Italy’s pioneering comic actor, Franca Valeri, dies at 100

ROME (AP) — Franca Valeri, an elegant, ironic and versatile actor who pioneered Italian female comic roles in the post-war years, has died.  Corriere della Sera quoted her daughter, Stefania Bonfadelli, as saying that Valeri died in her sleep at home in Rome, nine days after her 100th birthday. Valeri began in radio and theater and for decades also had Italian TV roles and starred in many movies, often writing the scripts for monologues for of some of her works. Signature roles often featured comic scenes in which she appeared solo, speaking on the phone, including as Signorina Snob, in which she drew on her Milanese bourgeois roots.