
Totò: A noble heart behind humor and humanity
In order to talk about Prince Antonio de Curtis, we need to make a quick historical reference to the art of acting and writing in Napoli. The historically documented roots start from the mid-1500s, in fact it is proven that the first comic companies were formed in that period. In a notarial deed, cited by Benedetto Croce in “I Teatri di Napoli”, there is talk of the constitution of a company between 5 comedians, 2 of whom were Neapolitans “to make and perform comedies”. From “Pulicenella”, a mask born at the end of the 1500s, had as its interpreter a great actor Silvio Fiorillo, probably considered the true inventor of the mask. We then move on to Giambattista Della Porta (Napoli 1535-1615) and his contemporary Giulio Cesare Cortese, up to the modern and contemporary Geppino Anatrelli, Concetta and Peppe Barra, Vittorio Caprioli, Carlo Croccolo, Nuccia and Nunzia Fumo, Roberto de Simone, Eduardo Scarpetta, the De Filippos, Aldo and Carlo Giuffrè, the Maggio brothers, Gilda Mignonette, Rina Morelli, the Petitos, the Rondinellas, the Tarantos, Raffaele Viviani, Gustavo De Marco and many others.
The list is very long and it was in Napoli that at the end of the 19th century, precisely on February 15th, 1898, Totò was born from a clandestine relationship between Anna Clemente and the Marquis Giuseppe De Curtis. His father, the Marquis, did not want to recognize him and his mother, at only 17 years old, faced the society of the late 19th century with strength and a good dose of provocation, not leaving her lover. Baby Totò was taken care of by his maternal grandmother and then a boarding school. For us, being the son of N.N., as they said then, it was not easy and fighting in the alleys of Napoli was not simple but, as they say, it rained on the wet when, as a student at the first gymnasium of the Cimino College, during recess, he was playing boxing with one of the tutors when a blow, delivered with a certain intensity, hit him full in the face. The nose then began to bleed and, in addition, little de Curtis felt a strong pain in the jaw that caused the deviation of the nasal septum and the indentation of the same. All this gave ours a facial appearance that was not exactly harmonious. And that was how his fortune was born: de Curtis acquired the face of Totò, his natural “mask“. A commemorative plaque in via Carbonara, right where the Cimino college stood and where the Palazzo Caracciolo hotel is now, was placed on June 19th, 2018.
From that natural mask he drew his comic strength that made him compare to the great names of world comedy such as Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin and the Marx Brothers. Many still today tend to see Totò only as the actor we see in films while he was also a playwright, poet, as well as a lyricist and screenwriter but the usual local critics never dealt with all this and always rejected him as if he were just any buffoon and, as almost always happens, after his death they revalued him by recognizing everything that in life they had always denied him. Having moved with his family to Rome in the 1920s, Totò was finally recognized by his father who, moreover, also married his mother and it was in the capital that he had to try to climb the first cruel steps of the stage instead of in Naples. Perhaps the most bitter chapter of her life was Liliana Castagnola, a singer who was well-known throughout Europe and for whom there had been duels and squandering of entire estates and fortunes of many men. Liliana arrived in Naples in December 1929, engaged by the Teatro Santa Lucia and was intrigued by seeing the Neapolitan artist Totò perform, so she showed up one evening at one of his shows, attracting his attention. Totò showed his interest by sending roses to the boarding house where Liliana lived and from that evening a love story was born.

Castagnola was beautiful as you can see from her photo, but this time it was she who fell in love with Totò who, leaving her, led her to the fatal decision of suicide, as witnessed by a letter: “Why didn’t you want to come and say goodbye to me for the last time? …… Did you make me happy or unhappy? I don’t know. My hand is shaking right now… Ah, if you were near me! You would save me, wouldn’t you? Antonio, I’m calmer than ever. Thank you for the smile you were able to give to my grey and wretched life. I won’t look at anyone anymore… Goodbye. Your Lilia” to which Totò replied with these verses: “She’s dead, she’s gone! Why don’t I mourn? I can’t make it, I answer people and make a face at them but in my heart it’s all one big thing!” Totò was totally shocked by that tragedy and never forgave himself for it throughout his life and, to remember her, he had Liliana buried in his family tomb and gave her name to his first daughter, baptizing her: Liliana De Curtis.

Today we know Totò from the hundred films he made but the real Totò as his real “sidekick” the actor Mario Castellani said and, more modestly, my father “Totò was the theater” live where with many revues staged he toured far and wide throughout Italy always being sold out. My father who, as a young man, never missed a single theatrical work in the 30s told me that, often, he saw the same show several times and he modified it according to his inspiration every evening. Furthermore, he never missed the radio or the cinema. Tragedies never abandoned him and, after having suffered a retinal detachment in his left eye as a young man, complete blindness struck him suddenly, during the tour of the revue managed by Remigio Paone “A prescindere” on the evening of May 4th, 1957, on the tables of the Politeama in Palermo, dressed as Napoleon. He began to blink as if to remove something from his eyes and with his pupils wide open he realized he could no longer see anything. No one on stage noticed and, speeding up the tempo, cutting the lines, with an ever-equal vitality, he made his audience burst out laughing and, amid the ovations of a crazy theater, he intuitively headed towards the wings. From that moment and for over a year it was deep night in the true sense of the word until he managed to recover just 2 tenths of his right eye and with these two tenths he worked until his death on April 15th, 1967. On the evening of April 13th, 1967, Totò confessed to his driver, Carlo Cafiero, who was taking him home on board his Mercedes: “Cafie’, I won’t hide from you that tonight I feel like real crap”.
Even for funerals Totò was unique, they had to do 3, the first in Rome in Parioli where he lived with Franca Faldini in the presence of his family and many colleagues. The second in his Napoli, obviously, in the Basilica del Carmine Maggiore and I was there at 18 with the city completely paralyzed, only with the first championship of Napoli I saw so many people in the streets. Then there was the third funeral for which his daughter Liliana was approached by the “Sindaco del rione Sanità” district aka Luigi Campoluongo, better born as “Nase ‘e cane” supreme boss of the “camorra” which was not what we know today and from whose story another great Eduardo De Filippo drew his comedy of the same name. The guappo asked Totò’s daughter for another funeral, to be held right in Sanità, in the church of San Vincenzo, with an empty coffin. And so on May 22nd the Sanità district had its funeral and here too thousands poured into the streets. Totò, the prince of laughter, had cried and suffered a lot in his private life but as a summary of this meager representation of this great son of Napoli I suggest listening to him and seeing him recite his most famous poem ‘A livella.
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