Richard Harrison, the American actor who became a leading man overseas in sword-and-sandal adventures, spaghetti Westerns and low-budget ninja movies, has died at 90.
Harrison died Friday of natural causes in Los Angeles, according to producer and longtime friend Joan Borsten. He leaves behind a filmography of more than 100 B-movies, including a handful he directed.
His international career took off after several small Hollywood roles. Harrison relocated to Italy and stepped into the leading-man spotlight with The Invincible Gladiator in 1962, following the muscleman mold associated with Steve Reeves.
He starred in Avenger of the Seven Seas and Gladiator 7 the next year. In 1963, he also appeared in Gunfight in the Red Sands, or Duello Nel Texas, an Italian-Spanish spaghetti Western featuring a score by Ennio Morricone.
Harrison later said he turned down Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars in 1964. He also maintained that he recommended fellow expatriate Clint Eastwood for the role of the unnamed stranger, a part that helped launch Eastwood’s career.
From Hollywood Bit Parts to European Stardom
Born in Salt Lake City on May 26, 1935, Harrison arrived in Hollywood at 17. Before his acting career gathered momentum, he worked at gyms owned by bodybuilders Vic Tanny and Bert Goodrich and modeled for beefcake magazines. He later took acting lessons at Fox under Sandy Meisner.
His early screen appearances included Kronos and Jeanne Eagels, both released in 1957. The latter starred Kim Novak. He also had parts in 1958’s Too Much, Too Soon, starring Dorothy Malone, and South Pacific, starring Mitzi Gaynor. Harrison went on to appear in Tall Story in 1960 alongside Anthony Perkins.
While working on the 1961 Vincent Price film Master of the World, Harrison met castmate Loretta Nicholson. She was the daughter of James H. Nicholson, a producer on the American International Pictures release. Harrison and Loretta married that year.
His move to Italy then transformed him into an immediately in-demand star. Borsten said Harrison became so recognizable there that he could not walk down the street without being noticed, but she remembered him as someone who did not allow that celebrity to define him.
“Harrison never let his movie star status, especially in Italy where he couldn’t walk down the street without being recognized, go to his head,” Borsten said. “Instead, he saw his unexpected career as an opportunity to see the world and meet interesting people.”
A Decade of Ninja Movies
When European work began to slow in the late 1970s, Harrison shifted his focus again. For roughly a decade, he starred in numerous low-budget ninja features made out of Hong Kong.
According to Borsten, travel was often a deciding factor when Harrison considered a movie. She recalled him saying that he would ask a producer where a project was filming and accept if it was somewhere he had never visited. Only after boarding the plane would he read the script.
Harrison’s offscreen life also crossed international and political lines. During the Cold War in 1985, he helped Soviet actor Oleg Vidov, who was known as the “Russian Robert Redford,” defect at the U.S. embassy in Rome. Vidov married Borsten in 1989, and they remained together until his death in 2017.
Borsten also remembered Harrison as a host whose industry dinner parties invariably concluded with “pasta at midnight.” She said his close friends included Reeves, George Cukor, Franco Nero, Gore Vidal, Troy Donahue, Tab Hunter, Stewart Stern, Al Bano and Romina Power.
Life Back in Los Angeles
Harrison married his second wife, Francesca, in 1978. After returning to Los Angeles in 1986, the couple purchased a run-down Malibu property overlooking the Pacific. They constructed a home there and named it “Villa Francesca.” The residence was lost in the Palisades Fire last year.
In addition to Francesca, Harrison is survived by three of his four children.