RIP Maria Grazia Spina

 

Farewell to the Venetian actress Grazia Maria Spina: a life of arts, marked by beauty

Cinema, TV, theater: a brilliant and intense career, in which gossip also had space. She passed away at the age of 89

Messaggero

March 13, 2025

 

I am a Venetian actress. It is perhaps to my city that I owe my profession: the Theatre. The knowledge of Venetian has helped me a lot to interpret the works of what is certainly our greatest playwright: Carlo Goldoni. I was still attending the Art School at the Academy of Venice, when the director of the University Theatre of Ca' Foscari, Giovanni Poli, wanted me in a role in "Le donne gelose" by Carlo Goldoni and in Rosetta in "Con l'amore non si scherza" by Alfred de Musset. Certainly, at the time, I was more interested in the world of painters; my teachers: Saetti and Cesetti”.

This is how Grazia Maria Spina wrote about herself, about her career, her artistic experiences, the meaning of a path. One of the most beautiful and well-known actresses of a distant Italy, from the economic boom, has died. Goldonian actress of the highest level, she was 89 years old. Her golden period goes from the end of the fifties to the early eighties. A brilliant and intense career, in which gossip also had space: a relationship with the director Pasquale Campanile party, an unveiling service in October 1970 for Playmen magazine. In 1997 she received the honor of Commendatore.

She had set up her own website, years ago, in which she tells her story. "I used to go to the house of the great abstract painter Mario De Luigi, because I went to school with his daughter Caterina, still my great friend and talented art historian. In their house I met the painter Tancredi, who was innocent as a child and then under contract to the collector Peggy Guggenheim. Along the Zattere I saw De Pisis, Guidi, Carena and Vedova walking in the sun. If I hadn't, almost for fun, started acting, I would have tried to follow their path and paint. But by then the great passion for cinema had broken out. I participated in 33 films, not all of them beautiful, but certainly decent. In particular, one is dear to me and every now and then they broadcast it on TV: "Totò Against the Black Pirate". Probably, if it hadn't been for Totò, I would probably hardly not be remembered; but Totò was there. And he has a clear, affectionate, admiring memory of him”.

In the cinema she was also in “Rugantino” with Adriano Celentano. On television she was a regular presence of what today we would call fiction, and which were then scripted. She won the audition in Milan for the production of "The Lady of the Camellias" (role of Micia) by A. Dumas, then added this medium to theater and cinema. On TV she is remembered in "The Adventures of Nicola Nickleby" by C. Dickens (scripted), "The late Mattia Pascal" by Pirandello (scripted), "Life with Father and Mother" with Paolo Stoppa and Rina Morelli (script), "David Copperfield" by C. Dickens with Giancarlo Giannini (script), "Whoever You Are", "The Return of Casanova" by Schnitzler, "The Woman of Flowers", many comedies, but also "Sanremo 1965" with Mike Bongiorno, "Biblioteca di Studio Uno", "Dizionarietto musicale".

In the theater she has worked alongside the greatest: Renzo Ricci, Salvo Randone, Memo Benassi, Alberto Lionello, Lina Volonghi, Vittorio Gassman, Giancarlo Sbragia, Aroldo Tieri, Alberto Lupo, Paolo Stoppa, Rina Morelli, Lilla Brignone, Eva Magni, Diana Torrieri, Lia Zoppelli, Valeria Valeri.

Vittorio Gassman was looking for a young actress to replace Anna Maria Ferrero in Trieste, in Anouilh's "Ornifile". “That very comedy I made my debut at La Fenice in Venice. It would seem like a fairy tale, and perhaps it was the most beautiful fairy tale of my life. In twenty months, I had made an acrobatic leap: from the small cold and uncomfortable theaters to the large theater where prose was rarely hosted, mainly the house of music. It would seem like a fantasy of my mind and instead there are many witnesses: my Venetians, my parents, my brothers and the gratifying theater critics... I returned to La Fenice in 1968 with Goldoni's "One of the Last Evenings of Carnovale"; and with two shows by the Teatro Stabile di Genova, directed by Luigi Squarzina, with which I then toured the whole world, they had been so successful: Paris, London, Vienna, Moscow, Leningrad (now St. Petersburg)”.

Starting in 1991 she stopped acting: in her life, as in a circle, art had returned: she had become an appreciated painter, because "No one escapes their destiny", as she commented with a smile. She had exhibited in Rome and Cortona (where she had moved), developing works with collage and mixed media. A life of arts, marked by beauty.

SPINA, Maria Grazia (Maria Grazia Spinazzi)

Born: 6/3/1936, Venice, Veneto, Italy

Died: 3/13/2025, Padua, Veneto, Italy

 

Maria Grazia Spina’s western – actress:

Samson and the Slave Queen – 1963 (Isabella de Alazon)

RIP Pierluigi Sangalli

 

Farewell to Pier Luigi Sangalli, the father of Geppo and Popeye

A protagonist of the world of comics in Italy has died at the age of 86: he also signed on Felix, Topo Gigio and Superboy. The funeral on Saturday in Villasanta.

il Cittadino

3/14/2025

 

A life for pencils, which began at school, when he portrayed his classmates. Then he never stopped and became one of the protagonists of Italian comics. The world of comics that has to say goodbye to Pier Luigi Sangalli, father of Popeye and many other characters who have studded the imagination of generations of Italians: he passed away on Thursday 13 March, at the age of 86.

Raised in Villasanta, the municipality where he still lived, he was born in Monza in November 1938. As the Brianza-based Fossati Foundation, which manages the Wow space in Milan (Museum of Comics), recalls, around 1954 he had begun to make caricatures of friends and teachers, on the desks that would have guaranteed him a diploma as a commercial expert. But that was not his path, at least the one he dreamed of: and in fact immediately after the certificate, in 1958, he began to collaborate with the magazine Soldino of the Il Ponte editions founded by Renato Bianconi and began to draw characters such as Blick and Block, Devy Crock, Pignatta, Giannina Calamity and the famous Geppo, for which he also wrote the screenplays: he is the little devil such by misfortune, because he falls from heaven unconscious at the revolt of Satan, whose attempts at "devilry" turn into good deeds. Geppo then became a title in its own right in 1960, with Alberico Motta, and thus were born the snake Salvatore, Beelzebub, the cat Caligula "and characters for complementary stories such as Zurlino, Marinetto, Superboy, Merlotto, prof. Rotella, Al Gallina, Baciccia, Trachea and Dormy West", writes the Foundation chaired by Luigi Bona.

Farewell to Pierluigi Sangalli: the funeral on Saturday in Villasanta

In 1963 the adventure of the production of Popeye's stories began, which would end only in 1998, in which Pier Luigi Sangalli was an essential illustrator: another Bianconi editorial acronym, Gem, i.e. Grafica editoriale Metro, sent them to the newsstands: there the Villasante also designed all the covers. Among the other characters who passed through his pencils, Provolino, Felix, Pinocchio, Chico and Saruzzo. Between 1993 and 1997 he also produced the stories of Topo Gigio for FPM Editore.

"The world of Italian comics loses a great author – wrote the My Comics news page – who contributed copiously to marking a golden age (he was active from the 50s to the 90s of the last century): Felix, Trottolino, Nonna Abelarda, Mago Merlotto and many others mourn his death from their fantastic world". The funeral will be celebrated on Saturday 15 March at 3.30 pm in the parish church of Sant'Anastasia in Villasanta.

"Pier Luigi Sangalli is part, without the slightest doubt, of the Great History of Italian Comics - wrote Antonio Marangi on the online head Sbam! who in 2021 had edited the volume The Best of Popeye for Salani (372 pages, paperback, Nuvole Salani, 16.90 euros) -. With his stories, his tens of thousands of plates, the hundreds of covers for as many comic books that invaded Italian newsstands for decades, he colored the childhood of entire generations, including Geppo, Popeye and many other characters. So far the artist. But today, on the sad day of his death, we want to think back to him, to Pier Luigi, a kind and helpful person, a mine of anecdotes and stories, a man with a perennial enthusiasm in his eyes in talking about his characters, in exchanging jokes with lifelong colleagues, the late Alberico Motta and our dearest Sandro Dossi".

SANGALLI, Pieruluigi

Born: 11/5/1938, Monza, Lombardy, Italy

Died: 3/13/2025, Italy

 

Pierluigi Sangalli’s westerns- comic book artist:

Devy Crock – 1958

Dormy West – 196?

RIP Georgina González

 

Golden Age actress dies on the same day she was born, 97 years ago

Georgina González Hernández stood out in several Mexican films by acting alongside great stars such as Jorge Negrete and Pedro Infante.

TV Azteca

By Claudia Pacheco Ocampo |

March 10, 2025

 

Georgina González Hernández, an actress who stood out in the Golden Age of Mexican cinema alongside actors such as Jorge Negrete, Mario Moreno "Cantinflas" and Pedro Infante, died at the age of 97, the same day she was born.

Although the news was only recently announced, La Yoya, as she was also known, died on March 6 at her home in Cocoyoc, Morelos, the city where she had lived for several years, La Jornada Morelos confirmed.

Georgina González Hernández, who also stood out as a singer, was born on March 6, 192, and died on the same date almost a century later, after shining in

Throughout his artistic career, he participated in more than 30 films, sharing credits with great personalities such as Mario Moreno "Cantinflas", Germán Valdés "Tin Tan", Jorge Negrete, Pedro Armendáriz, Amalia Aguilar, Lilia del Valle, Lilia Prado, Pedro Infante and María Félix, to name a few. It was directed by filmmakers such as Luis Buñuel, Tito Davison, Rogelio A. González and Miguel M. Delgado in films such as "Soy un prófugo" (1946), "El bello durmiente" (1952), "Las tres alegres comadres" (1952), "Las interesas" (1952), "Tal para cual" (1953) and "Él" (1953), among other productions.

In the musical field, Georgina González excelled in performing boleros and in retirement, she made art through embroidery and fabrics. She married Manuel Ampudia Palafox, a businessman in the film industry.

So far, the causes of his death are unknown. His remains were buried on March 8. He is survived by four children: Lilia, Esteban, Ramón, María.

GONZALEZ, Geiorgina (Georgina González Hernández)

Born: 3/6/1928, Mexico

Died: 3/6/2025, Cocoyoc, Morelos, Mexico

 

Georgina González’s western – actress:

Spurs of Gold – 1948 (fiesta attendee)

RIP Stanley R Jaffe

 

Stanley R. Jaffe Dies: ‘Kramer Vs. Kramer’ Oscar Winner Who Also Produced ‘Fatal Attraction’ & More Was 84

DEADLINE

By Erik Pederson

March 10, 2925

 

Stanley R. Jaffe, a film executive and producer who won a Best Picture Oscar for Kramer vs. Kramer and was nominated for Fatal Attraction during a career that also including producing such films as The Bad News Bears, Taps, Black Rain and Goodbye, Columbus, died today. He was 84.

CAA, which repped Jaffe, confirmed his death to Deadline.

Jaffe was a decade into his career when he produced Kramer vs. Kramer, the riveting 1979 child-custody drama starring Dustin Hoffman and Meryl Streep, both winning lead acting Oscars — Streep’s first of three. It also scored Best Director and Adapted Screenplay Oscars for director Robert Benton.

He followed that by producing Taps for Paramount, where Jaffe at 29 had become the youngest major-studio head ever in 1969. The latter film about a mutiny at a soon-to-close military academy, starred Timothy Hutton and launched the careers of such future stars as Tom Cruise, Sean Penn and Giancarlo Esposito.

Those films came after Jaffe produced the 1969 Richard Benjamin-Ali MacGraw drama Goodbye, Columbus; I Start Counting (1970); the Jeff Bridges Civil War-era Bad Company (1972); and raunchy but revered 1976 Little League baseball comedy The Bad News Bears, starring Walter Matthau and Tatum O’Neal.

He went on to produce other films including the Kelly McGillis-Jodie Foster legal drama The Accused (1988), the Michael Douglas action thriller Black Rain (1989), the Brendan Fraser-Matt Damon period drama School Ties (1992), I Dreamed of Africa starring Kim Basinger (2000) and Shekhar Kapur’s 2002 The Four Feathers led by Heath Ledger.

Jaffe also produced and had his lone directing credit on the 1983 missing-child drama Without a Trace. “The decision to direct it myself didn’t reflect any discontent I had with any of the directors I’d worked with,” he told The New York Times that year. “Selfishly, I just wanted to stretch myself out, like anyone else.”

His executive producing credits include the 2023 Paramount+ series Fatal Attraction along with the features Madeline (1998), Michael Apted’s Firstborn starring Teri Garr, Peter Weller and Corey Haim — in his big-screen debut — and others.

Jaffe was born on July 31, 1940, in New Rochelle, NY, into a showbiz family. His father was Leo Jaffe, who worked at Columbia Pictures for more than a half-century, moving up from accountant to president and CEO and chairman of the board. He received the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ 1978 Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award. Stanley Jaffe’s sister was Andrea Jaffe, a powerhouse PR exec later Fox marketing chief who died in 2016.

Stanley Jaffe began his career at Seven Arts Associates in the early 1960s and left for CBS after Warner Bros acquired Seven Arts in 1967. Three years later, Jaffe was named EVP and COO at Paramount Pictures — and just three months after that, he rose to president of the studio.

But he left Paramount in 1971 to launch Jaffilms, where he produced Bad Company and The Bad News Bears, before being named EVP Worldwide Production at Columbia Pictures — a post he held for only a couple of years before focusing on his producing career.

JAFFE, Stanley R. (Stanley Richard Jaffe)

Born: 7/31/1940, New Rochelle, New York, U.S.A.

Died: 3/10/2025, Rancho Mirage, California, U.S.A.

 

Stanley R. Jaffe’s western – producer:

Bad Company - 1972

RIP Evelyn Lazar

 

Former evening show presenter Evelyn Lazar died

rbb24

3/4/2025

 

The former evening show presenter Evelyn Lazar is dead. She died on Monday at the age of 91, as rbb learned from Lazar's family.

First woman at the evening show

Lazar was the first woman to present the Berlin television show from 1971 to 1991. The then editorial director Harald Karas was convinced by her. "I said I wanted to do it. And he said, 'Well, let's try it,'" Lazar later recounted. Some colleagues told her that they had nothing against a woman taking over the moderation, but that she would break into the studio under the nervous strain. "We didn't break in," she said.

Before she presented the Abendschau, Lazar was a reporter for the Sender Freies Berlin (SFB). At first, she wanted to become an actress. Cultural topics also accompanied her as a reporter and presenter.

In the 1980s, she sometimes presented in doubles with changing colleagues. Preferably, as she said herself, with Hans-Werner Kock. They were the "double Lottchen" of the evening show.

LAZAR, Evelyn

Born: 3/10/1933, Germany

Died: 3/3/2025, Berlin, Berlin, Germany

 

Evelyn Lazar’s western – actress:

The Last of the Mohicans (TV) – 1956 (Cora Munro)

RIP Eleonora Giorgi

 

Italy bids farewell to actress Eleonora Giorgi

Wanted in Rome

March 3, 2025

 

Tributes pour in for Eleonora Giorgi who is remembered for her films and love of life.

Italian actress Eleonora Giorgi has died in Rome at the age of 71, following a long battle with pancreatic cancer, her family said on Monday.

Since revealing her illness on television in 2023, Giorgi maintained a positive outlook on life, inviting everyone to "live without wasting their time".

Giorgi had a long and varied career in Italian cinema and television, appearing in dozens of films in the 1970s and 1980s, many of which were comedies and erotic comedies, as well as taking on dramatic roles.

Her best-known films include Mia moglie è una strega (1980), Grand Hotel Excelsior (1982), and Borotalco (1982), for which she won the David di Donatello award and remembered it as "the most beautiful role of my career".

Italy's culture minister Alessandro Giuli in a statement hailed Giorgi as "an eclectic popular interpreter of Italian cinema whose talent has marked entire generations of spectators, ranging from brilliant to dramatic roles with intensity and authenticity”.

Deputy premier Antonio Tajani in a post on X described Giorgi as a "star of Italian cinema" and "a brave woman who never stopped smiling and fighting for her life, even in the face of a terrible disease."

Carlo Verdone, with whom Giorgi starred in his cult 1982 film Borotaclo, wrote a fond tribute to his friend in a post on Instragram.

"Thank you for giving me your lightheartedness, your enthusiasm, your smile and your precious friendship" - Verdone said - "And thank you for being a great, courageous example for everyone during this hard and merciless year".

Giorgi, who leaves behind two adult sons and a grandson, passed away with gratitude and without regrets, as she said in a television interview last September.

"I feel flooded with goodness and I have no hard feelings" - she said - "There is one mad thing that I have to say: this has been the best year of my life, I have been loved like never before."

Her funeral will be held at the Chiesa degli Artisti in Rome's central Piazza del Popolo at 16.00 on Wednesday.

GIORGI, Eleonora

Born: 10/21/1953, Rome, Lazio, Italy

Born: 3/3/2025, Rome, Lazio, Italy

 

Eleonora Giorgi’s western – actress:

The Three Musketeers of the West – 1973 (lover in opening scene)

 

RIP Herbert Léonard

 

Herbert Léonard, unforgettable interpreter of "Pour le plaisir", has died

The variety singer, who rose to fame in the 80s, passed away on Sunday at the age of 80. He had suffered from a series of health problems in recent years and was fighting lung cancer.

Le Dauphine

March 2, 2025

 

He had been experiencing health problems for a few years... Herbert Léonard is no more: the unforgettable singer of Pour le Plaisir, a hit released in 1981 and composed by Julien Lepers, died this Sunday at the age of 80.

Recently, his wife, Cléo Léonard, had given unreassuring news about the state of health of her husband, who had experienced many hardships during his life. It was she who announced his death to Agence France Presse, specifying that he was "fighting lung cancer". "Herbert died at 6 p.m. in the hospital of Fontainebleau," said his wife.

Born on February 25, 1945, in Strasbourg, the artist left school at a very early age to take up the guitar. At the age of 16, he set up a rock band with friends and scoured the balls of the Alsatian capital. After his military service, he joined another band and began touring. He was 21 years old at the time and signed his first contract with a label. He took part in Antoine and Sylvie Vartan's tours, listened to Otis Redding, recorded his first albums... And also met the woman who would become his wife, Cleo.

A serious accident at the age of 25

But in March 1970, everything changed: at the age of 25, he was the victim of a serious car accident while making a U-turn: "As I was late, I went for it and missed a turn, and I went under a truck. I took the whole windshield in the face. I lived for more than a year like Frankenstein with scars everywhere (...) I experienced it very badly," he told Gala in 2020. His partner Cléo would be his pillar in adversity. From their love a little girl, Eléa, was born in 1973.

A true miracle worker, Herbert Léonard temporarily moved away from the music scene... to come back better. Ten years later, in 1980, he met a promising author, a certain... Julien Lepers. From this meeting was born Pour le plaisir, his greatest success. Seductive and charming behind his microphone, he played a series of titles, sometimes in duets (Julie Pietri, Nathalie Lermitte...) and tours; he was even chosen for the credits of the television series Châteauvallon, a successful soap opera broadcast on Antenne 2.

Frollo in Notre-Dame de Paris

After several tours, notably in Quebec, in the ‘90s, the variety singer made his comeback to the forefront of the scene in 2000, taking over the role of Frollo, the clergyman, in the musical Notre-Dame de Paris, following the departure of Daniel Lavoie. After a foray into the world of television with a supporting role in the series Navarro, the release of best-ofs, appearances in the idol tour Âge Tendre or the release of his autobiography Pour le plaisir... and for the rest, he is caught up in health problems.

In2017, while he was supposed to leave for a tour in Quebec, he suffered a pulmonary embolism and spent a month in a coma.

Recovered, this football and Russian aviation history enthusiast then became a fierce activist for the anti-smoking cause. In recent years, he had been tired due to long covid and three vascular surgeries, consequences of the "damage that cigarettes", his most faithful companion, "had caused him..."

LEONARD, Herbert (Hubert Lœnhardt)

Born: 2/25/1945, Strasbourg, Bas-Rhin, France

Died: 3/2/2025, Fontainebleau, Seine-et-Marne, France

 

Herbert Léonard’s western – actor:

The Man Who Came from Cher (TV) – 1969 (The Baron)