Raf Mattioli and Alessandra Panaro in THE BACCHANTES
Raf made 10 films, including the John Derek adventure PIRATE OF THE HALF MOON, before dying at the age of 23 in 1960 (via IMDb). THE BACCHANTES was his last film and was released posthumously in 1961. The circumstances of his tragic death are unknown to me.
Addendum: Thanks to some information provided by readers, there's an Italian Wiki page about the actor and it says he died from a heart attack. The Wiki page erroneously say he was 24 years old but he was actually 23, he died just one week before his birthday.
I've created a new permanent page: TRAGIC STARS ; I'll be updating it regularly
Marvellous. I discovered Raf Mattioli last year, in a long unseen 1959 film LE LOI (The Law) - its on Amazon, by Jules Dassin, with a great cast: Gina Lollobrigida, Melina Mercouri, Marcello Mastroianni, Yves Montand and Raf Mattioli as his son, its quite a big part. I wondered who this stranger to me was and checked the info on IMDB. He died of a heart attack aged 23!
ReplyDeleteAnother tragic peplum star is French actor Henri Vidal who died in 1959 aged 40; Gerard Philipe also died that year at a young age - and of course Belinda Lee in 1961 - it was she, not Jayne Mansfield, who was practically decapitated in an automobile accident.