Richard Conte

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Richard Nicholas Peter Conte (born March 24, 1910 in Jersey City , New Jersey , † April 15, 1975 in Los Angeles , California ) was an American film and stage actor and film director .

Life

Conte was the son of an Italian-American hairdresser and spent his childhood and youth in very simple circumstances. As a teenager, he got by doing odd jobs including truck drivers, clerks on Wall Street, and singing waiter at a Connecticut seaside resort . It was precisely through his job as a singing waiter that he was first engaged in a theater in New York City in 1935 . Here he was discovered by Elia Kazan and John Garfield , who promoted the 25-year-old Conte from now on. Kazan helped Conte to a scholarship at the Neighborhood Playhouse , which the latter successfully completed. Conte made his Broadway debut in Moon Over Mulberry Street in 1939 and made his film debut in the drama Heaven with a Barbed Wire Fence that same year .

Conte was retired and therefore did not have to take part in World War II like other actors . In 1942 he got a long-term contract with 20th Century Fox and changed his first name from Nicholas to Richard . His career flourished in the period between 1943 and 1945; he mostly embodied soldiers. After the war he mainly took on roles in film noir dramas, such as Henry Hathaway's Keyword 777 alongside James Stewart and Joseph L. Mankiewicz's Blood Enmity (1949) alongside Edward G. Robinson . In the 1950s, now independent, Conte starred in numerous B-movies . In 1965 he took on the role of Barabbas in The Greatest Story Of All Time , directed by George Stevens .

In 1968 Conte did his first and only work as a director. It was Operation Cross Eagles , a film that was made in cooperation between the USA and Yugoslavia . He also took on the leading role. Contes last big role - his career developed parallel to the crime films since the 1960s - he was to get in 1972: In the classic film The Godfather , he played Don Barzini, the opponent of Don Corleone ( Marlon Brando ). Conte was also under discussion as an alternative cast for the role of Brando.

Richard Conte was married twice privately. He was married to the actress Ruth Storey from 1943 to 1962 . The two have a son, Mark Conte , who works as a film editor . After divorcing Storey in 1973, Conte married a middle-class woman, Shirlee Garner. Richard Conte died of a heart attack two years later, at the age of 65 .

Filmography (selection)

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personal data
SURNAME Conte, Richard
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Conte, Richard Nicholas Peter
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American film and stage actor and film director
DATE OF BIRTH March 24, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Jersey City , New Jersey, United States
DATE OF DEATH April 15, 1975
Place of death Los Angeles , California, United States