Umberto Smaila: “We swore eternal love with Jerry Calà. Then the stab "
The stand-up comedian reveals: "Jerry's farewell was a shock, but now we hear from each other every day." The link with Sardinia where the first Smaila's opened
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"We swore a kind of eternal love, it was a stab."
Umberto Smaila, 71 years old and over fifty career, recalls with these words the moment when Jerry Calà, in 1981, decided to leave the Gatti di Vicolo Miracoli, the legendary cabaret group with whom, together with Ninì Salerno and Franco Oppini, he enjoyed himself at the famous Derby Club in Milan. They did not speak to Calà for years: “But then - he tells Corriere della Sera - the same thing happened to me and there I realized that when the train passes, you get on it. After we clarified and now we talk every day, on Easter Monday the four of us will meet at the usual restaurant in Verona ”.
Salerno and Oppini, he remembers, "were in class with me at the Scipione Maffei high school" while Jerry Calà, "younger than a year, we fished out later, when I was already studying Law at the university, carefully choosing all the exams. easy, I stopped at fifteen ".
The turning point, he explains, came with Cino Tortorella: “He invited us to his villa in Milan to sing a few songs, then he took us first to eat - blessed be it - and then to the Derby. We were literally thrown on stage, people had fun. The owner paid us 5,000 lire each. 'Now write something new and it will be 10,000'. We stayed indoors for two months ". From that point on, “unrepeatable moments, with Paolo Villaggio, Enzo Jannacci, Cochi and Renato, monsters of skill. We were the youngest, mum's chariots ".
After the success of “Non stop” on Raiuno and the farewell of Calà, a new era. In 1987 for 4 seasons it was the era of Colpo grosso and the Cin Cin girls: “I did not expect such a success, otherwise I would have signed another contract. We shot 800 episodes, it was sold all over the world and repeated for 18 consecutive years, time passed and I was always young, a miracle ".
His link with Sardinia is very strong, where he inaugurated the first Smaila's with live music: “The first opened in 1991 in Poltu Quatu. Then that of Sharm el Sheikh. Two remain, in Tropea and Porto Rotondo ”.
Silvio Berlusconi also performed at Poltu Quatu: “He gave an Aznavour-style recital. A few years ago he returned to Smaila's in Porto Rotondo, bringing me three of his ties, the Neapolitan ones, as a gift.
(Unioneonline / D)
