Lorella De Luca (17 September 1940 – 9 January 2014) was an Italian film, television, and voice actress. One of the most recognized ingénues of Italian cinema during the mid-to-late 1950s, she is best known for having played naive young girls in dramas and comedies.
De Luca was one of several women romantically involved with her Poor, But Handsome co-star Maurizio Arena.[9] She co-starred with Arena in Il principe fusto (1960), a film which he co-wrote, produced and directed. Their relationship created a minor scandal when it was revealed by the Italian media that Arena, after publicly announcing his intention to wed Anna Maria Pierangeli, was also engaged to De Luca.[10]
With the beginning of the 1960s, De Luca received more and more roles in commercial films. She had a brief, but memorable, foray into the Spaghetti Westerngenre. In 1965, under the pseudonym "Hally Hammond", she had supporting roles in A Pistol for Ringo[14][15] and its sequel, The Return of Ringo, both directed by her future husband Duccio Tessari. De Luca appeared in nine other films directed by her husband, most notably, Una voglia da morire (1965) and Kiss Kiss...Bang Bang (1966),[16][17] between 1965 and 1978. After 1967, with the birth of their two daughters Federica and Fiorenza Tessari, in addition to her losing interest as a character actor, she accepted only occasional parts during the next decade.
Her last acting roles were in The Fifth Commandment (1978)[8] and the 1984 television miniseries Nata d'amore. She was actively involved in her husband's later career and was first assistant director in his final film There Was a Castle with Forty Dogs (1990). De Luca made one last appearance in Bonus malus (1993) and retired from the film industry after Tessari's death the following year.
Marriage
De Luca starred in a total of nine films directed by Ducio Tessari, whom she married in 1971, in addition to working behind the scenes as an assistant director.
Death
De Luca died on 9 January 2014, aged 73, after a long battle with a brain tumor, which had caused her to lose her vision sometime before her death.[18][19][20]
^"Discovery of Lorella De Luca." Cosmopolitan. Sept. 1961: 52+. ("Discovery of Lorella De Luca (left) reads like script: at fourteen, she was spotted by director, who followed her home, convinced father she should be in, films. Now 21, she is a talented actress.")
^Sadoul, Georges. Dictionary of Films. Trans. Peter Morris. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1972. (pg. 32) ISBN0-520-02152-5
^Bondanella, Peter E. A History of Italian Cinema. New York: Continuum International Publishing Group, 2009. (pg. 150) ISBN1-4411-6069-8
^ abHughes, Howard. Once Upon a Time in the Italian West: The Filmgoers' Guide to Spaghetti Westerns. New York: I.B. Tauris & Co., 2004. (pg. 20) ISBN1-85043-896-X
^Rondi, Gian Luigi. Italian Cinema Today, 1952–1965. New York: Hill and Wang, 1966 (pg. 157).
^Cowie, Peter, ed. International Film Guide 1983. London: The Tantivy Press, 1983.
^Gundle, Stephen. Death and the Dolce Vita: The Dark Side of Rome in the 1950s. Edinburgh: Canongate Books, 2011. (pg. 227) ISBN0-85786-049-6
^Allen, Jane. Pier Angeli: A Fragile Life. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., 2002. (pp. 159–160); ISBN0-7864-1392-1 ("The press claimed they were inseparable. However, when Arena publicly announced his intention of marrying Anna Maria Pierangeli, it was revealed that he already had a fiancée, a starlet named Lorella De Luca")
^Cardullo, Bert. Vittorio De Sica: Director, Actor, Screenwriter. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., 2002. (pg. 120) ISBN0-7864-1135-X
^Maltin, Leonard. Leonard Maltin's Movie and Video Guide 2001. New York: Plume, 2000. (pg. 460); ISBN0-452-28187-3
^Blum, Daniel. Daniel Blum's Screen World 1965. Vol. 16. New York: Crown Publishers, 1966. (pg. 185); ISBN0-8196-0306-6
^Frayling, Christopher. Spaghetti Westerns: Cowboys and Europeans from Karl May to Sergio Leone. 2nd ed. London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 1998. (pg. 263) ISBN1-86064-200-4
^Hughes, Howard. Once Upon a Time in the Italian West: The Filmgoers' Guide to Spaghetti Westerns. London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 2006. (pg. 31); ISBN1-85043-896-X
^Parish, James and Michael Pitts. The Great Spy Pictures II. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow, 1986 (pg. 178); ISBN0-8108-1913-9
^Mavis, Paul. The Espionage Filmography: United States Releases, 1898 through 1999. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Co., 2001 (pg. 168); ISBN0-7864-0861-8
