Clara Calamai

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BIRTHDAY

September 07, 1915

Prato, Italy

DIED

September 21, 1998

RECENT CREDITS

Ossessione (FILM) Jun. 3, 1977

Deep Red (FILM) Jan. 1, 1975

Le Streghe (FILM) Mar. 1, 1969

Le Notti Bianche (FILM) May. 28, 1961

Afrodite, Dea Dell'amore (FILM) Aug. 29, 1958

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BIOGRAPHY

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Best remembered for her white-hot performance as an adulterous wife in Luchino Visconti's directorial debut Ossessione (1942), sultry Clara Calamai ranked among Italy's most popular stars of the late '30s and '40s. That same year Calamai rocketed to national fame in Allessandro Blasetti's La Cena delle Beffe (1942), when she became the first Italian actress to appear topless onscreen; it happened when her co-star, Amedeo Nazzari, ripped open her dress in a moment of passion during a love scene. Calamai made her first screen appearance in Aldo Vergano's Pietro Micca (1938). She first worked opposite Nazzarri in Goffredo Alessandrini's Caravaggio (1941). Following WWII, Calamai would appear steadily in films through 1976 when she played a murderously crazy aging actress in Dario Argento's Deep Red. Some of Calamai's other notable films include Duilio Coletti's Il Fornaretto di Venezia (1939) and Mario Camerini's Two Anonymous Letters (1941). At one time Calamai was the wife of documentary maker and aviator-explorer Leonardo Bonzi.

~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide

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