Osvaldo Valenti

Osvaldo Valenti was born in Constantinople, Ottoman Empire (present-day Turkey), to a Sicilian carpet trader and a wealthy Lebanese woman of Greek descent.

In 1915 the family left Turkey for Italy, settling first in Bergamo and then in Milan. He attended high schools in St. Gallen, Switzerland and in Würzburg, Bavaria and subsequently enrolled in the law faculty of the Catholic University of Milan.^[2]

Two years later, he left the university and went to live first in Paris then in Berlin, where he made his acting debut with a supporting role in the German silent drama film Hungarian Rhapsody, directed by Hanns Schwarz (1928).

At the beginning of the 1930s, he returned to Italy and worked with film directors Mario Bonnard (Five to Nil, 1932) and Amleto Palermi (La fortuna di Zanze, 1933 and Creatures of the Night, 1934).

In 1935, Valenti met the famous film director Alessandro Blasetti, who gave him a role in the comedy film The Countess of Parma (1937). Valenti played the role of Guy de la Motte in Blasetti's Ettore Fieramosca (1938) gaining appreciation from both critics and the public alike. The success of the movie allowed him to star in many successful films and to be sought after by many leading directors. In 1939, while working on An Adventure of Salvator Rosa (1940), directed by Alessandro Blasetti, he met the actress Luisa Ferida. The pair became romantically involved and had a son, Kim, who died 4 days after his birth.^[2]

After the fall of the Fascist regime in 1943, Valenti joined the Republic of Salò, and moved to Venice together with his mistress Luisa Ferida, renouncing a contract for two films to be shot in Spain in early 1944.

Cinematographic activity restarted in Venice at the Cinevillaggio, created by the Minister of Popular Culture of the Italian Social Republic Fernando Mezzasoma. In 1944, Valenti shot what would be his last movie, Piero Ballerini's Fatto di cronaca.

Valenti and Ferida then moved to Bologna. In April 1944, Osvaldo joined, with the rank of lieutenant, the Decima Flottiglia MAS, an elite commando unit led by Junio Valerio Borghese.^[2] The couple then moved to Milan. During the liberation of the city on April 25, 1945, they were arrested by members of the Italian Resistance and shot five days later without trial. When they were executed, Ferida was expecting another child. They are buried in the Cimitero Maggiore di Milano.

• Brunetta, Gian Piero (1993) [1979]. Storia del cinema italiano. Vol. II (Il cinema del regime 1929-1945). Rome: Editori Riuniti.
• Reggiani, Odoardo (2001). Luisa Ferida, Osvaldo Valenti. Ascesa e caduta di due stelle del cinema. Milan: Spirali.
• Gundle, Stephen (2013). Mussolini's Dream Factory: Film Stardom in Fascist Italy. Berghahn Books. ISBN 978-1-78-238244-7.
• Puppa, Paolo (2020). "VALENTI, Osvaldo". Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, Volume 97: Trivulzio–Valeri (in Italian). Rome: Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. ISBN 978-8-81200032-6.

• Osvaldo Valenti at IMDb
• Osvaldo Valenti at Find a Grave
• Osvaldo Valenti at AllMovie