'Arte Drammatica. Gassman's debut was in Milan, in 1942, with Alda Borelli in Niccodemi's Nemica (theatre), he then moved to Rome and the Teatro Eliseo joining Tino Carraro and Ernesto Calindri in a team that remained famous; with them he acted in a range of plays from bourgeois comedy to the sophisticated intellectual theatre. In 1946, he made his film debut in Preludio d'amore, the year after he appeared in five films. In 1948 he played in Riso amaro. It was with Luchino Visconti's company that Gassman achieved his mature successes, together with Paolo Stoppa, Rina Morelli and Paola Borboni. He played Stanley Kowalski in Tennessee Williams' Un tram che si chiama desiderio (A Streetcar Named Desire), as well as in As You Like It (by Shakespeare) and Oreste (by Vittorio Alfieri). He joined the Teatro Nazionale with Tommaso Salvini, Massimo Girotti,Arnoldo Foà, for a successful Peer Gynt (by Henrik Ibsen). With Luigi Squarzina in 1952 he co-founded and co-directed the Teatro d'Arte Italiano, producing the first complete version of Hamlet in Italy, then rare works such as Seneca's Thyestes and Aeschylus's The Persians. --- Gassman married three actresses: Nora Ricci (with whom he had Paola, an actress and wife of Ugo Pagliai); Shelley Winters (mother of his daughter Vittoria); and Diletta D'Andrea, by whom he had a son, Jacopo. In addition, he had an affair with actress Juliette Maynel (mother of his son Alessandro, also an actor). In the 1990s he took part in the popular TV show Tunnel in which he very formally and "seriously"' recited documents such as utility bills, yellow pages and similar trivial texts, such as washing instructions for a woollen sweater or cookies ingredients. He rendered them with the same professional skill that made him famous while reciting Dante's Divine Comedy. On June 29, 2000, Gassman died of a heart attack at his home in Rome, aged 77.