Duccio Tessari

Duccio Tessari was an Italian director screenwriter and occasionally actor considered one of the fathers of spaghetti westerns Born in Genoa Tessari started in the fifties as documentarist and as screenwriter of Peplum films In 1964 he cowrote Sergio Leones A Fistful of Dollars one year later he gained an impressive commercial success and launched the Giuliano Gemmas career with A Pistol for Ringo and his immediate sequel The Return of Ringo He later touched different genres and worked in RAI TV directing some successful TVseries He died of cancer in Rome at 68 He was married to actress Lorella De Luca