where we were shooting with our bevy of beauties. The Duke gave us the afternoon on his yacht to do some great shooting and partying. Later that night, we all went dining and dancing at the Cala del Volpe Resort Hotel complex with the Aga Khan and Princess Yasmin, along with the daughter of Rita Hayworth and Orson Welles.
How did you get hooked up with PLAYBOY magazine?
I was a photog at the time. As a sideline, I did photo layouts for models and actresses, and also sold racing photos to mags in Italy and Germany. A friend of mine who worked as a freelancer for PLAYBOY was in town and asked me if I could line up a couple of gorgeous gals who would like to do a pictorial for them. We found a couple of la- dies I knew and he asked me to be the male coun- terpart. I had a week off and welcomed the idea of an all-expenses-paid trip to Sardegna and the play- boy paradise called Costa Smeralda, which had been developed by the Aga Khan for his rich friends in the late ’50s. The shoot was fun, but the spread ended up with one of the girls, Chris- tine, and I just walking along with a shot of the Calle de Volpe in the background. I made some bucks and had a ball.
I can find very little information on your film Vacanze sulla neve [1966]. I think this was done after OPERATION WHITE
SHARK, and even though it was finished, I’m not sure it was ever released. I never saw it. I think there was some kind of ruckus over the fact that the producer, who was the leading lady’s keeper, didn’t like the way she was photographed, so he blocked the release. I have no idea what happened with it.
Any recollections of the cast or director? Filippo “Pippo” Ratti, who also directed OP- ERATION WHITE SHARK, was an absolute char- acter, one of the greatest jokers I ever met in Italian cinema. Certainly not a great director, but fun to work and pal around with. I remember there was a party of some kind every night after filming. We were all over Italy and Yugoslavia for WHITE SHARK, which was lots of fun; Vacanze sulla neve was filmed where they had just held the winter Olympics above Torino. And again, just one month-long party. I played the ro- mantic lead, and since I was a ski-buff, spent most of my time on the slopes. Can’t remember the name of the gal who played the “femme” lead. [Gisella Sofio. —Ed.] Cute, chubby, little blonde lady.
26
What was the plot? Plot, schmott! At this point, all I recall is that it
was some kind of silly romance concerning a spoiled rich Italian brat, and a Swiss ski-bum, me. Seems to me he dumps her in the end for a gal with more class. Moreover, like I say at this stage, it is cer- tainly a moot point since it never got further than probably the third screening as far as I can tell!
OPERATION WHITE SHARK was one of the first of many European James Bond copycats.
It was the first of some laughable spy films, that’s for sure, and it was my introduction to Pippo Ratti and the insane world of 1960s filmmaking in Italy! I had done a series of TV commercials with Brunella Tocci, Miss Italy of 1955, so I was fairly accustomed to their rather polemic way of deal- ing with the everyday crises that come up during filming. But, on this nutty film, there was a fight each day twixt producers, director and writers, and a party every night—just to cool everybody out after the madness of the day! It probably took three months to film, and we were all over Italy and sev- eral spots on the coast of Yugoslavia. I think I was 29 or 30 years old, so it was like playing a funky kind of cops-and-robbers game. Every little boy in that era loved to play with guns, and I got to play with all sorts of noisy playthings. Most of the time they jammed or wouldn’t fire, “all’ Italiana.” I’m not joking: half the time nothing mechanical worked.
There was plenty of action in this film... Were you doing your own stunts? Was there much real danger involved for you or the rest of the cast? I always did my own stunts. The only place where there was any danger was crossing a rush- ing cataract in the cave sequence. Had I slipped, I would still be underground somewhere in North- ern Italy. The drop-off, just a few feet from where I staggered across, was estimated at 200 feet into unexplored nether regions of Hell [laughs]. The other sequence that left me wondering why the heck I had gotten myself into the cinema occurred in the La Casaccia Atomic Power facility outside Rome. If you saw the silly film, I am running around in a wet suit and hanging from a moving gantry crane at one point. We were actually filming inside the plant reactor area.
Wait a minute. You filmed inside an actual atomic power plant!?
It was completely nuts. To this day, I can’t be- lieve I actually went along with it. The producer had a friend who was a physicist in the hierarchy
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