Pioneering Italian comic actor Franca Valeri dies at 100

Franca Valeri, an elegant, ironic and versatile actress who pioneered Italian female comic roles in the post-war years, has died

ROME – Franca Valeri, an elegant, ironic and versatile actress who pioneered female comic roles in the post-war years in Italy and helped the nation laugh at its weaknesses, has passed away at age 100.

Corriere della Sera newspaper quoted her daughter, Stefania Bonfadelli, an opera singer, as saying that Valeri died in her sleep on Sunday at her Rome home, nine days after her 100th birthday.

Milanese by birth but Roman by adoption, Valeri will be honored with a wake on Monday in a theater in the Italian capital, announced the city hall of Rome.

Loved by Italians, especially for her roles in the 1950s to 1970s, first on radio, then on television and in the movies, Valeri has recently been toasted by many celebrities and in interviews in the run-up to its 100th anniversary.

President Sergio Mattarella sent a message of condolences, praising Valeri as a versatile and popular actress who will remain in the hearts of Italians for her great talent and extraordinary sympathy.

Valeri was a sophisticated and intelligent comedic performer of post-war Italian society and often wrote scripts or monologues for her performances, especially on stage.

The lead roles included comic book scenes in which she appeared solo, holding a phone, real or imagined, including as “Signorina Snob, a role for which she drew inspiration from her Milanese bourgeois roots. Another popular comic book character she created poked fun at the Roman middle class vulgarities.

After decades in which comedy roles in Italy were virtually the exclusive province of men, Valeri has stood firm against the best male actors in comics, with Toto ‘and Alberto Sordi. Of the six films she made with Sordi, arguably her most popular role came in Il Vedovo (The Widower), a 1959 hit directed by Dino Risi, a master of Italian comedy films.

Often ironic, Valeri once wrote a film script in which she offered to play sister roles with Sophia Loren and sent the proposal to Carlo Ponti, the producer who was Lorens’ husband.

Italian state television noted that Ponti responded that the slender and short Valeri could not be paired as a sister to the statuesque and voluptuous Loren, but he loved the script and offered the two women to play cousins, this that they finally did.

In the film Il Segno di Venere (The Sign of Venus), Loren was the Neapolitan cousin and Valeri the Milanese cousin. Together they formed Italy, the Corriere della Sera wrote on the film.

Valeri has worked with many prominent Italian directors, including Federico Fellini and Mario Monicelli.

Born July 31, 1920 in Milan under the name Alma Franca Maria Norsa, she later adopted a stage name, Italian state television said, in part because her father disapproved of her becoming a comedic actress .

Valeri was a teenager when Benito Mussolinis’s anti-Jewish laws were enacted in 1938. Her father, a Jew, fled with his brother to Switzerland to escape what would later be under German occupation of Italy, the deportation to the death camps of many members of Italy. small Jewish community.

Her mother obtained a false document falsely stating that Valeri was the illegitimate daughter of an Italian who was not Jewish, according to the Italian news agency ANSA.

Dad was Jewish. When he read the racial law news in the newspaper, he cried, said the Corriere della Sera quoted by Valeri in an interview. It was the ugliest moment of my life, especially since Valeri was not allowed under anti-Jewish fascist repression to continue attending school or going to the theater, his passion, according to the newspaper.

Asked in a recent interview about the secret to her long-standing success, Valeri replied: I tried to stay classy.