Bull Montana

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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.

Filmography

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1990
Venere Paura
Movie Original Music Composer
1966
Spaceship to the Unknown
Movie Monkey-Man (archive footage) (uncredited)
1937
Big City
Movie Bull Montana
1936
Flash Gordon
Movie Monkey Man
1935
Never Too Late
Movie Monte, an escaped convict
1935
Palooka from Paducah
Movie Bullfrog Kraus
1929
Tiger Rose
Movie Joe
1929
Glorifying the American Girl
Movie Customer Requesting "Baby Face" (uncredited)
1929
Loud Soup
Movie Convict
1928
How to Handle Women
Movie The Turk
1928
The Fight Pest
Movie
1928
Good Morning, Judge
Movie First Crook
1928
Limousine Love
Movie The Chauffer
1927
The Sting of Stings
Movie Bull Montana
1927
Many Scrappy Returns
Movie Zozo's Husband
1926
On the Front Page
Movie Private Secretary