Pippo Franco

Francesco Pippo (born 2 September 1940), known professionally as Pippo Franco, is an Italian actor, comedian, television presenter, and singer.

Franco began singing and playing guitar at the end of the 1950s, and started writing songs with surreal lyrics.

He made his name first as a musician in the early 1960s, and in the late 1960s began a career in film, starring in a great number of commedia sexy all'italiana, the "sexy comedy" subgenre of Italian comedy.

One of his groups, The Penguins, made its debut in 1960 in the musicarello by Mario Mattoli for Appuntamento a Ischia, and accompanied Mina Mazzini on three songs, "La nonna Magdalena," "Il cielo in una stanza", and "Una zebra a pois."

In 1968 he scored a minor hit with the single "Vedendo una foto di Bob Dylan," which made fun of the gap between beatniks and their parents.

Franco's first role in a box office hit was 1969's Nell'anno del Signore, directed by Luigi Magni and starring "an exceptional cast of actors" including Franco, Nino Manfredi and Claudia Cardinale.

His songs were recorded on more than fifteen 45 rpm vinyl records, including several hits like La licantropia (1969), which participated in Cantagiro 1969.

In the 1970s he expanded into television, acting in TV movies and presenting variety shows.

His type of comedy borrows heavily from cabaret.

Throughout his career he continued to sing, appearing many times at the Sanremo Festival.

He has made children's music as well, and has co-written three books on (linguistic) humor.

Franco was born in Rome to an Irpinian family, who had moved to Rome from Vallata, in the Province of Avellino.

In the 1970s and 1980s he starred in a large number of Italian comedies, many of them erotic comedies such as the 1972 Mariano Laurenti production Quel gran pezzo dell'Ubalda tutta nuda e tutta calda, a semi-medieval erotic spoof (a "decamerotic" film) distributed in the US as Ubalda, all naked and warm, in which Franco starred (with "undeniable comic verve") alongside Edwige Fenech, the Algerian-born last "popular incarnation of the 'sex bombs' so in vogue twenty years earlier."

Beginning in the late 1970s, Franco began playing and composing children's music, as well as music for the shows by the Italian lottery.

Franco began a career in television in 1971 with ''Riuscirà il cav.

papà Ubu?'', directed by Vito Molinari and Giuseppe Recchia, and from then on played in a number of made-for-television movies.

Franco has appeared on numerous Italian TV shows as comic and as presenter.

As a singer he recorded more than a dozen albums, including Cara Kiri (1971), Bededè (1975), Al cabaret (1977), Praticamente, no? (1978), Pippo nasone and Vietato ai minori (1981).

One of his most famous song is Cesso.

In 1972 he had a part in Billy Wilder's Italian/American comedy Avanti! alongside Jack Lemmon and Juliet Mills.

The success of Ubalda was followed by another successful movie with Franco and Edwige, Sergio Martino's Giovannona Coscialunga disonorata con onore (1973).

Between 1979 and 1984 he was an annual performer and presenter at the popular music festival in San Remo.

Franco again worked with Martino and Fenech in 1980 in Zucchero, miele e peperoncino and in 1982 in Ricchi, ricchissimi... praticamente in mutande, though Franco and Fenech did not share any scenes in these anthologies.

In 1980, he presented the weekly television show of the drawing of the Italian lottery, with Laura Troschel (then his wife) and Claudio Cecchetto.

He directed his first movie in 1981, La gatta da pelare, for which he also wrote the score and the script.

In the 1990s he appeared on the comedy show La sai l'ultima? with English TV presenter Harold Davies (actor), and in the 2000s he presented the variety show Bellissima: Cabaret Anticrisi, in cooperation with the variety company Il Bagaglino.

With Antonio Di Stefano he wrote three books with stories and commentaries on (unintentionally) humorous linguistic blunders and mishaps, Non prenda niente tre volte al giorno (2002), Qui chiavi subito (2006), and ''L'occasione fa l'uomo ragno.

In the 2006 Italian general election he was a candidate for the Italian Senate from the list of Christian Democracy for Autonomies in Lazio.

Despite the publicly stated support of Giulio Andreotti, Pippo Franco's party got only 0.6% of votes in Lazio and therefore it was not elected.

Reference: Franco discography

Strafalcioni, cartelli, scritte sui muri e altri capolavori di umorismo involontario'' (2007), all published by Mondadori.

He returned there in 2008.