Death of Benito Mussolini Milan, where he had been based, and tried to escape to the Swiss border. He and his mistress, Claretta Petacci, were captured on 27 April by local partisans near the village of Dongo on Lake Como. Mussolini and Petacci were shot the following afternoon, two days before Adolf Hitler's suicide. The bodies of Mussolini and Petacci were taken to Milan and left in a suburban square, the Piazzale Loreto, for a large angry crowd to insult and physically abuse. They were then hung upside down from a metal girder above a service station on the square. The bodies were beaten,
The Dictator (1915 film) The Dictator (1915 film) The Dictator is a 1915 American silent comedy film directed by Oscar Eagle and reputedly Edwin S. Porter. It was based on a play "The Dictator" by Richard Harding Davis and produced by Adolph Zukor (Famous Players Film Company) and the Charles Frohman Company. John Barrymore stars in a role played on the stage by William Collier, Sr. whose company Barrymore had performed in this play. The film was rereleased on April 13, 1919 as part of the Paramount "Success Series" of their early screen successes. The story was refilmed in 1922 as "The Dictator" starring