The main problem faced by any averagely hairy ruler, be they king or dictator, is whether they end up looking like Bigfoot or run the risk of letting someone get up close and personal with a sharp blade. English kings frequently entrusted the task of the royal shave to their jester or whoever served as their whipping-boys – yes; there really was such a post. (Inspired by the Divine Right of Kings, a doctrine that made it blasphemy to lay hands on the ruling monarch or the heir apparent, English princes each had a friend selected from a noble family for frustrated tutors to beat in his stead.) In the case of Mussolini, the hand that held a razor to his throat was Luigi Galbani (1918–2004).
It seems that famous pate had to be kept shaven because its owner did not want his adoring public to know he was going bald – better the Telly Savalas look than a comb-over. Until the opening of World War II, Mussolini had always favored the tactic of having a barber picked up at random and brought to him immediately to shave his face and head, this precluding any established pattern through which a regular barber could be “got at” by Mussolini’s enemies. For reasons uncertain, all this kidnapping of barbers ceased in 1939 and Il Duce settled for new-man-in-town, Luigi Galbani, a member of the family that was already making a reputation for itself in the cheese business – Gruppo Galbani is now Italy’s leading producer and exporter of dairy products. Galbani was a mere 21 when he first put a razor to Mussolini’s throat, but despite his youth he had already established something of a reputation in Rome, not only as a barber and a gentlemen’s hairdresser, but also as a man-about-town who was never seen without a pretty face in tow. Very much a showman, Galbani also knew the value of a “trademark,” his being a white linen suit, white shirt, bright red tie, and a black Malacca cane with a silver top. According to his niece, Silvi Fattorini, he never wore a hat in case it messed up his immaculate coiffure and in later life continued this look to become an aging dapper gent.
Before he was ushered into Mussolini’s presence for the first time, it was explained to him in words of one syllable that any betrayal of any confidence he may overhear, any attempt to inflict harm on his new client, or any transgression of any kind would result in wholesale retaliation on his family and friends, who would not survive the experience. Galbani nodded his understanding of such conditions and was led into a side room where his new client was waiting. According to Ms Fattorini, her uncle recalled that, after getting Mussolini “sheeted up” and frothy-faced, he nervously picked up his razor only to feel the muzzle of a gun being rammed into his spine by one of the bodyguards. Halfway through that first shave he downed tools and told Mussolini in no uncertain terms that he simply could not function under such conditions and that perhaps he, Mussolini, had better find another barber with sterner nerves. Shaving a dictator while on the brink of a bad case of the shakes was not, he opined, to be recommended. Mussolini agreed and told the bodyguard to holster his weapon and stand back; it was only when Galbani had finished and removed the white cloth from his client that he saw that Mussolini too held a cocked pistol in his lap. Galbani laughed nervously and said that he had several other high-profile clients who, when visiting his barber shop, always kept a pistol at the ready when reclined and vulnerable in the chair. Although the two never became close, they did come to an understanding of trust, with Galbani on occasions even required to shave the legs of Mussolini’s mistress, Clara Petacci (1912–1945).
After the war Galbani moved his shop into the ground floor of Rome’s Excelsior Hotel on the Via Veneto, and no matter how many incentives he was offered by journalists or inquisitive customers, anxious to get him to reveal some hitherto unknown snippet, he always replied that his lips were sealed. According to Silvi, this was not out of any misplaced loyalty to the dead dictator but a fervent desire by Galbani for it to be common knowledge throughout the city that he was saying nothing; Rome still teemed with disgruntled Fascists who might pay him and/or his loved ones a visit. Only in the mid-1960s did he feel safe to talk, and told family members of something that only became guessed at in the early years of the new millennium. It was common knowledge that Mussolini was an adulterer but no one outside the Fattorini family knew that he was also a bigamist who had murdered his first wife and son when they became politically “inconvenient.”
In 1909, Mussolini was an up-and-coming political thug with a rough charm that attracted Ida Dalser (1880–1937), who ran a beauty parlor in Milan. They married in 1914 and, with Benito Albino born the next year, Ida sold her business to fund her husband’s political ambitions. But Mussolini soon tired of her and, abandoning her and Benito Albino, returned to his previous mistress, Rachele Guidi (1890–1979) with whom he entered into a bigamous marriage on December 17, 1915 in Treviglio, Lombardy. Ida knew nothing of her errant husband and his new domestic arrangements until his rise to prominence, when, not a lady to take it lying down, she made a nuisance of herself, claiming to be the first and rightful Mrs Mussolini with a son to prove it. Mussolini responded by sending out agents to track down and destroy any paper trail that linked him to Ida and, just for good measure, in 1922 he had her committed to Pergine Valsugana lunatic asylum. From here she was transferred to the hospital island of San Clemente, Venice where she would die of a “brain hemorrhage.” Benito Albino (1915–1942) was also abducted in 1922 and, told his mother was already dead, was adopted as an orphan by the Fascist controller of Sopramonte in Sardinia. But, like his mother, he too would not keep quiet, constantly announcing himself to be Mussolini’s son. As a result he was whisked away to the Mombello Asylum in Milan Province to die of “consumption.”
Apparently, while waiting one day to do Mussolini’s head and Petacci’s legs in the one sitting, Galbani overheard the latter on the phone in the adjoining room discussing the fate of Dalser and son, both of whom were, it seems, dispatched with lethal injection. Realizing that this would be his fate too, if anyone thought he had overheard, he swiftly lay down in the prepared chair and, drawing a towel over his face, pretended to be taking a nap while waiting. It was a full 15 minutes before Petacci came into the room, by which time Galbani had indeed fallen asleep and was thus quite convincing in his awakening act.
Although Petacci was the latest acquisition, Rachele never complained and remained loyal to her husband to his death and beyond. One of their children, Romano (1927–2006) became quite a famous jazz pianist who married Sophia Loren’s sister, and their daughter, Alessandra (b.1962), Loren’s niece, managed the unusual shift from soft-porn to politics to sit in the Italian Chamber of Deputies as an outspoken defender of her grandfather and a volatile neo-Fascist. As for Galbani, in the 1980s he was consulted by the makers of George C. Scott’s Mussolini: The Untold Story (1985), the stars and producers all being anxious to get the right look, so who better than Galbani? But by this time he had hung up the razors and retired, his business one of the many casualties of modern electric shavers. Few today have the time or the money to indulge the luxury of an old-fashioned wet shave and a phone call to that hotel, now the Westin Excelsior, reveals that no one on the desk even remembers a time when the foyer boasted the city’s most famous barber.
This excerpt is the sole property of Graeme Donald and Osprey Publishing. Do not reproduce without permission though please, buy the book here.
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