Chiari, Walter

(1924-1991)

(Born Walter Annichiarico.)

   Actor. After being a keen sportsman in his teens and showing a great deal of promise as a boxer, Chiari began working in theater in 1946. While displaying a natural talent for stage reviews and musical theater, he also made his first film appearance in Giorgio Pastina's Vanita (Vanity, 1947), for which he received a Nastro d'argento for Best Acting Debut. From then on he alternated between stage and screen, starring in dozens of light romantic comedies, some written especially for him, but also giving more nuanced performances, as in Luchino Visconti's Bellissima (1951).

   His popularity continued to grow and by the early 1960s he had achieved something of an international reputation, having appeared in films such as Otto Preminger's Bonjour tristesse (1958) as well as on American television on the Steve Allen (1957) and Ed Sullivan (1961) shows. After playing the wryly cynical protagonist of Alessandro Blasetti's Io, io, io . . . e gli altri (Me, Me, Me . . . and the Others, 1966) and Mr. Silence in Orson Welles's Chimes at Midnight (1966), he was memorable as Nino, the hapless Italian journalist who migrates to Australia, in Michael Powell's They're a Weird Mob (1966). However, in May 1970, still at the crest of his popularity, he was arrested and jailed for several months on charges of using and supplying cocaine. Although he was eventually acquitted of the supply charge, his career subsequently went into a severe decline. He began making a comeback in the mid-1980s, especially after the screening on national television of a seven-part documentary on his life, produced by film critic and historian Tatti Sanguinetti. That same year his performance as the father in Massimo Mazzucco's Romanzo (Romance, 1986) was highly acclaimed and tipped by many to bring him the Golden Lion at the Venice Festival. After playing a minor role in the television miniseries I promessi sposi (The Betrothed, 1989), he made his final appearance in one of the stories of Peter Del Monte's Tracce di vita amorosa (Traces of an Amorous Life, 1990).