Tognazzi, Ugo

(1922-1990)

   Actor. A popular actor who appeared in over 140 films in a career that spanned three decades, Tognazzi began working in amateur theater in his teens and continued to hone his stage skills by entertaining troops while doing his military service during World War II. After the war he embarked on a professional career in show business and began touring in numerous vaudeville shows and musical revues. Over the next decade he became enormously popular with his comic sketches and routines, initially only onstage and on the radio but eventually also on television, where for almost five years he performed regularly with fellow comic actor Raimondo Vianello in the long-running variety program Uno due tre (One Two Three, 1955-1959). During this time he also appeared on the big screen in a host of lightweight comedies, but his film career only really took off in the early 1960s, due largely to the much more complex characters he was able to create in two films directed by Luciano Salce, Il federale (The Fascist, 1961) and La voglia matta (The Crazy Urge, 1962). From then on, usually playing some variation on a cynical, self-serving, womanizing scoundrel, he became one of the fixtures of the Italian silver screen, starring in films such as Dino Risi's Imostri (The Monsters, 1963, also known in the United States as 15 from Rome), Antonio Pietrangeli's Il magnifico cornuto (The Magnificent Cuckold, 1964), Alberto Lattuada's Venga a prendere il caffe da noi (Come Have Coffee with Us, 1970), and Mario Monicelli's Vogliamo i colonelli (We Want the Colonels, 1973). He contributed significantly in his sardonic supporting role to Pier Paolo Pasolini's Porcile (Pigpen, 1969) but undoubtedly provided his most memorable performances in the many films in which he worked with Marco Ferreri, which included L'ape regina (The Conjugal Bed, 1963), La donna scimmia (The Ape Woman, 1964), Marcia nuziale (Wedding March, 1965), L'udienza (The Audience, 1972), and La grande abbuffata (The Grande Bouffe, 1973). After playing so many dubious characters, his performance as the morally questionable father willing to exploit his own son's kidnapping for business reasons in Bernardo Bertolucci's La tragedia di un uomo ridicolo (Tragedy of a Ridiculous Man, 1981) earned him the Palme d'or at Cannes and his fourth Nastro d'argento.

   Outside of Italy, Tognazzi is probably best remembered as Renato Baldi, the gay character he played in the three Cage aux folles films (1978, 1980, 1985), all directed by Edouard Molinaro and Georges Lautner. Tognazzi also tried his hand at directing himself in three films, Il mantenuto (His Women, 1961), Il fischio al naso (The Seventh Floor, 1967), and Sissignore (Yes Sir, 1968).