Remembering Roberto Amoroso

Roberto Amoroso was born on January 7, 1911 in Naples, Italy. After a brief career as a reporter he found work at South Film in Rome in the 1940s and then formed his own production company Roberto Amoroso Films. He had an interest in his home town of Naples and his first films were documentaries about its culture. His first feature film was 1947's “Malaspina” for which he produced and was also the cinematographer. Many of his films were musicals and sentimental dramas distributed only locally such as “Due soldi di felicità” (1954), a pleasant romantic comedy typical of the Neopolitan people and “Kathy” (1956) with Walter Chiari, Gabriele Ferzetti and Aldo Fabrizi. In the ‘60s and ‘70s he dedicated himself to producing and writing films inspired by the popular genre, comic Spaghetti Westerns such as “A Fistful of Knuckles” (1965) starring Franco and Ciccio and “Bad Kids of the West” (1973). He was also co-writer of “El Rojo” (1966) with Richard Harrison. Among his more dramatic films of this era were “The Bachelor Pad” 1960 which he produced and was directed by Giuseppe De Santis. Amoroso died on February 3, 1994 in Rome. Today we remember Roberto Amoroso on what would have been his 100th birthday.