Richard Harrison, Star of Spaghetti Westerns and Sword-and-Sandal Flicks, Dies at 90

Richard Harrison, the chiseled American actor who found fame and fortune overseas as the star of sword-and-sandal films, spaghetti Westerns and Z-grade ninja movies, has died. He was 90.

Harrison died Friday of natural causes in Los Angeles, producer and longtime friend Joan Borsten reported.

After showing up in small roles in such Hollywood films as 1958’s Too Much, Too Soon and South Pacific, Harrison headed to Italy and became an instant leading man in the mold of muscleman Steve Reeves with The Invincible Gladiator (1962).

The next year, he starred in Avenger of the Seven Seas and Gladiator 7, then followed in 1963 with Gunfight in the Red Sands (Duello Nel Texas), an Italian-Spanish spaghetti Western that featured a score by Ennio Morricone.

He turned down Sergio Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars (1964) but said he recommended Clint Eastwood for the part of the unnamed stranger that jump-started his fellow expat’s career.

After work slowed in Europe in the late 1970s, Harrison starred in lots of low-budget ninja features out of Hong Kong for about a decade. He wound up making more than 100 B-movies (and even directed a handful) in his career.

Born in Salt Lake City on May 26, 1935, Harrison came to Hollywood at age 17, worked at gyms owned by bodybuilders Vic Tanny and Bert Goodrich and modeled for beefcake magazines before taking acting lessons at Fox under Sandy Meisner.

He landed bit parts in films including Kronos (1957); Jeanne Eagels (1957), starring Kim Novak; Too Much, Too Soon, starring Dorothy Malone; South Pacific, starring Mitzi Gaynor; and Tall Story (1960), starring Anthony Perkins.

On Master of the World (1961), starring Vincent Price, he met castmate Loretta Nicholson, the daughter of James H. Nicholson, a producer on the American International Pictures release, and they married in 1961.

Borsten said that Harrison hosted industry dinner parties that always ended with “pasta at midnight” and counted among his closest friends Reeves, George Cukor, Franco Nero, Gore Vidal, Troy Donahue, Tab Hunter, Stewart Stern, Al Bano and Romina Power.

During the Cold War in 1985, he helped Soviet actor Oleg Vidov, known as the “Russian Robert Redford,” defect at the U.S. embassy in Rome. (Vidov and Borsten married in 1989 and were together until his death in 2017.)

Returning to Los Angeles in 1986, Harrison and his second wife, Francesca, bought a run-down property in Malibu with an infinity view of the Pacific and built a home that they would call “Villa Francesca.” That home, however, was lost in the Palisades Fire last year.

In addition to his wife — they married in 1978 — survivors include three of his four children.

“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 noted. “Instead, he saw his unexpected career as an opportunity to see the world and meet interesting people.

“When asked how he’d choose his next project, he said he’d ask the producer where it was going to be shot and would accept if he’d never traveled to the location. Once on the plane, he’d finally read the script.”