Acrobati Comici: Tontolini’s Acrobats 1910

Tontolini was a character played by a French-born, Italian actor called Ferdinand Guillaume (1887-1977). Having been raised in his family's circus, he and his brother, Natale, and their wives, were employed by the film company, Societa Italiana Cines in 1910. Ferdinand played the comical character, Tontolini, starring in over 100 comedy silent shorts. After the success of his first feature-length film, Pinnochio, in 1911, Ferdinand left the company to work for Pasquali Films in Turin and created the character, Polidor, named after a horse in his previous circus shows. Here he acted, directed and sometimes wrote the scripts for almost 100 films between 1912-14, shooting up to four films per month. These were shown all over Europe and the US, where he was known as “Jenkins”. At the start of WWI, he stopped making movies but then continued in 1916-17 and was a constant in cinemas until 1920, when his brother was killed in a plane crash while making a movie. Ferdinand appeared in some Fellini films in the 1950s and 60s, his last being in 1968.