Italian stage, screen, and TV actress Maria Grazia Spina, 88, died this week, it was announced today. Born in Venice, Spina never became a major star, but from the 1950s-80s, she was seen in a great number of films and TV shows. Some of the titles released in the US (generally badly dubbed) were Tartar Invasion, Zorro in the Court of Spain, Tiger of the Seven Seas, Samson and the Slave Queen, and Revolt of the Barbarians. Spina was trained as a painter, and said that “I met the painter Tancredi, innocent as a child and then under contract by the collector Peggy Guggenheim. If I hadn’t, almost for fun, started acting, I would have tried to follow his path and paint.” Though her bread and butter was movies and TV, she looked back fondly on her theater days: “The company was poor, but it was also supported by the talent of an extraordinary actress who deserves to be remembered: Leony Leon Bert. From this actress, I learned the famous ‘comic timing.’ I began to love so many cities, towns, and villages that I might never have known, because we performed wherever there was a theater, beautiful or ugly, warm or cold. No money, just food and lodging.” In later years, Spina returned to her first love, painting.
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