Vintage 1972 On M'Appelle Verita Belgian Movie Poster 🖼️ Mark Damon Comedy Spaghetti Western, Mijn Naam is Verita

🤠 One of the names billed on this poster once married the Titanic's most famous widow. Enzo Fiermonte, an Italian prizefighter turned character actor, wed Madeleine Astor, widow of John Jacob Astor IV, in New York in 1933. Four decades later he was playing in a comic spaghetti western about four con men and a donkey, and this is the Belgian poster for it: On M'Appelle Verita, Mijn Naam is Verita, starring Mark Damon, from the archive of the now defunct Cosmopolis Films.

🖼️ The poster

An original Belgian cinema affiche for the 1972 Italian film Lo chiamavano Verità. Across the top, in small blue capitals, COSMOPOLIS-FILMS; below it MARK DAMON in blue and the French title ON M'APPELLE VERITA in big rough red letters. The painting fills the sheet with four Western rogues crowded behind a donkey that stares straight out at you: a long-haired gunman with a multi-barrelled rapid-fire gun on his shoulder, a man in a battered black hat with his nose in a red book, a balding card sharp letting playing cards slip from his fingers, and a grinning giant in a red shirt, plaid kilt and bowler hat, tipping it with one hand.

Under the art run the supporting names, PAT NIGRO · ENZO FIERMONTE · WILLIAM BOGART, then Régie: Luigi Perelli, SCOPE and TECHNICOLOR, and the Flemish title in white on a blue band. The printer's imprint along the bottom edge reads Imp. WAGRAM, Tel. 37.48.91, Bruxelles, a Brussels press whose name turns up on Belgian cinema posters of the 1970s.

About 22 x 14 inches (roughly 56 x 35 cm), on lightweight poster paper. It was never folded and arrives unfolded.

🎬 The film: four no-goods and a how-to book

The film is Lo chiamavano Verità, known in English as They Called Him Veritas. It runs 91 minutes and follows Verità, Yesael, Miserere and Gigante, four drifters living by their wits somewhere between Sacramento and San Antonio. They get hold of a book called How to Make Money in the West, work its con games one after another, and use the confusion of the American Civil War to put on uniforms and pass themselves off as heroes. Look at the poster again: the man in the middle has his nose buried in a red book. The film was shot at Elios Studios in Rome and on location in Almería, Spain, the desert that stood in for the American West in so many Italian westerns.

It was the first feature directed by Luigi Perelli, who went on to direct episodes of La Piovra ("The Octopus"), the Italian television saga about the Mafia that became one of the most watched dramas in Europe.

👊 Why the western turned into a comedy

The title is a wink. In 1970 Enzo Barboni, working under the name E.B. Clucher, made Lo chiamavano Trinità, They Call Me Trinity, with Terence Hill as a lazy drifter and Bud Spencer as his horse-thief brother posing as a sheriff. It swapped the genre's gunfights for slapstick fistfights and sold 8,742,787 tickets in Italy alone. That success was a turning point: after Trinity, Italian studios turned out comic westerns by the dozen, and a film called Lo chiamavano Verità, "They Called Him Verità", was telling its audience exactly what kind of picture to expect.

⭐ The people on the billing

Mark Damon was born Alan Harris in Chicago, Illinois, on April 22, 1933, and studied at UCLA before acting. Roger Corman cast him in House of Usher, which won him a Golden Globe as most promising newcomer, and in The Pit and the Pendulum. He then moved to Europe and spent years in Italian westerns and genre films. In the mid-1970s he stopped acting and became one of the most successful independent film sellers and producers in the business: he was executive producer of Das Boot and worked on The NeverEnding Story, 9½ Weeks, Short Circuit and The Lost Boys. He died in 2024 at 91.

Enzo Fiermonte boxed professionally from 1925 to 1934, finishing with 47 wins, 17 losses and 2 draws. On November 27, 1933, the 26-year-old fighter married 40-year-old Madeleine Talmage Force Astor, whose first husband, John Jacob Astor IV, had gone down with the Titanic in 1912; the match scandalized New York society, and the couple divorced in 1938. In 1940 Fiermonte starred as a boxer in L'ultimo combattimento, the first film produced by Dino De Laurentiis, and he went on to play at least 116 film roles.

William Bogart was the screen name of Guglielmo Spoletini, born in Rome in 1929, who appeared in at least fourteen spaghetti westerns and later turned up in The Omen (1976).

🇧🇪 Why Belgian posters look like this

Belgium is officially bilingual, so its cinema posters carried the title in both French and Flemish, as this one does. Belgian distributors printed their own posters locally at a compact size of about 14 by 22 inches, often with artwork of their own, and that is why collectors seek them out. Cosmopolis Films was one of those Brussels distributors. In his words, the art on Belgian posters is amazing and unique compared to the rest of the world; he bought the Cosmopolis archive in 2007 and saved that history before it was lost.

📅 The poster was printed for the film's Belgian cinema release. 2007 is the year the archive was saved and kept together as one collection, not a printing date.

✔️ Condition

Little to slight wear, with light edge discolouration at the margins that does not reach the picture. Never folded. Not trimmed, backed or restored.

❓ Questions People Ask

Is this an original poster?
Yes, an original Belgian cinema affiche, printed in Brussels by Wagram for the film's Belgian release.

What film is On M'Appelle Verita?
Lo chiamavano Verità (1972), an Italian comedy western directed by Luigi Perelli and starring Mark Damon.

Why does it have two titles?
Belgian posters carry both of the country's languages, French on top and Flemish below.

Who is Enzo Fiermonte?
An Italian boxer and actor, billed on this poster, who was married to Titanic widow Madeleine Astor from 1933 to 1938.