He had been one of the best-known faces of Italian westerns. Mark Damonthe American actor who achieved success at Cinecittà, protagonist of numerous spaghetti westerns before dedicating himself to film distribution abroad and producing films such as 9 1/2 Weeks, Wild Orchid and The Neverending Story, died Sunday May 12th of natural causes in Los Angeles at the age of 91.
Born Alan Harris in Chicago on April 22, 1933, Mark Damon won the Golden Globe for Most Promising Newcomer for his starring role in The living and the dead (1960) by the director Roger Corman, who died last Thursday. After starring in The devils of the great prize (1963), always directed by Corman, he moved to Italy with the hope of boosting his career as an actor particularly in horror films, where he was hired by Mario Bava For The three faces of fear (1963), which later became a cult movie.
After a series of films of various genres, Damon was cast in western films shot by Italian directors: he starred in Johnny Gold (1966) by Sergio Corbucci, Johnny Yuma (1966) by Romolo Guerrieri, Requiescant (1967) by Carlo Lizzani, Death doesn’t count dollarsrthe (1967) by Riccardo Freda (1967), A train to Durango (1968) by Mario Caiano, All for all (1968) by Umberto Lenzi, Get in the saddle son of…! (1971), They call it Truth (1972) by Luigi Perelli.
After spending about 20 years acting and with the spaghetti western genre in decline, in 1974 Damon he decided to change career and the following year he accepted a job with a distributor of Italian films in the USA for 1,000 dollars a month. At the time, the big US studios were in charge of foreign sales, but Damon thought that local companies could get more revenue from the films.
Returned to the United States in 1977, he founded the production and sales company Producers Sales Organization. After the production of U-boat 96 And The Neverending Storyhis company handled the foreign sales of King for a night (1982) by Martin Scorsese And Once upon a time in America (1984) by Sergio Leone.
After the failure of the Producers Sales Organization, Mark Damon, Jon Peters and Peter Guber founded Vision International in 1987, which was eventually sold to Credit Lyonaisse. In 1993 Damon launched the production, sales and distribution company Mdp Worldwide, which went public; a decade later, it became Media 8 Entertainment, only to end up on the brink of bankruptcy in 2012.
