Franca Bettoia, Italian Actress in ‘The Last Man on Earth,’ Dies at 88

Franca Bettoia, the Italian actress who starred opposite Vincent Price in the 1964 cult sci-fi film The Last Man on Earth , has died in Rome, her family told the Italian news agency Adnkronos. She was 88.

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Bettoia was married to Italian actor Ugo Tognazzi — he starred in the 1978 movie La Cage aux Folles in the part played by Robin Williams in Mike Nichols’ 1996 adaptation The Birdcage — from 1972 until his death from a cerebral hemorrhage in 1990 at age 68.

In The Last Man on Earth , directed by Ubaldo Ragona and Sidney Salkow, Bettoia portrays Ruth, a woman who, with the help of Price’s Dr. Robert Morgan, is fending off the effects of a plague that has turned humans into vampiric creatures.

Filmed in Rome, produced by Robert L. Lippert and distributed by American International Pictures, the movie was based on Richard Matheson’s 1954 novel I Am Legend . The author then co-wrote the screenplay credited as Logan Swanson. (Will Smith starred in the 2007 adaptation directed by Francis Lawrence.)

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Born in Rome on May 14, 1936, Bettoia made her film debut in 1955 and had her breakout role as “the other woman” in Pietro Germi’s Man of Straw (1958), which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival.

She also starred with Alan Ladd in Duel of Champions (1961), co-directed by Terence Young; in Day by Day, Desperately (1961), directed by Alfredo Giannetti; in Will Our Heroes Succeed in Finding Their Friend Who Mysteriously Disappeared in Africa? (1968); and in Don’t Touch the White Woman (1974).

Her last film was Teste rasate (1993), in which she played the mother of her real-life son, Gianmarco Tognazzi. Survivors also include her daughter, Maria Sole Tognazzi, a director.

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