A Severed Cinema Tribute to an Italian Icon: Franco Garofalo
I received a message today from the daughter of old school Italian actor, Franco Garofalo (aka Frank Garfield). We have been messaging recently regarding the health of her father, something I do not wish to talk about, and sadly she had to tell me he passed away on the 22nd of August. It had taken her a while to tell me, being that his condition recently mirrored a relative I lost a few years ago, and it pained me to read the message, however, Franco Garofalo is now at peace.
I interviewed Mr. Garofalo back in 2017, and that was quite a comical adventure in itself. Mr. Franco was comfier being emailed in his native tongue, thus responding as such. Over so many long days and evenings, I Google translated my questions, then his replies – and the web tool isn’t always accurate, so I had to ask what he meant so many times, much to our amusement.
We had a Facebook friendship, messaging one another from time to time, and I hoped to one day fly over and meet him – no Google Translate, goodness knows how that meeting would have been.
Then I noticed, over a time, he wasn’t online ranting about politics, or whatever. I left it a while, finally posting on his wall enquiring as to his well being. Mr. Garofalo’s daughter sent me a message explaining the illness her father had developed, and we spoke a couple of times online. I could only offer a small bit of support knowing I had been through the same thing, but it feels I couldn’t offer enough overall of course.
Mr. Franco Garofalo was an actor from my youth. Having seen in in Zombie Creeping Flesh, unhinged and sweating, then The Other Hell, and Eyes Behind the Stars, I found him just fantastic. So to get the chance and honour to interview him, and then become his Facebook message pal for a brief time, it meant so much and I am very emotional writing this. Let us remember, he wasn’t just a horror actor, he had so many diverse roles under his belt, but his horror ones were so cool.
I’m not going to lavish heaps of examples and praise, I simply will say, if you have any of his films, sit back and watch it the next chance you have, or if you haven’t please track one down – it’s totally worth it for anyone who loves a grimy classic Italian flick. Plus his marvellous voice over work on the short films by Chris Milewski.
My thoughts are with his friends, his relatives, but especially his wonderful daughter, an extremely brave and strong lady.
