Actors - Richard Harrison

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	Actors - Richard Harrison

Richard Harrison is an American B-movie actor (and occasionally a writer/director/producer), born on the 26th of May in 1936, Salt Lake City, Utah. He left Salt Lake City for Los Angeles at seventeen, where he found work first at the Vic Tanny and Bert Goodrich gyms. Many people working in the film industry trained at the gym, and these encounters led Harrison to study acting. He appeared in a Santa Monica stage production, then in TV, then in small parts in feature films. Harrison worked at Twentieth Century Fox under acting coach Sandy Meiser. He eventually signed a three film deal with American International Pictures, which led him to Italy, where he remained for almost three decades, making a name for himself first in peplum, then spy films and spaghetti westerns. Formal acting studies set Harrison apart from other muscular American actors working in Italy in the early 60's such as Brad Harris and Steve Reeves, with whom he is often grouped with.

Harrison was very prolific and worked with most of the better-known names in European B-movies during the 60's and 70's, branching out to exploitation films shot all over the world in the early 70's. He worked with directors ranging from established names like Antonio Margheriti and Marino Girolami to infamous Z-movie directors like Paolo Solvay and Alfonso Brescia. Harrison's co-stars ranged from major and minor stars of the time like Anita Ekberg, Klaus Kinski, Fernando Sancho and Helmut Berger to obscure cult actors such as Mike Monty, Romano Kristoff and Mike Cohen.

He is also famous for refusing the title role in Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars
and suggesting the name of his colleague Clint Eastwood instead, a fact that has guaranteed him a footnote in most books on spaghetti western or Eastwood.

The spaghetti western/spy/peplum era of the 60's

During which Harrison appeared mostly in solid B-movies, many of which are now considered to be cult films.

Harrison relocated to Italy in the early 60's with his first wife Loretta, and became a minor star in peplums, spy films, and spaghetti westerns. His first Italian film and first starring role was in The Invincible Gladiator (1962), directed by Alberto De Martino and Antonio Momplet. Arguably Harrison's most well known film from his early career is the western Gunfight at Red Sands AKA Duello nel Texas, directed by Ricardo Blasco in 1963. Gunfight at Red Sands is also noteworthy for being the first Italian Western to feature a Ennio Morricone score. The 1968 film Joko Invoca Dio...I Muori AKA Vengeance, directed by Antonio Margheriti, is another favorite among spaghetti western fans. Luciano Martino's 1965 movie Secret Agent Fireball, Harrison's first Italian spy film, is also often cited as his best film in the genre and one of his better earlier films.

The death of the spaghetti western and the exploitation years of the 70's

During which Richard Harrison started to show up in more and more low-budget features all over the globe. Harrison started sporting a moustache, which became something of a trademark for him in the coming years. Although the general quality of his 70's filmography is somewhat low, some films from the time have gone on to cult status.

Harrison's career dwindled slowly in the 1970's at the same rate as the spaghetti western died. He began appearing in low-budget movies shot all over the world: In Egypt, working with Farouk "Frank" Agrama (You Can Do a Lot with 7 Women), (1971), with the Shaw Brothers in Hong Kong (Marco Polo), (1975), and in Turkey, (The Godfather's Friend), (1972), again directed by Agrama. Harrison even appeared in a Yugoslavian war film, the 1979 effort Pakleni Otok, directed by Vladimir Tadej.

He made most of his better quality 70's films during the earlier half of the decade, like the comic spaghetti western Due Fratelli AKA Two Brothers in Trinity (1972), which he also directed. His co-star in Due Fratelli was the Irish-American actor Donald O'Brien, another veteran of Italian B-films. Harrison and O'Brien played two estranged brothers rejoined after receiving an inheritance, Harrison a "lovable rogue", O'Brien a pious Mormon. Harrison wants to spend his money on building a bordello, and comic adventures in the spirit of the Terence Hill/Bud Spencer hit My Name is Trinity (1971) follow. While Due Fratelli is never quite up to the level of the early Hill/Spencer films that it's clearly inspired by, it's a good film on its own and a rare chance to see Harrison in a comedy.

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