Raf Vallone
Actor
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After appearing briefly in Goffredo Alessandrini's "We, the Living" while still playing soccer for Torino in 1942, Vallone was discovered by director Giuseppe De Santis, who cast him in the classic 1948 neorealist drama "Bitter Rice." He went on to a career spanning six decades, working from Cinecitta to Hollywood, on stage, screen and television.
Unlike such contemporaries as Marcello Mastroianni, Vittorio Gassman and Ugo Tognazzi, Vallone's intense gaze, his ruggedly handsome southern Mediterranean looks and robust physicality steered him toward steady employment in dramatic roles rather than comedies.
This serious side was mirrored offscreen in the actor's cultured background and leftist intellectual leanings. During his years in Turin while working as a writer on left-wing daily l'Unita, Vallone mixed with literati figures such as Italo Calvino, Natalia Ginzburg and Cesare Pavese.
After "Bitter Rice," he reteamed with De Santis on "Under the Olive Trees." Other roles from the postwar years included Luigi Zampa's "The White Line," Curzio Malaparte's "The Forbidden Christ" and Pietro Germi's "Path of Hope."
While working on the latter production, Vallone met actress Elena Varzi, with whom he remained married for 50 years despite being romantically linked with such screen sirens as Brigitte Bardot and Marlene Dietrich.
His national popularity peaked in 1951 with Alberto Lattuada's "Anna," which reunited Vallone with his "Bitter Rice" co-stars Silvana Mangano and Gassman.
He worked again with Lattuada on "The Beach" and "Guendalina," Vittorio De Sica on "Two Women," Alessandrini on "Red Shirts," Mario Camerini on "Sunday Heroes" in a role that drew on the actor's soccer background, and Dino Risi on "The Sign of Venus," one of Vallone's few comedies.
He began working in co-productions such as Marcel Carne's "Therese Raquin" in 1953 before switching to the stage with a Paris production, directed by Peter Brook, of Arthur Miller's "A View From the Bridge." Vallone toured internationally to great acclaim in the play, repeating his role in Sidney Lumet's 1962 film version.
Starting in the 1960s, Vallone began working in U.S. productions including Anthony Mann's "El Cid," Otto Preminger's "The Cardinal," "Rosebud" and "The Human Factor," John Huston's "The Kremlin Letter," Roger Corman's "The Secret Invasion" and, later, Michael Ritchie's "An Almost Perfect Affair."
He also worked in the late '70s in glossy commercial pulp such as J. Lee Thompson's "The Greek Tycoon" and Charles Jarrot's "The Other Side of Midnight." After a period of mainly television and stage work, he resurfaced in 1990 in Francis Ford Coppola's "The Godfather: Part III."
Besides his wife, he is survived by three children.
