Phillip A. Attmore was born on May 31, 1984 in Pasadena,
California. Phillip began his career at the age of three. He attended Broadway
workshops and has appeared in a number of Broadway and Off Broadway plays and
shows. He was a contestant on ‘So You Think You Can Dance’ Season 6 in 2010. He
appeared in one Euro-western “Silent Tongue” (1993) as a tap dancer in the
travelling medicine show.
Tom Berenger was born Thomas Michael Moore on May 31,
1949 in Chicago, Illinois. Tom was raised along with his sister, in a working
class home headed by a father who worked as a printer for The Chicago
Sun-Times. After graduating Rich East High School in 1967, he attended the
University of Missouri to study journalism, but tried his hand at acting on a
whim because of a bet he lost. He picked "Berenger" as his
professional name, after a school friend, because there was already a "Tom
Moore" in the Actors' Equity Association
Mario Migliardi was born on May 31, 1919 in Alessandria, Piedmont, Italy.
A pianist, organist and conductor, Migliardi was always at the forefront of pop
music. He also did experiments in radio broadcasting electronic music. From
1955 he was part of the Sextet Blue RAI, directed by Alberto Semprini, where he
played the Hammond organ. In 1956 at the IV Festival of Neapolitan Song he
directed the Orchestra on "Full Moon" made up of male and female
voices in replacement of musical instruments (importing the style of Ray
Conniff ). The other orchestra was conducted by Luigi Vinci.
...continuavano a chiamarlo Trinità – Italian title
Michael J. Pollard was born Michael John Pollack, Jr. on
May 30, 1939 in Passaic, New York. Pollard has been acting since 1958. A
character actor, he has accumulated almost a hundred appearances in movies and television
series since then. An early career break occurred when Pollard was brought in
as a replacement during the first season of TV's "Dobie Gillis."
Co-star Bob Denver, who was stealing the show as Dobie's beatnik buddy Maynard
G. Krebs, was going to be drafted into the Army and had to exit the series.
When Denver was classified "4-F" due to a longstanding neck injury
and returned, Pollard's character of weird cousin Jerome Krebs was quickly
written out.
Mario Costa was born on May 30, 1904 in Rome, Lazio,
Italy. Mario is the brother of director, screenwriter Piero Costa [1913-1975]
Still a young man he was introduced to the world of cinema, where he worked
first as an editor, scriptwriter, dubbing director, writer and organizer of
production in some films made between 1936 and 1938. He enrolled at the
Istituto Luce, a short time after his debut as a director of short films,
revealing excellent communication skills, he made the documentaries “Fontane di
Roma” (1938) and “I pini di Roma” (1939) both with music by Ottorino Respighi,
which won prestigious awards. In 1943 he directed his first feature film, “La
sua strada”, with wide acclaim from critics and audiences. Immediately after
World War II he distinguished himself in a genre of great success, the
transposition of operas. In more recent years he devoted himself to historical
and mythological genre and adventures; among other things, he was a director of
one of the earliest spaghetti westerns, “Buffalo Bill, Hero of the Far West”,
1964 and signed with a pseudonym that says it all, John W. Fordson. He al;so
directed and wrote the screenplay for “The Beast” (1970) starring Klaus Kinski.
Mario is the father of director Massimo Costa [1951-2004]. Costa died in Rome,
Italy on October 22, 1995.
Trinità e Sartana figli di... - Italian title
Jean Pierre Léaud was born on May 28, 1944 in Paris, Île
de France, France. He is the son of actress and writer Jacqueline Stony Pierre
Léaud [1923-2005]. If the French New Wave has a face, it might be the beaky,
piercing-eyed visage of Jean-Pierre Léaud. In 1959, at age fifteen, Léaud made
his debut as Antoine Doinel in François Truffaut’s “The 400 Blows”; over the
next two decades, he would play alter ego not only to Truffaut, but to a
generation that grew up (or failed to) in parallel with him. For Jean-Luc
Godard, he was one of the ‘children of Marx and Coca-Cola’ in films like
“Masculine Feminine” (1966) and “La Chinoise” (1967). Later, Léaud worked with
Jacques Rivette in the epic “Out 1” (1972) and stalked through the wreckage of
the late-sixties dream in Jean Eustache’s anti-epic “The Mother and the Whore”
(1973), a film and a performance that obliterate sentimentality. The effect of
all these collaborations is cumulative: when Léaud appears in a film by Aki
Kaurismäki or Olivier Assayas, his history appears with him.
Riccardo Pizzuti was born on May 28, 1934 in Cetraro,
Calabria, Italy. Pizzuti became the poster boy for symbol of the Italian bad
guy and was a constant presence in the films of Bud Spencer and Terence Hill.
He was an outstanding stuntman with a great propensity for acting, often
playing the leader of the henchmen who serves the lead villain. In many of his
roles he finds himself downsized by the films hero. Much has been made about
his constant participation in the films of Hill and Spencer which has reached
twenty. In some cases, he was given a major role as in “Man of the East” (1972)
as Morton and in others he’s a minor character as in “They Call Me Trinity”
(1970) as Jeff.
Horst
Bernhard Wilhelm Frank was born on May 28, 1929 in Lubeck, Schleswig-Holstein,
Germany. The son of a porcelain painter. Horst Frank financed his acting
studies by working part-time as a babysitter and night watchman. He actually
failed his final exams at the Musikhochschule Hamburg, but nonetheless managed
to secure an acting position in his home town. For some time after, his work
was primarily confined to small parts on stage and in radio. His first screen
role saw him as a cowardly pilot in “The Star of Africa” (1957). Frank then won
a critic's award for his next role as member of a U-Boat crew in the war drama “Sharks
and Little Fish” (1957).
Klaus Gehrke was born on May 27, 1939 in Neustrelitz,
Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Germany. Gehrke graduated in 1963 from the Academy of
Film and Television in Potsdam-Babelsberg. He then performed in engagements at
theaters in Frankfurt / Oder Schwerin, Dresden and Brandenburg. In addition, he
worked as a supporting actor in DEFA productions, such as 1962 in “Ach, du
fröhliche …”, before joining the ensemble cast of the German Television (DFF)
in 1970. He embodied during this time more than 150 different roles, such as
the first engineer in the successful series ‘Zur See’ (1976) or the
investigator in the TV series ‘Police 110’ until the network was terminated
during reunification.
Paolo Solvay was born Luigi Batzella on May 27, 1924 in San
Sperate, Sardinia, Italy. Paolo was an Italian Z-movie director, writer and
former actor who used numerous pseudonyms. Some of them were Ivan Kathansky,
A.M. Frank, Gigi Batzella, Paul Hamus, Dean Jones, Paul Selway and several
others.
Prima ti suono e poi ti sparo – Italian title
Pamela Suzette ‘Pam’ Grier was born on May 26, 1949 in
Winston-Salem, North Carolina. She became famous in the early 1970s after
starring in a string of moderately successful women in prison and
blaxploitation films like “The Big Bird Cage” (1972), “Coffy” (1973), “Foxy
Brown” (1974) and “Sheba Baby” (1975). Her career was revitalized in 1997 after
her appearance in Quentin Tarantino's film “Jackie Brown”, for which she
received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress. She has also been
nominated for a SAG Award as well as a Satellite Award for her performance in “Jackie
Brown”. Grier is also known for her work on television, for 6 seasons she
portrayed Kate 'Kit' Porter on the television series ‘The L Word’. She received
an Emmy Award nomination for her work in the animated program ‘Happily Ever
After: Fairy Tales for Every Child’. Director Quentin Tarantino remarked that
she may have been cinema's first female action star.
Michael
Nicholas Salvatore ‘Mike’ Bongiorno was born on May 26, 1924 in New York City,
New York. Mike moved to Turin (his mother's native city), when he was young.
His father was a Sicilian American lawyer. During World War II Mike abandoned
his studies and joined a group of Italian partisans. He was captured and spent seven months
in the San Vittore prison in Milan and was then deported to a German
concentration camp. He was liberated before the end of the war due to a
prisoners of war exchange between the United States and Germany. He returned to
New York and in 1946 started work at the radio headquarters of Il Progresso
Italo-Americano (The Italian-American Progress) newspaper. 
Here’s the first news out of Rome on composer Ennio
Morricone’s condition.
Una noche en el viejo México – Spanish title
Kristian Levring tells Wendy Mitchell about the inspiring
process of making The Salvation, a ‘Western that’s a myth about Westerns’
José Manuel
Martín Pérez was born on May 24, 1924 in Casavieja,
Ávila, Castilla y León, Spain. Pérez studied
at Madrid's Teatro Español Universitario and the Lope de Rueda, and began
working for Radio Nacional de España in 1942, before making his feature film
debut in César Fernández Ardavín's 1952 war drama “La llamada de África”. This
was followed by minor roles in the Ángel Vilches' adventure film “A dos grados
del Ecuador” (1953), the Luis Lucia comedy “Aeropuerto” (1953), and Rafael
Gil's religious-themed historical dramas “I Was a Parish Priest” (1953) and “Judas'
Kiss” (1954). He received his first supporting role, as Muñoz, in Gil's next
film “Murió hace quince años” (1954) appearing alongside Rafael Rivelles,
Francisco Rabal and Lyla Rocco. He also started working in television joining
the cast of ‘Diego Valor’ in 1958. Pérez continued on in supporting roles for
number of other films then being shot in Almería and elsewhere.
By: Todd McCarthy
