ALBERTO GRIMALDI

Written by Michael Darvell
 

(28 March 1925 - 23 January 2021)

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The Italian film producer Alberto Grimaldi was born in Naples to father Pasquale, a lawyer. Alberto followed his father’s profession in law and opened his own firm. Some of his legal clients were in the film business and he learned a lot, so in 1962 he set up his own production company, Produzioni Europee Associati (P.E.A.). His first film was The Shadow of Zorro, a Western adventure set in California. This gave him an interest in action films and his next two titles were Texas Ranger and Legacy of the Incas, an historical tale of bandits, bullets and bounty hunters, starring Guy Madison and Rik Battaglia. He produced Sergio Leone’s For a Few Dollars More and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, both with Clint Eastwood and Lee Van Cleef. Stewart Granger starred in Sergio Solima’s spy story Requiem for a Secret Agent, while Lee Van Cleef headed The Big Gundown. Following more actioners, Grimaldi was involved in a segment of Spirits of the Dead (1968), a portmanteau film of Edgar Allen Poe stories directed by Fellini, Louis Malle and Roger Vadim. This introduced him to the international art movie scene as he produced Elio Petri’s A Quiet Place in the Country, with Franco Nero and Vanessa Redgrave, Claude Lelouch’s Life Love Death with Amidou, Fellini Satyricon, Casanova and Ginger and Fred, Gillo Pontecorvo’s Burn! with Marlon Brando, Pasolini’s The Decameron, The Canterbury Tales, Arabian Nights and Salò, or the 120 Days of Sodom. He produced Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris and Novocento (1900), Arthur Hiller’s Man of La Mancha with Peter O’Toole, Billy Wilder’s Avanti! with Jack Lemmon, and Francesco Rosi’s Illustrious Corpses, etc. He had ongoing court cases with Last Tango in Paris, The Canterbury Tales and Salò, on account of their offending public decency. His last feature film as a producer was Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York in 2003, for which it was Oscar- and Bafta-nominated. Alberto Grimaldi, who has died of natural causes at the age of 95, is the father of three children, Massimo, Maurizio and Marcello from his first wife Maria Rosario Buongiorno, who died in 1983. Later he also married Melanie Vaughan-Hughes.

MICHAEL DARVELL

 
Michael Darvell

Michael Darvell trained as a librarian at Watford and in Surrey before joining Ealing Libraries where he became Music Librarian for the borough. He edited Masthead, the magazine of the University of North London School of Librarianship, The Surrealist, the staff magazine of Surrey County Library, and contributed to the Assistant Librarian and London Librarian professional journals. A freelance film reviewer since 1970, he has written for Film, Films Illustrated, Film Review, Movie Maker and Radio Times, as well as editing Montage, the London film societies magazine, for ten years. A change of career saw him joining What’s On in London as Features Editor and he eventually stepped into the shoes of the late F. Maurice Speed (founding father of Film Review annual) as the magazine’s Editor. From 2007 to 2015, he was co-editor of the Film Review annual with Mansel Stimpson. As well as writing about films, Michael has reviewed theatre for The Stage newspaper, and has written about music theatre and cabaret for the Classical Source and Musical Theatre Review websites. He is also a former restaurant critic for the ViewLondon website. Michael has been a member of the London Film Critics’ Circle since 2005.

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