People (Births)

• 1916 – Lock Martin, American actor (d. 1959).

People (Deaths)

• 2006 – Gillo Pontecorvo, Italian director and screenwriter (b. 1919).

Lock Martin

Joseph Lockard “Lock” Martin Jr. (12 October 1916 to 19 January 1959) was an American performer afflicted with giantism, best remembered for essaying the part of the robot Gort in The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951).

Gillo Pontecorvo

Gilberto Pontecorvo Cavaliere di Gran Croce OMRI (19 November 1919 to 12 October 2006) was an Italian filmmaker associated with the political cinema movement of the 1960s and 1970s. He is best known for directing the landmark war docudrama The Battle of Algiers (1966), which won the Golden Lion at the 21st Venice Film Festival, and earned him Oscar nominations for Best Director and Best Original Screenplay.

His other films include the Kapò (1960), a Holocaust drama; Burn! (1969), a period film about a fictional slave revolt in the Lesser Antilles; and Ogro (1979), a dramatisation of the assassination of Spanish Prime Minister Luis Carrero Blanco by Basque separatists. He also directed several documentaries and short films.

In 2000, he received the Pietro Bianchi Award at the Venice Film Festival. The same year, he was ascended as a Knight’s Grand Cross of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic.