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Osvaldo Valenti
Osvaldo Valenti
Born	17 February 1906; Constantinople, Ottoman Empire
Died	30 April 1945 (aged 39); Milan, Italy
Cause of death	Execution by firing squad
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1928–1945
Military career
Allegiance	Italian Social Republic
Service / branch	Decima Flottiglia MAS
Years of service	1944–1945
Rank	Lieutenant

Osvaldo Valenti (17 February 1906 – 30 April 1945) was an Italian film actor.^[1] Valenti starred in several successful Italian movies of the late 1930s and early 1940s, such as the famous The Iron Crown and The Jester's Supper. He appeared in more than 50 films between 1928 and 1945. He and his lover, Luisa Ferida, were executed by partisans in Milan, Italy, due to their links with Fascism. Their story was portrayed in the 2008 film Wild Blood.

Biography

Osvaldo Valenti was born in Constantinople, Ottoman Empire (present-day Turkey), to a Sicilian carpet trader and a wealthy Lebanese woman of Greek descent.

In 1915 the family left Turkey for Italy, settling first in Bergamo and then in Milan. He attended high schools in St. Gallen, Switzerland and in Würzburg, Bavaria and subsequently enrolled in the law faculty of the Catholic University of Milan.^[2]

Two years later, he left the university and went to live first in Paris and then in Berlin, where he made his acting debut with a supporting role in the German silent drama film Hungarian Rhapsody, directed by Hanns Schwarz (1928).

At the beginning of the 1930s, he returned to Italy and worked with film directors Mario Bonnard (Five to Nil, 1932) and Amleto Palermi (La fortuna di Zanze, 1933 and Creatures of the Night, 1934).

In 1935, Valenti met the famous film director Alessandro Blasetti, who gave him a role in the comedy film The Countess of Parma (1937). Valenti played the role of Guy de la Motte in Blasetti's Ettore Fieramosca (1938) gaining appreciation from both critics and the public alike. The success of the movie allowed him to star in many successful films and to be sought after by many leading directors. In 1939, while working on An Adventure of Salvator Rosa (1940), directed by Alessandro Blasetti, he met the actress Luisa Ferida. The pair became romantically involved and had a son, Kim, who died 4 days after his birth.^[2]

The Second World War

After the fall of the Fascist regime in 1943, Valenti joined the Republic of Salò, and moved to Venice together with his mistress Luisa Ferida, renouncing a contract for two films to be shot in Spain in early 1944.

Cinematographic activity restarted in Venice at the Cinevillaggio, created by the Minister of Popular Culture of the Italian Social Republic Fernando Mezzasoma. In 1944, Valenti shot his last movie, Piero Ballerini's Fatto di cronaca.

Valenti and Ferida then moved to Bologna. In April 1944, Osvaldo joined, with the rank of lieutenant, the Decima Flottiglia MAS, an elite commando unit led by Junio Valerio Borghese.^[2] The couple then moved to Milan. During the liberation of the city on 25 April 1945, they were arrested by members of the Italian Resistance and shot five days later without trial. When they were executed, Ferida was expecting another child. They are buried in the Cimitero Maggiore di Milano.

Partial filmography

Hungarian Rhapsody (1928) – Der Fähnrich
Five to Nil (1932) – Barenghi
La signorina dell'autobus (1933) – Giacomo
La fortuna di zanze (1933)
Ragazzo (1934) – Malvivente di borgata
Creatures of the Night (1934)
The Dance of Time (1936)
The Countess of Parma (1936) – Duca di Fadda
Queen of the Scala (1937)
Mia moglie si diverte (1938) – Tommy Bolden
Ettore Fieramosca (1938) – Guy de la Motte
La signora di Montecarlo (1938)
A Thousand Lire a Month (1939) – Gabriele Corodi
The Widow (1939) – Padova, il pittore
The Fornaretto of Venice (1939) – Alvise Duodo
Frenzy (1939) – Sigfrido
Hurricane in the Tropics (1939) – Il tenente Reguero
An Adventure of Salvator Rosa (1939) – Lamberto d'Arco
Una lampada alla finestra (1940) – Dick
Fanfulla da Lodi (1940) – Franco di Genova
Love Trap (1940) – Il conte di Brazeuil
Antonio Meucci (1940) – Giuseppe Garibaldi giovane
Beyond Love (1940) – Livio Sabelli
Abandonment (1940) – Leonard
Boccaccio (1940) – Berto
La leggenda azzurra (1940) – L'ufficiale straniero
La zia smemorata (1940) – Paolo Ravelli
Captain Fracasse (1940) – Il duca Ruggero di Vallombrosa
I pirati del golfo (1940)
Idyll in Budapest (1941) – Sandor
Giuliano de' Medici (1941) – Franceschino de' Pazzi
The King of England Will Not Pay (1941) – Il secondo Antellesi
The Iron Crown (1941) – Eriberto
Beatrice Cenci (1941) – Giacomo Cenci
Don Buonaparte (1941) – Maso
The Mask of Cesare Borgia (1941) – Cesare Borgia
The Secret Lover (1941) – Valentini
First Love (1941) – Giovannino Cafiero
Il vetturale del San Gottardo (1941) – Mortens
La sonnambula (1941) – Il conte Osvaldo Merola
Sancta Maria (1942) – Jack
The Jester's Supper (1942) – Giannetto Malespini
The Two Orphans (1942) – Pietro
Sleeping Beauty (1942) – Don Vincenzo Caramandola
Orizzonte di sangue (1942) – Alioscia
Fedora (1942) – Vladimiro Yariskine
Luisa Sanfelice (1942) – Nelson
Piazza San Sepolcro (1942) – Napoleone da giovane
Knights of the Desert (1942) – Il capitano Serra
Gli ultimi filibustieri (1943) – Ramon de la Sierra
La valle del diavolo (1943) – Il barone Rider
Harlem (1943) – Chris Sherman
Enrico IV (1943) – Il conte Enrico Di Nolli / Enrico IV
The Innkeeper (1944) – Cavaliere di Ripafratta
Fatto di cronaca (1945)

References

^ "Osvaldo Valenti". MyMovies. Retrieved 23 November 2019.
^ ^a ^b ^c Puppa 2020.

Bibliography

Brunetta, Gian Piero (1993) [1979]. Storia del cinema italiano. Vol. II (Il cinema del regime 1929-1945). Rome: Editori Riuniti.
Bracalini, Romano (1985). Celebri e dannati. Osvaldo Valenti e Luisa Ferida. Storia e tragedia di due divi del regime. Milan: Longanesi.
Reggiani, Odoardo (2001). Luisa Ferida, Osvaldo Valenti. Ascesa e caduta di due stelle del cinema. Milan: Spirali.
Moscati, Italo (2004). "VALENTI, Osvaldo". Enciclopedia del Cinema. Rome: Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. Retrieved 15 December 2024.
Gundle, Stephen (2013). Mussolini's Dream Factory: Film Stardom in Fascist Italy. Berghahn Books. ISBN 978-1-78-238244-7.
Puppa, Paolo (2020). "VALENTI, Osvaldo". Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, Volume 97: Trivulzio–Valeri (in Italian). Rome: Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. ISBN 978-8-81200032-6.