Almost everyone knows them. Millions of viewers saw them. And if you believe Rinaldo Talamonti, they even helped increase the German birth rate in the 1970s. We’re talking about films like “Love from the Lederhose”, “Alpenglüh’n im Dirndlrock” or the various parts of the “Schoolgirl Report”. What is also important to mention: Many well-known German actors have taken part there. Some were at the end of their careers, others at the beginning. And if you asked them about it later, they often fussed. Not so Rinaldo Talamonti. The actor, born in 1947 in San Benedetto del Tronto, Italy, who turns 75 on August 25, has never been ashamed of it.
And why? These films made him one of the busiest actors at the time. And if the sex comedy producer Alois Brummer from Pasing hadn’t chosen him in 1968 for the role of the clumsy private detective Harry Holst in the film “Count Porn and his girls“, he might never have become an actor. Before that, Talamonti was a waiter, but by chance he had also acted in a US commercial for mouthwash. This experience and his future wife Roswitha were the reasons why he stayed in Munich as a young man. He came here with his parents in 1964. They went back to Italy three years later. And her son? After that he made no fewer than 48 erotic and sex films.
Rinaldo Talamonti, actor and host, in 2018 at a vernissage in the Pasing factory.
(Photo: B. Lindenthaler/imago/Lindenthaler)
In any case, it was sex and not porn films in which he mostly played the “little, funny Italian” or the cliché of a Latin lover: This distinction was always important to Talamonti. And “Count Porn”? It was just a sly, crowd-appealing title for a harmless dresser with a bit of skin. Talamonti later resented this business acumen of the former freight forwarder and hop farmer Brummer. And even today he says by email from Italy about this time: He would have swum “without experience” in an “ocean full of sharks”. But he was young and needed “bread for the family”. However, he also says: “My films made a lot of people happy”.
Despite this, he left the industry in 1978. Because the films were always “sharper”. Together with his wife Roswitha he set up a representation for Italian shoes in Munich. In 1993 they opened the bistro “Buon Gusto Talamonti” in the city center, which they successfully ran until 2012, soon expanded into a restaurant. He also had appearances on television. He played in “Derrick”, “Tatort”, “Marienhof”, “Hausmeister Krause”, but also in genre films such as “The Slave Hunters” by Jürgen Goslar or “High Crusade” by Roland Emmerich.
He has written a book and is hoping for publication
Even today, Talamonti sees himself primarily as an actor. In September or October he will be in front of the camera for a film in Chicago – if all goes well. But before that there is still the 75th birthday. Where does he celebrate it? In Italy, where he spends the summer months. “Maybe with my family, my 96-year-old mother, or in peace with friends, in a nice restaurant, with a good bottle of wine.” Munich? He left that five years ago. He went to Salzburg, the birthplace of his wife, who unfortunately passed away there last year. A “serious loss” that has “isolated him for a long time and made him think”.
Despite this, Talamonti has not lost his sense of humor and optimism. He cooks, tends the garden, repairs the house. And he’s written a book about his time as an actor, which he says is hopefully coming out soon. Also under discussion is a documentary film in which he meets fellow Italian actors from the 1970s. In Munich he continues to see his “beloved city”, the city of his youth, where he lived for 53 years. He has many friends and relatives here. “I’m still with you.”