Emimmo Salvi

Early production work (1949–1958)

Salvi began working in film production on Yvonne la Nuit (1949). Over the following decade he held various production posts, including production secretary on Roberto Rossellini's The Flowers of St. Francis, production supervisor on Rossellini's Journey to Italy and on Federico Fellini's Nights of Cabiria.

Producer and screenwriter (1958–1961)

In 1958, Salvi produced Luigi Capuano's Sorrisi e canzoni for Transfilm. The film starred Gabriele Tinti, Giulia Rubini and Maria Fiore, with a screenplay by Capuano and Alfredo Giannetti.

The same year, Salvi wrote the story (together with Gino Mangini and Isabella Comino), was the producer and responsible for the general organisation of Capitan Fuoco for Transfilm. The film was directed by Carlo Campogalliani and starred Lex Barker as a hero similar to Robin Hood.

Salvi then produced Carlo Campogalliani's Il terrore dei barbari (1959), starring Steve Reeves, and co-wrote the story. Della Casa and Giusti also credit Salvi's Standard Production with the film's production and distribution. Hughes records filming in Yugoslavia and at Incir-De Paolis Studios, where much of the woodland material was shot indoors.

The production encountered financial difficulties before completion. According to film historians Gary A. Smith and Rob Craig, AIP executives Samuel Z. Arkoff and James H. Nicholson viewed footage in Rome and supplied 20,000 US dollars to finish the film. AIP retitled it Goliath and the Barbarians, replaced the original score with music by Les Baxter, and hurried it into American release following the success of Reeves's Hercules. Kinnard and Crnkovich state that AIP completion money enabled the film to reach theatres five months after Hercules. Hughes adds that the American version was reduced from 100 to 85 minutes and describes the AIP release as a major success. Smith describes it as one of AIP's largest-grossing releases up to that time; Craig, citing Arkoff, writes that its returns helped rescue the financially troubled company.

In Italy, the film was released on 30 June 1959 and grossed 641 million lire, placing it fourth at the Italian box office that season.

According to Della Casa and Giusti, Salvi then produced and co-scripted Ferdinando Baldi's David e Golia (1960), in which Orson Welles played Saul. Della Casa and Giusti write that Salvi persuaded Welles to participate and built the film around his name. They recount, explicitly as a Roman film-industry legend, that Salvi obtained Welles's signature with a promissory note unsupported by funds, then crossed from Welles's hotel to the offices of Angelo Rizzoli and secured financing for the film. They also cite contemporary accounts placing Salvi's visit to Welles at his villa in Fregene, where Welles reportedly received him in swimming trunks with a cigar. Kinnard and Crnkovich list Welles as an uncredited director and state that he directed his own scenes. Hughes states location filming took place in Jerusalem and Yugoslavia, with interiors made at Amato and De Paolis studios, and regards the film as now principally remembered for Welles's performance. Audrey Stainton, who worked as Welles's secretary during the filming of David e Golia, recalled that Welles requested additional performers and sets for his scenes, increasing Salvi's costs, and that Welles, in turn, used income from his acting work to continue his own Don Quixote project. David e Golia was a commercial success.

Salvi then launched Richard Thorpe's I tartari (1961) and secured both Welles's contract and an agreement with the Yugoslav company Jadran Film. The Italian film archive ANICA lists Salvi among the credited story and screenplay writers. According to production manager Alessandro Tasca di Cutò, Welles had agreed to appear in the film as a favour to Salvi. Hughes records collaboration with the Zagreb company Dubrava Film, Yugoslav location work and interiors at Titanus Studios. Tasca recalled that Salvi lacked sufficient capital and that the large sets being built in Zagreb were delayed. With the project having passed to Lux Film, Tasca said that he could not recommend the completion guarantee requested by its American financiers and agreed to take over production management only if Salvi was removed; Welles remained in the cast as the Tartar leader Burundai.

Salvi subsequently produced Primo Zeglio's Le sette sfide (1961), for which he had also written the story. The exteriors were filmed in Yugoslavia.

He also produced and co-wrote Il gigante di Metropolis (1961), an unusual hybrid of peplum and science fiction. Star Gordon Mitchell later remembered it as more a Salvi film than a film by its credited director, Umberto Scarpelli.

Director (1962–1967)

Between 1962 and 1967, Salvi directed mythological and oriental adventures, a Eurospy film, a musical comedy and two westerns.

At the beginning of his directorial career, Salvi worked with Iranian actor and athlete Iloosh Khoshabe on two films, Vulcano figlio di Giove and Le sette fatiche di Alì Babà (1962). Film scholar Mohammad Foad Abachi records that Khoshabe travelled to Italy at the invitation of producer Manouchehr Zamani. Credited under the pseudonym Rod Flash Ilush, Khoshabe starred as the titular characters in both films.

Vulcan, Son of Giove (1962) was Salvi's credited directorial debut, for which he wrote the story and co-wrote the screenplay. Della Casa and Giusti also credit him as a producer, whereas Kinnard and Crnkovich instead name Spartaco Antonucci as producer and Decio Salvi as executive producer; a credit summary in Nocturno Dossier identifies Ambrogio Molteni as producer for Juno Film. Della Casa and Giusti describe it as an Italian production made in association with Manouchehr Zamani in Iran, and state that some of its exterior scenes were filmed in Iran, while the interiors were made at the Interstudio in Grottaferrata. Kinnard and Crnkovich call it the first peplum filmed in Iran.

Salvi then directed and co-wrote the spy film F.B.I. chiama Istanbul. According to Marco Giusti, it was shot mostly on location in Istanbul and had its Italian premiere on 10 February 1964.

Salvi then acted as director, story writer and co-screenwriter of Sinbad contro i sette saraceni. Hughes praises Mitchell's performance as the villain.

For Il tesoro della foresta pietrificata (1965), Salvi is credited as director, co-screenwriter and story writer.

Salvi's first western Three Bullets for Ringo (1966) paired former bodybuilders Gordon Mitchell and Mickey Hargitay.

Salvi also directed and co-wrote Un gangster venuto da Brooklyn (1966), which gave singer Little Tony his first leading film role. A report published while the film was being shot used the variant title Un gangster arriva da Brooklyn and described Akim Tamiroff's character as a retired Brooklyn crime boss who becomes involved in Roman property speculation, unscrupulous lawyers and a fashionable nightclub driven by yé-yé rhythms. According to Little Tony biographer Mario Galeotti, the financially troubled production asked the singer to contribute his own money so that filming could continue and the film could be completed; he agreed, receiving no fee and ultimately paying out of pocket. Giusti described it as the least-known of Little Tony's musicarelli and attributed its obscurity partly to a poorly timed August release.

Salvi then directed and co-wrote his second and last western, Wanted Johnny Texas (1967). In a retrospective review, Weisser describes Wanted Johnny Texas (1967) as aesthetically strange and so atypical that it might be regarded as either among the best or among the worst examples of the form.

Return to directing and the Zeus project

After an interval of more than a decade, Salvi returned to directing with Pugni, dollari e spinaci (1978), a children's comedy inspired by American cartoons and centred on a spinach merchant devoted to Popeye. In a contemporary interview, Salvi said that distributors had initially been sceptical that an Italian production could live up to the premise. Salvi stressed that the film was not animated, but a live-action fable whose world was inspired by American cartoons, and said that he had completed it despite this pessimism. A subsequent report announcing the film's presentation at the 31st Salone Internazionale dell'Umorismo in Bordighera described it as the first live-action film about Popeye and named Maurizio Arena and Gordon Mitchell among its cast. The film's story and screenplay were credited to Maria Carla Bufalino, with Salvi also credited for the screenplay in a surviving ministerial censorship document. At the 31st Salone Internazionale dell'Umorismo in Bordighera, the film received a Rama di Palma d'Oro. Giusti reported that actor Gordon Mitchell, who acted as the villain, was particularly fond of it.

In the early 1980s, Salvi again collaborated with Bufalino on a science-fiction and mythological project generally known as Zeus and also promoted as Zeus contro l'universo. A screenplay titled Zeus is held by the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia's Biblioteca Luigi Chiarini. Its catalogue shows it under Bufalino's name.

A tempera drawing dated 1982 and annotated Studio Film: Zeus Vitelli–Salvi was catalogued by the auction house Capitolium Art as signed “S. Mocetti”. Film historian Hervé Dumont also lists Zeus contro l'universo, dating the proposed production to 1983 and naming Gordon Mitchell among its intended cast.

In his 1999 book, Giusti records Zeus contro l'universo under 1983, while stressing that it appeared in no Italian film catalogue and questioning whether it had ever been released or even completed. He attributes the date to the French fanzine Nostalgia and reports its suspicion that the project might have re-edited material from Vulcano figlio di Giove. Della Casa and Giusti separately report that, shortly before his death, Salvi announced a remake of Vulcano figlio di Giove, again with Mitchell, and that Mitchell said some material from the earlier film was to be reused.

In a 1998 interview, Mitchell stated that “some scenes were shot”, but that Salvi died before the film was completed. A separate 1990 interview with Mitchell describes an extensive period of technical preparation and an imminent production meeting.