Alberto Sordi

Alberto Sordi (15 June 1920 – 24 February 2003) was an Italian actor, comedian, voice dubber, director, singer, composer and screenwriter.

Sordi is considered one of the most important actors in the history of Italian cinema and one of the best in commedia all'italiana. Together with Nino Manfredi, Vittorio Gassman and Ugo Tognazzi he formed a quartet that starred in the most popular movies of this genre. His trio with Aldo Fabrizi and Anna Magnani was one of the most prominent in the Roman cinema.

Sordi established himself as an icon from a career that spanned seven decades of Italian cinema with his skills in comedy and light drama. He started as a voice actor and a theater actor, but eventually grew to fame as a comedian. In the 1960s, he started interpreting complex dramatic characters, as well as directing his own films: his credits as a director include 19 movies. Sordi won five Nastro d'argento, ten David di Donatello, a Golden Globe, a Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement, and many other awards and accolades.

Alberto Sordi was born in Rome, in via San Cosimato, 7, on the 15th of June, 1920. His father Pietro Sordi (1879–1941) was a music professor, he played tuba contrabbasso in the orchestra of the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma. His mother Maria Righetti (1889–1952) was an elementary school teacher. Alberto Sordi was the fifth of their children, his elder siblings were Savina (1911–1972), Giuseppe (1915–1990), and Aurelia (1917–2014). He received his name after Alberto, the couple's third son, who died in 1916 being only several days old. The Sordi family was coming from Valmontone where Alberto spent a part of his childhood.

Already in elementary school Alberto started staging small puppet plays. At the age of 7, he developed interest in opera. He sang in the Sistine Chapel Choir headed by Lorenzo Perosi. When Sordi's voice changed to bass, he studied opera and performed as an opera singer for several years. However, the parents did not support his pursuit of an acting career. Only the maternal grandfather Primo Righetti encouraged Alberto Sordi to try himself as a performer and even presented him with a tuxedo with some money inside the pocket. For several years, he wore that costume on stage.

In 1936, he recorded a disc of children's fairy tales for the Fonit record company and left for Milan with the proceeds There Sordi enrolled to Accademia dei Filodrammatici, for which he abandoned his studies at the Istituto di Avviamento Commerciale "Giulio Romano" in Rome. However, to please his mother, he graduated as an accountant several years later. From Accademia dei Filodrammatici he was expelled for the thick Romanesco dialect. In light theatre, after an unsuccessful attempt with the company of Aldo Fabrizi and Anna Fougez in the 1936–1937 season in the show San Giovanni, he tried again in the following season. He formed a comic duo with his childhood friend, they debuted at Cinema Teatro Pace in Milan but had little success and had to go back to Rome.

In 1937, he returned to Rome and found himself several roles as a background actor at Cinecittà. In the same year, he won a competition organised by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to dub the voice of Oliver Hardy (initially under the pseudonym Albert Odisor), along with Mauro Zambuto, who dubbed Stan Laurel. As recalled by Sordi himself, he went into the auditions with no specific dubbing experience and with little expectation of success, given the competition from established professionals in the industry. It was MGM dubbing director Franco Schirato who considered Sordi's low register and 'warm and mellow' voice an ideal match for the character's considerable size (although Hardy's voice was actually in the tenor register); he was therefore cast without delay, debuting in the dubbing of the comedy Below Zero in 1939, followed by the feature film The Flying Deuces in the same year.

As a voice actor, Sordi worked until 1956. In addition to numerous other Laurel and Hardy films, he gave the voice to, among others, Bruce Bennett, Anthony Quinn, John Ireland, Robert Mitchum, Pedro Armendáriz and, for the Italians, Franco Fabrizi and even Marcello Mastroianni, in the 1950 film Sunday in August. His own voice was dubbed over by Gualtiero De Angelis in Cuori nella tormenta and Carlo Romano in Bullet for Stefano. After 1952, he no longer worked as a voice actor, giving all his energy to acting.