Italian postcard, no. 11. Photo: Ciolfi.

Gino Cervi (1901-1974) was a highly active and equally popular Italian stage, film and television actor from the 1930s to the early 1970s. He is best remembered as Peppone in the Don Camillo films and as Maigret in the RAI TV series.

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Italian postcard by B.F.F. Edit., no. 2346-A. Photo: Ital Cine / Ciolfi. Late 1930s-early 1940s.

Strikingly beautiful actress Alida Valli (1921-2006) was Italy’s Sweetheart of the early 1940s. She fascinated audiences not only with her flawless porcelain face, her dark, voluptuous hair and her green, expressive eyes, but also with her ability to simultaneously hide and reveal a character's thoughts and emotions. In a career that spanned seven decades, she appeared in more than 110 films including such classics as The Third Man and Senso.

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Italian postcard. ASER (Aldo Scarmiglia Ed. Roma), nr. 19. Italcine. Photo Ciolfi.

Antonio Centa (1907 – 1979) was an Italian actor from the sound era, famous for films like Squadrone bianco (Augusto Genina 1936) and for being the male costar of female Italian stars like Alida Valli and Isa Miranda, and the antagonist of male actors like Gino Cervi and Fosco Giachetti.

Antonio Centa was born in 1907 in Maniago, near Pordenone, in the Northern Italian region of Friuli. During the First World War his family moved to Ferrara. He grew up in the world of Friulian ceramics, then in 1929 he emigrated to the US, where he continued his work as craftsman but also entered the staff of the famous boxer Primo Carnera, who was also of Friulian origin. Returned to Italy he managed to enter the film world and debuted in the mid-1930s in La luce del mondo (1935) by Gennaro Righelli. Soon Centa’s star rose and until 1943 he was one of the male leading actors of Italian cinema. His first big success came with Squadrone bianco (Augusto Genina 1936), a colonial film set in Libya, which established his fame. Centa played the lead as a dashing young lieutenant who proves his courage to his hard-boiled commander, played by Fosco Giachetti. He played opposite Luisa Ferida and Leda Gloria in the romantic comedy I tre desideri (Giorgio Ferroni, Kurt Gerron 1937), opposite Elisa Cegani in La contessa di Parma (Alessandro Balsetti 1938), opposite Doris Duranti in Sotto la croce del sud (Guido Brignone 1938), opposite Dria Paola and Paola Barbara in Lotte nell’ombra (Domenico Gambino 1938), opposite Alida Valli in the romance Ballo al castello (Max Neufeld 1939), opposite Maria Denis in Chi sei tu? (Gino Valori 1939), opposite Marie Glory in Una moglie in pericolo (Max Neufeld 1939), opposite Laura Solari in the comedy Validità giorni dieci (Camillo Mastrocinque 1940), opposite Junie Astor in Tutto per la donna (Mario Soldati 1940), opposite Doris Duranti in Il cavaliere di Kruja (Carlo Campogalliani 1940), opposite Vivi Gioi in Il pozzo dei miracoli (Gennaro Righelli 1941). In all these films Centa had the male lead. From then on, Centa often performed the role of the positive antagonist because of his ironic and fun poking attitude, rivaling with Andrea Checchi in Solitudine (Livio Pavanelli 1941), with Fosco Giachetti in the realistic melodrama Fari nella nebbia (Gianni Franciolini 1942) and the Pushkin adaptation Un colpo di pistola (Renato Castellani 1942), and with Gino Cervi in Gente dell'aria (Esodo Pratelli 1943) and T'amerò sempre (Mario Camerini 1943). Meanwhile he also continued to perform the male leads in La principessa del sogno (Maria Teresa Ricci, Roberto Savarese 1942) opposite Irasema Dilian and Maria Melato, Cercasi bionda bella presenza (Pina Renzi 1942) opposite Lotte Menas, Il ponte sull’infinito (Alberto Doria 1942) opposite Bianca Doria, and Zazà (Renato Castellani 1943) opposite Isa Miranda.

After the war, Centa no longer had leading roles, perhaps because of the changed taste of the audience, perhaps because he had gained weight. Despite this he still acted in major films like Assunta Spina (Mario Mattoli 1948), opposite Eduardo De Filippo and Anna Magnani, and Ombre sul Canal Grande (Glauco Pellegrini 1951), opposite Isa Pola. He still played with female stars like Yvonne Sanson, Valentina Cortese, Dina Sassoli and others. More and more, however, his roles were reduced to secondary ones, even in memorable films like Una vita difficile (Dino Risi), in which he was the aging partner of Lea Massari in a coastal night club, or in the famous Le salaire de la peur/The Wages of Fear (Henri-Georges Clouzot), in which he was a convincing Camp Chief. On November 10, 1974, Francesco Savio held a radio interview for the RAI with Centa, now preserved at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia. Even if he kept his official residence in his birthplace Maniago, Centa went to live in Ferrara after he retired from film in the late 1960s. For a while he ran an important and historical restaurant there. It was right on the road towards Ferrara, after having celebrated Easter in Maniago, that Centa had a road accident near Rovigo and died there because of his injuries on April 19, 1979. In 2008 Gloria De Antoni e Oreste De Fornari made Il perdente gentiluomo: vita e arte di Antonio Centa, a documentary produced by the Cineteca del Friuli. It is dedicated to Centa’s character, his film career and his private life, not always exposed to the spotlights of the yellow papers and so clouded with some mystery.

Sources: Italian Wikipedia, IMDB.

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Italian postcard. Photo Ciolfi. ASER (Aldo Scarmiglia Edizioni Roma), no. 150.

Silvana Jachino (1916-2004) was an Italian stage and film actress, who was successful and popular in the 1930s and 1940s.

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German postcard by Film-Foto-Verlag, no. G 174, ca. 1941-1944. Photo: Ciolfi, Rome.

German actress Carola Höhn (1910 - 2005) had a 60 years lasting film career. She was the elegant star of many productions of the German cinema.

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