Mario Maranzana, who was born in Trieste on the 14th July 1930, has died at the age of 81 in Rome.
Maranzana was an esteemed stage actor who began his theatre career opposite Vittorio Gassman in Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex and went on to work with some of the greatest Italian directors.
He was also a familiar performer on the small screen, appearing regularly in the hugely popular Italian Maigret TV series, French mini series D’Artagnan (69) and many others.
He also turned up in numerous films from the mid 1960s onwards. He appeared in just about every genre going: spaghetti westerns (Dollar of Fire (66), The Two Sides of the Dollar (67), Long Live Your Death (68)), crime films (The Last Chance (68), Day of the Cobra (80)), comedies (Ciccio perdona… Io no (68), La pupa del gangster (75)), giallos (The Etruscan Kills Again (72)) and decameroticons (Forbidden Decameroin (72)). He never had huge roles, but was another of the character actors who made Italian cinema of the time so enjoyable.