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Joseph Calleia (born Giuseppe Maria Spurrin-Calleja, in Malta, August 4, 1897; died October 31, 1975 in Malta), was a singer, composer, and actor, both on Broadway and in film. Calleia played against some Hollywood greats, including William Holden, Errol Flynn, Mae West, Bette Davies, Jane Russell, Mario Lanza, Charlton Heston, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, Orson Welles, Tyrone Power, Alan Ladd and Anthony Quinn.

Joseph Calleia was born at Saqqajja Square, Rabat, Malta, to Pasquale and Elena Calleja. He left Malta in 1914, and began his career touring Europe as a teenage singer with a harmonica band, appearing in the cafés and music halls of many war-torn and weary capital cities. By 1931, Calleia had landed an MGM contract in Hollywood, where he successfully pursued a career in the film industry, appearing in more than 50 movies between then and 1955. He made his screen debut in 1935 with appearances in two B-films:His Woman (1931) and The Girl in the Cab (1933). He very quickly made his mark, playing the role of a criminal in Public Hero No. 1, followed by Riff Raff (1935) in which he played a womanizer, co-starring with Jean Harlowe, Spencer Tracy and Mickey Rooney. He went on to appear in a total of 57 movies. Calleia frequently played cops or a villain in gangster or western films. He played Juan Seguín in The Alamo and the border-town detective in Orson Welles' Touch of Evil (1958). Other films include the comedy My Little Chickadee (1940), Disney's The Littlest Outlaw (1955). Calleia also appeared in the films noir Deadline at Dawn (1946) and Gilda (1946), where he co-starred with Rita Hayworth, Glenn Ford and George Macready. He also appeared with Susan Hayward and Lola Lane in Deadline at Dawn (1946), in Lured (1947) and The Glass Key (1942), Valentino, The Light Touch, Underwater, Cry Tough, After the Thin Man, and Johnny Cool. In The Caddy (1953) -- the movie that brought the song That's Amore into popular culture -- Calleia co-starred with Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, Donna Reed, Fred Clark and Barbara Bates. He co-starred with Luther Adler and Jane Russell in the 1956 action adventure film Hot Blood.

In Tough Guy, Calleia, together with child-star Jackie Cooper, sings a couple of bars of a Maltese folk tune "Ah, Lilek tal-Gallerija" (Ah! To you, up there on your balcony). This is possibly the only time that a ballad in Maltese has ever been heard in a Hollywood movie.

Earlier in his career, he wrote the screenplay for the western take on Robin Hood with The Robin Hood of El Dorado (1936).

Calleia received the Critics' Award for his performance in the 1938 John Cromwell film Algiers.

The 1958 film Touch of Evil in which Calleia co-starred along with Charlton Heston, Janet Leigh, Orson Welles, Marlene Dietrich and Zsa Zsa Gabor, was re-released in 1998.

It is said that Francis Ford Coppola had originally wanted Calleia to play the leading part of 'Il Padrino', the Sicilian Mafia boss in the immortal film The Godfather.

Although Calleia made over 50 films, he always claimed to enjoy stage performance to film acting. He was considered a "bright light" on Broadway between 1935 and 1945, and appeared in several hit plays, including Ten-minute Alibi, The Front Page, Grand Hotel and Broadway.

He retired in 1963 in Malta, and died in Sliema on October 31, 1975. He was honoured by the Malta postal authority with a set of two commemorative stamps issued in his memory in 1997. A monument, consisting of a bust of Joseph Calleia, was erected in front of his house in Rabat, in October, 2005, by Eman Bonnici, a young fellow, aged at the time 17. It has since been defaced by vandals, and remains to be repaired.

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