20 Facts About Ettore Petrolini

Ettore Petrolini was an Italian stage and film actor, playwright, screenwriter and novelist.

Ettore Petrolini is considered one of the most important figures of avanspettacolo, vaudeville and revue.

Ettore Petrolini was noted for his numerous caricature sketches, and was the "inventor of a revolutionary and anticonformist way of performing".

Ettore Petrolini had a difficult relationship with father, who was a strict moralist, but was close to his mother, who supported him both emotionally and financially when he decided to embrace a performing career.

Ettore Petrolini attended theaters in Rome as a boy, improvising for fun.

At the age of 13, Ettore Petrolini attended reform school as he bitterly recalls in his memoirs.

In 1903, Ettore Petrolini began performing in Rome at variety theaters and cafe-chantants, where he provided parodies of renowned nineteenth-century actors, silent movie and opera divas, rhetorical addresses, and even of the variety theater itself.

Back from a successful tour in South America, Ettore Petrolini was hired in 1910 by Giuseppe Jovinelli for his theater in Piazza Guglielmo Pepe that had opened in 1909 with a performance by Raffaele Viviani.

Ettore Petrolini developed an anti-Dannunzian position, something which was appreciated by the Futurists, and thus he put on exhibit during his variety sketches.

In 1930, with the advent of sound films, Ettore Petrolini returned to the cinema as a protagonist of Nerone by Alessandro Blasetti, and featuring Criner in the part of Poppea.

In Scenario's July 1934 issue, Ettore Petrolini has 94 close-ups, in a variety of poses, expressions, and emotional interpretations.

Now famous, Ettore Petrolini left Italy for a series of tours abroad, first to Cairo and the Italian colonies of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica, and then, in 1934, to London, Berlin, and Paris.

Ettore Petrolini performed in London at the Little Theatre, in Berlin at the Kurfurstendamm Theater, and in Vienna at the Komodie Theater, where his burlesque impression of Hamlet was considered hilarious.

Ettore Petrolini is considered one of the most influential figures in Italian avanspettacolo, vaudeville and revue.

Ettore Petrolini's characters included Giggi er bullo and Sor Capanna.

Music played a key role in Ettore Petrolini's theatrical style and is an important ingredient in many of his comedies.

Ettore Petrolini was often an interpreter, and sometimes the author, of popular songs of the day, many of which were released as records.

Ettore Petrolini was admired and befriended by Mussolini, even though his Nerone caricature was widely perceived as a parody of the dictator.

Ettore Petrolini influenced future generations of Italian comic actors, including Alberto Sordi, Carlo Verdone and Gigi Proietti.

Ettore Petrolini's Gastone became a byword in Italian for a certain type of artistic snob and ladies man.