Jannah News
By
Aaron Ozrovitz
June
1, 2022
Bud
Spencer died six years ago. In Berlin, a new museum commemorates the Italian
film star, who has long become a veritable cult figure in Germany.
“Mr.
Pedersoli, do you like Bud Spencer?” — “No, I don’t like him. But I respect him
for the money he has made, as he has achieved much more than Carlo Pedersoli,”
the very Carlo Pedersoli himself said in an interview with the German Focus
magazine in 2011 — jokingly, because he was actually referring to himself:
Naples-born
Carlo Pedersoli, Olympic swimmer, musician and self-taught actor was chiefly
known professionally as Bud Spencer. He was famous all over the world, and
presumably made a fortune for his roles featuring in over a hundred western
movies.
Role
of the good-natured strong-arm man
Back
in 1967, Pedersoli had a role in his first so-called Spaghetti Western film,
God Forgives… I don’t!
He
needed an English alias for his name that was regarded to be too unwieldy for
the international film market at that time. The actor made up a name from his
favorite beer, Budweiser, and his favorite actor, Spencer Tracy. And voila, Bud
Spencer was born.
Bud
Spencer grumbled and beat his way through countless films over the next few
decades, mostly alongside his Venetian compatriot Mario Girotti, aka Terence
Hill.
Box
office hits and later TV successes include Western parodies like They Call Me
Trinity (1970), Trinity Is Still My Name (1971) and All the Way, Boys (1972).
Worshiped
in East and West Germany
With an impressive number of such films, the Spencer-Hill duo played their way
deep into the cultural memory of two postwar generations in Germany, both in
West and East Germany.
The
extent of the cult around the two figures is exemplified by a fairly recent
debate about a two-kilometer long tunnel planned in the southern German city of
Schwäbisch-Gmünd that was intended to be named the Bud Spencer Tunnel. In the
end, the city council changed its mind and instead renamed a local open-air
swimming pool the Bud Spencer Bad.
In
1998, authorities in the city of Lommatsch in the eastern German state of
Saxony also renamed a sports facility the Terence Hill Outdoor Pool; Hill had
actually lived in the town for a while in the 1940s. Along with the first
chancellor of the German Empire, Otto von Bismarck, Terence Hill is even an
honorary citizen of the town.
There’s
also a bridge that was to be named after Terence Hill in the city of Worms, but
the mayor revised the decision at the last moment. The Terence Hill Bridge
spanning the Rhine River, however, is listed on maps and Google Maps all the
same.
In addition to the
tunnel, the pool and the bridge, a small museum in Berlin honoring Bud Spencer
opened its doors on June 27, 2021 in Berlin. The exhibition shown through June
30, 2022 is titled “Flatfoot in Berlin – the big Bud Spencer exhibition” and
will feature 400 exhibits showcasing the man beyond the actor — Carlos
Pedersoli, the world-class swimmer, lawyer, airline owner, composer, inventor —
and global icon.
No comments:
Post a Comment