ELSA MARTINELLI

9 Jul

(30 January 1935 - 8 July 2017)

The Italian actress Elsa Martinelli, who has died aged 82, did not enjoy a particularly successful career, except as decorative eye candy on a number of international film productions. After becoming a model at the age of sixteen, her cover shot on Life magazine prompted Kirk Douglas to put her in his film The Indian Fighter (1955). She then returned to Italy, married a count and raised her daughter Cristiana. She appeared in a number of Italian films, including Donatella, which won her a best actress award at Berlin, and was cast in the title role of Guy Hamilton’s Manuela, with Trevor Howard. Apart from several other (mostly forgettable) Italian titles, she was in Mauro Bolognini’s The Big Night, Howard Hawks’ Hatari! with John Wayne, The Pigeon That Took Rome with Charlton Heston, Orson Welles’ The Trial, Anthony Asquith’s The V.I.P.s, Rampage with Robert Mitchum, Maroc 7 with Gene Barry, Vittorio De Sica’s Woman Times Seven, Madigan’s Millions with Dustin Hoffman, and Christian Marquand’s Candy. In between Italian film and TV work Martinelli became a furniture and interior designer. After her first marriage was annulled, she married the photographer and designer Willy Rizzo in 1968. He died in 2013.

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.

ELSA MARTINELLI

MARTIN LANDAU

JOHN KARLSEN