“I wasn’t even sixteen years old, but I was already quite requested for celebrations in the town square, I sang ‘a fronna ‘e limone’ (mocking songs) and sometimes I was asked to act in the ‘sceneggiate’. One day in Naples, I was waiting along with a bunch of unemployed artists for the providential ‘call’ in the Galleria Umberto, which someone had nicknamed ‘the louses’ umbrella’, when I saw two men coming my way. One was tall and slug-like, and the other was short and wearing little pince-nez glasses. They saw me and one cried to the other: ‘There he is, that’s him!’. I had a feeling they were cops. I had nothing to hide, but since you can never be sure, I made a faint attempt to flee. The big slug caught up to me, grabbed me by the nape of my neck and said: ‘Guagliò, te vo’ abbuscà trenta lire ‘o juorno pe’ na ventine e juorne?’ (Hey, boy, would you like to make thirty lire a day for twenty days?). ‘E ch’aggia fà?’ (For doing what?). ‘O frate e Leda Gys’ (Leda Gys’ brother). My fear dissolved into fascination and that’s how I debuted in cinema. The two men were Livio Pavanelli, the big slug who was almost two metres tall, and Perego, the film director who everyone called ‘’o Prufessore’ (The Professor)”. That is how Nino Taranto told the writer of his start in this film produced by Gustavo Lombardo, another jewel from Neapolitan popular film which saw Leda Gys as its uncontested queen and which was snubbed by critics with stupid disdain.

Vittorio Martinelli