1887-05-15 ( 137 years old ) in Voghera, Lombardy, Italy
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Lewis Montagna (born Luigi Montagna, May 16, 1887 – January 24, 1950), better known as Bull Montana, was an Italian-American professional wrestler and actor.
Montagna was born on May 16, 1887 in Voghera, Italy and came to the United States as a child.
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.
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.
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 appeared in two Buster Keaton films including a role as a professional wrestler in the film Palooka from Paducah. 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.
Movies
Spaceship to the Unknown
1966-01-01
Big City
1937-09-03
Never Too Late
1935-11-27
Palooka from Paducah
1935-01-11
Tiger Rose
1929-12-21
Glorifying the American Girl
1929-12-07
Loud Soup
1929-03-16
How to Handle Women
1928-10-14
The Fight Pest
1928-05-12
Good Morning, Judge
1928-04-29
Limousine Love
1928-04-13
The Sting of Stings
1927-09-03
Many Scrappy Returns
1927-01-09
On the Front Page
1926-11-28
The Son of the Sheik
1926-09-05
The Skyrocket
1926-02-14
The Uneasy Three
1925-11-15
No Father to Guide Him
1925-09-05
The Lost World
1925-02-02
Dick Turpin
1925-02-01
Laughing at Danger
1924-11-23
Hello, 'Frisco
1924-09-28
The Fire Patrol
1924-08-14
Painted People
1924-01-28
Held to Answer
1923-11-22
Hollywood
1923-08-19
The Three Must-Get-Theres
1922-08-22
The Timber Queen
1922-07-16
Gay and Devilish
1922-05-14
The Foolish Age
1921-10-16
Crazy to Marry
1921-08-28
One Wild Week
1921-04-08
Hard Luck
1921-03-14
Go and Get It
1920-07-18
The Adventures of Daredevil Jack
1920-06-30
Treasure Island
1920-01-02
When the Clouds Roll By
1919-12-28
Victory
1919-12-07
His Majesty, the American
1919-09-01
Cowardice Court
1919-06-15
Brass Buttons
1919-04-06
The Unpardonable Sin
1919-04-01
Johanna Enlists
1918-09-14
He Comes Up Smiling
1918-09-09
The Border Legion
1918-07-28
Snap Judgment
1917-11-19
Down to Earth
1917-08-16
Wild and Woolly
1917-06-24
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