The Life of Jack Salvatori

Why did people keep looking at me? My mother and I were standing next to my uncle Johnnie's gravestone with several members of his family, who I hardly knew forming a horseshoe around the grave while the priest gave the final blessing. It was 1950, and I was 13. All I knew was that he had been an actor and made a film. He had died in St. Marys Hospital Paddington London suffering from galloping consumption and that my mother had visited in hospital many times in the final weeks.

In 1949 he had been to our house in Cricklewood occasionally. One afternoon he stayed a long time and relayed the story of his film 'UMANITA' (Humanity), which he had made in Rome in 1946 to my mother and grandmother. Once a week in my school lunch break it was my chore to take the dirty washing to the laundry, and once he walked with me. He asked me if there was anything wrong with me, how I got on with my brother, and if was I happy with my life. I could only think to tell him that I was getting pigeon toed through playing too much football but otherwise was fine. That was the last time I saw him. Dudley who I thought was my father quizzed me about what Uncle Johnnie had asked me the following day and lost interest once I told him about the pigeon toes.

I am now retired and with the aid of a computer (which causes me much frustration), I have attempted to research my fathers life. What initially motivated me was that certain things had been written about him which were untrue. Berkeley University in California had claimed that he was an almost forgotten American/Italian film Director who had died in the 1970s. To be fair to them, as soon as I provided them with photographs, dates and places, they created a website and with their help through Chicago University and Alma Films of Venice I was able to procure copies of UMANITA from the Italian Archive which I am trying to get translated and shown in the UK. My father had come to England to interest British film companies in the film but was unsuccessful and later died here.

The family home was 227 Elgin Avenue Maida Vale London and much of what I learned about him was from his sister Sylvia the last surviving member of the family living there. I was 16 when I discovered that Jack Salvatori was my father. My girlfriends friend was the daughter of the landlord of The Crown Inn at Cricklewood and had been told by Dudley who played piano there several nights a week.

 

 

So this is Jack Salvatori’s story - or the parts of it that I have pieced together.

In the mid 1800s my great-grandfather had a big decision to make.  He lived in Rome and at the age of 25 was about to take his final vows to become a Catholic Priest but he had met great-grandmother, so there was no contest. Having been trained for priesthood although well educated there was no profession or trade he could turn to. One of his tutor priests owned a vineyard and he employed him as a manager. They started a family but one day when he was riding his horse around the estate, as he did each evening to check that all was well, a labourer whom he had sacked in the morning threw a stone which hit him in the temple and killed him. The priest looked after the family and the children were given good educations. His son Giovanni, my grandfather, spoke 5 languages and became the first Italian Agent for Thomas Cook the travel agency. His job brought him to London where he met and married my grandmother Eva who bore him 6 children. He became the first Labour Party Candidate for Paddington London and he spent much of his time in Italy choosing suitable hotels for Thomas Cook. My father Jack was born in Rome in 1901. When they returned to England my grandmother was killed by a horsebus in Kilburn. It was said that having lived a while in Rome she was disorientated by traffic being on the other side of the road.

My mother and father met because there was a distant family connection. My daughter now has a photo of a large family gathering at a family wedding showing my father aged 15 and mother aged 14. A year later he proposed to her and quite understandably she turned him down saying they were too young. His response was  to join the Bedfordshire Regiment. He was only 16 but over 6ft.tall and told them that he was a year older. He like many other underage young men was accepted and after training sent to the 5th battalion fighting in North Africa at Suez. He was underage, in an Infantry Regiment, in WW1 in 1917 when the fatality rate was very high, but he survived. He was one of General Allenby's dispatch riders. I was told that he was boxing champion of the regiment and that he once led a camel charge. Whether this was by camel or motor cycle I do not know and I have been unable to ascertain whether either of these claims are fact or fiction.

When WW1 ended he and another man attempted to be the first to cross the Sahara desert by motorcycle. They became lost after 3 days and were rescued by The French Foreign Legion. It transpired that his co adventurer was in fact a deserter from The Legion. When he returned to England he became an actor, securing parts in West End plays and later procured a contract with British Lion Films his stage name being Jack Manners. He became known as The British Valentino. At the time when Hollywood was about to start the transition from silent movies to talkies he was working for Paramount Studios as an actor/director aged only 30 - no mean feat. He had a relationship with Lillian Gish and later directed Orson Welles. He became quite wealthy at this time but such was his love for the art he was immersed in he invested heavily in films that never made it. Paramount wanted to expand into Europe and produce films in other languages. My father was a prime candidate as he spoke 5 languages. He therefore transferred to Joinville in Paris where he directed several films. During this time he married one of a pair of Dutch actress twin sisters but I can find no record of this. The marriage was unsuccessful and in 1935 he returned to London met my mother again who was then married to Dudley and I was the result. He continued to direct films with Joinville until the outbreak of WW2. I do not know why he did not return to England then but he became trapped there in Houdon west of Paris when the Germans invaded France and he hid in a mental home claiming that he was an inmate. His acting abilities must have helped him at this stage as his true identity was not revealed. He left the safety of the mental home and walked to Rome through enemy occupied France. His knowledge of French and German languages must have been invaluable. On arrival in Rome he was hidden by Catholic Priests in the cellars beneath The Coliseum where he had played as a child. They smuggled him out of Rome and he joined the Partisans in the hills fighting  the Germans. 
 

When the Allies approached Rome he led a group to the outskirts of the city waving a union jack to welcome the British but was disappointed to learn that they had been kept back to allow the Americans to enter the city first.
After the war half starved and weak he secured a small part at the beginning of The Bicycle Thieves. He joked that they were looking for half starved actors so he fitted the part well. He also worked with UNICEF making a film about health and hygiene which he showed in a mobile cinema van which he took around villages and townships in Italy. This was immediately after the war when much of the population were starving and in need of survival advice. In 1946 he wrote and directed UMANITA with The Luce Institute with financial aid from UNRA, (United Nations Relief Assn.) He gave himself a small part in the film as Captain of a group of Partisans caught by the Germans and shot by a firing squad. Ironically only 18 months previous he had been fighting with the Partisans for real. UMANITA centres around the Cinecitta film studios in Rome opened by Mussolini in the late 1930s and used as a refugee camp after the war when so many were homeless. A documentary film called Refugees in Cinecitta by Marco Bertozzi of Alma Films was premiered in New York in January 2012. This brought the film to light as it is the one of the few visual historic records of the existence of the studios. He then returned to America where he directed Orson Welles and played a small part in PRINCE OF FOXES starring Orson Welles and Tyrone Power. He speaks a few lines and passes a goblet to Orson Welles. 
 

Finally he returned to London. His health was poor and he had not fully recovered  from the hardship of the war years. He told my mother that he had taken a job as a furniture removal company labourer but had to give it up as his strength was failing him and he was not the build for this kind of work. He died shortly afterwards.
 

It amazes me how much he packed into those 50 years, more than most of us achieve in a lifetime. I only met him on 3 or 4 occasions. He had a very deep voice, was over 6ft tall and by then a thin bony face.
When I visited his sister Sylvia several years later she told me that he always looked for the good in others and had never had the temperament to thrive in the cut and thrust of the cinematic world. She gave me his old leather briefcase and a couple of handwritten books he had written at the outbreak of WW2. Both were about life in a small French village at the time of the German invasion. He said that he had written them in a style suitable for filming, not as a novel.
I have no other possessions of his but this is what he wrote as a preface to one of these stories.

EXODE or POPPIES STILL REMEMBER.
The French are very fatalistic with their age old proverb “tout passe…tout s’affasse…tout casse…et tout  se replace” which means that everything passes, everything crumbles, everything breaks, and everything gets replaced. In fact TIME is an amazing incredible and incomprehensive study. One moment you hold it fast with both hands, all yours to do what you wish with, then…Swish!…it has gone. You are left empty handed, bewildered, incredulous. It is now definitively a thing of the past. All your cajoling, tears, pleas or curses will never bring it back again.
The fading shadow will whisper to you “you had the chance, why did you not profit of me instead of lingering undecided?.. You should have realised that I cannot wait like you can. I must go on, on and on for I follow Eternity's Trail.
Then as he sees you so hopelessly dejected he will add gently to balm your feelings, “come now don’t look so sad. It is no good regretting. Justly speaking the blame is not all yours but also of Destiny and only God can change its ways. Personally, I still wish to be good to you and this I can do, so I am going to leave you something of mine. Something that only Almighty God can take away from you, something that you can hold dearly and cherish to the end of your days upon this strange world. Something that is part of me.. My memory….”