Bull Montana
| Bull Montana | |
|---|---|
 Montana in 1919 | |
| Birth name | Luigi Montagna |
| Born | May 16, 1887 Voghera, Italy |
| Died | January 24, 1950 (aged 62) Los Angeles, California |
| Professional wrestling career | |
| Ring name(s) | Bull Montana |
| Billed height | 5 ft 10 in (1.78 m) |
| Billed weight | 250 lb (110 kg) |
| Billed from | Los Angeles, California |
| Trained by | Gene Dundee |
Lewis Montagna (May 16, 1887 – January 24, 1950), born Luigi Montagna and better known as Bull Montana, was an Italian-American professional wrestler and actor.[1][2][3]
Biography
Montagna was born on May 16, 1887 in Voghera, Italy and came to the United States as a child.[1]
He became a professional wrestler under the name of Bull Montana. He gravitated to films in 1917, appearing first in several of the vehicles of his close pal Douglas Fairbanks. In 1919 he appeared as a gruesome villain in Maurice Tourneur's masterpiece Victory alongside Lon Chaney. Numbered among his many friends was Abe "The Newsboy" Hollandersky, boxer, wrestler, and movie extra, who claimed Montagna offered to help him finance his 1930 autobiography.[4]
In the early 1920s Montana, as he was known, often wrestled with his friend Jack Dempsey prior to some of Dempsey's larger fights to help entertain the press and spectators. [5]
Montagna was usually cast as a thug, henchman or something not quite sympathetic, and sometimes not quite human (he was the apelike cave dweller in 1925's The Lost World opposite Wallace Beery as Arthur Conan Doyle's Professor Challenger). Tempering his on-screen brutishness with humor, Montana starred in his own series of two-reel comedies in the early 1920s, spoofing everyone from Robin Hood (Rob 'Em Good) to the Corsican Brothers (The Two Twins). He continued playing movie bits into the 1940s, notably as one of Buster Crabbe's antagonists in the 1936 series Flash Gordon. Like many mashed-face musclemen of the movies, Bull Montana is reputed to have been as gentle as a lamb in real life.
He died on January 24, 1950 in Los Angeles, California.[1] He is buried in Calvary Cemetery.[2]
Selected filmography [3]
- In Again, Out Again (1917)
- Wild and Woolly (1917) (uncredited)
- Down to Earth (1917)
- The Border Legion (1918)
- He Comes Up Smiling (1918)
- His Majesty, the American (1919)
- The Unpardonable Sin (1919)
- Victory (1919)
- When the Clouds Roll by (1919)
- Daredevil Jack (1920)
- Treasure Island (1920)
- The Girl in Number 29 (1920)
- The Mollycoddle (1920)
- What Women Love (1920)
- Hard Luck (1921)
- One Wild Week (1921)
- Crazy to Marry (1921)
- The Timber Queen (1922)
- Held to Answer (1923)
- Hollywood (1923) cameo
- The Lost World (1925)
- Stop, Look and Listen (1926)
- The Skyrocket (1926)
- On the Front Page (1926)
- The Show of Shows (1929)
- Glorifying the American Girl (1929)
- Palooka from Paducah (1935)
References
- ^ a b c "Bull Montana Dead. Actor And Wrestler". New York Times. January 25, 1950.
- ^ a b "Bull Montana". All Movie Bio. Retrieved October 8, 2016.
- ^ a b "Bull Montana". Bull Montana All Movie Filmography. Retrieved October 8, 2016.
- ^ Hollandersky, Abe (1958). The Life Story of Abe the Newsboy, Hero of a Thousand Fights, Published by Abraham Hollandersky, Los Angeles, p. 388.
- ^ Dempsey wrestled Montana in "Dempsey Finishing Heavy Ring Work", The New York Times, New York City, page 2, 27 June 1921
External links
- Bull Montana at IMDb
- Bull Montana at Virtual History
