Renato Rascel

Renato Rascel stage name of Renato Ranucci 27 April 1912 2 January 1991 was an Italian film actor and singer He appeared in 50 films between 1942 and 1972 He represented Italy in the Eurovision Song Contest in 1960 with the song Romantica which was placed equal eighth out of thirteen entries He was born to Cesare and Paola Ranucci in Turin It was in Turin where his parents who were opera singers were performing a show at the time Renato could really say that he was born in the back stage of the theater and thats where he spent all of his life His father tried to make it up to him by having him baptized at Saint Peters in Rome and apparently it worked because growing up in that neighborhood he ended up singing for the white voices choir of Saint Peter with the leadership of composerconductor Lorenzo Perosi At the age of 14 Renato started to play drums in ballrooms around Rome Soon after he joined the Di Fiorenza Sisters as an actor dancer and clown and in 1934 he was hired for his first big role by the Schwarts Brothers in the operetta Al Cavallino bianco In 1935 he joined Elena Gray for his first foreign tour in Africa In 1941 he created his own theater company and he began to develop his distinctive kind of humor that in the following years will crown him as the inventor of the nonsense with phrases like two friends that didnt know each other He decided to make his small size work for him being only 52 tall one of his major assets becoming known as the Tiny Italian il piccoletto nazionale and in his show he accentuated his stature by wearing huge extravagant coats his most famous one had a large pocket on the back In this time he created some of his most famous characters such as Napoleon and Il Corazziere a parody on his size since the Corazziere is a military division that employs only soldiers over 6 feet tall that brought him to an extraordinary popularity in Italy In 1942 he shot the first of a long series of films Pazzo damore Crazy For Love developing and establishing his very peculiar kind of humor Among the sixty plus films he worked in one of the most relevant was Il Cappotto The Overcoat by Gogol winner of the Golden Palm in Cannes He also had a leading role in The Secret of Santa Vittoria with Anthony Quinn and Anna Magnani Seven Hills of Rome with Mario Lanza Questi fantasmi with Eduardo De Filippo and Figaro qua Figaro là with Totò In 1977 he appeared in the Zeffirelli film Jesus of Nazareth as the blind man His post second World War success is due mainly to his leading roles in the musicals by Pietro Garinei and Sandro Giovannini The artistic trio is responsible for the existence of the musical in Italy with Attanasio cavallo vanesio in 1952 featuring the American trio Peters Sisters Alvaro piuttosto corsaro 1953 Tobia la candida spia 1955 Un paio dali 1957 Rascelinaria 1958 Enrico 61 1961 and also performed for an entire year in London at the Piccadilly Theatre in 1962 along with Il giorno della tartaruga 1965 and Alleluja brava gente 1970 Source Article Renato Rascel from Wikipedia in English licensed under CCBYSA 30