Born in Trastevere
Twenty years without Alberto Sordi: On February 24, 2003, the giant of Italian cinema said goodbye. He was born on June 15, 1920 at Via San Cosimato 7 in Rome, in the Trastevere district, the last son of the music professor and instrumentalist Pietro Sordi (1897 – 1941, contrabass tuba in the orchestra of the Teatro dell’Opera di Roma) and the elementary school teacher Maria Righetti (1898-1952).
brothers and sisters
The Sordi family also consisted of his sister Savina (1911 – 1972), his brother Giuseppe (1915 – 1990) and his sister Aurelia (1917 – 2014), while the third son named Alberto died a few days later in 1916 (The actor was remembered baptized in his own name).
Generous (and not stingy)
In the volume “The Secret of Alberto Sordi”, published in 2020, Igor Righetti – historical voice of Radio1 and cousin of the actor – revealed numerous anecdotes. Deaf people, for example, were considered stingy. He was actually very generous: “Anyone who really knew Alberto knows that he visited orphanages and had sponsored dozens of children, philanthropy always in secret, as was his style.”
private life
“What am I crazy for? I put a stranger in the house?!». Very little has always been leaked about the personal life of Alberto Sordi, who has never married and never had children. It is known that at the age of 22 he became engaged to fellow actress Andreina Pagnani, 14 years his senior, whom he met in the dubbing studio, and that the story ended in the early 1950s. Speaking of flirting, Sordi had a fleeting love affair with Countess Patrizia de Blanck in the early 1970s.
He has always lived in Rome
From birth until 1930 he lived at Via San Cosimato 7 in Rome. After the demolition of the building, the actor’s family moved to an apartment on Via Venezia and, after the death of his father in 1941, to an apartment on Via dei Pettinari. From 1958 until his death, Sordi lived in a villa on Via Druso in the Archaeological Park of the Baths of Caracalla (now a house-museum).
Expelled from acting academy
Perhaps not everyone knows that Alberto Sordi lived in Milan for a very short period of his life, in the second half of the 1930s, when he attended the amateur acting academy. From which he was expelled because of his pronounced Romanesque influence.
The beginnings as an extra
In 1937, having returned to the capital from Milan, Sordi found work as an extra in Cinecittà. He appeared in the blockbuster Scipio Africanus as a Roman soldier. After supporting roles in about twenty films, popularity came in the 1950s: Sordi made a name for himself first in Federico Fellini’s “The White Sheikh” (1952), then in “I Vitelloni”, also by Fellini (1953), Steno’s films «A Day in the District Court” (1953), “An American in Rome” (1954) and “Piccola posta” (1955).
Voice of Oliver Hardy
From 1939 to 1951, Alberto Sordi called Oliver Hardy (the Hardy of the comic couple Laurel and Hardy). It started by winning a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer competition. On June 25, 1950, the actor had the opportunity to meet and dub Hardy live on the occasion of a tour of Italy by the comic couple at the Villa Aldobrandini in Rome, where a children’s show had been organised. Sordi worked as a voice actor until 1956: he lent his voice to numerous actors, including Anthony Quinn, Robert Mitchum, Franco Fabrizi and even Marcello Mastroianni (in the film “Sunday in August” from 1950).
Meeting Harry Truman
Alberto Sordi’s popularity has crossed national borders. In 1955, as a reward for the positive promotion of the United States in relation to the character of Nando Moriconi (“An American in Rome”), the President of the United States, Harry Truman, presented him with the keys to the city of Kansas City and the position of honorary governor of the American royalty.
The epitaph
On Alberto Sordi’s tomb, which rests in the family chapel in the monumental Verano Cemetery in Rome, is engraved the epitaph “Sor Marchese, è l’ora”, a line from one of his most famous films: “The Marchese del Grillo” (directed in 1981 by Mario Monicelli).