Walter Annicchiarico

Walter Annicchiarico (8 March 1924 - 20 December 1991), known as Walter Chiari, was an Italian stage and screen actor, mostly in comedy roles. Born in Verona to a family originally from Apulia, he joined the Decima Flottiglia MAS during World War II and was then drafted into the Wehrmacht, being sent to a German anti-aircraft squad in Normandy where he was slightly wounded during D-Day. He was captured and taken to the American prisoner camp of Coltano.

Chiari appeared in films such as The Little Hut (1957), Bonjour Tristesse (1958), Chimes at Midnight (1966) and The Valachi Papers (1972), and appeared opposite Anna Magnani in Luchino Visconti's Bellissima (1951), in which Visconti offered him the role of the young lover. He continued in the theatre, working in musical comedy with Delia Scala in Buonanotte Bettina (1956) and in prose theatre, including La strana coppia by Neil Simon (1966) with Renato Rascel. He also starred in They're a Weird Mob (1966), the last of the Powell and Pressburger films.

During the making of The Little Hut, Chiari met Ava Gardner and began a relationship with the American star. He married Italian singer and actress Alida Chelli in 1969, and they had one son, television presenter Simone Annicchiarico, before their 1972 divorce. In 1970 he was arrested and jailed in Rome on suspicion of cocaine possession and trafficking; after his release and partial acquittal his career never fully recovered. He died of a sudden heart attack in Milan on 21 December 1991, and his gravestone bears the epitaph he had chosen: "Don't worry, I'm merely catching up with sleep".