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 that's where he spent all of his life. His father tried to make it up to him by having him baptized at Saint Peter's 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 composer-conductor 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 "non-sense" with phrases like "two friends that didn't know each other". He decided to make his small size work for him, being only 5'2" 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 d'amore (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 d'ali (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 CC-BY-SA 3.0.

Known For: Acting

Born: Turin, Piedmont, Italy, 1912-04-27

Died: 1991-01-02

No.	Year	Title	Role	Vote Average
1	1942	Pazzo d'amore		0
2	1949	Maracatumba... ma non è una rumba!	rag. Filippo De Bellis	0
3	1950	I'm in the Revue	Self	48
4	1950	Figaro qua... Figaro là	Don Alonzo	59
5	1951	Beauties on bicycles	Il figlio del meccanico	60
6	1951	Io sono il capataz	Uguccione / Rascelito Villa	70
7	1951	Napoleone	Napoleone	0
8	1951	Love I Haven't... But... But	Teodoro	62
9	1952	Half a Century of Song		0
10	1952	L'eroe sono io	Righetto	0
11	1952	The Overcoat	Carmine De Carmine	68
12	1952	Il bandolero stanco	Pepito	55
13	1953	La passeggiata	Paolo Barbato	0
14	1953	Ho scelto l'amore	Boris Popovic	75
15	1953	Piovuto dal cielo	Renato	0
16	1953	Attanasio cavallo vanesio		60
17	1954	Il matrimonio	Dmitry Marinin, il 'generale'	65
18	1954	Alvaro piuttosto corsaro	Alvaro	0
19	1954	Gran varietà	Il comico	61
20	1954	Rosso e nero	Himself	0
21	1954	These Phantoms	Pasquale Lojacono	0
22	1954	Io sono la Primula Rossa	Sir Archibald	0
23	1955	Variety carousel		60
24	1956	I pinguini ci guardano		65
25	1956	The Monte Carlo Story	Duval	56
26	1957	Oh! Sabella	Don Gregorio (uncredited)	71
27	1957	Rascel-Fifì	Renato / Renatino - il suo figlio	0
28	1957	Seven Hills of Rome	Pepe Bonelli	59
29	1958	Move and I'll Shoot	Renato Tuzzi - il professore	70
30	1958	Rascel Marine	Caporale Ronny Rascel	0
31	1959	Policarpo, ufficiale di scrittura	Policarpo De Tappetti	73
32	1959	Uncle Was a Vampire	Baron Osvaldo Lambertenghi	52
33	1959	Ferdinand I King of Naples	Mimì	64
34	1960	A Soldier and a Half	Nicola Carletti	70
35	1960	Little Girls and High Finance		65
36	1960	The Bear	Medard	60
37	1960	Il corazziere	Urbano Marangoni	0
38	1961	Enrico '61		0
39	1961	Destination Fury	Renato Micacci	0
40	1961	The Last Judgment	Coppola	64
41	1961	The Orderly	Remigio De Acutis	60
42	1962	Questi fantasmi		81
43	1963	Follie d'estate	il sognatore	0
44	1967	Delirio a due	Lui	50
45	1970	The Secret of Santa Vittoria	Babbaluche	69
46	1970	Transplant	Dario Barbieri	55
47	1970	I racconti di Padre Brown	Padre Brown	0
48	1972	Pinocchio	Narratore (voce)	68
49	1975	Un sorriso, uno schiaffo, un bacio in bocca	(archive footage)	48

No.	Year	Title	Role	Vote Average
1	1956	Cinépanorama	Self	80
2	1971	I racconti di padre Brown	Padre Brown	0
3	1977	Jesus of Nazareth	The Blind Man	78

Renato Rascel

Film

Television