Last month, the entertainment industry lost a major producer and distributor of animated film and TV content, when Orlando Corradi, founder of Rome-based Mondo TV, died following a prolonged illness. During his 55-year career, he produced more than 50 animated TV series and over 100 films, both live-action and animated.

Corradi was born in 1940 in Busto Arsizio, a town north of Milan, and moved to Rome in 1964. His passion for animation began during a 1964 trip to Japan, where he met Kenichi Tominaga, a TV producer with whom he later founded DEA, a company set up in Rome to distribute Japanese animation in Europe. They subsequently created another company, Doro TV Merchandising. A third company, Mondo TV, was set up in 1985 to produce Italian-made animated series with international appeal.

In 1999, Mondo TV was transformed into a stock company that acquired all shares of Doro TV. A year later it traded on the Italian Stock Exchange (Borsa Italiana).

Corradi was one of the pioneer exporters of Italian TV content worldwide, and was a fixture at international TV markets. He attended his first TV trade show, MIP-TV, in 1968.

A VideoAge reporter recalled a specific instance at one NATPE show in the U.S. shortly after Russia—just liberated from the USSR’s yoke—first began acquiring foreign TV content. Orlando and son Matteo Corradi were negotiating sales of a cartoon series to a couple of Russian buyers, one of whom was a woman in a dazzling mini-skirt who repeatedly crossed and uncrossed her legs in front of the two Italians. When negotiations were concluded, Orlando reported that he was so distracted that he could scarcely remember what he had sold!

Corradi died in Switzerland, where he’d lived since 2012. He’s survived by his wife, Lascia Giuliana Bertozzi, sons Ricky and Matteo (Mondo TV’s CEO), and a daughter, Monica.

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