Gemma, Giuliano

(1938-)

   Actor. After being a keen sportsman in his teenage years, Gemma began his career in films working as a stuntman at Cinecitta. Following a number of tiny roles, including a momentary (and uncredited) appearance in William Wyler's Ben-Hur (1959), he scored a substantial part in Duccio Tessari's peplum Arrivano i Titani (The Titans, 1961). More prestigious was his appearance as Garibaldi's General in Luchino Visconti's Il gattopardo (The Leopard, 1963), following which he did several more sword-and-sandal epics before launching into a host of spaghetti Westerns, often under the pseudonym Montgomery Wood. He thereafter alternated between playing the facile characters of popular B-grade films such as Pasquale Festa Campanile's prehistoric sex comedy, Quando le donne avevano la coda (When Women Had Tails, 1970), and the gangster spoof, Anche gli angeli mangiano fagioli (Even Angels Eat Beans, 1973), and taking on more significant roles in auteur films, such as the heroic Resistance fighter Silvio Corbari in Valentino Orsini's Corbari (1970) or the character of Mattis in Valerio Zurlini's adaptation of the Dino Buzzati novel Il deserto dei Tartari (The Desert of the Tartars, 1976), a finely nuanced interpretation that earned him a David di Donatello. A year later he provided a similarly convincing personification of Cesare Mori, the police prefect sent to Sicily by Mussolini to clean up the Mafia, in Pasquale Squitieri's II prefetto di ferro (The Iron Prefect, 1977).

   After appearing as the detective, Germani, in Dario Argento's horror classic Tenebre (Tenebrae, 1982), and as the Western comic book hero Tex in Duccio Tessari's Tex Wilier e il signore degli abissi (Tex and the Lord of the Deep, 1985), Gemma gravitated more toward playing supporting roles in television miniseries. This permitted him to indulge in what had always been another of his passionate interests, sculpture. Gemma's most recent television appearance has been as Judge Concato in the two-episode crime drama La bambina dalle mani sporche (The Little Girl with Dirty Hands, 2005), directed by Renzo Martinelli.

   Historical Dictionary of Italian Cinema by Alberto Mira