Remembering Mario Amendola

Mario Amendola was born in Recco, Italy on December 8, 1910 to traveling actors. He began his career in show business first as a stage actor and then as a writer for vaudeville. His humor and style caught the attention of several magazines and he began writing articles and was soon asked to write screenplays for actors such as Carlo Campanini, Walter Chiari and Renato Rascel. Mario then became an assistant director under Oreste Biancoli. He then returned to writing screenplays for comedy and drama, teaming with Ruggero Macario and later Bruno Corbucci where they created the character police commissioner Giraldi played with great success by Tomas Milian. Using the aliases Irving Jacobs and Dean Whitccomb he turned to directing Spaghetti westerns. During the ‘60s and ‘70s he wrote screenplays for such films as “The Three Swords of Zorro” (1963) “Kill or be Killed” (1966), “The Great Silence” (1968), “Hate for Hate” (1968) “The Longest Hunt” (1968), “Sonny and Jed” (1972) and “The White, the Yellow and the Black” (1975). Mario died in Rome, Italy 12/22/1993. Today we remember Mario Amendola on what would have been his 100th birthday.