Remembering Duccio Tessari

Allesandro ‘Duccio’ Tessari was born on October 11, 1926 in Genoa, Italy. Duccio began his career as a documentary film maker, then in the early fifties, he became an assistant director to Victor and Carmine Gallone Cottafavi. Between 1959 and 1961 Tessari wrote screenplays for some of the sword and sandal films and decided to become a director specializing in the western genre, in which he developed a more personal concretely ironic style, in such films as "A Pistol for Ringo" (1965) and "The Return of Ringo" (1965), which were a springboard for the then young actor Giuliano Gemma.

In the seventies, he changed genres and dedicated his talents, with excellent results, to the crime films, revealing dark and distressing tales "La morte risale a ieri sera" (1970), "Una farfalla con le ali insanguinate" (1971) "Tozy Arzente" (1973). In 1971 he married his second wife, the actress Lorella De Luca (aka Holly Hammond), former actress in some of his films. In the eighties, he turned to the creation of television drama, then a return to the western film in 1985 for the transposition of the famous comic book hero Tex Willer "Tex and the Lord of the Deep", starring once more Giuliana Gemma.

His last work on the big screen was the comedy "There was a Castle with 40 Dogs" (1990). Tessari died from cancer in Rome on September 6, 1994. Today we remember Duccio Tessari on what would have been his 85^th birthday.