Celebrity Biographies
Robert Loggia
The general public tends to elevate the big stars, although deep down everyone knows that good films would not work if they did not have the support of solid secondary roles, such as the great Robert Loggia. The actor, who accumulated more than 200 appearances in films and television series, became an Oscar candidate in the secondary interpretation category. After retiring five years ago as a result of Alzheimer’s, he has died at the age of 85, in Los Angeles.
New Yorker Salvatore Loggia (his real name) was born on January 3, 1930 into a humble family on Staten Island, as his father was a shoemaker, and his mother was a housewife. He took a long time to confess to his father, a Sicilian with character, that he dreamed of being an actor. When he finally did, he replied: “I don’t like it at all, but I respect it.”
In the end, his father granted him permission to try to make a career in the world of interpretation but with conditions. So he first had to study Journalism, at the University of Missouri. After some time in the army, he enrolled in the Actors Studio, while earning a little money as a radio and television presenter.
After some role on Broadway, he debuted on the big screen as an extra, along with Paul Newman himself, in Marked by Hate , from 1956. Soon, he made his way through his good work, his charismatic physique, and his deep voice with personality, for which he chained one shoot after another both in cinema and on television, where he obtained some success as the sheriff Elfego Baca, in Disneyland. The magical world of colour.
In the 60s and 70s, he accumulated successful titles, such as The Greatest Story Ever Told, with numerous series, especially the police ones, that went to his hair, so he was seen in Colombo , McMillan and wife , Policewoman , Starsky and Hutch , Charlie’s Angels and even Harrelson’s Men . He finally starred in his own, Mancuso, between 1989 and 1990.
Robert Loggia began to have more prominent roles from the 80s, since he played the chief petty officer of the Navy, father of Richard Gere, in Officer and gentleman . He was required above all as a mobster, since he played a gangster in various titles in the Pink Panther saga, a Miami boss who hires Al Pacino in The Price of Power , and one of the sons of the most powerful family in the world. underworld, in Prizzi’s Honor . For his role as private detective Sam Ransom in Edge of Suspicion , he earned his only Oscar nomination, in 1985.
In the telefilm A Woman Called Golda , about Israel’s prime minister, she played the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat, along with the legendary Ingrid Bergman. “We were very close on set. I remember he had an arm ailment, but he still did a great job,” recalls the actor.
Divorced from Della Marjorie Sloan, mother of his three children, Robert Loggia joined the actress and producer Audrey Loggia in 1982, who accompanied him until his death. Ordinary moviegoers haven’t forgotten him as the owner of the toy company, which he dances on a gigantic electric piano with Tom Hanks, in Big . “We pretty much shot it in one take,” he stated.
Later, he accumulated dozens of titles inappropriate for his talent, although he could also be seen as a general in Independence Day , as a religious in Joan of Arc and as a gangster, again, in Lost Highway . Despite his illness, he continued to work until the end, and even left behind posthumous titles, such as Hospital Arrest, a B-series comedy.