Word: audisio
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...famous sergeant in the U.S. Army; after six years and one child; in Santa Monica. In addition to a cool $1.5 million, Elvis also gave Priscilla a 5% interest in his music companies and half of the proceeds from the sale of their Holmby Hills, Calif., home. -Died. Walter Audisio, 64, World War II Italian Communist partisan leader who claimed credit for gunning down Benito Mussolini in April 1945 as the Fascist dictator attempted to escape into Switzerland with his mistress Claretta Petacci along a country road in northern Italy; of a heart attack; in Rome...
Cracked Heads. Communist Walter Audisio, who likes to boast that he was Mussolini's executioner, sped to the clerk's table, ripped away a microphone, scared off the clerks and tore up the parliamentary minutes. Spying an elderly Demo-Christian deputy who was grabbing an antique clock to save it, Audisio clubbed him to the floor. Tough Demo-Christian Deputy Giuseppe Bettiol tore the leg off a chair, advanced on Audisio and beat him into retreat...
...commanded by blue-jawed Walter Audisio, Communist executioner of Benito Mussolini (TIME, April 7, 1947). Audisio rushed up to Tomba, cried: "If you are a gentleman, come outside in the garden." Tomba declined, but the fracas became a free-for-all; even a Communist woman deputy, Laura Diaz (known to her admirers as the "Joan Crawford of Parliament"), joined in, whacking at bearded Christian Democrats. Contestants ripped out stenographers' desks, used them as clubs. Three deputies had to be treated for injuries. It was the worst riot in the loo-year history of Parliament...
...Audisio's career began in the dirty northern industrial town of Alessandria, where he grew up in a squalor he swore to escape. He rose to the top of his class in school, got a job making Borsalino hats (which are to Stetsons what Isotta Fraschinis are to Oldsmobiles); during the depression he lived squalidly in a tiny apartment with his wife, a seamstress. He was arrested for Communist agitation and when he got out of jail after five years, things were even worse ("We lived on boiled milk and boiled potatoes...
What heroic luster this story had was tarnished by the party's attempts to peddle it to the newspapers. The Communists first charged $100 for one of Audisio's photographs, then went down to $35, still found no takers. Both A.P. and U.P. refused to bid for "exclusives," but Overseas News Agency came through with 50,000 lire ($133) for a special bylined article-which did not turn out to be very special. When an Overseas man asked Audisio for more information, the bookkeeper answered: "I can't sell all my secrets at once...