Mario Girotti was born March 29, 1939, in Venice—and, incidentally, is not related to actor Massimo Girotti, as some published sources claim. He started acting in 1952 and appeared, as did De Sica, in the Bava-photo- graphed Villa Borghese. Prior to his role as Prince Moluk in Le meraviglie di Aladino, he had played minor roles in Annibale/Hannibal and Cartagine in fiamme/Carthage in Flames, both produced in 1959. Afterwards, he took advantage of his German ancestry to appear in some of the Karl May West- erns being produced in West Germany, notably Winnetou II (1964) and Old Surehand (1965). His success in Ger- man Westerns prompted a mid-career transformation: Mario Girotti became “Terence Hill”—star of Italian West- erns. After Hill had appeared in a couple of films, he was cast as the lead in Lo chiamavano Trinità (1969), an early comic Spaghetti Western di- rected by former cinematographer Enzo Barboni under the pseudonym
ALADDIN and Omar are rescued from the Desert of Tribulations by a bevy of Amazon women.
the most unbearably poignant human dramas ever filmed. As a director, De Sica helmed many important pic- tures that gained popular recognition in America, probably more than any other Italian director to date: Stazione termini/Indiscretion of an American Wife (1953), La ciociara/Two Women (1960), an episode of Boccaccio ’70 (1962), Il Boom, lere, oggi, domani/ Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (1962), the Galatea production Matri- monio all’italiana/Marriage, Italian Style (1964), Caccia alla volpe/After the Fox (1966), and the Oscar-winning Il giardino dei Finzi-Contini/The Gar- den of the Finzi-Continis (1971). He died on November 13, 1974, shortly after playing the amusing role of the Marquis De Fiore in Paul Morrissey’s Blood for Dracula a.k.a. Andy Warhol’s Dracula. Actress Harriet White Medin, who worked with De Sica as a dialogue coach on several films made in the 1950s, described him to me as “the finest human being” she ever met in the Italian film industry.
