- Cesare Danova
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Cesare Danova (March 1, 1926 - March 19, 1992), born Cesare Deitinger in Bergamo, Italy, by Austrian father and Italian mother, was a television and screen actor. He adopted the stage name Danova when he turned to acting in Rome at the end of World War II. He migrated to the United States in the 1950s to make the film Don Giovanni (Don Juan) in 1955. He was contracted to MGM in 1956.[1]
Other appearances include The Man Who Understood Women. He tested for a part in Ben Hur, but his big break was the role of Apollodorus, Cleopatra's personal servant in the 1963 film, Cleopatra directed by Joseph Mankiewicz and starring Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton and Rex Harrison. The original script called for a major role for Danova, who was to form a trio of Cleopatra's lovers alongside Harrison's Caesar and Burton's Marc Antony. Though a number of scenes featuring Taylor and Danova were shot, the script was revised and the role truncated as the Burton-Taylor affair made tabloid headlines. What remained was little more than a cameo.
The following year he starred as Count Elmo Mancini in Viva Las Vegas as Elvis Presley's rival for both Ann Margaret's Rusty Martin and for the Las Vegas Grand Prix (predictably losing both to Elvis's Lucky Jackson).
In 1967, Danova had another break with the TV series, Garrison's Gorillas, in which he played the role of Actor. Clearly inspired by the hit film, The Dirty Dozen and the hit TV series Mission: Impossible, the series had an ensemble cast but, unfortunately, only ran for 26 episodes. Two of his best roles were as the neighborhood mafia Don, Giovanni Cappa, in Martin Scorsese's Mean Streets (1973) and as the corrupt town mayor, Carmine DePasto, in National Lampoon's Animal House (1978). He also acted in three episodes of The Rifleman, and regularly appeared as a guest star on numerous television series, including Murder, She Wrote, Maude (in which he played a pompous writer who had dated Maude and then her daughter), Falcon Crest, the revival of Mission: Impossible (1988–90), and his final television appearance in 1992 as Father DiMarco on the series In The Heat of the Night.
Later that year Donova died of a heart attack at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences headquarters in Los Angeles while attending a meeting of the Foreign Language Film committee. His mausoleum is in Valhalla Memorial Park Cemetery.
Danova was married twice and had two sons, Marco & Fabrizio, by his first wife, Pamela. He was an expert horseman, avid polo player, and an excellent archer.
Trivia
Danova is a cousin of American poet, editor, publisher and translator Frank Judge and Italian artist Sergio Deitinger, who lives in Rome and paints under the name DeiTinger. A self-taught painter, Danova is reputed to be a descendant of 15th Century Italian painter Fra Lippo Lippi, immortalized in Browning's poem.
Notes
External links
Categories:- 1926 births
- 1992 deaths
- American actors
- Italian actors
- Italian people of Austrian descent
- Italian emigrants to the United States
- Film actor stubs
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