Raf Vallone facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Raf Vallone Cavaliere di gran croce dell'OMRI
Vallone in Bitter Rice (1949)
Born	Raffaele Vallone (1916-02-17)17 February 1916 Tropea, Calabria, Italy
Died	31 October 2002(2002-10-31) (aged 86) Rome, Italy
Alma mater	University of Turin
Occupation	Actor, football player, journalist
Years active	1942–2000
Spouse(s)	Elena Varzi ​ (m. 1952)​
Children	3, including Eleonora (b. 1955)
Awards	1962 David di Donatello for Best Actor (A View from the Bridge)
Honours	Knight's Grand Cross of the Italian Republic
Association football career Position(s) Midfielder Youth career 1930-1934 Torino Senior career* Years Team Apps (Gls) 1934-1939 Torino 23 (4) 1939-1940 Novara 7 (0) 1940-1941 Torino 2 (0) Total 32 (4) Medal record Men's football Coppa Italia Winner 1935–36 *Club domestic league appearances and goals

Raffaele Vallone (born February 17, 1916 – died October 31, 2002), known as Raf Vallone, was a famous Italian actor and a professional football player. He was one of Italy's biggest male movie stars in the 1950s and 1960s. He first became known for his work in the neorealist film style. This style showed real-life stories and often used non-professional actors.

Raf Vallone also became successful in many movies made outside of Italy. On stage, he was well-known for acting in plays by Arthur Miller. He played the main character, Eddie Carbone, in the play A View from the Bridge many times. He also starred in the 1962 movie version of the play, directed by Sidney Lumet. For this role, he won the David di Donatello for Best Actor award, which is a top Italian film award.

Early Life and Education

Raf Vallone was born in Tropea, a town in Calabria, Italy. His father was a lawyer. When Raf was young, his family moved to Turin. He went to Liceo classico Cavour, a high school, and then studied law and philosophy at the University of Turin. Some of his teachers were famous people, including Leone Ginzburg and Luigi Einaudi, who later became the President of Italy. After finishing college, he worked at his father's law firm.

In 1941, Vallone started working as a culture editor for L'Unità, a newspaper that was linked to the Italian Communist Party. He also wrote movie and play reviews for another Turin newspaper called La Stampa. Vallone was against fascism, a type of government that has a dictator and controls everything. In 1943, he joined a group called Giustizia e Libertà that fought against the fascist government. He was arrested and put in jail in Como, but he managed to escape during a transfer by swimming across Lake Como.

Football Career

Vallone loved playing association football (soccer) from a young age. He was part of a youth football club in Turin and won a championship with them in the 1930–31 season. He started playing professionally in 1934 while he was still studying law. He joined Torino F.C. in Serie A, which is Italy's top football league. He played as a midfielder.

In the 1935–36 season, he won the Coppa Italia (Italian Cup) with his team. He also played for Novara in the 1939–40 season. He stopped playing professional football after 1941.

Acting Career Highlights

Vallone first appeared in a movie in 1942 as an extra in We the Living. However, he wasn't planning to become an actor at first. But in 1949, he was cast in the movie Riso amaro (Bitter Rice). In this film, he played a soldier who was competing with Vittorio Gassman for the love of Silvana Mangano.

Bitter Rice became a very important neorealist movie. This role launched Vallone's career and made him famous around the world. In the 1950s, he often played strong, romantic main characters. Some of his notable films from this period include Anna (1951) and The Beach (1954). He also starred in The Crossroads (1951) and Rome 11:00 (1952).

He played Giuseppe Garibaldi, a famous Italian general, in the movie Red Shirts (1952). He was also the main male actor in Vittorio De Sica's Two Women. This movie helped its star, Sophia Loren, win an Academy Award for Best Actress. People often compared Vallone's acting style to that of Burt Lancaster, another famous actor.

Vallone also worked in movies made in other parts of Europe. He acted with Maria Schell in two German films, Love (1956) and Rose Bernd (1957). French director Marcel Carné cast him in Thérèse Raquin (1953). In 1956, he starred in The Violet Seller, a Spanish musical that became very successful internationally.

His first American movie was the historical film El Cid (1961), where he acted alongside Charlton Heston. He then appeared in many other American films, including Phaedra (1962), The Cardinal (1963), The Italian Job (1969), and Lion of the Desert (1980). Later in his career, he had a significant role as Cardinal Lamberto, who becomes Pope John Paul I, in Francis Ford Coppola's The Godfather Part III (1990).

On stage, Raf Vallone was especially known for his work in plays by Arthur Miller, particularly A View from the Bridge. He first played the role of Eddie Carbone in a famous 1958 production in Paris. He played the role again in the 1962 movie version, which won him an award. He also performed it for television and directed a stage production in 1980.

In 1994, he received a special honor from Italy, being made a Knight's Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic. This was for his important contributions to the arts.

Personal Life

Raf Vallone was married to actress Elena Varzi from 1952 until he passed away. They had three children. Two of their children, Eleonora Vallone (born 1955) and Saverio Vallone (born 1958), also became actors. The family lived for many years in a house built near Sperlonga, Italy.

Vallone believed in communism for much of his life. However, he was never an official member of the Italian Communist Party because he disagreed with some of its ideas.

In 2001, he wrote a book about his life called L'alfabeto della memoria.

Death

Raf Vallone died from a heart attack in Rome on October 31, 2002. He was buried in his family's chapel in the cemetery of Tropea, the town where he was born.

Filmography

See also

In Spanish: Raf Vallone para niños