Who Are Those Guys? – Eugenio Galadini

 

Eugenio Galadini was born in Rome sometime in 1897. He was an Italian theater and film actor, active as a character actor and second-rate performer for over forty years. During his career he worked in prose, musical comedy and numerous films, moving from post-war popular cinema to the Spaghetti western of the sixties. In this last phase he also used the pseudonym Graham Sooty, as well as some graphic variants of the surname such as Galandini, Galantini and Galatini.

His theatrical activity is documented as early as 1926, when he participated in Giuseppe Rossi's “Blood Signal”, a work presented as a railway drama in Grand Guignol style. This presence places the beginning of his professional activity long before his film debut and confirms a training gained mainly on the stage.

For about twenty years, the documentation on his career has remained fragmentary. Galadini belongs in fact to that generation of company actors and character actors for whom theatrical archives preserve discontinuous information. When he landed permanently in the cinema, he already had a long-acting experience behind him, evident in the ability to sustain even very short parts with an immediately recognizable physiognomy.

Eugenio Galadini belongs to the large group of Italian character actors capable of crossing different genres and eras without almost ever occupying the center of the scene. His activity, which began on stage, continued in the cinema from the second post-war period until the early seventies and experienced a significant parenthesis in musical comedy thanks to the Marquis Facconi of the first edition of Rugantino.

His documented film debut took place in 1946 with Duilio Coletti's “Il Passatore”, in which he played a brigand. The following year he participated in Carlo Borghesio's “How I Lost the War”, thus entering the Italian film production of the first post-war period.

The years immediately following saw him engaged with great regularity. In 1951 he took part in Aldo Fabrizi's “La famiglia Passaguai”; in 1952 he appeared in “Una madre ritorna” by Roberto Bianchi Montero; in 1953 he participated in “Amarti è il mio peccato” by Sergio Grieco and in “Non vogliamo morire” by Oreste Palella. His professional profile was now that of a reliable character actor, often used in secondary parts that required stage presence rather than extensive narrative development.

A new important chapter in his theatrical activity opened in 1962 with the first edition of “Rugantino” by Garinei and Giovannini, performed at the Teatro Sistina in Rome.

In 1961 he had meanwhile appeared in “The Magnificent Three” and “The Usual Robbers” in Milan. In 1964 he played Dominique in Steno's “Texas Twins”, with Walter Chiari and Raimondo Vianello, and also took part in “Primitive Love”. His film activity, however, was about to move towards a completely different genre.

Starting from the mid-sixties Galadini in fact entered the Spaghetti western permanently, frequently adopting the Anglo-Saxon pseudonym Graham Sooty, according to the practice of the time that tended to present Italian technical and artistic casts with names with an international appearance. Specialist repertoires attribute to him numerous participations in the genre, sometimes even under variants of the name such as Jim Bathlin.

In the 1965 In the “A Colt’s Shadow”, directed by Giovanni Grimaldi, he played Buck, credited as Graham Sooty. In 1966 he was Jefferson in “For the Taste of Killing” by Tonino Valerii, again under the pseudonym Graham Sooty. Around the same time, he appeared in “Starblack”, “A Taste for Killing”, “Arizona Colt”, and other western productions, often in roles as lawmen, landlords, bandits, or frontier characters.

He also worked with Franco Franchi and Ciccio Ingrassia, protagonists of an important part of Italian comic cinema of the sixties. In these productions his role remained that of the character actor capable of adapting to the farcical register without losing the credibility built in gender roles.

At the beginning of the seventies he participated in Per grazia ricevuta by Nino Manfredi and in Will the lawyer Franco Benenato be able to defeat his bitter enemy the praetor Ciccio De Ingras?, then in 1972 he appeared in Un apprezzato professionista di sicuro avvenire by Giuseppe De Santis, one of the last documented titles of his career. Some reconstructions place the end of his film activity in 1973.

He died in Rome in 1972 according to the specialist repertoires that report his personal data, although it has not been possible to find a complete date of death in more detailed personal or biographical sources. It is precisely this gap that testifies to how much still remains to be reconstructed on the lives of Italian character actors who worked for decades without receiving the same attention reserved for the protagonists.

In all he appeared in some 78 films.  

GALADINI, Eugenio (aka Jim Bathlin, Eugenio Caladini, Eugenio Galandini, Giulio Galadini, Eugenio Galantini, Eugenio Galatini, Graham Sooty) [1897, Rome, Lazio, Italy – 1972, Rome, Lazio, Italy] – theater, film, TV actor.

The Magnificent Three – 1961 (peon)

Lost Treasure of the Aztecs – 1964 (old Aztec)

The Magnificent Brutes of the West – 1964 (Uncle Sal Capone) [as Jim Bathlin]

The Twins from Texas – 1964 (undertaker)

The Big Gundown – 1966 (photographer)

In a Colt’s Shadow – 1966 (Buck) [as Graham Sooty]

Johnny Colt – 1966 (Henry Williams) [as Giulio Galadini, Graham Sooty]

The Man from Nowhere – 1966 (waystation proprietor)

A Taste for Killing – 1966 (Jefferson) [as Graham Sooty]

The Bang-Bang Kid – 1967 (old man) [as Graham Sooty]

The Handsome, the Ugly and the Stupid – 1967 (old stbleman)

And for a Roof a Sky Full of Stars – 1968 (sheriff)

One After the Other – 1968 (undertaker) [as Graham Sooty]

Tequila Joe – 1968 (Connors)

The Forgotten Pistolero – 1969 (Chico)

Dead Men Don’t Make Shadows – 1970 (old merchant)