There Will Be Bud

When Carlo Pedersoli passed away June 27, 2016, at age 86, the president of Fox Italy, Osvaldo De Santis, called him "an actor whom Italian cinema needs to thank because he took Italian movies around the world." International audiences were familiar with Pedersoli by his Americanized name, Bud Spencer. Spencer and his frequent screen partner, Terence Hill (a blonde-haired, blue-eyed Venetian, born Mario Girotti to an Italian father and German mother), became global superstars in several knockabout comedies, notably the slapstick spaghetti western "They Call Me Trinity" (1970), which became the highest grossing Italian film worldwide, beating the previous record of "La Dolce Vita," and its sequel, "Trinity is STILL My Name!" (1971), which topped the box-office success of the first one.

Born in Santa Lucia, a historic neighborhood of Naples, Carlo Pedersoli became an avid swimmer. He was the first Italian to swim the 100-meter freestyle in less than one minute.

Pedersoli participated in the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki, Finland, and the 1956 games in Melbourne, Australia. He also competed in a championship water polo team.

Carlo Pedersoli (far left) chats with teammates at the 1952 Helsinki Olympics. 

He had no intention of becoming an actor when his imposing Herculean physique landed him a walk-on role as a Roman Praetorian guard in the 1951 Hollywood epic "Quo Vadis" (filmed in Rome). As Pedersoli recalled, moviemakers first approached him because he was "very well known as an athlete and a very attractive man." He also had a bit part in the 1957 adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's "A Farewell to Arms," starring Rock Hudson and Jennifer Jones.

Who's watching whom? The Praetorian Guard was an elite force of bodyguards
commissioned by Roman emperors. Here, Nero (Peter Ustinov) keeps a close eye
on one of the Praetorian Guard (Carlo Pedersoli) in "Quo Vadis."

In the late 1950s, Carlo Pedersoli abruptly abandoned his aquatic pursuits and, in 1960, married Maria Amato, daughter of Giuseppe Amato, the producer of Federico Fellini's "La Dolce Vita" and, among many others, Vittorio De Sica's "Bicycle Thieves."

In 1959, Pedersoli appeared as a hirsute tribal leader named Rutario in "Hannibal," a sword-and-sandal epic starring Victor Mature.

Among the other bit players was that blue-eyed Northern Italian, Mario Girotti, cast as a Roman soldier, Quintilius (pictured below), although the two actors didn't share any scenes.

Mario Girotti had been acting onscreen since childhood, growing into bit parts in numerous Italian productions and featured roles in German-produced "sauerkraut westerns."

In 1961's "The Wonders of Aladdin," an international co-production featuring a
too-old Donald O'Connor, Mario Girotti (far right) played good guy Prince Moluk.

When actor Franco Nero, a familiar face in a number of spaghetti westerns, including the original "Django" (1966), left Europe to costar alongside Richard Harris and Vanessa Redgrave in the 1967 Hollywood musical "Camelot," Italian producers frantically sought a Nero look-alike to star in the prequel, "Django, Prepare a Coffin" (aka "Viva Django!").

Producers selected Mario Girotti (pictured above left), whose resemblance to Nero (pictured above right) was remarkable, right down to the piercing, strikingly blue eyes, although critic Roger Ebert once insisted that the former "has the bluest eyes in all of the West...bluer than Paul Newman's."

Eight years after "Hannibal," Pedersoli and Girotti were cast together in a straightforward, no-nonsense spaghetti western called "God Forgives...I Don't!" (1967). Director Giuseppe Colizzi urged the two actors to change their too-Italian names to make the picture salable overseas. Pedersoli based his name, Bud Spencer, on two of his favorite American exports, Budweiser beer and Spencer Tracy. "It comes in handy that I am asked to use an American name," Pedersoli - er, Spencer later remarked, "because American names are better for marketing at this time."

Accounts of Mario Girotti's choice of Terence Hill vary, but most likely, he was given a list of 20 names, from which he randomly picked the one with his German mother's reversed initials.

Bud Spencer plays Hutch Bessy, the unlikeliest of insurance agents, and
Terence Hill portrays card shark Cat Stevens (!) in "God Forgives...I Don't!"

Spencer recalled, "Since I don't want to put my reputation at stake because of a funny cowboy movie I let grow a beard so that my friends would not recognize me."

Before the beard, Bud Spencer appeared in another "funny cowboy movie,"
"Beyond the Law," starring Italian westerns' favorite import, American character
actor Lee Van Cleef (best known for his roles in Sergio Leone's "For a Few
Dollars More" and "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly").

Remembering "God Forgives...I Don't!" Spencer said, "I don't speak English well. I am not a good horse rider and really didn't think to continue my acting career because the success period of Italo-Western movies is fast declining in the end of the '60s, and...I am not expecting following job offers. But I am mistaken. The audience likes me very much, especially when I am together with Terence Hill, and the movie is a success."

"God Forgives" was such a success that it was followed by two sequels, "Ace High" and "Boot Hill," with Hill and Spencer repeating their roles as Cat Stevens and Hutch Bessy. "Ace High" benefitted from the participation of American actors Eli Wallach (basically in another take on the crude but likable bandit he played in "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly"), Brock Peters, and Kevin McCarthy. On the set of "Ace High," Wallach befriended Spencer and taught him, in the latter's words, "a lot of tricks to be a better actor."

Terence Hill, Eli Wallach, Brock Peters, and Bud Spencer line up for
the final showdown in "Ace High."

Like Bud Spencer said, moviegoers particularly took to Terence Hill and himself when they worked together onscreen in the trilogy. They were subsequently teamed in 1970's "They Call Me Trinity," which ushered in a spate of comedic spaghetti westerns as audience interest in grim, violent Italian westerns waned.

Bud Spencer and Terence Hill portray half-brothers Bambino and Trinity.

In his review of "They Call Me Trinity," Roger Ebert recalled meeting Bud Spencer two years previously in Rome on the set of "The Five Man Army," a hybrid spaghetti western starring American actors Peter Graves and James Daly, Italians Spencer and Nino Castelnuovo, and Japanese actor Tetsuro Tamba. Over a massive lunch of salad, soup, spaghetti, pork chops, and a couple liters of wine, Spencer told Ebert what he would really like to do someday would be to make a spoof of these westerns. "We have made so many Italian Westerns in Italy," Spencer said, "that we have earned the right to make a spoof."

Seemingly, Spencer's wish was granted with "They Call Me Trinity" and its even more popular sequel, "Trinity Is STILL My Name!" What especially tickled Ebert in the film was the "delightful" ending that finds the brothers defending a band of Mormon settlers by tossing aside their guns and beating up the bad guys with their fists. "And the fight is so highly stylized," Ebert wrote, "that it looks like a cross between the big production number in 'Seven Brides for Seven Brothers' and the Laurel and Hardy short about a construction gang. Italian Western audiences traditionally laugh at the violence. For once it's funny." A review of "They Call Me Trinity" in The New York Times described Spencer as "a grizzly bear of a man" and said that he and Hill "couldn't be more likable."

When it was released, "Trinity Is STILL My Name!" (pictured
above) became the top-grossing Italian film of all time.

Terence Hill and Bud Spencer were teamed in 15 more rambunctious screen adventures, playing everything from stunt buggy drivers to missionaries to fake Miami cops to island-dwelling banana farmers, all following the basic set-up of characterizations defined in "They Call Me Trinity." Hill was the laid-back, agile schemer, while Spencer was the grumpy strong-arm enforcer with the slow burn, a devastating shoulder chop, and a heart of gold - in his words, "the big friendly giant" of the movies.

A number of the contemporary pictures Hill and Spencer made were filmed in Miami,
like 1977's "Crime Busters" (pictured above). No matter what time period the movies
were set in, several were retitled to cash in on the name "Trinity," including "Odds and
Evens" ("Trinity: Gambling for High Stakes"), "Go for It" ("Trinity Hits the Road"),
and "Miami Supercops" ("Trinity: Good Guys and Bad Guys").

After Bud Spencer died, Travis M. Andrews of The Washington Post noted, "Their screwball comedies did one thing well: made people feel good."

The New York Times praised the duo's films for their "carbolic impudence and scarcity of gore." In a 1983 interview, Spencer remarked, "Terence and I, we don't like the violence, and for this reason, our violence is comic violence."

On the Miami set of 1983's "Go for It" (pictured above), Terence Hill and Bud Spencer were interviewed by Jeanne Wolfe for "Entertainment Tonight." When Wolfe brashly asked, "Is it true that your salaries are in the millions of dollars?" Hill, taken aback, shyly muttered, "Well - um - should I answer? Yes, I guess it is, yes, it is." Leave it to Spencer to not hold back when he interrupted with, "I can answer. We are very rich."

In another interview, Bud Spencer commented, "Terence is like a brother to me, and like a brother, we don't always agree, and he can be a pain in the neck sometimes...Our relationship, I suppose, is reflected in our movies, but he can always count on me as I can on him. We always enjoyed working together, probably why we made so many films together."

One filmmaker who didn't appreciate the combination of Terence Hill and Bud Spencer was Sergio Leone, the director who transformed Clint Eastwood from a Hollywood studio contract player into an international superstar in the so-called "Man with No Name" trilogy and who turned the western genre completely on its ear with the spectacular "Once Upon a Time in the West."

Sergio Leone (center) poses on the set of "Once Upon a Time in the West" with
stars Henry Fonda, Claudia Cardinale, Charles Bronson, and Jason Robards.

Leone thought the "Trinity" movies turned the already degenerating genre of spaghetti westerns into a travesty. He was convinced that Terence Hill could have a better future as his own man, so Leone, as producer, cast Hill (and Hill alone) as the title character in 1973's "My Name Is Nobody," a lighthearted but melancholy eulogy to both Hollywood and Italian westerns.

"Nobody" is a mischievous pest of a hero-worshipper, obsessed with a arranging a glorious exit for his idol, aging gunfighter Jack Beauregard (aptly portrayed by Henry Fonda).

Ostensibly, Leone handed the directing chores to disciple Tonino Valerii, whose track record of spaghetti westerns included "Day of Anger," starring Lee Van Cleef, and "A Reason to Live, a Reason to Die," with James Coburn, Telly Savalas, and Bud Spencer. However, the picture undeniably bears Sergio Leone's thumbprint, and controversy still exists over just how much Valerii acquiesced to his mentor's bidding.

One sequence Leone definitely supervised was the climactic railroad showdown between Jack Beauregard and the 150 "pure-bred sons of bitches" of the Wild Bunch. Leone also made it a point to tell Terence Hill, who had been very keen on being directed by the master, that he was not going to direct Trinity.

Sergio Leone (left) directs Henry Fonda as Terence Hill looks on. Leone wasn't
about to let anyone else direct Fonda, his favorite actor, in the film's money-shot scene.

In 1994, nine years after their penultimate teaming in "Miami Supercops," Terence Hill and Bud Spencer made their last film together, "Troublemakers" (also known as "The Night Before Christmas" and "The Fight Before Christmas"), a family-themed western comedy.

Terence Hill and Bud Spencer play Travis and Moses, feuding brothers who just
as well could have been named Trinity and Bambino, in "Troublemakers."

Enzo Barboni, the director of the original "Trinity" pictures, along with several other Hill-Spencer pairings, including the abovementioned "Miami Supercops," had his heart set on directing "Troublemakers," the anticipated swan song for the duo, but Terence Hill insisted on doing the job himself. Hill's son, Jess Hill, wrote the screenplay, while Spencer's son, Giuseppe Pedersoli, was one of the producers.

To console his bruised ego, Enzo Barboni made "Sons of Trinity," a 1995 attempt to pump new life into the formula in the escapades of the offspring of Trinity and Bambino, played by Heath Kizzler, an American actor best known as Dr. Joshua Landers on "The Young and the Restless," and Keith Neubert, a former NFL tight end for the New York Jets and the Philadelphia Eagles.

The caption for this studio 8x10 glossy photo hypes, "With a fistful of hijinks
and a headful of wacky ideas, troublemakers Heath Kizzler and Keith Neubert
star in 'Sons of Trinity'..."

After the disappointment of not being able to direct "Troublemakers" and the lackluster reception for "Sons of Trinity," Enzo Barboni retired. He died in Rome, five months before his 80th birthday in March 2002.

Through the 1980s and 1990s, Bud Spencer enjoyed an active solo career in a string of Italian TV series. In 1987, he starred in "Big Man" (pictured below) as an insurance detective nicknamed "Professor" whose investigations for Lloyd's of London take him to France, Italy, and Germany.

In 1991, Spencer played a retired cop-turned-private investigator in the Miami-based series "Extralarge" (pictured below). His costar through 1992 was Philip Michael Thomas - that's right, Detective Rico Tubbs from five seasons of "Miami Vice." It was Thomas who first coined the acronym "EGOT" (for Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony), referring to his personal goal to win all four; he has, to date, never been nominated for any of these awards.

In 1993, Spencer's new costar on "Extralarge" was Michael Winslow (pictured below), best known as the human sound-effects boombox in the "Police Academy" movies.

In 1997, Spencer reunited with Philip Michael Thomas on the Italian TV series "We Are Angels" (pictured below) which found the two portraying maximum security prisoners who escape and masquerade as monks in Costa Rica.

Spencer starred as a retired police commissioner who runs a restaurant on the posh resort island of Ischia in the Gulf of Naples in the 2010 series "Recipe for Crime" (pictured below). The former top cop staffs his restaurant with ex-cons who form his kitchen crime-squad, solving cases that stump the police.

As for Bud Spencer's longtime screen buddy, Terence Hill starred in a single season of the Italian western comedy series "Lucky Luke" (based on a popular Belgian comic book series) in 1992 (pictured below).

Hill (pictured below) later found long-running success as the star of "Don Matteo," a soft-spoken (much like Hill himself) priest in a quaint Italian parish town on the slope of Mt. Ingino who helps solve crimes that baffle the often comically inept local law enforcement. The series has aired on Italian television since 2000.

Proving he wasn't too long in the tooth for the Wild West just yet, Hill, in 2009, starred in a pair of Italian TV movies, "Triggerman" and "Doc West." Both films featured Paul Sorvino, Hill's American paisano (Sorvino's father was an immigrant from Naples, his mother's family came from Southern Italy) as the town sheriff (pictured below).

One of Bud Spencer's last screen roles came in 2003's "Singing Behind Screens," a fanciful drama loosely inspired by the exploits of a female Chinese pirate, Ching Shih, who terrorized the China Sea in the early 19th century. After accepting amnesty from the Chinese government, she retired but kept her booty and opened a gambling house.

Cast as an old sea captain who narrates the fable-like film from the deck of a ship, Spencer confessed that after working with visionary director Ermanno Olmi on the picture, he felt for the first time that he was an actor, explaining, "I always said I was only a character."

All in all, Bud Spencer appeared in 54 feature films. Off-camera, he was a true Italian renaissance man. He obtained a degree in law and registered several patents. He became a certified commercial airline and helicopter pilot. He founded (and later sold) an air mail company. He supported and funded many children's charities, including his own Spencer Scholarship Fund.

A recorded vocalist himself, he wrote lyrics for 1960s Italian pop and folk singers and produced documentaries for Italian public television. He published his autobiography in 2010 and wrote a cookbook of his favorite dishes.

In 2005, Bud Spencer entered politics for the first and only time, unsuccessfully running for regional councillor. "In my life, I've done everything," he noted. "There are only three things I haven't been - a ballet dancer, a jockey and a politician. Given that the first two jobs are out of the question, I'll throw myself into politics." The leftist opposition criticized him for engaging in "showbiz politics."

As he grew older, Spencer felt that his body was betraying his "28-year-old mind." When he died, he was in the company of his wife of over 55 years, Maria, and their children, Giuseppe, Christine, and youngest daughter Diamante, also known as Diamy Spencer, who appeared in a handful of her papa's pictures. Giuseppe Pedersoli, who worked for his father as a producer and writer, related that Bud Spencer's last words were "Thank you." The headline for The New York Times obituary called him the "Good Giant" of spaghetti westerns.

Postscript

Fittingly, the title of one of the movies Bud Spencer made with Terence Hill was "Who Finds a Friend Finds a Treasure" (pictured below).

The two compagnos remained good friends long after their screen shenanigans ended. Hill was a frequent guest at Spencer's home, where Bud's wife would lovingly cook Terence's favorite meal of spaghetti and tomatoes.

Terence Hill reacted to Bud Spencer's passing by posting, "I'm shocked. I lost my closest friend." Hill reflected, "What we were doing in our movies were things that can not be repeated, and if we did something different, we would not be us."

"We are the only couple that never had a fight," Hill said. "Between us there was a lot of envy but together we had fun...with a look we understood each other."