Mario Carillo

Mario Carillo (aka Count Mario Caracciolo) was an Italian actor who worked in silent films in Hollywood in the 1920s.^[1][2]

Biography[]

Origins[]

Mario was allegedly born as Mario Comte Caracciolo di Melito into a wealthy noble family in Naples, Italy, in 1883 (some sources claim his birth year as 1894).^[3] His parents were Filippo Caracciolo and Emilia Compagna.

Mario served as an officer in the Italian cavalry before moving to the United States.^[4] He worked as an attache at the Italian embassy in Washington, D.C., where he met and married Miriam Crosby in 1915.^[5][6] The pair had a son, Ludovico.

Hollywood career[]

Around 1920, he headed out to Hollywood alone to seek work as an actor. He also worked as a physiotherapist at the Los Angeles Athletic Club, where he met Rudolph Valentino.^[7] He also had a fling with a young actress named Lucille LeSueur (better by the stage name she took on later, Joan Crawford). Over the course of the decade, he appeared in several dozen films before returning to Italy with the aim of starting his own production company.^[8] (It does not appear that he was successful in this endeavor.)

Later life[]

Mario died in Rome, Italy, in 1953; he was survived by his wife. P^[9]lace and date of death are recorder as Rome, 12/03/1958, in the "Libro d'oro della nobiltà Mediterranea",

There appears to be a case of mistaken identity at the heart of stories in the press that he was the Mario Caracciolo who was given supreme command of the Italian army's technical service by Mussolini during World War II.^[8] This man's full name appears to have been named Mario Caracciolo di Feroleto; the two were around the same age.

Partial filmography[]

References[]