Friday, April 17, 2020

RIP Sergio Fantoni


Sergio Fantoni has died, a life for cinema and screenplays

la Repubblica
April 17, 2020

Actor, voice actor and director he was 89 years old. In his long career he worked with the greatest directors from Luchino Visconti to Blake Edwards, his last TV role was in Commissioner Montalbano

Sergio Fantoni has died, actor, voice actor and director who would have turned 90 in August. In his long career he worked with the greatest directors, from Luchino Visconti to Blake Edwards, he had a Hollywood parenthesis, but his popularity is owed to the scripts of the seventies and eighties such as Anna Karenina, La Piovra and La consciousness di Zeno. His latest TV role was as Sironi's Inspector Montalbano for the episode La voce del violino .

Born in an art family, in Rome on August 7, 1930, he initially thought of becoming an engineer or architect but his passion for theater prevailed and he began to attend experimental theater companies until he created in the seventies, together with Luca Ronconi and his wife Valentina Fortunato, one of the first independent companies. First, however, there had been cinema since the late 1940s and then over time with directors of the caliber of Luchino Visconti (Senso), Francesco Maselli (I delfini, alongside Claudia Cardinale), Giuliano Montaldo (Sacco and Vanzetti ), but also peplums like Esther and the King .

In the 1960s he had experienced a Hollywood parenthesis (which lasted three years, from 1963 to 1966) with appearances in films such as Mark Robson's Intrigue in Stockholm and Von Ryan's Express alongside Frank Sinatra, and then What Did You Do in the War Daddy? by Blake Edwards. In the 1980s he starred in the cult film The Belly of the Architect by British director Peter Greenaway. Fantoni worked on numerous television productions of important literary works and in television dramas which, particularly in the sixties and seventies, have had particular critical and public success. Sergio Fantoni's frontal full nude in State Crime, broadcast on RaiDue in 1982, caused a scandal.

In his long career as a voice actor he has lent his voice to American stars such as Marlon Brando (in Apocalypse Now), Henry Fonda (in Meteor), Rock Hudson (in Giant) and Ben Kingsley (in Gandhi). After an operation on his larynx in 1997 he dedicated himself to theater direction. Together with the playwright and director Ivo Chiesa and his colleague Bianca Toccafondi, he received the Lifetime Achievement Award named after Ennio Flaiano in 2002.


FANTONI, Sergio
Born: 8/7/1930, Rome, Lazio, Italy
Died: 4/17/2020, Rome, Lazio, Italy

Sergio Fantoni’s westerns – actor, dubber:
Giant – 195? [Italian voice of Rock Hudson]
The Badlanders – 1958 [Italian voice of Alan Ladd]
The Law and Jake Wade – 1958 [Italian voice of Robert Taylor]
The Magnificent 7 – 1959 [Italian voice of Robert Vaughn]
The Good, the Bad and the Ugly – 1966 [Italian voice of Jesús Guzmán]
The Price of Power – 1969 [Italian voice of Van Johnson]
Bad Man’s River – 1971 (Colonel Enrique Fierro)

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