If in New York conmen used to sell skyscrapers to naïve tourists just arrived in town, here in Italy Totò made a very funny movie called Tototruffa ’62 about a similar theme.
In fact the movie tells the story of a streetwise guy who tries to sell the famous Trevi fountain to a poor tourist! Totò was an Italian actor, writer, and songwriter, the most beloved Italian artist of all time and the greatest of the last century, an incomparable comic genius that in the last years of his life also showed that he was also a complete actor who could master in dramatic roles as well.
An actor who was also a real prince, though he was born illegitimate.
In fact only in 1937 his true father, the Marquis Giuseppe de Curtis recognized him.
A few years later the tribunal of Naples allowed the actor to use his father’s endless list of titles and names; from that day onwards Totò could proudly bear all those noble titles and his plain name changed to Antonio Focas Flavio Angelo Ducas Comneno De Curtis Di Bisanzio Gagliardi, Imperial Highness, Palatine Count, Knight of the Holy Roman Empire, Exarch of Ravenna, Duke Macedonia and Illyria, Prince of Costantinople, Cilicia, Thessaly, Pontus, Moldavia, Dardania, Peloponnesus, Count of Cyprus and Epirus, Count and Duke of Drivasto and Durrës.
Not bad at all for a man who was born to make people laugh!Totòtruffa 62: Imdb.
