In the western set Espulgas City built and owned by the
Balcazar family of producers, directors, writers and actors the glasses of the
saloon were made of caramel produced by the Figuls de Espulgues pastry shop so
they could be broken easily into shards that were collected after shooting and given
to the children in the neighborhood who devoured them happily.
[These daily posts will cover little known actors or people that have appeared in more recent films and TV series. Various degrees of information that I was able to find will be given and anything that you can add would be appreciated.]
The Bucio brothers are two of the most well-known Mexican stunt coordinators and stuntmen.
Julián’s full name is Julián Carlos Bucio Montemayor and was born in Mexico City in 1962. He founded the Stunts POV team in 1991 of which his younger brother Balo is a member. Balo was born in Mexico City as Wilebaldo Bucio Montemayor in 1970. Besides being a stuntman and coordinator Balo is a director, cameraman, film and TV actor. His daughter is a stuntwoman and the parkour world champion Ella Bucio (Ella Bucio Dovali) [1997- ].
Julián is also a horse master, TV and film actor and the father of stuntmen, Benny Bucio (Bernardo Bucio) [1991- ], Tony Bucio, Jerónimo Bucio (Jeronimo Bucio Fernandez) who are all POV members.
Both brothers performed stunts in several Spaghetti
westerns such as “Ravenous” in 1999, “Blueberry l’experience secrete”
(Renegade) and “Bandidas” (2004). Julián also appeared in “Bandits” in 1990.
BUCIO, Balo (aka Vilebaldo Buccio) (Wilebaldo
Bucio Montemayor) [1970, Mexico City, Federal District, Mexico] –
director, stunt coordinator, stuntman, cameraman, film, TV actor, brother of
stunt coordinator, horse master, stuntman, actor Julián Bucio (Julián Carlos
Bucio Montemayor) [1962- ], married to
?, father of stuntwoman, parkour world champion Ella Bucio (Ella Bucio Dovali)
[1997- ], uncle of stuntmen, Benny
Bucio (Bernardo Bucio) [1991- ], Tony
Bucio, Jerónimo Bucio (Jeronimo Bucio Fernandez).
Ravenous – 1999 [stunts as Vilebaldo Buccio]
Bandidas – 2004 [stunts as Wilebaldo Bucio]
Renegade – 2004 [stunts]
BUCIO, Julián (aka Julian
Busio) (Julián Carlos Bucio Montemayor) [1962, Mexico City,
Federal District, Mexico - ] – stunt
coordinator, horse master, stuntman, film, TV actor, brother of stuntman Balo
Bucio, married to ? father of graphic designer José Miguel, stuntmen Benny
Bucio (Bernardo Bucio) [1991-
], Tony Bucio, Jerónimo Bucio, uncle of stuntwoman, parkour world
champion Ella Bucio (Ella Bucio Dovali) [1997- ], founded Stunts POV [1983].
Bandits – 1990 [stunt coordinator]
Ravenous – 1999 [stunts as Villebaldo Bucio]
Bandidas – 2004 [stunt coordinator]
Renegade – 2004 [stunt coordinator]
“Il magnifico West”
(The Magnificent West)
(1972)
Director: Gianni Crea
Starring: Vassili Karis, Lorenzo Fineschi, Dario Pino,
Italo Gasperini
Country: Italy
Label: Obilivion Grindhouse
#OGH#31
Uncut version, 720p remastered from analog sources
Language: Italian
Subtitles: None
Running time: 84 minutes
EAN: 6234581682926
Available: May 31, 2024
Mario Migliardi (composer) would have been 105 today but died in 2000.
Gisela May [singer] would have been 100 today but
died in 2016.
Franco Beltrame (actor) would have been 95 today
but died in 2012.
Manfred Ensinger (cinematographer) is 95 today.
Menahem Golan [producer] would have been 95 today
but died in 2014.
Tom Berenger (actor) is 75 today.
[These daily posts will cover little known actors or people that have appeared in more recent films and TV series. Various degrees of information that I was able to find will be given and anything that you can add would be appreciated.]
John West Buchanan was born on October 16, 1934, in Greensboro, North Carolina. He attended Guilford College for two years and then graduated from Duke University. He entered his film career later in life starting with an appearance in the “C.I.A. Story” (1975) and continuing until his final appearance in 1988’s “Party Line”. Before his acting career really kicked into gear he was a stuntman, stunt coordinator and extra sometimes being billed as Buck West.
West’s only Euro-western appearance was as a member of the Wild Bunch in “My Name is Nobody”.
Buchanan died on November 22, 1995, in Carolina Beach, North Carolina.
BUCHANAN, West (aka John West Buchanan, Buck West) (John
West Buchanan) [10/16/1934, Greensboro, North Carolina, U.S.A. -
11/22/1995, New Hannover, North Carolina, U.S.A.] – stuntman, film, TV actor,
married to Lynn Lovell Holsclaw [1938-
] (1958-1978) father of Elizabeth Ashley Buchanan [1959- ], Dana Lovell Buchanan [1963- ], John West Buchanan Jr. [1965- ], Andrew Bradley Buchanan [1968- ], married to Catherine Marie Komis
[1948- ] (1994-1995).
My Name is Nobody – 1972 (Wild Bunch saloon patron)
Global News 24 Hours
By Kaylin
May 15, 2024
Before 1964’s A Fistful of Dollars, Clint Eastwood’s career consisted primarily of several uncredited roles in films with dull titles like Revenge of the Creature (1955) and Tarantula! (1955), and one-off performances in anthology series like the dryly named waterlogged drama Navy Log (1955) and the much more memorable Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955). Before Eastwood’s teeth-gritting snarl and perpetual sun-in-the-eye squint became as intrinsic to American popular culture as Twinkies, the actor was in dire need of a proper vehicle to coax the latent hard-ass from his slumber.
In those early years, it was 1959’s Rawhide, in which Eastwood portrayed the precocious ramrod Rowdy Yates, a former Confederate Army soldier. If any of those early performances could be said to provide an inkling as to what sort of gruff underbelly could be scratched with the right material, it was Rawhide. In Yates, we have a nascent iteration of the type of character with whom Eastwood would become synonymous only a few short years later.
Enter Sergio Leone, the son of Roberto Roberti (Vincenzo Leone), an Italian director who cut his teeth as an assistant to the great neorealist filmmaker Vittorio De Sica. After a stint in earthbound realism, Leone’s career would take him in a completely different direction. He found work in varying capacities on several historical epics of the schmaltzy sword-and-sandal ilk, which would culminate in the grandly bland directorial debut, The Colossus of Rhodes (1961). Leone’s peregrinations proved crucial in developing his broad stylistic tastes that would congeal in his Spaghetti Westerns, which are unlike anything that came before them. Leone’s style comes across at once as rough-edged and highly refined.
A Fistful of Dollars Takes Its Premise from a Classic
Akira Kurosawa’s 1961 film, Yojimbo, provides the blueprint for the first film in Sergio Leone’s Dollars Trilogy
Pilfered from Akira Kurosawa’s Edo-era-set Yojimbo (1961), Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars arrives with the same core conceit intact. However, there is enough peripheral allure that is distinctly its own thing to justify its existence. The film marks the first of three fabulously off-kilter collaborations — the other two being For a Few Dollars More (1965) and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly (1966). Set in the severely dehydrated locale of San Miguel — a town that’s really just a couple of strewn-about slab structures floating in a land of arid nothingness — the tale begins with the arrival of our hero. The Man with No Name (Eastwood) happens upon this purgatory, coming from adventures unknown and needing a drink of water. From his puckered glare, the Man sips from a ladle as he observes a small child entering a building. The child is quickly shooed away by a hail of gunfire at his heels. No more than four, the kid runs to his father, whom the shooters proceed to rough up. Why? Because it’s something to do.
Our introduction to the Man with No Name, or “Joe,” as he’s later referred to, is measured. In a nearly silent scene, save for the rolling dashes of piano and flute trills of Ennio Morricone’s score, the townsfolk scurry like mice at the flick of a light switch as the Man sizes up the town. A body propped up on a horse is sent off into the distance with a sign on its back. Adios amigo. Silvanito, the town’s innkeeper, promptly urges the Man to leave, offering just enough information to entice the cunning drifter into setting up shop. San Miguel’s beleaguered populace is trapped between a rock and a hard place, namely, that of the Rojos — led by Don Miquel (Antonio Prieto) and his brother Ramón (Gian Maria Volonté) — and the Baxters. The feuding families engage in various extortion practices, wanton acts of violence, arms dealing, and theft. To live in San Miguel, on the Mexico-United States border, is to live in a space where rules are dictated by the powerful. As the Man with No Name later says, “A man’s life in these parts often depends on a mere scrap of information,” and he will use information as his most powerful tool — aside from his revolver.
But before the Yojimbo plot can commence, there’s first the crucial matter of settling scores with a group of roughhousing cowboys who gave the Man with No Name’s mule a scare and, by extension, disrespected the Man himself. “Get three coffins ready,” the Man says offhandedly to a gravedigger. Returning moments later, the Man amends his initial command: “My mistake. Four coffins.” That sobriquet, the Man with No Name, works to tell us that he’s a mysterious, unknowable figure, a person about whom the audience will learn next to nothing except through an accumulation of actions; it’s through deeds like the handy dispensation of the four cowboys that the Man’s code will be revealed. The name also tells us that given the propensity for untimely demise in San Miguel, there’s little point in knowing someone’s given name.
The Man’s plan to pit both criminal organizations against one another — the old Yojimbo maneuver — is a purloined plot for the ages. As our hero pinballs between warring factions of trigger-happy egotists, he disseminates incendiary nuggets of misinformation to further his cause and collects the titular fistful of dollars to remain (cough) loyal. As the house of cards is carefully stacked, we know it must eventually come tumbling down, and it does, in a torrent of over-the-top action that has lost none of its potency in the years since the film’s release. But it’s not all a matter of stakes-upping. Just as often as the bullets go whizzing by, A Fistful of Dollars provides marvelously mellow scenes of wound-licking convalescence and rough-edged but secretly very tender character interactions. In one such scene, the Man makes a decision that provides some semblance of understanding the Man’s heart, guarded as it may be.
Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars Introduced the World to the Character Clint Eastwood Would Become Best Known For The Man with No Name is an archetypal antihero who operates by his own code, a tactical genius who doesn’t waste time with idle chatter
Nowadays, it’s impossible to consider Clint Eastwood, the actor-director, as anything other than one of those always-around titans, a figure whose legacy has only solidified with time. (Eastwood has just wrapped principal photography on Juror No. 2, his 40th film as director.) It seems all that it took was a spark to ignite the storied career, but it all truly begins with A Fistful of Dollars. We should all be thankful.
A Fistful of Dollars is currently streaming on Max, and
available to rent or buy through various outlets.
Gustav Kampendonck (writer) would have been 115 today but died in 1966.
Benno Hoffmann [voice actor] would have been 105
today but died in 2005.
Larry G. Spangler (actor) is 85 today.
Michael J. Pollard (actor) would have been 85 today
but died in 2019.
[These daily posts will cover little known actors or people that have appeared in more recent films and TV series. Various degrees of information that I was able to find will be given and anything that you can add would be appreciated.]
I can find no other reference to him or any biographical information.
BUCCHI, Alberto [Italian] – film actor.
Bury Them Deep – 1968 (sheriff)
[Photo courtesy of Michael Ferguson]
Quinlan
By Elisa Battistini
May 16, 2024
“The Damned”
By Roberto Minervini
After six years, Roberto Minervini returns to directing with The Damned, tackling for the first time an openly "fictional" work, and immersing the viewer in the American wilderness during the Civil War. In competition in Un Certain Regard and in cinemas.
In the company of wolves
Winter 1862: During the Civil War, the Northern army sends a small group of volunteers to the West to map and scout the land that is still off the beaten track. But among the mountains and barren expanses, the handful of men are not alone. [synopsis]
Six years after his last feature film, Roberto Minervini returns to the big screen with The Damned, presented in Competition in the Un Certain Regard section of the Cannes Film Festival and his first fiction film. Or rather, his first work openly "staged" since the action took place in the USA in 1862, so we cannot even remotely presume to be in front of a documentary: the director's choice is intelligent and effective, but above all it is capable of reviving precisely that genuinely naturalistic tone that Minervini seemed to have lost a little in Louisiana (2015) and in What to do when the world is on fire? (2018). The "documentary of creation", a hybrid space between direct shooting in front of reality and fiction in the strict sense in which the author has moved, here gives way to actual writing, to costume opera, to the "western" story and what comes out of it is the renewed precision of the directorial gesture in restoring environments, faces, feelings and without artifice one would like to say. In doing this, Minervini seems to show, in the context of fiction, how much cinema can express the intimate and living essence of phenomena and, equally, how this expression is always ineluctably technical and planned in whatever "genre" one moves. In fact, it is significant that the author has returned to the Carlson family of Stop the Pounding Heart (2013), "taking" three characters from the documentary on the very religious clan and now placing them in the fray of the American Civil War: the choice underlines both the greater emotional closeness between this film and that film, and how much this story seeks the same clarity as that documentary act. So much so that, even in The Damned, the Carlsons (father and two sons) are a very religious triadic nucleus, as if they had migrated from one work to another, remaining to some extent themselves. To rigorously pursue this directional motion, Minervini works on two vectors: on the one hand, the dryness of the weave, to say the least minimal; on the other hand, the admirable care for the visual rendering, which is entrusted with the stratification of the work.
In the beginning, a small pack of wolves is meticulously preparing their meal: the teeth remove the hair and skin of a dead fawn and then move on to emptying the entrails. Minervini frames the documentary and symbolic scene for a couple of minutes before moving on to fictional narration, already suggesting, however, that the story will have to do with the feral nature not of animals but of man, who in fact is portrayed in the Civil War. In this context, the Northern army has sent a group of volunteers to go to the West, that wild West that was colonized copiously at the end of the internal dispute between North and South: the soldiers – no female character appears in the film, defining The Damned as a work also on a belligerent male – are pioneers of pioneers, the vanguard of the western (including that of cinema) and sent, of course, to the slaughterhouse. The explicit violence is also consigned almost exclusively to the animalistic prologue, always remaining off-screen or out of focus elsewhere: the enemy is at the gates but is never seen in a definite way and the film does not reach a climax, unfolding instead in a sensitive search made up of faces, arid and snowy landscapes, daily actions while waiting for hell to break out (The Desert of the Tartars it's always around the corner). The outpost finds a clearing in which to camp and from which to move to proceed further: the first sequence tells the daily life of the group with dialogues about rifles and Colts, poker games, prayers, sighting methods among the heights, collection of stones containing that gold that will be one of the reasons for the conquest of the lands of the natives. The men, unaware, are surrounded and after the adage come the bullets (at the hands of other Americans): what follows is a pounding shaking that will not lead to a great battle, but rather to a warning after which the handful will send four soldiers to explore the space beyond the mountains to figure out what to do. The group then splits (the four will then split again), pushing some "forward" in a sort of absolute dispersion of the collective and of the sense. In a film of great rarefaction, Minervini manages to make us feel every single element: the chill of the water in which we wash, the sound of bullets, the fear, the anguish of the horses, the tone of the air, defining The Damned as a work that makes sensitive intensity its dominant feature. Looking – as in Stop the Pounding Heart – to the painting of Frederic Ramington or to Malick in Days of Heaven and The Thin Red Line, but also to Tarkovsky (and perhaps also to Italian Risorgimento painting), Minervini relates the solitude of man to a landscape that can be a testimony of God as well as of his total absence, raising questions (very topical) about the war that is always internal and about the fragility of each one in the face of its unacceptable violence. But also relating man to wolf, since we will see some soldiers dissecting a buffalo: the feral side is connected to our own animality, yet no one really knows why it is there and some try to provide motivations with short dialogues that express more solidarity in the lack of meanings than the real reason for a conflict both internal (the Civil War) and indecipherable (the conquest of the West).
It is therefore in the pictorial and visual intensities,
in the portraiture of anonymous soldiers (apart from Noah and Judah Carlson)
caught in acts that never become action, that the value of The Damned must be
recognized, a different but concrete "documentary of creation", in
which the fictional mise-en-scène is indubitable but in which the ability to
express a possible experience is not lacking (indeed it comes out enhanced).
keeping the viewer always at the side of this small group and showing Minervini
an allusive sensitivity that overturns the gaze with which the director had
brought to light his last, extremely explicit, extremely brutal works. A
musical and compositional film, so much so that it is interesting that it is
the director of photography, Carlos Alfonso Corral, who signs the beautiful and
enveloping soundtrack: The Damned is a work that with great brilliance deals
with war and its absurdity, the idea of God in relation to an ambiguous human
nature, but in which it is up to the viewer to grasp the beating heart. You
will be able to find it if you listen to a score that develops in an impossible
but surprisingly perceptible "live recording".
I dannati – Italian title
Les Damnés – French title
The Damned – German title
The Damned – English title
A 2020 Italian, Belgium, U.S.A film co-production [Okta
Film (Trieste), Pupa Films, Rai
(Rome),
Michigan Film, BeTV (Brussels)]
Producers: Paolo Benzi, Denise Ping Lee
Director: Roberto Minervini
Story: Roberto Minervini
Screenplay: Roberto Minervini
Cinematography: Carlos Alfonso Corral [color]
Music: Carlos Alfonso Corral
Running time: 88 minutes
Story: Winter 1862. In the midst of the Civil War, the
U.S. Army sends a company of volunteer soldiers to the western territories,
with the task of patrolling the unchartered borderlands. As their mission
ultimately changes course, the meaning behind their engagement begins to elude
them.
Cast:
Scouts - René W. Solomon, Jeremiah Knupp, Noah Carlson
Sergeant Yim Carlson, Timothy Carlson
With: Judah Carlson, Cuyler Ballenger, Chris Hoffert,
Bill Gehring
Stunt coordinator: Daniele Balconi, Alessandro Riva
Stunts: Antonio Catalano, Riccardo Geremia, Dumitru
Stoian
Trailer link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQ0RSCDWGh8
Venancio Deus Mejuto was born in A Coruña, Galicia, Spain on December 12, 1919. Before becoming an actor, he worked as a journalist. In an interview he says he was also a singer and musician.
As Beni Deus, he made his film debut in 1949, then worked steadily in small character roles for the next 32 years. The "I" and "Y" spellings of his name are pretty much evenly split, with no way of telling which should be the official spelling, however a magazine interview uses the "I" spelling, so that seems to indicate that this was his preferred spelling. In the interview he explains that he adopted the nickname in tribute to jazz musician Benny Goodman. Rather strangely he also has quite a few credits where his names are hyphenated.
The tall and robust Spanish small-part actor appeared in over a hundred and fifty films during his career in Spain from the late-1940's until the early-1980's.
Deus was also part of the cast of television series such as ‘Cervantes’, ‘Historias para no dormir’, ‘Los camioneros’ and ‘El pícaro’. He also participated in televised plays in programs such as ‘Estudio 1’ and ‘Novela’.
Beni appeared in sixteen Spaghetti westerns usually playing town officials, lawmen, judges and landowners.
He died in Madrid on March 16th, 1989, aged 77.
DEUS, Beni (aka Beni-Deus,
Beny-Deus, Benis Deus, Benny Deus, Beny Deus) (Venancio Deus Mejuto) [12/12/1919, A Coruña, Galicia,
Spain – 3/16/1989, Madrid, Madrid, Spain] – journalist, film, TV actor, married
to Tita Deus
Torrejón City - 1962 (Doug)
Welcome Padre Murray – 1962 (Mark
Herrero)
Heroes of the West - 1963 (Sanchez)
Gunmen of
Hour of Death – 1964 (Dan)
Seven from
Welcome Padre Murray – 1964 (Mark)
Finger on the Trigger - 1965 (O’Brien)
[as Benny Deus]
Vengence Ranch – 1965 (Monahan)
Clint the Stranger – 1967 (McKinley)
The Magnificent Texan – 1967 (Judge
Wilkins) [as Beny Deus]
Garringo – 1969 (Sheriff Klaus)
When Satan Grips the Colt – 1969
(preacher) [as Ben Deter]
Thunder Over
Sentence of God – 1972
The White, the Yellow, the Black –
1974 (Robson/Robinson brother)
Gilbert Chesterton (actor) would have been 150 today but died in 1936.
Carlo Innocenzi (composer) would have been 125
today but died in 1962.
German theater, film, radio, television and voice actress
died in Berlin, Germany on May 1, 2024. She was 82. Born in Bytom, Poland she
was was an actress at the Theater der Freundschaft in Berlin from 1958 to the
summer of 1961, before moving to the Volksbühne Berlin, where she remained
until 1967. In addition to her theater activities, she starred in several
feature and television films, including the title role of the DEFA production “Hatifa”
in 1960. During her dubbing career, she not only acted as a narrator, but also
directed the dialogue in many films. Gisela was the voice of Andrea Drahota in
1967’s East German “Chingachgook, the Great Snake” and Pepa Niolova in 1971’s “Osceola”.
[These daily posts will cover little known actors or people that have appeared in more recent films and TV series. Various degrees of information that I was able to find will be given and anything that you can add would be appreciated.]
The last mention of him that I can find was as a screenwriter for a 2005 TV film called “Il mondo è meraviglioso” starring Enrico Montesano and Lorena Forteza.
Bucceri appeared in only one Spaghetti western and that was a doctor in 1967’s “Giarrettiera Colt” (Garter Colt) starring Nicoletta Machiavelli and Claudio Camaso.
BUCCERI, Franco (Gianfranco Bucceri) [Italian]
– producer, dubbing director, writer, film, TV actor.
Garter Colt – 1967 (doctor)
Pray and Kill – 1967 [screenwriter]
A Man Called Amen – 1968 [screenwriter]
California 1977 [screenwriter]
Variety
By Joseph Lapid
October 25, 1972
Tel Aviv, Oct. 24
Shooting of
“Billy Two Hats,” a western starring Gregory Peck, Desi Arnaz Jr. and Jack
Warden with David Huddleston and Sian Barbara Allen, started at “Sarcoville”
near Tel Aviv Oct. 15 and will continue for eight weeks. Other locations are
the desert between Ashkelon and Beer-Sheba, which represents a homestead in
Nevada, and the area near the Red Sea port of Eliat. The film will be released
in the late spring of ’73.
“Billy Two
Hats” is $1,100,000 production of Algonquin Film, a London-based production
company set up by Norman Jewison and Patrick Palmer. Algonquin is making the
film for United Artists, which will distribute it. The chose the Israeli
location on the insistence of Jewison, who is simultaneously directing “Jesus
Christ Superstar” here (for Universal).
Director is
Ted Kotcheff, and the original screenplay was written by Scotsman Alan Sharp.
Fifty percent of the production unit is Israeli, as well as the
Berkey-Pathe-Humphrey processing laboratories and the Birns & Sawyer camera
and lighting equipment.
[submitted by Michael Ferguson]
As we know most of the Euro-westerns were co-productions from Italy, Spain, Germany and France which incorporated British and American actors to gain a worldwide audience. The films were shot silent and then dubbed into the various languages where they were sold for distribution. That means Italian, Spanish, German, French and English voice actors were hired to dub the films. Even actors from the countries where the film was to be shown were often dubbed by voice actors for various reasons such as the actors were already busy making another film, they wanted to be paid additional salaries for dubbing their voices, the actor’s voice didn’t fit the character they were playing, accidents to the actors and in some cases even death before the film could be dubbed.
I’ll list a Euro-western and the (I) Italian, (S)
Spanish, (G) German and (F) French, (E) English voices that I can find and once
in a while a bio on a specific voice actor as in Europe these actors are as
well-known as the actors they voiced.
Today we’ll cover “Mutiny at Fort Sharp”
[(I) Italian, (S) Spanish, (G) German, (F) French, (E) English]
Colonel Lenox – Broderick Crawford (I) Emilio Cigoli, (S) Salvador Arias
Captain Clermont - Mario Valdemarin (I) Cesare Barbetti, (S) José María Cordero
Southern Medical Lieutenant - Umberto Ceriani (I) Umberto Ceriani, (S) ) Francisco Valladares
Brenda - Elisa Montés (I) ?, (S) Josefina De Luna
Sergeant Ross – Ugo Sasso (I) Bruno Persa, (S) Luis
María Lasala
Otto Lins-Morstadt (director) would have been 135 today but died in 1962.
Horst Frank (actor) would have been 95 today but
died in 1999.
Vida Jerman (actor) would have been 85 today but
died in 2011.
Jean-Pierre Leaud (actor) is 80 today.
[These daily posts will cover little known actors or people that have appeared in more recent films and TV series. Various degrees of information that I was able to find will be given and anything that you can add would be appreciated.]
Maria Grazia Buccella was born in Milan, Lombardy, Italy on August 15, 1940. Buccella won the Miss Trento, Miss Venice, and Miss Italy beauty pageants, and placed third in the Miss Europe 1959 competition.
Grazia was busy throughout the 1960s in numerous Italian and European films. She screen tested for the role of Domino Derval in the 1965 James Bond film “Thunderball”. (The role, originally an Italian woman named Dominetta Petacchi, went to French actress Claudine Auger). That same year Buccella appeared in the Dino Risi-directed film “Il Gaucho” which starred Vittorio Gassman; “Gentleman de Cocody”, starring Jean Marais; “The Secret Agents”, starring Gassman and Henry Fonda; and the Dino DeLaurentiis production “Menage All'Italiana”. But she’s usually remembered as 'Miss Okra' in the Peter Sellers film “After the Fox” (1966).
Buccella was featured on the cover of the July 1977 Italian edition of Playboy magazine. She retired from films in 1979, although she made two small appearances in the late 1980s and a final appearance in the 2000 television series ‘Hotel Otello’.
Grazia recorded four 45 rpm records between 1969 and 1981.
Grazia appeared in one Spaghetti westerns: “Villa Rides!” in 1967 she plays the role of Fina and she was to appear in another western “Casanova West” also in 1967 but it was never made.
BUCCELLA, Grazia (aka Grazia Maria Buccella, Grazia
Bucella, Maria Bucella) (Maria Grazia Buccella)
[8/15/1940, Milan, Lombardy, Italy -
] – model, film, TV actress, singer. Miss Trento, Miss Venice, Miss
Italy [1959].
Casanova West – 1967 [film was never made]
Villa Rides! – 1967 (Fina)
“Mas alla de la ley”
(Beyond the Law)
(1968)
Director: Giorgio Stegani
Starring: Lee Van Cleef, Antonio Sabato, Lionel Stander, Graziella
Granata
Country: Spain
Label: Mon Inter
Blu-ray
Languages: English, Spanish
Subtitles: Italian, Spanish
Runtime: 90 minutes
Available: May 27, 2024
Here’s a scene from the 1971 film “Pancho Villa” showing Clint Walker aboard a flatcar with a cannon which was used to shoot at approaching trains or soldiers riding too close to the railroad tracks. The railroad spur is near the city of Guadix and was also used in many Spaghetti westerns including “For a Few Dollars More” where the La Calahorra castle can be seen on the hillside in the distance.
Here is the same location as seen today with the La
Calahorra castle in the distance.
Baldo
This comic book series was a reprint of Baldo, Whiskey
& Gogo and Joe Polpetta. The artwork was done by Luciano Bottaro
and Studio Bierreci Comics. Covers were illustrated by by Luciano Bottaro. It
was published in 1979 with issue #1 coming out in August and ended with issue
#4 in November of that year. It was published by Edizioni Bianconi in Milan,
Italy under the direction of Rosalia Guccione. Each issue varied in size from
112-128 black and white pages with color covers.
Luigi Batzella (director) would have been 100 today but died in 2008.
Uwe Friedrichsen [voice actor] would have been 90
today but died in 2016.
Klaus Gehrke (actor) is 85 today.
Alícia Sánchez (actress) is 75 today.
[These daily posts will cover little known actors or people that have appeared in more recent films and TV series. Various degrees of information that I was able to find will be given and anything that you can add would be appreciated.]
Agostino ‘Tino’ Buazzelli was born in Frascati, Lazio, Italy. He was a producer, director, writer, theater, film and TV actor. After obtaining his diploma in education, Buazzelli enrolled at the Accademia d'Arte Drammatica in Rome, graduating in 1946. He made his debut the following year, in the Maltagliati-Gassman stage company. Then he made his film debut in 1948, in Riccardo Freda's “Il cavaliere misterioso”. Buazzelli's major successes are related to his theatre work in notably several stage works played at the Piccolo Teatro in Milan between the 1950s and 1960s, and his performance of Brecht's “Life of Galileo” (1963) is referred to as the peak of his career. Buazzelli had significant television success as Nero Wolfe in a series of television films in which he starred between 1969 and 1971.
Tino was married to actress Ermelina Banfi (1953-1980) and the father of stepdaughter Nicoletta Morini.
He appeared in 46 films between 1948 and 1978 among which was one Euro-western “Il bandolero stanco” in the role of Paco in 1952.
Tino Buazzelli died in Rome on October 20, 1980, of lymphadenitis
a month after turning 58.
BUAZZELLI, Tino (Agostino Buazzelli)
[9/13/1922, Frascati, Lazio, Italy – 10/20/1980, Rome, Lazio, Italy
(lymphadenitis)] – producer, director, writer, theater, film, TV actor, married
to actress Ermelina Banfi (1953-1980) father of a stepdaughter Nicoletta Morini.
Il bandolero stanco – 1952 (Paco)
Ramon Mereles remains an enigma. He’s only listed as singing this one song “Ya me voy” on the IMDb and Discogs. I don’t know if he is/was Spanish, Mexican or Argentinian like the composer of the score Luis Bacalov. The song itself seems to be a Mexican standard and sung by many Mexican artists.
Mereles may have been a session singer or the member of an unnamed Mariachi group. The question remains unanswered.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0BjvPdm2NY
MERELES, Ramon [Spanish] – singer.
A Bullet for the General – 1966 [sings: “Ya me voy”]
Mike Bongiorno (actor) would have been 100 today but died in 2009.
Ulrich Teschner (actor) would have been 85 today
but died in 2018.
Olga Bisera (actress) is 80 today.
