Remembering Luis Davila

Hector Gonzalez Carmelo Ferrantino was born on July 15, 1927 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He had an early vocation towards acting, and began his career in the theater and made his film debut in "El baldío" directed Carlos Rinaldi  in 1952. Until the early sixties he appeared in over 15 films in his native land, with six in 1955 alone. With the beginning of the sixties he decided to move to Europe and in 1962 appeared in a film directed by Juan Bosch called "Bahía de Palma", a comedy with Arturo Fernandez, the Swedish Elke Sommer and the great comedian Cassen. Soon Davila became a regular figure in European cinema through the heyday of so-called genre films and the proliferation of co-productions. He starred in "Marc Mato, agente S. 077” (1965) a typical spy movie and was paired with Perla Cristal another Argentinian, repeating in this genre the following year in "S 077 Operación relámpago”. Luis also participated in adventure films like "Los tigres de Mompracén" (1970) based on the character Sandokan created by Emilio Salgari and "El arquero de Sherwood" (1971), thrillers such as “Rebus” (1969) with Laurence Harvey and Ann Margret, the remarkable "A Quiet Place to Kill" (1970), directed by Umberto Lenzi with Carroll Baker and Jean Sorel, war films such as "Suicide Commandos" (1968) with Aldo Ray and "Eagles Over London" (1969) directed by Enzo G. Castellari with among others, Van Johnson, Frederick Strafford and Paco Rabal. Davila debuted in the Euro-western genre in “Relevo para un pistolero” (1964) with Alex Nicol, one of the few films still filmed in black and white and participated through 1972 in six more westerns, four of them produced by the Balcazar brothers. In the late seventies and with his career in decline, he returned to Argentina where he starred in several television series but then was involved in a tragic accident in Chile that caused serious mobility problems, and forced him to retire from the world of acting and live his last years almost forgotten. In 1998 he died of cardioid-respiratory failure in the Sanitarium Santa Isabel de Buenos Aires just prior to receiving an award given to him by the Association Podesta Actors Argentina. Today we remember Luis Dávila on what would have been his 85^th birthday.