Person Biography:
Feodor Fedorovich Chaliapin Jr. was born on October 6, 1905, in Moscow, Russia, as the youngest of six children. His father, Feodor Chaliapin Sr., was a world-famous Russian Opera basso, and his mother, Iola Tornagi, was a prima-ballerina who quit the stage after her marriage and became a caring mother of six children.
Feodor grew up in a trilingual family environment, receiving an excellent private education in Moscow. He enjoyed the company of his father's friends, including Sergei Rachmaninoff and Konstantin Korovin. After the Russian revolution of 1917, he and his father fled from Russia to Paris, France.
Chaliapin Jr. began his film career in Hollywood, playing cameo roles in silent films and creating a niche for himself as an impressive character actor with excellent skills. He played a variety of Russian characters in films made during and after the Second World War.
After World War 2, Chaliapin moved to Rome, Italy, where he continued his film career as a character actor, from the 1950s-1970s. He played a broad array of very different characters, ranging from a comic gem as Sen. Torsello in the political satire The Eroticist (1972),to a sinister Prof. Arnold in the horror film Inferno (1980).
Feodor Chaliapin Jr. is probably best known for his role as the loony dog-walking grandfather in Moonstruck (1987),living in a world of his own and greeting the Moon with his funny cries "La Luna! La Luna!" He also enjoyed a fine part as Leonides Cox, 'Robert DeNiro's father in Stanley & Iris (1990).
In 1960, during "The Thaw" initiated by Nikita Khrushchev, Chaliapin Jr. saved his mother from communist captivity and reunited with her in Rome, Italy. At that time, Iola Tornagi was 87 and had been granted permission to leave the Soviet Union.
Chaliapin Jr. took part in the returning of his famous father's remains from Paris to Moscow in 1984, which was also a result of reforms known as perestroika initiated by Mikhail Gorbachev. He died of natural causes on September 17, 1992, at his home in Rome, Italy, and was laid to rest next to his mother in the cemetery of Rome.
