Very sad news… Robert Hundar, aka Claudio Undari, died on the 13th May. Hundar wasn’t overly well known internationally, and he was something of a forgotten figure in recent years, but he was one of the true stars of the Spaghetti Western genre. There are lots of notices in the Italian press, but not really any substantial obituaries – fortunately he was interviewed at least a couple of times in the last couple of years, most recently in the Nocturno Spaghetti Western Dossier.
A former trained lawyer, he caught the bug for acting and moved to Rome, where he started getting acting jobs in peplums and swashbucklers (his breakthrough role was in Marco Polo (61)). He quickly became associated with Grimaldi’s Produzioni Europee Associati (PEA), who were just starting to make Italo-Spanish westerns and Zorro films in Spain, starring in films like L’ombra di Zorro (62), The Implacable Three (63) and Seven Guns from Texas (64). Although not as well known as later genre productions, these were fasinating early examples of the form, before its conventions were solidified with Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars in 64. They were also extremely popular around the world, and Hundar rapidly became a bankable star.
He continued appearing regularly in the genre, albeit soon dropping down into support parts, with standout roles being in A Hole in the Forehead (68), Sabata (69) and Cut Throats Nine (72). Outside of the Spaghetti Western, though, his film roles were more sporadic: he turned up in the occassional crime film (Free Hand for a Tough Cop (76)) and sci fi film (Beast in Space (80)), but never really made such an impact.
As the film industry collapsed in Italy, he gave up acting for a few years, working in documentary filmmaking, before taking it up again and working on the stage and very occassionally in cinema in the late 90s.