For those—many of us—who grew up with the goliardic and surreal humor of programs like Alto Gradimento and Quelli della Notte, the name of the actor, musician, and tireless creator of utterly mad characters and catchphrases, Giorgio Bracardi, carries the weight of a longtime friend. Having been hospitalized since spring in a retirement home in Fiano Romano after breaking his femur, our beloved Max Vinella, Scarpantibus, Professor Marcellini, the comrade Ermanno Catenacci with a booming voice, left us at the age of 93. The writer recalls having seen him when he was very young at the Olimpico Theatre, in a one-man show where he moved from one character to another with ease, capable, with his charisma and his absolute disregard for the rules, of moving us to tears of laughter.
His contribution to the success of Alto Gradimento was pivotal: it was he who threw open the door and shouted “Patroclooooo!” (Mariano Laurenti even made a film about that character—the first appearance Bracardi made), he was Dr. Marsala at Rai with the perpetual “circle on his head,” the nostalgic figure of La Dolce Vita who sang “Via Veneto,” Dr. Onorato Spadone (“man is a beast!”), the jaunty dancer on Quelli della notte, to whom Renzo Arbore would inevitably ask, “but you, Bracardi, how old are you?” only to hear the reply and be told, “and at this age you still do these things?”
Brother of another musician, Franco Bracardi, the accompanist of the Costanzo Show, he was born into a family of opera singers and was an excellent pianist, but what he did even better was make people laugh. In cinema we remember him with some of his characters in La gorilla, I carabbimatti, Vinella e don Pezzotta, Banana Joe, and Mi faccia causa. Now that he has joined Mario Marenco in that ether where we will no longer see him, we will always fondly remember his “chettefrega? Chettefrega?” and we are grateful to a comic genius impossible to pigeonhole and often even to contain, because in this world, so stingy with moments of joy, anyone who can make us laugh so heartily is a true benefactor of humanity. Goodbye Giorgio, “chiappala, chiappala!”.
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