https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5067-7365
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ABSTRACT
During the 1950s, comedy actors Ugo Tognazzi and Raimondo Vianello were the famous faces of Italian variety television thanks to their roles as hosts of the popular series Un, due, tre (1954-1959). In addition to proving popular with audiences, the programme played an important role in establishing the nature of variety television in this period, and the expectations of Italian television more broadly, given the regular focus in each episode on the nature of the medium itself. This article explores this focus on television and the wider role played by Tognazzi and Vianello as hosts of Un, due, tre as a way of exploring the nature of Italian variety television in the 1950s. In particular, it examines how the two stars appealed to and connected with viewers in a way that established a nascent national television audience and expectations regarding entertainment programming and television broadcasting in this period.
SOMMARIO
Durante gli anni 50, i comici Ugo Tognazzi e Raimondo Vianello rappresentavano il varietà televisivo italiano grazie ad essere gli ospiti del programma famoso Un, due, tre (1954-9). Inoltre ad essere molto popolare con il pubblico, il programma giocava un ruolo importante nello stabilimento sia dell'essenza del varietà televisivo in questo periodo sia delle aspettative del pubblico per quanto riguarda la televisione stessa dato la focalizzazione regolare del programma sul medium. Il presente articolo analizzerà questa focalizzazione sulla televisione del programma e soprattutto il ruolo giocato da Tognazzi e Vianello come ospiti per fare luce sull'essenza del varietà televisivo Italiano degli anni 50. In particolare, esamineremo il modo in cui i due comici piacevano agli spettatori, il che dava origine a un pubblico nazionale nascente e stabiliva le aspettative per quanto riguarda i programmi di svago e la televisione in generale in questo periodo.
Acknowledgements
I gratefully acknowledge the support of the British School at Rome during my tenure as Balsdon Fellow 2021–22, which enabled me to undertake the archival research presented in this article.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 Stefano Mauriello, ‘Cent’anni di Ugo Tognazzi: una grande abbuffata di film e premi’, Il Corriere della Sera Style Magazine, 17 March 2022, <https://style.corriere.it/news/societa/ugo-tognazzi-centenario/> [accessed 5 July 2022].
2 Renato Franco, ‘Raimondo Vianello, le battute da espulsione con Tognazzi e solo due scivoloni (su Gronchi e Berlusconi)’, Il Corriere della Sera, 6 May 2022, <https://www.corriere.it/sette/cultura-societa/22_maggio_06/raimondo-vianello-battute-espulsione-tognazzi-solo-due-scivoloni-su-gronchi-berlusconi-3d394f06-c986-11ec-9820-58d31043d436.shtml> [accessed 5 July 2022].
3 In this article, I maintain the Italian term varietà for variety television programme, in order to denote the cultural specificity of these types of programme to the Italian context of the 1950s. This specificity is seen in particular in the precise way in which entertainment models from Italy and abroad were adopted and adapted for television screens.
4 Italian television’s aims in this period emulated those of the BBC: to inform, entertain, and educate the viewing public. For more information, see Massimo Scaglioni, ‘Cavalcare la tigre: Tv italiana e culture storiche’, in Storie e culture della televisione, ed. by Aldo Grasso (Milan: Mondadori, 2013), loc. 612. Kindle ebook.
5 Aldo Grasso, with Luca Barra and Cecilia Penati, Storia critica della televisione italiana (Milan: Il Saggiatore, 2019), p. 83.
6 Ibid.
7 Franco Monteleone, Storia della radio e della televisione in Italia: Costume, società e politica, 2nd edn (Venice: Marsilio Editori, 2021), p. 379. Kindle ebook.
8 Ibid.
9 Scaglioni, loc. 614.
10 Ibid., loc. 600.
11 Ibid., loc. 612.
12 Monteleone, p. 393.
13 Ibid., p. 410.
14 I am borrowing John Fiske’s terminology here: for more information about how viewers decode the representation of reality that television provides them, see John Fiske, Television Culture, 2nd edn (Abingdon: Routledge, 2011), pp. 4–5.
15 Grasso, Storia critica della televisione italiana, p. 83.
16 Gabriele Rigola, Una storia moderna: Ugo Tognazzi: Cinema, cultura e società italiana (Turin: Kaplan, 2018), pp. 23–24.
17 This article deliberately focuses on the ways in which star status was the vehicle through which Tognazzi and Vianello were able to make an impact on Italian television and its audiences. To complement this analysis, it would be beneficial to explore how acting and performance style and established tropes of theatrical and cinematic comedy of the period also facilitated Tognazzi and Vianello’s success and influence. However, this remains outside of the scope of the present article.
18 I am drawing here on the analytical framework and terminology of Richard Dyer and his work on stars. See in particular Richard Dyer, Stars (London: BFI Publishing, 1998).
19 Stephen Gundle, Fame amid the Ruins: Italian Film Stardom in the Age of Neorealism (New York: Berghahn, 2020), p. 7.
20 Stephen Gundle, ‘Stars and Stardom in the Study of Italian Cinema’, Italian Studies, 63.2 (2008), 261–66 (p. 263).
21 Rigola, p. 31.
22 Roberto Frini and Federico Bravetti, Sandra Mondaini e Raimondo Vianello (Rome: Gremese, 2010), p. 21.
23 Ugo Tognazzi and Raimondo Vianello, Un, due, tre, ed. by Roberto Buffagni (Milan: Mondadori, 2001), pp. 27–30.
24 Frini and Bravetti, p. 27.
25 Fabio Melelli, ‘Due strane coppie: Tognazzi & Vianello, Scarnicci & Tarabusi’, in Ugo Tognazzi: questa specie d’attore. 1 parte: 22/03/2022 mattina, online video recording, YouTube, 22 March 2022, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZgz8QUiHG4&t=6689s> [accessed 5 August 2022].
26 Dyer, pp. 60–63.
27 Paola Valentini, La scena rubata. Il cinema italiano e lo spettacolo popolare, 1924–1954 (Milan: Vita e pensiero strumenti, 2002), pp. 87–88.
28 I am using Edgar Morin’s terminology here, drawing on his idea that the characters that film stars play affect and infect their star image, but that the film star also reciprocally affects and infects the characters they interpret on screen. For more information, see Edgar Morin, Stars, trans. by Richard Howard (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2005), p. 27.
29 Ibid., p. 2.
30 Monteleone, p. 402.
31 Both episodes have been digitized by RAI and are available to watch on Raiplay (as of August 2022).
32 David Brackett, ‘Musical Meaning: Genres, Categories and Crossover’, in Popular Music Studies, ed. by David Hesmondhalgh and Keith Negus (London: Edward Arnold, 2002), pp. 65–83, at p. 67.
33 Stephen Gundle, ‘Signorina Buonasera: Images of Women in Early Italian Television’, in Women in Italy, 1945–1960: An Interdisciplinary Study, ed. by Penelope Morris (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), pp. 65–76, at p. 67.
34 Un, due, tre, Programma Nazionale, 31 May 1959, 9.15pm. Cefaro had won the ‘Miss Roma’ beauty contest in 1952 and had gone on to secure roles in a series of films during the 1950s.
35 Gundle, ‘Signorina Buonasera’, p. 68.
36 Ibid., pp. 68–69.
37 Un, due, tre, Programma Nazionale, 7 June 1959, 9.15pm.
38 Grasso, Storia critica della televisione italiana, p. 84.
39 Ibid., p. 142.
40 Ibid., pp. 176–77.
41 Gundle, ‘Signorina Buonasera’, p. 65.
42 Aldo Grasso, ‘Il dissodatore appassionato’, in Storie e culture della televisione, ed. by Aldo Grasso (Milan: Mondadori, 2013), loc. 185. Kindle ebook.
43 See Radiocorriere 4–10 January 1959, p. 40; Radiocorriere 11–17 January, p. 40; Radiocorriere 18–24 January 1959, p. 40; and Radiocorriere 25–31 January 1959, p. 40.
44 Monteleone, p. 427.
45 According to Ricky Tognazzi, Ugo Tognazzi’s son, in conversation with the author, 22 March 2022.
46 Monteleone, p. 381.
47 Ibid., p. 403.
48 Quoted in Rigola, p. 25.
49 Joshua Meyrowitz, No Sense of Place: The Impact of Electronic Media on Social Behaviour (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), p. 6.
50 Ibid.
51 Tognazzi and Vianello, p. 133.
52 Ibid., pp. 134–35.
53 Gundle, ‘Signorina Buonasera’, p. 66.
54 I am drawing on Dyer’s conceptualization of the way star images function in relation to contradictions within ideologies and can embody both dominant and alternative or oppositional ideological positions. See Dyer, pp. 20–34.