{"id":1798,"date":"2010-02-05T10:24:51","date_gmt":"2010-02-05T10:24:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/?p=1798"},"modified":"2010-02-11T14:10:23","modified_gmt":"2010-02-11T14:10:23","slug":"rip-peter-martell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/latest-news\/rip-peter-martell\/","title":{"rendered":"R.I.P. Peter Martell"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Pietro
Pietro Martellanza, aka Peter Martell<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

More sad news… Italian actor Pietro Martellanza, aka Peter Martell, died on the 4th February.\u00a0 Born in 1938 in Bolzano, the dark and handsome Martellanza starred in over 40 films between 1960 and 2009, and at one point in the late sixties looked like becoming a bonafide movie star.\u00a0 He found his biggest success in westerns, playing both heroes and villains in the likes of 100,000 dollair per Lassiter <\/strong>(66), Il pistolero dell’Ave Maria <\/strong>(69) and Ciakmull – l’uomo della vendetta <\/strong>(70).\u00a0 By the beginning of the seventies, though, as the genre entered a period of decline, his screen appearences became less regular as the productions he was involved with decreased in quality and the parts he played became less substantial.\u00a0 After a brief period working on a handful of Peter Steiner comedies in Germany (Die Sto\u00dfburg<\/strong> (73), La\u00df jucken, Kumpel 3: Maloche, Bier und Bett<\/strong>, Liebesgr\u00fc\u00dfe aus der Lederhose 2: Zwei Kumpel auf der Alm<\/strong> (both 74) and a supporting role in the Roger Moore crime film, Gli esecutori <\/strong>(76) he disappeared for a long period.\u00a0 In the 2000s, though, he was rediscovered living in a Volkswagon bus in the Alps in Bolzano, and appeared in a handful of low budget productions including Jesus Franco’s Killer Barbys vs Dracula <\/strong>(2002).<\/p>\n

Perhaps, though, Martellanza was best known for the film he didn’t appear in.\u00a0 In 1970, he was hired as the star of Enzo Barboni’s comedy western Lo chiamavano Trinit\u00e0…<\/strong>, but was forced to drop out of the production after a bizarre accident – following a quarrel with his girlfriend – in which he broke his leg.\u00a0 He was replaced at the last minute by Mario Girotti, aka Terence Hill, the film went on to become a huge success and Hill went on to become one of the biggest Italian stars of the seventies.<\/p>\n

A short documentary was made\u00a0 in 1997 about his career and the difficulties he’d faced after his brief period in the limelight, called Starring Peter Martell <\/strong>and featuring contributions from Maurizio Lucidi and Manolo Bolognini.\u00a0 Coincidentally, there was also a character in David Lynch’s Twin Peaks<\/strong>, played by Jack Nance, who’s name was ‘Peter Martell’.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

More sad news… Italian actor Pietro Martellanza, aka Peter Martell, died on the 4th February. Born in 1938 in Bolzano, the dark and handsome Martellanza starred in over 40 films between 1960 and 2009, and at one point in the late sixties looked like becoming a bonafide movie star<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[712],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1798"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1798"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1798\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1817,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1798\/revisions\/1817"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thewildeye.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}