RIP Tullio Moneta

 Tullio Moneta dead, goodbye to the man of a thousand lives

Athlete, entrepreneur, mercenary, actor and spy: mourning in Macerata. From the war in Congo to the coup in the Seychelles, then cinema with Jack Palance and Roger Moore. "I was bored in Hollywood"

 

il Resto del Carlino

By Paola Pagnanelli

April 1, 2022

Macerata, April 2, 2022 - Tullio Moneta from Macerata died on Thursday evening in the hospital of San Severino. He was 85 years old, lived as if they were six lifetimes. Moneta was an athlete, trader and mercenary in Africa, then an actor again in Africa and in Hollywood, an entrepreneur and a spy.

He met movie stars and soldiers in the Congo, went from Rolls Royces to ambushes in the jungle, risking death on at least a couple of occasions. In the end he had returned to Macerata, where he had found many friends.

Born in Rijeka in 1935, he arrived in the city at the age of seven. Then in 1957 he moved to Umbria. Shot put champion, he was among the athletes competing for the Olympics. Knowing English and French, he found work for a French import-export company and, in 1961, he was sent to Sierra Leone, cruising the west coast from Senegal to Gabon. Then he moved to South Africa and started working for the cinema thanks to a series of lucky encounters. For a film he went to Congo, where there was war.

At the end of '64 in Kinshasa Mike Hoare of the fifth command was looking for an interpreter: he enlisted Moneta with the national army of Congo. "Months of training, meanwhile I saw weapons, trophies: I was enthusiastic", he recalled. With the fifth command he participated in attacks, ambushes against the Simba rebels. "I was wounded several times, in two cases they gave me up for dead. But I liked fighting, it was my nature. There were also ideal reasons, I always wanted to defend the West against Marxism. The strongest motivation, however, was the spirit of adventure".

Back in Johannesburg, he returned to cinema and TV, starting to act. He worked with Rossano Brazzi, Jack Palance, Roger Moore, Tippi Hedren, Richard Burton and Don Ameche.

"I had small parts - he said -, I was a military consultant for various productions, such as" The Four of the Wild Goose". I was in Hollywood, but I was bored to death". So he stopped acting, starting various activities, from construction to security for institutions and banks.

Meanwhile, he continued to deal with intelligence, with missions in the Soviet Union, in the Balkans, in the Middle East. In the 1980s he participated in an operation in the Seychelles. "There had been a shift to the left that worried someone. Mike Hoare and I were asked to put back the pro-Western president, deposed by the deputy. We were arrested for aerial piracy, convicted and released thanks to international negotiations."

After years of living in South Africa, where he has two children, he returned to Macerata in 2013. Here he had also enrolled at the university. "He spent the last few years between one hospitalization and another - recalls his friend Giorgio Rapanelli - suffering stoically until the end, which took place late in the evening of Thursday. He had always fought for the protection of Western civilization. He planned to educate young people to fight over this strategy, because he realized that our European civilization had been betrayed.

He said that "lordships and principalities" were imposed on popular democracies. So, even in the small of him, he wanted to do something to restore the rights of peoples. He always asked me, not being able to do it in person, to thank the social services of the Municipality of Macerata, the Acli, the Macerata hospital, the Marchetti clinic, Villa Pini and the Santo Stefano Institute, the hospitals of Civitanova for their help., Treia, Camerino and San Severino and the retirement home of Mogliano, where he had lived for a few months. Finally, an affectionate greeting to the various friends who collaborated with him in Italy, along with those from Macerata from his youth and those of recent acquaintance. "The funeral will then be held on Monday at 9, in the church of the Sacred Heart.

MONETA, Tullio

Born: 5/7/1937, Fiume, Italian Regency of Carnaro, Italy

Died: 3/31/2022, Macerata, Macerata, Italy

 

Tullio Moneta’s westerns – actor:

Three Bullets... for a Long Gun – 1970 (Moses)

They Call Me Lucky – 1973 (Diaz Almeida)