Pippo Franco

Pippo Franco
Pippo Franco in 2013
Born	Francesco Pippo (1940-09-02)2 September 1940 Rome, Italy
Nationality	Italian
Occupation	comic actor, singer, TV presenter

Pippo Franco (pseudonym of Francesco Pippo; born 2 September 1940) is an Italian actor, comedian, television presenter, and singer. He made his name first as a musician in the early 1960s, and in the late 1960s began a career in film, starring in a great number of commedia sexy all'italiana, the "sexy comedy" subgenre of Italian comedy. In the 1970s he expanded into television, acting in TV movies and presenting variety shows. His type of comedy borrows heavily from cabaret. Throughout his career he continued to sing, appearing many times at the Sanremo Festival. He has made children's music as well, and has co-written three books on (linguistic) humor.

Franco was born in Rome to an Irpinian family, who had moved to Rome from Vallata, in the Province of Avellino.

Franco's first role in a box office hit was 1969's Nell'anno del Signore, directed by Luigi Magni, and starring "an exceptional cast of actors" including Franco, Nino Manfredi, and Claudia Cardinale.

In the 1970s and 1980s he starred in a large number of Italian comedies, many of them "erotic comedies," such as the 1972 Mariano Laurenti production Quel gran pezzo dell'Ubalda tutta nuda e tutta calda, a semi-medieval erotic spoof (a "decamerotic" film), distributed in the US as Ubalda, all naked and warm, in which Franco starred (with "undeniable comic verve") alongside Edwige Fenech, the Algerian-born last "popular incarnation of the 'sex bombs' so in vogue twenty years earlier." T he success of Ubalda was followed by another successful movie with Franco and Edwige, Sergio Martino's Giovannona Coscialunga disonorata con onore (1973). Franco again worked with Martino and Fenech in 1980, in Zucchero, miele e peperoncino, and in 1982, in Ricchi, ricchissimi... praticamente in mutande, though Franco and Fenech did not share any scenes in these Anthologies. In 1972, he had a part in Billy Wilder's Italian/American comedy Avanti!, alongside Jack Lemmon and Juliet Mills. He directed his first movie in 1981, La gatta da pelare, for which he also wrote the score and the script.