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White Gate Cemetery
Located along the gently flowing Tom's Run outside of Moundsville is White Gate Cemetery, resting place for many of West Virginia's unwanted. Metal signs that read the deceased name, department of corrections number, date of birth, and date of death. Whitegate Cemetery is where some of the 94 executed prisoners of West Virginia Penitentiary, some murdered, some suicide, many from natural causes were laid to rest. If a prisoner's body was left unclaimed by family they were brought here and forgotten. Several of West Virginia's most notorious criminals are buried at White Gate cemetery, including William Griffith, Frank Hyer, Bud Peterson, and Harry Powers who gained national attention as the Bluebeard of Quiet Dell. Powers is suspected of murdering 55 women before he was caught in 1931, he was hanged on March 18, 1932 and was buried at White Gate Cemetery.
The Acropolis’ flat top is the result of thousands of years of construction beginning as far back as the Bronze Age. Historians believe the Mycenaeans built a massive compound surrounded by a great wall (almost 15 feet thick and 20 feet high) on top of the Acropolis to house the local ruler and his household.
Years later, the Athenians built a Doric temple made of limestone, known as Bluebeard Temple, on the northeast side of the hill in honor of the goddess Athena in the sixth century B.C. It was named after a sculpture that adorned the building that depicted a man-serpent with three blue beards.
Another temple dedicated to the Athena was also erected in the same century, as was a shrine to Artemis Brauronia, the goddess of expectant mothers in Greek mythology.
During the Greek Dark Ages (800 B.C. to 480. B.C.), the Acropolis remained largely intact. Many religious festivals were held there, and the artifacts of the time reflected the grandeur of ancient Athens.
Around 490 B.C., the Athenians started building a majestic marble temple known as the Old Parthenon. By that time, the Bluebeard Temple had been demolished by the Persians.
In 480 B.C., the Persians attacked again and burned, leveled and looted the Old Parthenon and almost every other structure at the Acropolis. To prevent further losses, the Athenians buried the remaining sculptures inside natural caves and built two new fortifications, one of the rock’s north side and one on its south.
Italian postcard by Edizione R.D.V., Milano, no. 101. Sophia Loren in La donna del fiume/The River Girl (Mario Soldati, 1954).
Sophia Loren (1934) rose to fame in post-war Italy as a voluptuous sex goddess. Soon after, she became one of the most successful stars of the 20th Century, who won an Oscar for her mother role in La ciociara (Vittorio De Sica, 1960).
Sophia Loren was born Sofia Villani Scicolone in the charity ward of a Roman hospital in 1934. She was the illegitimate daughter of construction engineer Riccardo Scicolone and piano teacher and aspiring actress Romilda Villani. Riccardo was married to another woman and refused to marry Romilda, leaving her without support. Romilda, Sofia, and sister Maria returned to Pozzuoli to live with Sofia's grandmother. Pozzuoli was a small town outside Naples and one of the hardest hit during World War II. The family shared a two-room apartment with the grandmother and several aunts and uncles. The shy, stick-thin girl regularly went hungry and had to flee from bombings. At 14, Sofia had a voluptuous figure and entered a beauty contest. She was selected as one of the finalists but did not win. In 1950, she was one of the contestants in the Miss Italia competition. She earned 2nd place and was awarded ‘Miss Eleganza’. While attending the Miss Rome beauty contest, earlier in 1950, she had met judge Carlo Ponti, an up-and-coming film producer, 22 years her senior. Ponti had helped launch Gina Lollobrigida's career and now began grooming Sofia for stardom. He hired an acting coach to tutor her. At 16 she was in her first film, the Totó comedy Le Sei Mogli di Barbablù/Bluebeard’s Six Wives (Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia, 1950) under the name Sofia Lazzaro. She also appeared as an extra in Luci del varietà/Lights of the Variety (Federico Fellini, 1950), the smash hit Anna (Alberto Lattuada, 1951), and Quo Vadis (Mervyn Leroy, 1951). During the early 1950s, she secured work modelling for fumetti magazines. These comic-like magazines used actual photographs. The dialogue bubbles were called 'fumetti' - hence the popular name. At 17, she was cast by Ponti in her first larger role as the commoner who caught the prince's eye in the filmed opera La Favorita/The Favorite (Cesare Barlacchi, 1952). The next year she earned third billing after Silvana Pampanini and Eleanora Rossi-Drago in La Tratta Delle Bianche/The White Slave Trade (Luigi Comencini, 1953) and she played, complete with blackface and an Afro, the lead in another filmed opera, Aida (Clemente Fracassi, 1953) by Giuseppe Verdi. Her singing was dubbed by Renata Tebaldi. Ponti eventually changed her name to Sophia Loren.
Sophia Loren appeared for the first time with Marcello Mastroianni in the romantic comedy Peccato che sia una canaglia/Too Bad She's Bad (Alessandro Blasetti, 1954). They would make 13 films together, including Tempi nostri/A Slice of Life (Alessandro Blasetti, Paul Paviot, 1954), La bella mugnaia/The Miller's Wife (Mario Camerini, 1955), and La fortuna di essere donna/What A Woman (Alessandro Blasetti, 1956). L'Oro di Napoli/Gold of Naples (Vittorio de Sica, 1954), an anthology of tales depicting various aspects of Neapolitan life, was distributed internationally. At AllMovie, Jason Ankeny writes that in reviews "Loren was singled out for the strength of her performance as a Neapolitan shopkeeper, surprising many critics who had dismissed her as merely another bombshell". The film established her persona as a sensuous working-class earth mother. It also began a fruitful, career-long collaboration with De Sica. Sophia’s first film to find international success was La Donna del Fiume/The River Girl (Mario Soldati, 1955), in which she danced sensually the Mambo Bacan. Hal Erickson at AllMovie: "Through it all, Sophia Loren looks like a million lire - and she even gets to sing and dance!". She came to the attention of Stanley Kramer who offered her the female lead in The Pride And The Passion (Stanley Kramer, 1957) opposite Cary Grant and Frank Sinatra. Sophia played a Spanish peasant girl involved in an uprising against the French. This was the turning point in her career, and the film proved to be one of the top US box office successes of the year. Her next English-language film was Boy on a Dolphin (Jean Negulesco, 1957) with Alan Ladd, where she was memorable mostly for emerging from the water in a wet, skin-tight, transparent dress. With her va-va-va-voom image, she became an international film star and got a five-picture contract with Paramount Pictures. Among her Paramount films were Desire Under the Elms (Delbert Mann, 1958) with Anthony Perkins and based upon the Eugene O'Neill play, Houseboat (Melville Shavelson, 1958), a romantic comedy co-starring Cary Grant, and the Western Heller in Pink Tights (George Cukor, 1960) in which she appeared for the first time with blonde hair (a wig). Most of these films were received lukewarmly at best.
In 1960 Sophia Loren returned to Italy to star in the biggest success of her career, La Ciociara/Two Women (Vittorio De Sica, 1960). She played a widow desperately trying to protect her daughter from danger during WW II, only to end up in a destructive love triangle with a young radical (Jean-Paul Belmondo). Hal Erickson at AllMovie: "A last-minute replacement for Anna Magnani, Sophia Loren brought hitherto untapped depths of emotion to her performance in Two Women; she later stated that she was utilizing 'sensory recall,' dredging up memories of her own wartime experiences." Loren won the Best Actress Oscar for her performance, and also the Cannes, Venice ánd Berlin Film Festivals' best performance prizes. Next, she played in Spain Samuel Bronston's epic production of El Cid (Anthony Mann, 1961) with Charlton Heston, followed by the De Sica episode of the anthology Boccaccio '70 (Vittorio De Sica, Federico Fellini, Luchino Visconti, 1962). On the strength of her Oscar win, she also returned to English-language fare with Five Miles to Midnight (Anatole Litvak, 1963), followed a year later by The Fall of the Roman Empire (Anthony Mann, 1964), for which she received $1 million. Among Loren's other films of this period are The Millionairess (Anthony Asquith, 1960) with Peter Sellers, It Started in Naples (Melville Shavelson, 1960) with Clark Gable, Lady L (Peter Ustinov, 1965) with Paul Newman, Arabesque (Stanley Donen, 1966) with Gregory Peck, and Charlie Chaplin's final film, A Countess from Hong Kong (1967) with Marlon Brando. Despite the failure of many of her films to generate sales at the box office, she invariably turned in a charming performance and she wore some of the most lavish costumes ever created for the cinema. Her best Italian films include the triptych Ieri, oggi, domani/Yesterday, Today And Tomorrow (Vittorio De Sica, 1963), a comedy that poked fun at a Catholic priest and gently mocked the Italian law on birth control, and Matrimonio all' Italiana/Marriage Italian Style (Vittorio De Sica, 1964) with Loren as the hooker who lures Mastroianni into marriage.
After several miscarriages and a highly-publicized struggle to become pregnant, Sophia Loren gave birth to her son Hubert Leoni Carlo Ponti in 1968. She started to work less and moved into her 40s and 50s with roles in films like De Sica's war drama I Girasoli/The Sunflowers (Vittorio De Sica, 1972), Il Viaggio/The Voyage (Vittorio De Sica, 1974) opposite Richard Burton, and reuniting with Marcello Mastroianni in the mob comedy La Pupa del Gangster/Get Rita (Giorgio Capitani, 1975). An artistic highlight was Una giornata particolare/A Special Day (Ettore Scola, 1977) which earned a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film. Loren played a bored housewife on the day of the first meeting between Mussolini and Hitler. Left alone in her tenement home when her fascist husband runs off to attend the historic event, Loren strikes up a friendship with her homosexual neighbour (Marcello Mastroianni). As the day segues into night, Loren and Mastroianni develop a very special relationship that will radically alter both of their outlooks on life. When a dubbed version of Una giornata particolare/A Special Day found favour with American audiences, Hollywood again came calling, resulting in a pair of thrillers, The Brass Target (John Hough, 1978) and Firepower (Michael Winner, 1979) which offered her a central role as a widow seeking answers in the murder of her chemist husband. In 1980, Loren portrayed herself, as well as her mother, in Sophia Loren: Her Own Story (Mel Stuart, 1980), a made-for-television biopic adaptation of her autobiography. Actresses Ritza Brown and Chiara Ferrari played Loren at younger ages. She made headlines in 1982 when she served an 18-day prison sentence in Italy on tax evasion charges, a fact that didn't damage her career or popularity. In her 60s, Loren ventured into various areas of business, including cookbooks, eyewear, jewellery, and perfume. In honour of her lengthy career, Loren was the recipient of a special Oscar in 1991. She also made well-received appearances in her final film with Mastroianni, Prêt-à-Porter/Ready to Wear (1994), Robert Altman's take on the French fashion scene, and in the comedy hit Grumpier Old Men (Howard Deutch, 1995) playing a femme fatale opposite Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon. In 1995 she received the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award. At the age of 72, she appeared scantily clad in the 2007 edition of the famous calendar of Italian racing tire giant Pirelli. It made her the oldest model in the calendar's history. The photos by Dutch photographers Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin proved that she was still a major international sex symbol. In 2007 Carlo Ponti died. It had been controversial in her native Italy when Sophia Loren had married her mentor Ponti in 1957. Not only was he 45 to her 23, but he had been married previously, and neither the Catholic Church nor the Italian government recognised his Mexican divorce. Ponti was charged with bigamy, but the charges were dropped when they had their marriage annulled. They continued living together - scandalous at the time - and remarried after his legal problems had been cleared. Ponti and Loren made three dozen films together. They had two children, symphony conductor Carlo Ponti Jr. and film director Edoardo Ponti. After four years off the big screen, Sophia Loren co-starred in a film version of the Broadway musical Nine (Rob Marshall, 2009). She played the mother of famous film director Guido Contini, portrayed by Daniel Day-Lewis. According to Jason Ankeny at AllMovie, "Loren proved she still had movie star charisma with a role in Chicago director Rob Marshall's Nine - a lavish tribute to all things Italian." Loren made a two-part television biopic of her early life titled La Mia Casa È Piena di Specchi/My House Is Full of Mirrors (Vittorio Sindoni, 2010), based on of the memoir written by her sister Maria Scicolone. At 80, Sophia Loren returned to the screen in Human Voice (2014) directed by her son Edoardo Ponti. At the presentation at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York, 'the timeless beauty' stunned the press once again when she walked on the red carpet in a chic red pantsuit hand-in-hand with her 41-year-old son to promote the short film. Human Voice is based on the play by iconic French playwright Jean Cocteau and sees La Loren play a woman in her twilight years facing revelations from her past. In late 2014, she also presented her first memoir, Ieri, oggi, domani. La mia vita/Today and Tomorrow: My Life as a Fairy Tale. It includes old pictures, letters, and notes detailing encounters with Cary Grant and other film partners. In 2020, Sophia Loren returned to cinema after an 11-year absence. At the age of 86, she played a Jewish Holocaust survivor who befriends a 12-year-old Senegalese orphan in the Netflix film La vita davanti a sé/The Life Ahead, directed by her son Edoardo Ponti. The film is based on the novel 'La vie devant soi' by French author Romain Gary.
Sources: Jason Ankeny (AllMovie), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Shyam Dodge (Daily Mail), Jenny (IMDb), Wikipedia, NNDB, TCM, and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Doc and I once bought an old farmhouse that was over 100 years old. Left behind was a few treasures and trinkets - one of them being this key. It was wrapped in a cloth, and hidden in the corner of a drawer, in an antique table. I searched and searched, but never did find a keyhole that the key would open - but it did remind me of an old Bluebeard tale . . .
-----------------------------------------
Bluebeard was a wealthy and powerful nobleman who had been married several times to beautiful women, who had all mysteriously vanished. When Bluebeard visits his neighbor and asks to marry one of his daughters, the girls are terrified. After hosting a wonderful banquet, he chooses the youngest daughter to be his wife – against her will – and she goes to live with him in his rich and luxurious palace in the countryside, away from her family.
Bluebeard announces that he must leave for the country and gives the keys of the château to his wife. She is able to open any door in the house with them, each of which contain some of his riches, except for an underground chamber that he strictly forbids her to enter lest she suffer his wrath. He then goes away and leaves the house, and the keys in her hands. She invites her sister, Anne, and her friends and cousins over for a party. However, she is eventually overcome with the desire to see what the forbidden room holds, and she sneaks away from the party and ventures into the room.
She immediately discovers the room is flooded with blood and the murdered corpses of Bluebeard's former wives hanging on hooks from the walls. Horrified, she drops the key in the blood and flees the room. She tries to wash the blood from the key, but the key is magical and the blood cannot be removed. . . .
*(Since we are all in quarantine - this might be a good time to read about Bluebeard and his "key".)
Italian postcard.
Sophia Loren (1934) rose to fame in post-war Italy as a voluptuous sex goddess. Soon after, she became one of the most successful stars of the 20th Century, who won an Oscar for her mother role in La ciociara (Vittorio De Sica, 1960).
Sophia Loren was born Sofia Villani Scicolone in the charity ward of a Roman hospital in 1934. She was the illegitimate daughter of construction engineer Riccardo Scicolone and piano teacher and aspiring actress Romilda Villani. Riccardo was married to another woman and refused to marry Romilda, leaving her without support. Romilda, Sofia, and sister Maria returned to Pozzuoli to live with Sofia's grandmother. Pozzuoli was a small town outside Naples and one of the hardest hit during World War II. The family shared a two-room apartment with the grandmother and several aunts and uncles. The shy, stick-thin girl regularly went hungry and had to flee from bombings. At 14, Sofia had a voluptuous figure and entered a beauty contest. She was selected as one of the finalists but did not win. In 1950, she was one of the contestants in the Miss Italia competition. She earned 2nd place and was awarded ‘Miss Eleganza’. While attending the Miss Rome beauty contest, earlier in 1950, she had met judge Carlo Ponti, an up-and-coming film producer, 22 years her senior. Ponti had helped launch Gina Lollobrigida's career and now began grooming Sofia for stardom. He hired an acting coach to tutor her. At 16 she was in her first film, the Totó comedy Le Sei Mogli di Barbablù/Bluebeard’s Six Wives (Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia, 1950) under the name Sofia Lazzaro. She also appeared as an extra in Luci del varietà/Lights of the Variety (Federico Fellini, 1950), the smash hit Anna (Alberto Lattuada, 1951), and Quo Vadis (Mervyn Leroy, 1951). During the early 1950s, she secured work modelling for fumetti magazines. These comic-like magazines used actual photographs. The dialogue bubbles were called 'fumetti' - hence the popular name. At 17, she was cast by Ponti in her first larger role as the commoner who caught the prince's eye in the filmed opera La Favorita/The Favorite (Cesare Barlacchi, 1952). The next year she earned third billing after Silvana Pampanini and Eleanora Rossi-Drago in La Tratta Delle Bianche/The White Slave Trade (Luigi Comencini, 1953) and she played, complete with blackface and an Afro, the lead in another filmed opera, Aida (Clemente Fracassi, 1953) by Giuseppe Verdi. Her singing was dubbed by Renata Tebaldi. Ponti eventually changed her name to Sophia Loren.
Sophia Loren appeared for the first time with Marcello Mastroianni in the romantic comedy Peccato che sia una canaglia/Too Bad She's Bad (Alessandro Blasetti, 1954). They would make 13 films together, including Tempi nostri/A Slice of Life (Alessandro Blasetti, Paul Paviot, 1954), La bella mugnaia/The Miller's Wife (Mario Camerini, 1955), and La fortuna di essere donna/What A Woman (Alessandro Blasetti, 1956). L'Oro di Napoli/Gold of Naples (Vittorio de Sica, 1954), an anthology of tales depicting various aspects of Neapolitan life, was distributed internationally. At AllMovie, Jason Ankeny writes that in reviews "Loren was singled out for the strength of her performance as a Neapolitan shopkeeper, surprising many critics who had dismissed her as merely another bombshell". The film established her persona as a sensuous working-class earth mother. It also began a fruitful, career-long collaboration with De Sica. Sophia’s first film to find international success was La Donna del Fiume/The River Girl (Mario Soldati, 1955), in which she danced sensually the Mambo Bacan. Hal Erickson at AllMovie: "Through it all, Sophia Loren looks like a million lire - and she even gets to sing and dance!". She came to the attention of Stanley Kramer who offered her the female lead in The Pride And The Passion (Stanley Kramer, 1957) opposite Cary Grant and Frank Sinatra. Sophia played a Spanish peasant girl involved in an uprising against the French. This was the turning point in her career, and the film proved to be one of the top US box office successes of the year. Her next English-language film was Boy on a Dolphin (Jean Negulesco, 1957) with Alan Ladd, where she was memorable mostly for emerging from the water in a wet, skin-tight, transparent dress. With her va-va-va-voom image, she became an international film star and got a five-picture contract with Paramount Pictures. Among her Paramount films were Desire Under the Elms (Delbert Mann, 1958) with Anthony Perkins and based upon the Eugene O'Neill play, Houseboat (Melville Shavelson, 1958), a romantic comedy co-starring Cary Grant, and the Western Heller in Pink Tights (George Cukor, 1960) in which she appeared for the first time with blonde hair (a wig). Most of these films were received lukewarmly at best.
In 1960 Sophia Loren returned to Italy to star in the biggest success of her career, La Ciociara/Two Women (Vittorio De Sica, 1960). She played a widow desperately trying to protect her daughter from danger during WW II, only to end up in a destructive love triangle with a young radical (Jean-Paul Belmondo). Hal Erickson at AllMovie: "A last-minute replacement for Anna Magnani, Sophia Loren brought hitherto untapped depths of emotion to her performance in Two Women; she later stated that she was utilizing 'sensory recall,' dredging up memories of her own wartime experiences." Loren won the Best Actress Oscar for her performance, and also the Cannes, Venice ánd Berlin Film Festivals' best performance prizes. Next, she played in Spain Samuel Bronston's epic production of El Cid (Anthony Mann, 1961) with Charlton Heston, followed by the De Sica episode of the anthology Boccaccio '70 (Vittorio De Sica, Federico Fellini, Luchino Visconti, 1962). On the strength of her Oscar win, she also returned to English-language fare with Five Miles to Midnight (Anatole Litvak, 1963), followed a year later by The Fall of the Roman Empire (Anthony Mann, 1964), for which she received $1 million. Among Loren's other films of this period are The Millionairess (Anthony Asquith, 1960) with Peter Sellers, It Started in Naples (Melville Shavelson, 1960) with Clark Gable, Lady L (Peter Ustinov, 1965) with Paul Newman, Arabesque (Stanley Donen, 1966) with Gregory Peck, and Charlie Chaplin's final film, A Countess from Hong Kong (1967) with Marlon Brando. Despite the failure of many of her films to generate sales at the box office, she invariably turned in a charming performance and she wore some of the most lavish costumes ever created for the cinema. Her best Italian films include the triptych Ieri, oggi, domani/Yesterday, Today And Tomorrow (Vittorio De Sica, 1963), a comedy that poked fun at a Catholic priest and gently mocked the Italian law on birth control, and Matrimonio all' Italiana/Marriage Italian Style (Vittorio De Sica, 1964) with Loren as the hooker who lures Mastroianni into marriage.
After several miscarriages and a highly-publicized struggle to become pregnant, Sophia Loren gave birth to her son Hubert Leoni Carlo Ponti in 1968. She started to work less and moved into her 40s and 50s with roles in films like De Sica's war drama I Girasoli/The Sunflowers (Vittorio De Sica, 1972), Il Viaggio/The Voyage (Vittorio De Sica, 1974) opposite Richard Burton, and reuniting with Marcello Mastroianni in the mob comedy La Pupa del Gangster/Get Rita (Giorgio Capitani, 1975). An artistic highlight was Una giornata particolare/A Special Day (Ettore Scola, 1977) which earned a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film. Loren played a bored housewife on the day of the first meeting between Mussolini and Hitler. Left alone in her tenement home when her fascist husband runs off to attend the historic event, Loren strikes up a friendship with her homosexual neighbour (Marcello Mastroianni). As the day segues into night, Loren and Mastroianni develop a very special relationship that will radically alter both of their outlooks on life. When a dubbed version of Una giornata particolare/A Special Day found favour with American audiences, Hollywood again came calling, resulting in a pair of thrillers, The Brass Target (John Hough, 1978) and Firepower (Michael Winner, 1979) which offered her a central role as a widow seeking answers in the murder of her chemist husband. In 1980, Loren portrayed herself, as well as her mother, in Sophia Loren: Her Own Story (Mel Stuart, 1980), a made-for-television biopic adaptation of her autobiography. Actresses Ritza Brown and Chiara Ferrari played Loren at younger ages. She made headlines in 1982 when she served an 18-day prison sentence in Italy on tax evasion charges, a fact that didn't damage her career or popularity. In her 60s, Loren ventured into various areas of business, including cookbooks, eyewear, jewellery, and perfume. In honour of her lengthy career, Loren was the recipient of a special Oscar in 1991. She also made well-received appearances in her final film with Mastroianni, Prêt-à-Porter/Ready to Wear (1994), Robert Altman's take on the French fashion scene, and in the comedy hit Grumpier Old Men (Howard Deutch, 1995) playing a femme fatale opposite Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon. In 1995 she received the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award. At the age of 72, she appeared scantily clad in the 2007 edition of the famous calendar of Italian racing tire giant Pirelli. It made her the oldest model in the calendar's history. The photos by Dutch photographers Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin proved that she was still a major international sex symbol. In 2007 Carlo Ponti died. It had been controversial in her native Italy when Sophia Loren had married her mentor Ponti in 1957. Not only was he 45 to her 23, but he had been married previously, and neither the Catholic Church nor the Italian government recognised his Mexican divorce. Ponti was charged with bigamy, but the charges were dropped when they had their marriage annulled. They continued living together - scandalous at the time - and remarried after his legal problems had been cleared. Ponti and Loren made three dozen films together. They had two children, symphony conductor Carlo Ponti Jr. and film director Edoardo Ponti. After four years off the big screen, Sophia Loren co-starred in a film version of the Broadway musical Nine (Rob Marshall, 2009). She played the mother of famous film director Guido Contini, portrayed by Daniel Day-Lewis. According to Jason Ankeny at AllMovie, "Loren proved she still had movie star charisma with a role in Chicago director Rob Marshall's Nine - a lavish tribute to all things Italian." Loren made a two-part television biopic of her early life titled La Mia Casa È Piena di Specchi/My House Is Full of Mirrors (Vittorio Sindoni, 2010), based on of the memoir written by her sister Maria Scicolone. At 80, Sophia Loren returned to the screen in Human Voice (2014) directed by her son Edoardo Ponti. At the presentation at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York, 'the timeless beauty' stunned the press once again when she walked on the red carpet in a chic red pantsuit hand-in-hand with her 41-year-old son to promote the short film. Human Voice is based on the play by iconic French playwright Jean Cocteau and sees La Loren play a woman in her twilight years facing revelations from her past. In late 2014, she also presented her first memoir, Ieri, oggi, domani. La mia vita/Today and Tomorrow: My Life as a Fairy Tale. It includes old pictures, letters, and notes detailing encounters with Cary Grant and other film partners. In 2020, Sophia Loren returned to cinema after an 11-year absence. At the age of 86, she played a Jewish Holocaust survivor who befriends a 12-year-old Senegalese orphan in the Netflix film La vita davanti a sé/The Life Ahead, directed by her son Edoardo Ponti. The film is based on the novel 'La vie devant soi' by French author Romain Gary.
Sources: Jason Ankeny (AllMovie), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Shyam Dodge (Daily Mail), Jenny (IMDb), Wikipedia, NNDB, TCM, and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Maker: Atelier Manassé (Adrian and Olga Wlassics) (Austrian, Active 1924 - 1943)
Title: Madame Bluebeard
Date: ca. 1930
Medium: Gelatin silver print
From the blurb inside:
This is the story of an irresistibly ruthless lover who let neither maidenly innocence nor social proprieties stand in his way.
Beth Wimbish, beautiful daughter of an aristocratic family, succumbed entirely to his cruel fascination. She wanted him and she had him and sank with him when he went down.
In Greenwich Village, Jake had gained for himself a lurid reputation as a striking personality and an artist of amazing power. The came the day when Jake met the Village's strangest Bohemian, the fantastic love-cultist Bellerophon Cawdor. Cawdor taught Jake the pleasures and passions of a modern Bluebeard -- and dragged Beth into a weird and tragic love.
Seldom in literature will you encounter as startling a romance as Ward Greene's "The Life and Loves of a Modern Mister Bluebeard.
This is a Bluebeard (Caryopteris, dt.: Bartblume), which is one of the latest blooming plants in the garden of my parents. In autumn you can hear the hum of insects on it from meters away.
Treated with G´Mic´s Simple Local Contrast-Filter
Greta agreed to portray the evil Bluebeard for Friday's Blythe a Day. What a wretched man!! I did not know the story until I read it yesterday.
For Blythe a Day
Bluebeard
November 15, 2019
Fairy Tales from Around the World
Doll: Mondrian Blythe
Hat: Etsy
Prince outfit: Borrowed from vintage Ken
Background: wrapping paper with window image glued on
Beard, keys, blood: added in BeFunky
For Greg.
Italian postcard, no. 100 105. Raquel Welch in One Million Years BC (Don Chaffey, 1966).
American actress Raquel Welch (1940) is one of the icons of the 1960s and 1970s. She first won attention for her role in Fantastic Voyage (1966). In Great Britain, she then made One Million Years B.C. (1966). Although she had only three lines in the film, a poster of Welch in a furry prehistoric bikini became an amazing bestseller and catapulted her to stardom.
Raquel Welch was born Jo Raquel Tejada in 1940 in Chicago, Illinois. She was the first of three children born to Bolivian Armando Carlos Tejada Urquizo, an aerospace engineer, and his Irish-American wife Josephine Sarah Hall, who was the daughter of American architect Emery Stanford Hall. At age 14, Raquel won her first beauty title as Miss Photogenic. She graduated from high school in 1958 and a year later, after becoming pregnant, she married her high school sweetheart, James Welch. Seeking an acting career, Welch won a scholarship in drama, took classes at San Diego State College and won several parts in local theatre productions. She got a job as a weather forecaster at KFMB, a local San Diego television station. After her separation from James Welch, she moved with her two children to Dallas, Texas, where she worked as a model for Neiman Marcus and as a cocktail waitress. In 1963, she went to California, where she met former child star and Hollywood agent Patrick Curtis who became her personal and business manager and second husband. They developed a plan to turn Welch into a sex symbol. After small roles in a few films and TV series, she had her first featured role in the beach film A Swingin' Summer (Robert Sparr, 1965). She landed a seven-year nonexclusive contract at 20th Century Fox and was cast in a leading role in the sci-fi film Fantastic Voyage (Richard Fleischer, 1966) opposite Stephen Boyd. Welch portrayed a member of a medical team that is miniaturized and injected into the body of an injured diplomat with the mission to save his life. The film was a hit and made her a well-known name. Fox Studio loaned her to Hammer Studios in Britain where she starred in One Million Years B.C. (Don Chaffey, 1966). Her only costume was a two-piece deer skin bikini. Gary Brumburgh at IMDb: "Tantalizingly wet with her garb clinging to all the right amazonian places, One Million Years B.C. (1966), if nothing else, captured the hearts and libidos of modern men (not to mention their teenage sons) while producing THE most definitive and best-selling pin-up poster of that time."
Raquel Welch stayed in Europe for the French comedy Le Plus Vieux Métier du monde/The Oldest Profession (Michael Pfleghar a.o., 1967), a typical European anthology film of the 1960s. A collection of sketches on prostitution through the ages, made by a pan-European cast and crew. Some of the most sensual stars of the era played the leads: Michèle Mercier, Elsa Martinelli, Anna Karina, Nadia Gray, Jeanne Moreau and Welch. She played Nini in the episode La belle époque/The Gay Nineties by German director Michael Pfleghar. When Nini discovers by accident that her antiquated customer (Martin Held) is a banker, she pretends to be an honest woman who has fallen in love with him. She even pays him, just like a gigolo! Varlaam at IMDb: "Raquel Welch stars in the most amusing episode, relatively speaking. It's apparently set in the 1890s Vienna (Emperor Franz Josef is on the paper money). One could probably say that Raquel's greatest classic role was as the injured party in the Cannery Row lawsuit. Finely nuanced she was not, normally. But she makes an appealing light comedienne here, and she can really fill a lacy Viennese corset. The Belle Époque it assuredly was." Next, she appeared in the British seven-deadly-sins comedy Bedazzled (Stanley Donen, 1967). She played the deadly sin representing 'lust' for the comedy team of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. In Britain, she was also the title secret agent in the sexy spy spoof Fathom (Leslie H. Martinson, 1967). In Italy, she starred with Monica Vitti and Claudia Cardinale in Le Fate/The Queens (Mauro Bolognini, 1966) and with Edward G. Robinson and Vittorio de Sica in The Biggest Bundle of Them All (Ken Annakin, 1968). Back in the United States she appeared in the Western Bandolero! (Andrew V. McLaglen, 1968) with James Stewart and Dean Martin, which was followed by the private-eye drama Lady in Cement (Gordon Douglas, 1968) with Frank Sinatra. She caused quite a stir in her ground-breaking sex scenes with black athlete Jim Brown in the Western 100 Rifles (Tom Gries, 1969).
Raquel Welch's most controversial role came in the comedy Myra Breckinridge (Michael Sarne, 1970), based on Gore Vidal's 1968 novel. She took the part as the film's transsexual heroine in an attempt to be taken seriously as an actress. The picture was controversial for its sexual explicitness, but unlike the novel, Myra Breckinridge received little to no critical praise. It is cited in the book The Fifty Worst Films of All Time. Jason Ankeny at AllMovie: "Her situation was unusual; she was certainly a star and a household name, yet few people ever went to see her movies." Welch took a measure of control over her screen persona, producing and starring in Hannie Calder (Burt Kennedy, 1971), the first film in which she carved out a place in movie history portraying strong female characters and breaking the mold of the submissive sex symbol. She altered the image further with Kansas City Bomber (Jerrold Freedman, 1972), insisting on doing her own stunts as good-hearted roller derby star Diane 'KC' Carr. She followed that with a series of successful films in Europe that included the thriller Bluebeard (Edward Dmytryk, 1972) starring Richard Burton, the swashbuckler The Three Musketeers (Richard Lester, 1973) - for which she won a Golden Globe, the sequel The Four Musketeers (Richard Lester, 1974) both with Oliver Reed and Michael York, and The Wild Party (James Ivory, 1975). A big hit in Europe was the French action-comedy L'Animal/Animal (Claude Zidi, 1977) starring Jean-Paul Belmondo. Raquel Welch's unique persona on film made her into one of the reigning icons of the 1960s and 1970s. Later, she made several television variety specials. In 1980, Welch planned on making a comeback in an adaptation of John Steinbeck's Cannery Row (David S. Ward, 1982), but was fired by the producers a few days into production. The producers said that at 40 years old she was too old to play the character. She was replaced with Debra Winger. Welch sued and collected a $10.8 million settlement. She starred on Broadway in Woman of the Year, receiving praise for following Lauren Bacall in the title role. She also starred in Victor/Victoria, having less success. In 1995, Welch was chosen by Empire Magazine as one of the 100 Sexiest Stars in Film History.
Sources: Jason Ankeny (AllMovie), Gary Brumburgh (IMDb), David Carless (IMDb), Bob Taylor (IMDb), Varlaam (IMDb), TCM, Wikipedia, and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Italian postcard by Bromofoto, Milano, no. 717. Photo: Minerva Film. Sophia Loren in Un giornata in pretura/A Day in Court (Steno, 1954).
Sophia Loren (1934) rose to fame in post-war Italy as a voluptuous sex goddess. Soon after, she became one of the most successful stars of the 20th Century, who won an Oscar for her mother role in La ciociara (Vittorio De Sica, 1960).
Sophia Loren was born Sofia Villani Scicolone in the charity ward of a Roman hospital in 1934. She was the illegitimate daughter of construction engineer Riccardo Scicolone and piano teacher and aspiring actress Romilda Villani. Riccardo was married to another woman and refused to marry Romilda, leaving her without support. Romilda, Sofia, and sister Maria returned to Pozzuoli to live with Sofia's grandmother. Pozzuoli was a small town outside Naples and one of the hardest hit during World War II. The family shared a two-room apartment with the grandmother and several aunts and uncles. The shy, stick-thin girl regularly went hungry and had to flee from bombings. At 14, Sofia had a voluptuous figure and entered a beauty contest. She was selected as one of the finalists but did not win. In 1950, she was one of the contestants in the Miss Italia competition. She earned 2nd place and was awarded ‘Miss Eleganza’. While attending the Miss Rome beauty contest, earlier in 1950, she had met judge Carlo Ponti, an up-and-coming film producer, 22 years her senior. Ponti had helped launch Gina Lollobrigida's career and now began grooming Sofia for stardom. He hired an acting coach to tutor her. At 16 she was in her first film, the Totó comedy Le Sei Mogli di Barbablù/Bluebeard’s Six Wives (Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia, 1950) under the name Sofia Lazzaro. She also appeared as an extra in Luci del varietà/Lights of the Variety (Federico Fellini, 1950), the smash hit Anna (Alberto Lattuada, 1951), and Quo Vadis (Mervyn Leroy, 1951). During the early 1950s, she secured work modelling for fumetti magazines. These comic-like magazines used actual photographs. The dialogue bubbles were called 'fumetti' - hence the popular name. At 17, she was cast by Ponti in her first larger role as the commoner who caught the prince's eye in the filmed opera La Favorita/The Favorite (Cesare Barlacchi, 1952). The next year she earned third billing after Silvana Pampanini and Eleanora Rossi-Drago in La Tratta Delle Bianche/The White Slave Trade (Luigi Comencini, 1953) and she played, complete with blackface and an Afro, the lead in another filmed opera, Aida (Clemente Fracassi, 1953) by Giuseppe Verdi. Her singing was dubbed by Renata Tebaldi. Ponti eventually changed her name to Sophia Loren.
Sophia Loren appeared for the first time with Marcello Mastroianni in the romantic comedy Peccato che sia una canaglia/Too Bad She's Bad (Alessandro Blasetti, 1954). They would make 13 films together, including Tempi nostri/A Slice of Life (Alessandro Blasetti, Paul Paviot, 1954), La bella mugnaia/The Miller's Wife (Mario Camerini, 1955), and La fortuna di essere donna/What A Woman (Alessandro Blasetti, 1956). L'Oro di Napoli/Gold of Naples (Vittorio de Sica, 1954), an anthology of tales depicting various aspects of Neapolitan life, was distributed internationally. At AllMovie, Jason Ankeny writes that in reviews "Loren was singled out for the strength of her performance as a Neapolitan shopkeeper, surprising many critics who had dismissed her as merely another bombshell". The film established her persona as a sensuous working-class earth mother. It also began a fruitful, career-long collaboration with De Sica. Sophia’s first film to find international success was La Donna del Fiume/The River Girl (Mario Soldati, 1955), in which she danced sensually the Mambo Bacan. Hal Erickson at AllMovie: "Through it all, Sophia Loren looks like a million lire - and she even gets to sing and dance!". She came to the attention of Stanley Kramer who offered her the female lead in The Pride And The Passion (Stanley Kramer, 1957) opposite Cary Grant and Frank Sinatra. Sophia played a Spanish peasant girl involved in an uprising against the French. This was the turning point in her career, and the film proved to be one of the top US box office successes of the year. Her next English-language film was Boy on a Dolphin (Jean Negulesco, 1957) with Alan Ladd, where she was memorable mostly for emerging from the water in a wet, skin-tight, transparent dress. With her va-va-va-voom image, she became an international film star and got a five-picture contract with Paramount Pictures. Among her Paramount films were Desire Under the Elms (Delbert Mann, 1958) with Anthony Perkins and based upon the Eugene O'Neill play, Houseboat (Melville Shavelson, 1958), a romantic comedy co-starring Cary Grant, and the Western Heller in Pink Tights (George Cukor, 1960) in which she appeared for the first time with blonde hair (a wig). Most of these films were received lukewarmly at best.
In 1960 Sophia Loren returned to Italy to star in the biggest success of her career, La Ciociara/Two Women (Vittorio De Sica, 1960). She played a widow desperately trying to protect her daughter from danger during WW II, only to end up in a destructive love triangle with a young radical (Jean-Paul Belmondo). Hal Erickson at AllMovie: "A last-minute replacement for Anna Magnani, Sophia Loren brought hitherto untapped depths of emotion to her performance in Two Women; she later stated that she was utilizing 'sensory recall,' dredging up memories of her own wartime experiences." Loren won the Best Actress Oscar for her performance, and also the Cannes, Venice ánd Berlin Film Festivals' best performance prizes. Next, she played in Spain Samuel Bronston's epic production of El Cid (Anthony Mann, 1961) with Charlton Heston, followed by the De Sica episode of the anthology Boccaccio '70 (Vittorio De Sica, Federico Fellini, Luchino Visconti, 1962). On the strength of her Oscar win, she also returned to English-language fare with Five Miles to Midnight (Anatole Litvak, 1963), followed a year later by The Fall of the Roman Empire (Anthony Mann, 1964), for which she received $1 million. Among Loren's other films of this period are The Millionairess (Anthony Asquith, 1960) with Peter Sellers, It Started in Naples (Melville Shavelson, 1960) with Clark Gable, Lady L (Peter Ustinov, 1965) with Paul Newman, Arabesque (Stanley Donen, 1966) with Gregory Peck, and Charlie Chaplin's final film, A Countess from Hong Kong (1967) with Marlon Brando. Despite the failure of many of her films to generate sales at the box office, she invariably turned in a charming performance and she wore some of the most lavish costumes ever created for the cinema. Her best Italian films include the triptych Ieri, oggi, domani/Yesterday, Today And Tomorrow (Vittorio De Sica, 1963), a comedy that poked fun at a Catholic priest and gently mocked the Italian law on birth control, and Matrimonio all' Italiana/Marriage Italian Style (Vittorio De Sica, 1964) with Loren as the hooker who lures Mastroianni into marriage.
After several miscarriages and a highly-publicized struggle to become pregnant, Sophia Loren gave birth to her son Hubert Leoni Carlo Ponti in 1968. She started to work less and moved into her 40s and 50s with roles in films like De Sica's war drama I Girasoli/The Sunflowers (Vittorio De Sica, 1972), Il Viaggio/The Voyage (Vittorio De Sica, 1974) opposite Richard Burton, and reuniting with Marcello Mastroianni in the mob comedy La Pupa del Gangster/Get Rita (Giorgio Capitani, 1975). An artistic highlight was Una giornata particolare/A Special Day (Ettore Scola, 1977) which earned a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film. Loren played a bored housewife on the day of the first meeting between Mussolini and Hitler. Left alone in her tenement home when her fascist husband runs off to attend the historic event, Loren strikes up a friendship with her homosexual neighbour (Marcello Mastroianni). As the day segues into night, Loren and Mastroianni develop a very special relationship that will radically alter both of their outlooks on life. When a dubbed version of Una giornata particolare/A Special Day found favour with American audiences, Hollywood again came calling, resulting in a pair of thrillers, The Brass Target (John Hough, 1978) and Firepower (Michael Winner, 1979) which offered her a central role as a widow seeking answers in the murder of her chemist husband. In 1980, Loren portrayed herself, as well as her mother, in Sophia Loren: Her Own Story (Mel Stuart, 1980), a made-for-television biopic adaptation of her autobiography. Actresses Ritza Brown and Chiara Ferrari played Loren at younger ages. She made headlines in 1982 when she served an 18-day prison sentence in Italy on tax evasion charges, a fact that didn't damage her career or popularity. In her 60s, Loren ventured into various areas of business, including cookbooks, eyewear, jewellery, and perfume. In honour of her lengthy career, Loren was the recipient of a special Oscar in 1991. She also made well-received appearances in her final film with Mastroianni, Prêt-à-Porter/Ready to Wear (1994), Robert Altman's take on the French fashion scene, and in the comedy hit Grumpier Old Men (Howard Deutch, 1995) playing a femme fatale opposite Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon. In 1995 she received the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award. At the age of 72, she appeared scantily clad in the 2007 edition of the famous calendar of Italian racing tire giant Pirelli. It made her the oldest model in the calendar's history. The photos by Dutch photographers Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin proved that she was still a major international sex symbol. In 2007 Carlo Ponti died. It had been controversial in her native Italy when Sophia Loren had married her mentor Ponti in 1957. Not only was he 45 to her 23, but he had been married previously, and neither the Catholic Church nor the Italian government recognised his Mexican divorce. Ponti was charged with bigamy, but the charges were dropped when they had their marriage annulled. They continued living together - scandalous at the time - and remarried after his legal problems had been cleared. Ponti and Loren made three dozen films together. They had two children, symphony conductor Carlo Ponti Jr. and film director Edoardo Ponti. After four years off the big screen, Sophia Loren co-starred in a film version of the Broadway musical Nine (Rob Marshall, 2009). She played the mother of famous film director Guido Contini, portrayed by Daniel Day-Lewis. According to Jason Ankeny at AllMovie, "Loren proved she still had movie star charisma with a role in Chicago director Rob Marshall's Nine - a lavish tribute to all things Italian." Loren made a two-part television biopic of her early life titled La Mia Casa È Piena di Specchi/My House Is Full of Mirrors (Vittorio Sindoni, 2010), based on of the memoir written by her sister Maria Scicolone. At 80, Sophia Loren returned to the screen in Human Voice (2014) directed by her son Edoardo Ponti. At the presentation at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York, 'the timeless beauty' stunned the press once again when she walked on the red carpet in a chic red pantsuit hand-in-hand with her 41-year-old son to promote the short film. Human Voice is based on the play by iconic French playwright Jean Cocteau and sees La Loren play a woman in her twilight years facing revelations from her past. In late 2014, she also presented her first memoir, Ieri, oggi, domani. La mia vita/Today and Tomorrow: My Life as a Fairy Tale. It includes old pictures, letters, and notes detailing encounters with Cary Grant and other film partners.
Sources: Jason Ankeny (AllMovie), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Shyam Dodge (Daily Mail), Jenny (IMDb), Wikipedia, NNDB, TCM, and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin, no. 516. Sophia Loren in Heller in Pink Tights (George Cukor, 1960).
Sophia Loren (1934) rose to fame in post-war Italy as a voluptuous sex goddess. Soon after, she became one of the most successful stars of the 20th Century, who won an Oscar for her mother role in La ciociara (Vittorio De Sica, 1960).
Sophia Loren was born Sofia Villani Scicolone in the charity ward of a Roman hospital in 1934. She was the illegitimate daughter of construction engineer Riccardo Scicolone and piano teacher and aspiring actress Romilda Villani. Riccardo was married to another woman and refused to marry Romilda, leaving her without support. Romilda, Sofia, and sister Maria returned to Pozzuoli to live with Sofia's grandmother. Pozzuoli was a small town outside Naples and one of the hardest hit during World War II. The family shared a two-room apartment with the grandmother and several aunts and uncles. The shy, stick-thin girl regularly went hungry and had to flee from bombings. At 14, Sofia had a voluptuous figure and entered a beauty contest. She was selected as one of the finalists but did not win. In 1950, she was one of the contestants in the Miss Italia competition. She earned 2nd place and was awarded ‘Miss Eleganza’. While attending the Miss Rome beauty contest, earlier in 1950, she had met judge Carlo Ponti, an up-and-coming film producer, 22 years her senior. Ponti had helped launch Gina Lollobrigida's career and now began grooming Sofia for stardom. He hired an acting coach to tutor her. At 16 she was in her first film, the Totó comedy Le Sei Mogli di Barbablù/Bluebeard’s Six Wives (Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia, 1950) under the name Sofia Lazzaro. She also appeared as an extra in Luci del varietà/Lights of the Variety (Federico Fellini, 1950), the smash hit Anna (Alberto Lattuada, 1951), and Quo Vadis (Mervyn Leroy, 1951). During the early 1950s, she secured work modelling for fumetti magazines. These comic-like magazines used actual photographs. The dialogue bubbles were called 'fumetti' - hence the popular name. At 17, she was cast by Ponti in her first larger role as the commoner who caught the prince's eye in the filmed opera La Favorita/The Favorite (Cesare Barlacchi, 1952). The next year she earned third billing after Silvana Pampanini and Eleanora Rossi-Drago in La Tratta Delle Bianche/The White Slave Trade (Luigi Comencini, 1953) and she played, complete with blackface and an Afro, the lead in another filmed opera, Aida (Clemente Fracassi, 1953) by Giuseppe Verdi. Her singing was dubbed by Renata Tebaldi. Ponti eventually changed her name to Sophia Loren.
Sophia Loren appeared for the first time with Marcello Mastroianni in the romantic comedy Peccato che sia una canaglia/Too Bad She's Bad (Alessandro Blasetti, 1954). They would make 13 films together, including Tempi nostri/A Slice of Life (Alessandro Blasetti, Paul Paviot, 1954), La bella mugnaia/The Miller's Wife (Mario Camerini, 1955), and La fortuna di essere donna/What A Woman (Alessandro Blasetti, 1956). L'Oro di Napoli/Gold of Naples (Vittorio de Sica, 1954), an anthology of tales depicting various aspects of Neapolitan life, was distributed internationally. At AllMovie, Jason Ankeny writes that in reviews "Loren was singled out for the strength of her performance as a Neapolitan shopkeeper, surprising many critics who had dismissed her as merely another bombshell". The film established her persona as a sensuous working-class earth mother. It also began a fruitful, career-long collaboration with De Sica. Sophia’s first film to find international success was La Donna del Fiume/The River Girl (Mario Soldati, 1955), in which she danced sensually the Mambo Bacan. Hal Erickson at AllMovie: "Through it all, Sophia Loren looks like a million lire - and she even gets to sing and dance!". She came to the attention of Stanley Kramer who offered her the female lead in The Pride And The Passion (Stanley Kramer, 1957) opposite Cary Grant and Frank Sinatra. Sophia played a Spanish peasant girl involved in an uprising against the French. This was the turning point in her career, and the film proved to be one of the top US box office successes of the year. Her next English-language film was Boy on a Dolphin (Jean Negulesco, 1957) with Alan Ladd, where she was memorable mostly for emerging from the water in a wet, skin-tight, transparent dress. With her va-va-va-voom image, she became an international film star and got a five-picture contract with Paramount Pictures. Among her Paramount films were Desire Under the Elms (Delbert Mann, 1958) with Anthony Perkins and based upon the Eugene O'Neill play, Houseboat (Melville Shavelson, 1958), a romantic comedy co-starring Cary Grant, and the Western Heller in Pink Tights (George Cukor, 1960) in which she appeared for the first time with blonde hair (a wig). Most of these films were received lukewarmly at best.
In 1960 Sophia Loren returned to Italy to star in the biggest success of her career, La Ciociara/Two Women (Vittorio De Sica, 1960). She played a widow desperately trying to protect her daughter from danger during WW II, only to end up in a destructive love triangle with a young radical (Jean-Paul Belmondo). Hal Erickson at AllMovie: "A last-minute replacement for Anna Magnani, Sophia Loren brought hitherto untapped depths of emotion to her performance in Two Women; she later stated that she was utilizing 'sensory recall,' dredging up memories of her own wartime experiences." Loren won the Best Actress Oscar for her performance, and also the Cannes, Venice ánd Berlin Film Festivals' best performance prizes. Next, she played in Spain Samuel Bronston's epic production of El Cid (Anthony Mann, 1961) with Charlton Heston, followed by the De Sica episode of the anthology Boccaccio '70 (Vittorio De Sica, Federico Fellini, Luchino Visconti, 1962). On the strength of her Oscar win, she also returned to English-language fare with Five Miles to Midnight (Anatole Litvak, 1963), followed a year later by The Fall of the Roman Empire (Anthony Mann, 1964), for which she received $1 million. Among Loren's other films of this period are The Millionairess (Anthony Asquith, 1960) with Peter Sellers, It Started in Naples (Melville Shavelson, 1960) with Clark Gable, Lady L (Peter Ustinov, 1965) with Paul Newman, Arabesque (Stanley Donen, 1966) with Gregory Peck, and Charlie Chaplin's final film, A Countess from Hong Kong (1967) with Marlon Brando. Despite the failure of many of her films to generate sales at the box office, she invariably turned in a charming performance and she wore some of the most lavish costumes ever created for the cinema. Her best Italian films include the triptych Ieri, oggi, domani/Yesterday, Today And Tomorrow (Vittorio De Sica, 1963), a comedy that poked fun at a Catholic priest and gently mocked the Italian law on birth control, and Matrimonio all' Italiana/Marriage Italian Style (Vittorio De Sica, 1964) with Loren as the hooker who lures Mastroianni into marriage.
After several miscarriages and a highly-publicized struggle to become pregnant, Sophia Loren gave birth to her son Hubert Leoni Carlo Ponti in 1968. She started to work less and moved into her 40s and 50s with roles in films like De Sica's war drama I Girasoli/The Sunflowers (Vittorio De Sica, 1972), Il Viaggio/The Voyage (Vittorio De Sica, 1974) opposite Richard Burton, and reuniting with Marcello Mastroianni in the mob comedy La Pupa del Gangster/Get Rita (Giorgio Capitani, 1975). An artistic highlight was Una giornata particolare/A Special Day (Ettore Scola, 1977) which earned a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film. Loren played a bored housewife on the day of the first meeting between Mussolini and Hitler. Left alone in her tenement home when her fascist husband runs off to attend the historic event, Loren strikes up a friendship with her homosexual neighbour (Marcello Mastroianni). As the day segues into night, Loren and Mastroianni develop a very special relationship that will radically alter both of their outlooks on life. When a dubbed version of Una giornata particolare/A Special Day found favour with American audiences, Hollywood again came calling, resulting in a pair of thrillers, The Brass Target (John Hough, 1978) and Firepower (Michael Winner, 1979) which offered her a central role as a widow seeking answers in the murder of her chemist husband. In 1980, Loren portrayed herself, as well as her mother, in Sophia Loren: Her Own Story (Mel Stuart, 1980), a made-for-television biopic adaptation of her autobiography. Actresses Ritza Brown and Chiara Ferrari played Loren at younger ages. She made headlines in 1982 when she served an 18-day prison sentence in Italy on tax evasion charges, a fact that didn't damage her career or popularity. In her 60s, Loren ventured into various areas of business, including cookbooks, eyewear, jewellery, and perfume. In honour of her lengthy career, Loren was the recipient of a special Oscar in 1991. She also made well-received appearances in her final film with Mastroianni, Prêt-à-Porter/Ready to Wear (1994), Robert Altman's take on the French fashion scene, and in the comedy hit Grumpier Old Men (Howard Deutch, 1995) playing a femme fatale opposite Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon. In 1995 she received the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award. At the age of 72, she appeared scantily clad in the 2007 edition of the famous calendar of Italian racing tire giant Pirelli. It made her the oldest model in the calendar's history. The photos by Dutch photographers Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin proved that she was still a major international sex symbol. In 2007 Carlo Ponti died. It had been controversial in her native Italy when Sophia Loren had married her mentor Ponti in 1957. Not only was he 45 to her 23, but he had been married previously, and neither the Catholic Church nor the Italian government recognised his Mexican divorce. Ponti was charged with bigamy, but the charges were dropped when they had their marriage annulled. They continued living together - scandalous at the time - and remarried after his legal problems had been cleared. Ponti and Loren made three dozen films together. They had two children, symphony conductor Carlo Ponti Jr. and film director Edoardo Ponti. After four years off the big screen, Sophia Loren co-starred in a film version of the Broadway musical Nine (Rob Marshall, 2009). She played the mother of famous film director Guido Contini, portrayed by Daniel Day-Lewis. According to Jason Ankeny at AllMovie, "Loren proved she still had movie star charisma with a role in Chicago director Rob Marshall's Nine - a lavish tribute to all things Italian." Loren made a two-part television biopic of her early life titled La Mia Casa È Piena di Specchi/My House Is Full of Mirrors (Vittorio Sindoni, 2010), based on of the memoir written by her sister Maria Scicolone. At 80, Sophia Loren returned to the screen in Human Voice (2014) directed by her son Edoardo Ponti. At the presentation at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York, 'the timeless beauty' stunned the press once again when she walked on the red carpet in a chic red pantsuit hand-in-hand with her 41-year-old son to promote the short film. Human Voice is based on the play by iconic French playwright Jean Cocteau and sees La Loren play a woman in her twilight years facing revelations from her past. In late 2014, she also presented her first memoir, Ieri, oggi, domani. La mia vita/Today and Tomorrow: My Life as a Fairy Tale. It includes old pictures, letters, and notes detailing encounters with Cary Grant and other film partners. In 2020, Sophia Loren returned to cinema after an 11-year absence. At the age of 86, she played a Jewish Holocaust survivor who befriends a 12-year-old Senegalese orphan in the Netflix film La vita davanti a sé/The Life Ahead, directed by her son Edoardo Ponti. The film is based on the novel 'La vie devant soi' by French author Romain Gary.
Sources: Jason Ankeny (AllMovie), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Shyam Dodge (Daily Mail), Jenny (IMDb), Wikipedia, NNDB, TCM, and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Belgian postcard by Edit. Decker, Brussels, no. P.U. 51. Raquel Welch in The Biggest Bundle of Them All (Ken Annakin, 1968).
Today, 15 February 2023, American actress and sex symbol Raquel Welch (1940) has died at the age of 82 after a short illness. She was one of the icons of the 1960s and 1970s. Welch first won attention for her role in Fantastic Voyage (1966). In Great Britain, she then made One Million Years B.C. (1966). Although she had only three lines in the film, a poster of Welch in a furry prehistoric bikini became an amazing bestseller and catapulted her to stardom.
Raquel Welch was born Jo Raquel Tejada in 1940 in Chicago, Illinois. She was the first of three children born to Bolivian Armando Carlos Tejada Urquizo, an aerospace engineer, and his Irish-American wife Josephine Sarah Hall, who was the daughter of American architect Emery Stanford Hall. At age 14, Raquel won her first beauty title as Miss Photogenic. She graduated from high school in 1958 and a year later, after becoming pregnant, she married her high school sweetheart, James Welch. Seeking an acting career, Welch won a scholarship in drama, took classes at San Diego State College and won several parts in local theatre productions. She got a job as a weather forecaster at KFMB, a local San Diego television station. After her separation from James Welch, she moved with her two children to Dallas, Texas, where she worked as a model for Neiman Marcus and as a cocktail waitress. In 1963, she went to California, where she met former child star and Hollywood agent Patrick Curtis who became her personal and business manager and second husband. They developed a plan to turn Welch into a sex symbol. After small roles in a few films and TV series, she had her first featured role in the beach film A Swingin' Summer (Robert Sparr, 1965). She landed a seven-year nonexclusive contract at 20th Century Fox and was cast in a leading role in the sci-fi film Fantastic Voyage (Richard Fleischer, 1966) opposite Stephen Boyd. Welch portrayed a member of a medical team that is miniaturized and injected into the body of an injured diplomat with the mission to save his life. The film was a hit and made her a well-known name. Fox Studio loaned her to Hammer Studios in Britain where she starred in One Million Years B.C. (Don Chaffey, 1966). Her only costume was a two-piece deer skin bikini. Gary Brumburgh at IMDb: "Tantalizingly wet with her garb clinging to all the right amazonian places, One Million Years B.C. (1966), if nothing else, captured the hearts and libidos of modern men (not to mention their teenage sons) while producing THE most definitive and best-selling pin-up poster of that time."
Raquel Welch stayed in Europe for the French comedy Le Plus Vieux Métier du monde/The Oldest Profession (Michael Pfleghar a.o., 1967), a typical European anthology film of the 1960s. A collection of sketches on prostitution through the ages, made by a pan-European cast and crew. Some of the most sensual stars of the era played the leads: Michèle Mercier, Elsa Martinelli, Anna Karina, Nadia Gray, Jeanne Moreau and Welch. She played Nini in the episode La belle époque/The Gay Nineties by German director Michael Pfleghar. When Nini discovers by accident that her antiquated customer (Martin Held) is a banker, she pretends to be an honest woman who has fallen in love with him. She even pays him, just like a gigolo! Varlaam at IMDb: "Raquel Welch stars in the most amusing episode, relatively speaking. It's apparently set in the 1890s Vienna (Emperor Franz Josef is on the paper money). One could probably say that Raquel's greatest classic role was as the injured party in the Cannery Row lawsuit. Finely nuanced she was not, normally. But she makes an appealing light comedienne here, and she can really fill a lacy Viennese corset. The Belle Époque it assuredly was." Next, she appeared in the British seven-deadly-sins comedy Bedazzled (Stanley Donen, 1967). She played the deadly sin representing 'lust' for the comedy team of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. In Britain, she was also the title secret agent in the sexy spy spoof Fathom (Leslie H. Martinson, 1967). In Italy, she starred with Monica Vitti and Claudia Cardinale in Le Fate/The Queens (Mauro Bolognini, 1966) and with Edward G. Robinson and Vittorio de Sica in The Biggest Bundle of Them All (Ken Annakin, 1968). Back in the United States, she appeared in the Western Bandolero! (Andrew V. McLaglen, 1968) with James Stewart and Dean Martin, which was followed by the private-eye drama Lady in Cement (Gordon Douglas, 1968) with Frank Sinatra. She caused quite a stir in her ground-breaking sex scenes with black athlete Jim Brown in the Western 100 Rifles (Tom Gries, 1969).
Raquel Welch's most controversial role came in the comedy Myra Breckinridge (Michael Sarne, 1970), based on Gore Vidal's 1968 novel. She took the part of the film's transsexual heroine in an attempt to be taken seriously as an actress. The picture was controversial for its sexual explicitness, but unlike the novel, Myra Breckinridge received little to no critical praise. It is cited in the book The Fifty Worst Films of All Time. Jason Ankeny at AllMovie: "Her situation was unusual; she was certainly a star and a household name, yet few people ever went to see her movies." Welch took a measure of control over her screen persona, producing and starring in Hannie Calder (Burt Kennedy, 1971), the first film in which she carved out a place in movie history portraying strong female characters and breaking the mould of the submissive sex symbol. She altered the image further with Kansas City Bomber (Jerrold Freedman, 1972), insisting on doing her own stunts as good-hearted roller derby star Diane 'KC' Carr. She followed that with a series of successful films in Europe that included the thriller Bluebeard (Edward Dmytryk, 1972) starring Richard Burton, the swashbuckler The Three Musketeers (Richard Lester, 1973) - for which she won a Golden Globe, the sequel The Four Musketeers (Richard Lester, 1974) both with Oliver Reed and Michael York, and The Wild Party (James Ivory, 1975). A big hit in Europe was the French action-comedy L'Animal/Animal (Claude Zidi, 1977) starring Jean-Paul Belmondo. Raquel Welch's unique persona on film made her one of the reigning icons of the 1960s and 1970s. Later, she made several television variety specials. In 1980, Welch planned on making a comeback in an adaptation of John Steinbeck's Cannery Row (David S. Ward, 1982), but was fired by the producers a few days into production. The producers said that at 40 years old she was too old to play the character. She was replaced with Debra Winger. Welch sued and collected a $10.8 million settlement. She starred on Broadway in Woman of the Year, receiving praise for following Lauren Bacall in the title role. She also starred in Victor/Victoria, having less success. In 1995, Welch was chosen by Empire Magazine as one of the 100 Sexiest Stars in Film History.
Sources: Jason Ankeny (AllMovie), Gary Brumburgh (IMDb), David Carless (IMDb), Bob Taylor (IMDb), Varlaam (IMDb), TCM, Wikipedia, and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
British postcard by Film Weekly. Photo: Warner Bros. Publicity still for 42nd Street (Lloyd Bacon, 1933). with George Brent, Bebe Daniels and Warren Baxter.
Bebe Daniels (1901-1971) was an American actress, singer, dancer, writer and producer. She began her career in Hollywood during the silent film era as a child actress and later the love interest of Harold Lloyd in dozens of short comedies. Cecil B. de Mille made her a silent star and later she sang and danced in early musicals like Rio Rita (1929) and 42nd Street (1933). In Great Britain, she gained further fame on stage, radio and television. In her long career, Bebe Daniels appeared in 230 films.
Phyllis Virginia Daniels was born in Dallas, Texas, in 1901. Bebe was her childhood nickname. Her father was a theatre manager and her mother was stage and silent film actress Phyllis Daniels. The family moved to Los Angeles, California in her childhood and she began her acting career at the age of four in the stage play The Squaw Man. That same year she also went on tour in a stage production of William Shakespeare's Richard III. The following year she participated in productions by Oliver Morosco and David Belasco. By the age of eight Daniels made her film debut as the young heroine in A Common Enemy (Otis Turner, 1910). Then she starred as Dorothy Gale in the short The Wonderful Wizard of Oz (Otis Turner, 1910), the earliest surviving film version of L. Frank Baum's 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, was made by the Selig Polyscope Company. It was later followed by the sequels Dorothy and the Scarecrow in Oz (1910), The Land of Oz (1910) and John Dough and the Cherub (1910), all considered to be lost films. At the age of fourteen Bebe was enlisted by studio head Hal Roach to pair her with very young and talented Harold Lloyd and also Snub Pollard in a series of two-reel comedies starting with Giving Them Fits (Hal Roach, 1915). At the time, Harold Lloyd was trying to ape Charlie Chaplin in his character, 'Lonesome Luke'. Roach made 80 short comedies featuring Harold as Luke with Bebe playing his love interest between 1915 and 1917, including Bughouse Bellhops (Hal Roach, 1915), Tinkering with Trouble (Hal Roach, 1915) and Ruses, Rhymes and Roughnecks (Hal Roach, 1915). Lloyd and the charming and spunky Daniels eventually became known as ‘The Boy and The Girl’ in such shorts as Bliss (Alfred J. Goulding, 1917), The Non-stop Kid (Gilbert Pratt, 1918) and Young Mr. Jazz (Hal Roach, 1919). Stephan Eichenberg at IMDb: “Lloyd fell hard for Bebe and seriously considered marrying her, but her drive to pursue a film career along with her sense of independence clashed with Lloyd's Victorian definition of a wife.” After 200 shorts for Hal Roach Studios. Bebe decided to move to greater dramatic roles and accepted a contract from Cecil B. DeMille in 1919. He gave her secondary roles in such feature films as Male and Female (Cecil B. DeMille, 1919) starring Gloria Swanson, Why Change Your Wife? (Cecil B. DeMille, 1920), and The Affairs of Anatol (Cecil B. DeMille, 1921), with Wallace Reid.
In the 1920s, Bebe Daniels was under contract with Paramount Pictures and made the transition from child star to adult in Hollywood. The now-lost comedy The Speed Girl (Maurice Campbell, 1921) was supposedly expanded into a screenplay from Daniels's real-life jail sentence of 10 days for multiple speeding tickets. The film poster shows her walking out of a jail cell. At the time the 20-year-old was already a veteran film actress. By 1924 Bebe was playing Rudolph Valentino’s love interest in the costume drama Monsieur Beaucaire (Sidney Olcott, 1924). Paramount spared no expense on the film from the sets, and costumes down to the musical soundtrack that accompanied it upon its release. Following this she was cast in several light popular films, namely Miss Bluebeard (Frank Tuttle, 1925), The Manicure Girl (Frank Tuttle, 1925), and Wild Wild Susan (A. Edward Sutherland, 1925) with Rod LaRocque. Paramount dropped her contract with the advent of talking pictures. Daniels was hired by Radio Pictures (later known as RKO) to star opposite John Boles in one of their biggest productions of the year, the talkie Rio Rita (Luther Reed, 1929). Its finale was photographed in a two-color Technicolor. The musical comedy, based on the 1927 stage musical produced by legendary showman Florenz Ziegfeld, proved to be the studio's biggest box office hit until King Kong (1933). Daniels found herself a star and RCA Victor hired her to record several records for their catalogue. Radio Pictures starred her in lavish musicals such as Dixiana (Luther Reed, 1930) and Love Comes Along (Rupert Julian, 1930). Toward the end of 1930, Bebe Daniels appeared opposite Douglas Fairbanks in the musical comedy Reaching for the Moon (Edmund Goulding, 1930). However, by this time musicals had gone out of fashion so most of the musical numbers from the film had to be removed before it could be released. Daniels had become associated with musicals so Radio Pictures did not renew her contract. Warner Bros. realized what a box office draw she was and offered her a contract which she accepted. During her years at Warner Bros., she starred in such pictures as the drama My Past (Roy Del Ruth, 1931), Honor of the Family (Lloyd Bacon, 1931) and the pre-code version of The Maltese Falcon (Roy Del Ruth, 1931), based on the novel of the same name by Dashiell Hammett and with Ricardo Cortez as Sam Spade. The Maltese Falcon was a huge success for Warner and garnered rave reviews for Bebe and Cortez. In 1932, she appeared opposite Edward G. Robinson in Silver Dollar (Alfred E. Green, 1932) and the successful Busby Berkeley choreographed musical extravaganza 42nd Street (Lloyd Bacon, 1933) in which she played the star of a stage musical who breaks her ankle. The backstage musical was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture. That same year Daniels played opposite John Barrymore in the enjoyable Counsellor at Law (William Wyler, 1933). The film was another box office smash. Her last film for Warner Bros. was Registered Nurse (Robert Florey, 1934).
Bebe Daniels retired from Hollywood in 1935. She had been a working actress for 30 years. With her husband, film actor Ben Lyon, whom she had married in 1930, she moved to London. Daniels and Lyon had two children: a daughter Barbara (1932) and a son Richard whom they adopted. In England, they had found a quiet place in the countryside to raise their family. They starred in the British comedy crime film Treachery on the High Seas (Emil E. Reinert, 1936) with Charles Farrell. They also wanted to go back to the theatre. A few years later, Daniels starred in the London production of Panama Hattie in the title role originated by Ethel Merman. The Lyons then did radio shows for the BBC. Most notably, they starred in the radio series Hi Gang!, continuing for decades and enjoying considerable popularity during World War II. Daniels wrote most of the dialogue for the Hi Gang radio show. There was also the spin-off film Hi Gang! (Marcel Varnel, 1941) in which they starred opposite Vic Oliver). The couple stayed in London, broadcasting even during the worst days of The Blitz of WWII. Ben signed up for the Royal Air Force while Bebe kept the home fires burning in between appearing in the occasional stage play. Following the war, Daniels was awarded the Medal of Freedom by Harry S Truman for war service. In 1945 she returned to Hollywood for a short time to work as a film producer for Hal Roach and Eagle-Lion Films. She returned to the UK in 1948 and lived there for the remainder of her life. Daniels, her husband, her son Richard and her daughter Barbara all starred in the radio sitcom Life With The Lyons (1951-1961), which later made the transition to two films and television (1955-1960). Daniels’ final film The Lyons in Paris (Val Guest, 1955). Bebe Daniels suffered a severe stroke in 1963 and withdrew from public life. She suffered a second stroke in late 1970. In 1971, Daniels died of a cerebral haemorrhage in London at the age of 70. Her ashes would eventually be interred at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood California. Upon his death in 1979, Ben Lyon's remains were interred next to Daniels'.
Sources: Stephan Eichenberg (IMDb), Page (My Love of Old Hollywood), Shawn Dwyer (TCM), Wikipedia, and IMDb.
George Brent, born George Brendan Nolan (Ballinasloe, 15 March 1904,- Solana Beach, 26 May 1979) was an Irish actor who was mainly active in American cinema in the 1930s and 1940s. He was paired eleven times with Bette Davis, e.g. in Jezebel and Dark Victory.
East-German postcard VEB Progress Film-Vertrieb, Berlin, no. 2373, 1965. Sophia Loren in Boccaccio '70 (Vittorio De Sica, Federico Fellini, Luchino Visconti, 1962).
Sophia Loren (1934) rose to fame in post-war Italy as a voluptuous sex goddess. Soon after, she became one of the most successful stars of the 20th Century, who won an Oscar for her mother role in La ciociara (Vittorio De Sica, 1960).
Sophia Loren was born Sofia Villani Scicolone in the charity ward of a Roman hospital in 1934. She was the illegitimate daughter of construction engineer Riccardo Scicolone and piano teacher and aspiring actress Romilda Villani. Riccardo was married to another woman and refused to marry Romilda, leaving her without support. Romilda, Sofia, and sister Maria returned to Pozzuoli to live with Sofia's grandmother. Pozzuoli was a small town outside Naples and one of the hardest hit during World War II. The family shared a two-room apartment with the grandmother and several aunts and uncles. The shy, stick-thin girl regularly went hungry and had to flee from bombings. At 14, Sofia had a voluptuous figure and entered a beauty contest. She was selected as one of the finalists but did not win. In 1950, she was one of the contestants in the Miss Italia competition. She earned 2nd place and was awarded ‘Miss Eleganza’. While attending the Miss Rome beauty contest, earlier in 1950, she had met judge Carlo Ponti, an up-and-coming film producer, 22 years her senior. Ponti had helped launch Gina Lollobrigida's career and now began grooming Sofia for stardom. He hired an acting coach to tutor her. At 16 she was in her first film, the Totó comedy Le Sei Mogli di Barbablù/Bluebeard’s Six Wives (Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia, 1950) under the name Sofia Lazzaro. She also appeared as an extra in Luci del varietà/Lights of the Variety (Federico Fellini, 1950), the smash hit Anna (Alberto Lattuada, 1951), and Quo Vadis (Mervyn Leroy, 1951). During the early 1950s, she secured work modelling for fumetti magazines. These comic-like magazines used actual photographs. The dialogue bubbles were called 'fumetti' - hence the popular name. At 17, she was cast by Ponti in her first larger role as the commoner who caught the prince's eye in the filmed opera La Favorita/The Favorite (Cesare Barlacchi, 1952). The next year she earned third billing after Silvana Pampanini and Eleanora Rossi-Drago in La Tratta Delle Bianche/The White Slave Trade (Luigi Comencini, 1953) and she played, complete with blackface and an Afro, the lead in another filmed opera, Aida (Clemente Fracassi, 1953) by Giuseppe Verdi. Her singing was dubbed by Renata Tebaldi. Ponti eventually changed her name to Sophia Loren.
Sophia Loren appeared for the first time with Marcello Mastroianni in the romantic comedy Peccato che sia una canaglia/Too Bad She's Bad (Alessandro Blasetti, 1954). They would make 13 films together, including Tempi nostri/A Slice of Life (Alessandro Blasetti, Paul Paviot, 1954), La bella mugnaia/The Miller's Wife (Mario Camerini, 1955), and La fortuna di essere donna/What A Woman (Alessandro Blasetti, 1956). L'Oro di Napoli/Gold of Naples (Vittorio de Sica, 1954), an anthology of tales depicting various aspects of Neapolitan life, was distributed internationally. At AllMovie, Jason Ankeny writes that in reviews "Loren was singled out for the strength of her performance as a Neapolitan shopkeeper, surprising many critics who had dismissed her as merely another bombshell". The film established her persona as a sensuous working-class earth mother. It also began a fruitful, career-long collaboration with De Sica. Sophia’s first film to find international success was La Donna del Fiume/The River Girl (Mario Soldati, 1955), in which she danced sensually the Mambo Bacan. Hal Erickson at AllMovie: "Through it all, Sophia Loren looks like a million lire - and she even gets to sing and dance!". She came to the attention of Stanley Kramer who offered her the female lead in The Pride And The Passion (Stanley Kramer, 1957) opposite Cary Grant and Frank Sinatra. Sophia played a Spanish peasant girl involved in an uprising against the French. This was the turning point in her career, and the film proved to be one of the top US box office successes of the year. Her next English-language film was Boy on a Dolphin (Jean Negulesco, 1957) with Alan Ladd, where she was memorable mostly for emerging from the water in a wet, skin-tight, transparent dress. With her va-va-va-voom image, she became an international film star and got a five-picture contract with Paramount Pictures. Among her Paramount films were Desire Under the Elms (Delbert Mann, 1958) with Anthony Perkins and based upon the Eugene O'Neill play, Houseboat (Melville Shavelson, 1958), a romantic comedy co-starring Cary Grant, and the Western Heller in Pink Tights (George Cukor, 1960) in which she appeared for the first time with blonde hair (a wig). Most of these films were received lukewarmly at best.
In 1960 Sophia Loren returned to Italy to star in the biggest success of her career, La Ciociara/Two Women (Vittorio De Sica, 1960). She played a widow desperately trying to protect her daughter from danger during WW II, only to end up in a destructive love triangle with a young radical (Jean-Paul Belmondo). Hal Erickson at AllMovie: "A last-minute replacement for Anna Magnani, Sophia Loren brought hitherto untapped depths of emotion to her performance in Two Women; she later stated that she was utilizing 'sensory recall,' dredging up memories of her own wartime experiences." Loren won the Best Actress Oscar for her performance, and also the Cannes, Venice ánd Berlin Film Festivals' best performance prizes. Next, she played in Spain Samuel Bronston's epic production of El Cid (Anthony Mann, 1961) with Charlton Heston, followed by the De Sica episode of the anthology Boccaccio '70 (Vittorio De Sica, Federico Fellini, Luchino Visconti, 1962). On the strength of her Oscar win, she also returned to English-language fare with Five Miles to Midnight (Anatole Litvak, 1963), followed a year later by The Fall of the Roman Empire (Anthony Mann, 1964), for which she received $1 million. Among Loren's other films of this period are The Millionairess (Anthony Asquith, 1960) with Peter Sellers, It Started in Naples (Melville Shavelson, 1960) with Clark Gable, Lady L (Peter Ustinov, 1965) with Paul Newman, Arabesque (Stanley Donen, 1966) with Gregory Peck, and Charlie Chaplin's final film, A Countess from Hong Kong (1967) with Marlon Brando. Despite the failure of many of her films to generate sales at the box office, she invariably turned in a charming performance and she wore some of the most lavish costumes ever created for the cinema. Her best Italian films include the triptych Ieri, oggi, domani/Yesterday, Today And Tomorrow (Vittorio De Sica, 1963), a comedy that poked fun at a Catholic priest and gently mocked the Italian law on birth control, and Matrimonio all' Italiana/Marriage Italian Style (Vittorio De Sica, 1964) with Loren as the hooker who lures Mastroianni into marriage.
After several miscarriages and a highly-publicized struggle to become pregnant, Sophia Loren gave birth to her son Hubert Leoni Carlo Ponti in 1968. She started to work less and moved into her 40s and 50s with roles in films like De Sica's war drama I Girasoli/The Sunflowers (Vittorio De Sica, 1972), Il Viaggio/The Voyage (Vittorio De Sica, 1974) opposite Richard Burton, and reuniting with Marcello Mastroianni in the mob comedy La Pupa del Gangster/Get Rita (Giorgio Capitani, 1975). An artistic highlight was Una giornata particolare/A Special Day (Ettore Scola, 1977) which earned a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film. Loren played a bored housewife on the day of the first meeting between Mussolini and Hitler. Left alone in her tenement home when her fascist husband runs off to attend the historic event, Loren strikes up a friendship with her homosexual neighbour (Marcello Mastroianni). As the day segues into night, Loren and Mastroianni develop a very special relationship that will radically alter both of their outlooks on life. When a dubbed version of Una giornata particolare/A Special Day found favour with American audiences, Hollywood again came calling, resulting in a pair of thrillers, The Brass Target (John Hough, 1978) and Firepower (Michael Winner, 1979) which offered her a central role as a widow seeking answers in the murder of her chemist husband. In 1980, Loren portrayed herself, as well as her mother, in Sophia Loren: Her Own Story (Mel Stuart, 1980), a made-for-television biopic adaptation of her autobiography. Actresses Ritza Brown and Chiara Ferrari played Loren at younger ages. She made headlines in 1982 when she served an 18-day prison sentence in Italy on tax evasion charges, a fact that didn't damage her career or popularity. In her 60s, Loren ventured into various areas of business, including cookbooks, eyewear, jewellery, and perfume. In honour of her lengthy career, Loren was the recipient of a special Oscar in 1991. She also made well-received appearances in her final film with Mastroianni, Prêt-à-Porter/Ready to Wear (1994), Robert Altman's take on the French fashion scene, and in the comedy hit Grumpier Old Men (Howard Deutch, 1995) playing a femme fatale opposite Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon. In 1995 she received the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award. At the age of 72, she appeared scantily clad in the 2007 edition of the famous calendar of Italian racing tire giant Pirelli. It made her the oldest model in the calendar's history. The photos by Dutch photographers Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin proved that she was still a major international sex symbol. In 2007 Carlo Ponti died. It had been controversial in her native Italy when Sophia Loren had married her mentor Ponti in 1957. Not only was he 45 to her 23, but he had been married previously, and neither the Catholic Church nor the Italian government recognised his Mexican divorce. Ponti was charged with bigamy, but the charges were dropped when they had their marriage annulled. They continued living together - scandalous at the time - and remarried after his legal problems had been cleared. Ponti and Loren made three dozen films together. They had two children, symphony conductor Carlo Ponti Jr. and film director Edoardo Ponti. After four years off the big screen, Sophia Loren co-starred in a film version of the Broadway musical Nine (Rob Marshall, 2009). She played the mother of famous film director Guido Contini, portrayed by Daniel Day-Lewis. According to Jason Ankeny at AllMovie, "Loren proved she still had movie star charisma with a role in Chicago director Rob Marshall's Nine - a lavish tribute to all things Italian." Loren made a two-part television biopic of her early life titled La Mia Casa È Piena di Specchi/My House Is Full of Mirrors (Vittorio Sindoni, 2010), based on of the memoir written by her sister Maria Scicolone. At 80, Sophia Loren returned to the screen in Human Voice (2014) directed by her son Edoardo Ponti. At the presentation at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York, 'the timeless beauty' stunned the press once again when she walked on the red carpet in a chic red pantsuit hand-in-hand with her 41-year-old son to promote the short film. Human Voice is based on the play by iconic French playwright Jean Cocteau and sees La Loren play a woman in her twilight years facing revelations from her past. In late 2014, she also presented her first memoir, Ieri, oggi, domani. La mia vita/Today and Tomorrow: My Life as a Fairy Tale. It includes old pictures, letters, and notes detailing encounters with Cary Grant and other film partners.
Sources: Jason Ankeny (AllMovie), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Shyam Dodge (Daily Mail), Jenny (IMDb), Wikipedia, NNDB, TCM, and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Spanish postcard by Postal Oscar Color S.A., Hospitalet (Barcelona), no. 231, 1964. Sophia Loren in The Fall of the Roman Empire (Anthony Mann, 1964).
Sophia Loren (1934) rose to fame in post-war Italy as a voluptuous sex goddess. Soon after, she became one of the most successful stars of the 20th Century, who won an Oscar for her mother role in La ciociara (Vittorio De Sica, 1960).
Sophia Loren was born Sofia Villani Scicolone in the charity ward of a Roman hospital in 1934. She was the illegitimate daughter of construction engineer Riccardo Scicolone and piano teacher and aspiring actress Romilda Villani. Riccardo was married to another woman and refused to marry Romilda, leaving her without support. Romilda, Sofia, and sister Maria returned to Pozzuoli to live with Sofia's grandmother. Pozzuoli was a small town outside Naples and one of the hardest hit during World War II. The family shared a two-room apartment with the grandmother and several aunts and uncles. The shy, stick-thin girl regularly went hungry and had to flee from bombings. At 14, Sofia had a voluptuous figure and entered a beauty contest. She was selected as one of the finalists but did not win. In 1950, she was one of the contestants in the Miss Italia competition. She earned 2nd place and was awarded ‘Miss Eleganza’. While attending the Miss Rome beauty contest, earlier in 1950, she had met judge Carlo Ponti, an up-and-coming film producer, 22 years her senior. Ponti had helped launch Gina Lollobrigida's career and now began grooming Sofia for stardom. He hired an acting coach to tutor her. At 16 she was in her first film, the Totó comedy Le Sei Mogli di Barbablù/Bluebeard’s Six Wives (Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia, 1950) under the name Sofia Lazzaro. She also appeared as an extra in Luci del varietà/Lights of the Variety (Federico Fellini, 1950), the smash hit Anna (Alberto Lattuada, 1951), and Quo Vadis (Mervyn Leroy, 1951). During the early 1950s, she secured work modelling for fumetti magazines. These comic-like magazines used actual photographs. The dialogue bubbles were called 'fumetti' - hence the popular name. At 17, she was cast by Ponti in her first larger role as the commoner who caught the prince's eye in the filmed opera La Favorita/The Favorite (Cesare Barlacchi, 1952). The next year she earned third billing after Silvana Pampanini and Eleanora Rossi-Drago in La Tratta Delle Bianche/The White Slave Trade (Luigi Comencini, 1953) and she played, complete with blackface and an Afro, the lead in another filmed opera, Aida (Clemente Fracassi, 1953) by Giuseppe Verdi. Her singing was dubbed by Renata Tebaldi. Ponti eventually changed her name to Sophia Loren.
Sophia Loren appeared for the first time with Marcello Mastroianni in the romantic comedy Peccato che sia una canaglia/Too Bad She's Bad (Alessandro Blasetti, 1954). They would make 13 films together, including Tempi nostri/A Slice of Life (Alessandro Blasetti, Paul Paviot, 1954), La bella mugnaia/The Miller's Wife (Mario Camerini, 1955), and La fortuna di essere donna/What A Woman (Alessandro Blasetti, 1956). L'Oro di Napoli/Gold of Naples (Vittorio de Sica, 1954), an anthology of tales depicting various aspects of Neapolitan life, was distributed internationally. At AllMovie, Jason Ankeny writes that in reviews "Loren was singled out for the strength of her performance as a Neapolitan shopkeeper, surprising many critics who had dismissed her as merely another bombshell". The film established her persona as a sensuous working-class earth mother. It also began a fruitful, career-long collaboration with De Sica. Sophia’s first film to find international success was La Donna del Fiume/The River Girl (Mario Soldati, 1955), in which she danced sensually the Mambo Bacan. Hal Erickson at AllMovie: "Through it all, Sophia Loren looks like a million lire - and she even gets to sing and dance!". She came to the attention of Stanley Kramer who offered her the female lead in The Pride And The Passion (Stanley Kramer, 1957) opposite Cary Grant and Frank Sinatra. Sophia played a Spanish peasant girl involved in an uprising against the French. This was the turning point in her career, and the film proved to be one of the top US box office successes of the year. Her next English-language film was Boy on a Dolphin (Jean Negulesco, 1957) with Alan Ladd, where she was memorable mostly for emerging from the water in a wet, skin-tight, transparent dress. With her va-va-va-voom image, she became an international film star and got a five-picture contract with Paramount Pictures. Among her Paramount films were Desire Under the Elms (Delbert Mann, 1958) with Anthony Perkins and based upon the Eugene O'Neill play, Houseboat (Melville Shavelson, 1958), a romantic comedy co-starring Cary Grant, and the Western Heller in Pink Tights (George Cukor, 1960) in which she appeared for the first time with blonde hair (a wig). Most of these films were received lukewarmly at best.
In 1960 Sophia Loren returned to Italy to star in the biggest success of her career, La Ciociara/Two Women (Vittorio De Sica, 1960). She played a widow desperately trying to protect her daughter from danger during WW II, only to end up in a destructive love triangle with a young radical (Jean-Paul Belmondo). Hal Erickson at AllMovie: "A last-minute replacement for Anna Magnani, Sophia Loren brought hitherto untapped depths of emotion to her performance in Two Women; she later stated that she was utilizing 'sensory recall,' dredging up memories of her own wartime experiences." Loren won the Best Actress Oscar for her performance, and also the Cannes, Venice ánd Berlin Film Festivals' best performance prizes. Next, she played in Spain Samuel Bronston's epic production of El Cid (Anthony Mann, 1961) with Charlton Heston, followed by the De Sica episode of the anthology Boccaccio '70 (Vittorio De Sica, Federico Fellini, Luchino Visconti, 1962). On the strength of her Oscar win, she also returned to English-language fare with Five Miles to Midnight (Anatole Litvak, 1963), followed a year later by The Fall of the Roman Empire (Anthony Mann, 1964), for which she received $1 million. Among Loren's other films of this period are The Millionairess (Anthony Asquith, 1960) with Peter Sellers, It Started in Naples (Melville Shavelson, 1960) with Clark Gable, Lady L (Peter Ustinov, 1965) with Paul Newman, Arabesque (Stanley Donen, 1966) with Gregory Peck, and Charlie Chaplin's final film, A Countess from Hong Kong (1967) with Marlon Brando. Despite the failure of many of her films to generate sales at the box office, she invariably turned in a charming performance and she wore some of the most lavish costumes ever created for the cinema. Her best Italian films include the triptych Ieri, oggi, domani/Yesterday, Today And Tomorrow (Vittorio De Sica, 1963), a comedy that poked fun at a Catholic priest and gently mocked the Italian law on birth control, and Matrimonio all' Italiana/Marriage Italian Style (Vittorio De Sica, 1964) with Loren as the hooker who lures Mastroianni into marriage.
After several miscarriages and a highly-publicized struggle to become pregnant, Sophia Loren gave birth to her son Hubert Leoni Carlo Ponti in 1968. She started to work less and moved into her 40s and 50s with roles in films like De Sica's war drama I Girasoli/The Sunflowers (Vittorio De Sica, 1972), Il Viaggio/The Voyage (Vittorio De Sica, 1974) opposite Richard Burton, and reuniting with Marcello Mastroianni in the mob comedy La Pupa del Gangster/Get Rita (Giorgio Capitani, 1975). An artistic highlight was Una giornata particolare/A Special Day (Ettore Scola, 1977) which earned a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film. Loren played a bored housewife on the day of the first meeting between Mussolini and Hitler. Left alone in her tenement home when her fascist husband runs off to attend the historic event, Loren strikes up a friendship with her homosexual neighbour (Marcello Mastroianni). As the day segues into night, Loren and Mastroianni develop a very special relationship that will radically alter both of their outlooks on life. When a dubbed version of Una giornata particolare/A Special Day found favour with American audiences, Hollywood again came calling, resulting in a pair of thrillers, The Brass Target (John Hough, 1978) and Firepower (Michael Winner, 1979) which offered her a central role as a widow seeking answers in the murder of her chemist husband. In 1980, Loren portrayed herself, as well as her mother, in Sophia Loren: Her Own Story (Mel Stuart, 1980), a made-for-television biopic adaptation of her autobiography. Actresses Ritza Brown and Chiara Ferrari played Loren at younger ages. She made headlines in 1982 when she served an 18-day prison sentence in Italy on tax evasion charges, a fact that didn't damage her career or popularity. In her 60s, Loren ventured into various areas of business, including cookbooks, eyewear, jewellery, and perfume. In honour of her lengthy career, Loren was the recipient of a special Oscar in 1991. She also made well-received appearances in her final film with Mastroianni, Prêt-à-Porter/Ready to Wear (1994), Robert Altman's take on the French fashion scene, and in the comedy hit Grumpier Old Men (Howard Deutch, 1995) playing a femme fatale opposite Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon. In 1995 she received the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award. At the age of 72, she appeared scantily clad in the 2007 edition of the famous calendar of Italian racing tire giant Pirelli. It made her the oldest model in the calendar's history. The photos by Dutch photographers Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin proved that she was still a major international sex symbol. In 2007 Carlo Ponti died. It had been controversial in her native Italy when Sophia Loren had married her mentor Ponti in 1957. Not only was he 45 to her 23, but he had been married previously, and neither the Catholic Church nor the Italian government recognised his Mexican divorce. Ponti was charged with bigamy, but the charges were dropped when they had their marriage annulled. They continued living together - scandalous at the time - and remarried after his legal problems had been cleared. Ponti and Loren made three dozen films together. They had two children, symphony conductor Carlo Ponti Jr. and film director Edoardo Ponti. After four years off the big screen, Sophia Loren co-starred in a film version of the Broadway musical Nine (Rob Marshall, 2009). She played the mother of famous film director Guido Contini, portrayed by Daniel Day-Lewis. According to Jason Ankeny at AllMovie, "Loren proved she still had movie star charisma with a role in Chicago director Rob Marshall's Nine - a lavish tribute to all things Italian." Loren made a two-part television biopic of her early life titled La Mia Casa È Piena di Specchi/My House Is Full of Mirrors (Vittorio Sindoni, 2010), based on of the memoir written by her sister Maria Scicolone. At 80, Sophia Loren returned to the screen in Human Voice (2014) directed by her son Edoardo Ponti. At the presentation at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York, 'the timeless beauty' stunned the press once again when she walked on the red carpet in a chic red pantsuit hand-in-hand with her 41-year-old son to promote the short film. Human Voice is based on the play by iconic French playwright Jean Cocteau and sees La Loren play a woman in her twilight years facing revelations from her past. In late 2014, she also presented her first memoir, Ieri, oggi, domani. La mia vita/Today and Tomorrow: My Life as a Fairy Tale. It includes old pictures, letters, and notes detailing encounters with Cary Grant and other film partners. In 2020, Sophia Loren returned to cinema after an 11-year absence. At the age of 86, she played a Jewish Holocaust survivor who befriends a 12-year-old Senegalese orphan in the Netflix film La vita davanti a sé/The Life Ahead, directed by her son Edoardo Ponti. The film is based on the novel 'La vie devant soi' by French author Romain Gary.
Sources: Jason Ankeny (AllMovie), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Shyam Dodge (Daily Mail), Jenny (IMDb), Wikipedia, NNDB, TCM, and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Belgian postcard by Ets. Dagneaux & Co. for STAR, Chewing-gum. Sophia Loren and Eleonora Brown in La ciociara/Two Women (Vittorio De Sica, 1960).
Sophia Loren (1934) rose to fame in post-war Italy as a voluptuous sex goddess. Soon after, she became one of the most successful stars of the 20th Century, who won an Oscar for her mother role in La ciociara (Vittorio De Sica, 1960).
Sophia Loren was born Sofia Villani Scicolone in the charity ward of a Roman hospital in 1934. She was the illegitimate daughter of construction engineer Riccardo Scicolone and piano teacher and aspiring actress Romilda Villani. Riccardo was married to another woman and refused to marry Romilda, leaving her without support. Romilda, Sofia, and sister Maria returned to Pozzuoli to live with Sofia's grandmother. Pozzuoli was a small town outside Naples and one of the hardest hit during World War II. The family shared a two-room apartment with the grandmother and several aunts and uncles. The shy, stick-thin girl regularly went hungry and had to flee from bombings. At 14, Sofia had a voluptuous figure and entered a beauty contest. She was selected as one of the finalists but did not win. In 1950, she was one of the contestants at the Miss Italia competition. She earned the 2nd place and was awarded ‘Miss Eleganza’. While attending the Miss Rome beauty contest, earlier in 1950, she had met judge Carlo Ponti, an up-and-coming film producer, 22 years her senior. Ponti had helped launch Gina Lollobrigida's career and now began grooming Sofia for stardom. He hired an acting coach to tutor her. At 16 she was in her first film, the Totó comedy Le Sei Mogli di Barbablù/Bluebeard’s Six Wives (Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia, 1950) under the name Sofia Lazzaro. She also appeared as an extra in Luci del varietà/Lights of the Variety (Federico Fellini, 1950), the smash hit Anna (Alberto Lattuada, 1951) and Quo Vadis (Mervyn Leroy, 1951). During the early 1950s, she secured work modelling for fumetti magazines. These comic-like magazines used actual photographs. The dialogue bubbles were called 'fumetti' - hence the popular name. At 17, she was cast by Ponti in her first larger role as the commoner who caught the prince's eye in the filmed opera La Favorita/The Favorite (Cesare Barlacchi, 1952). The next year she earned third billing after Silvana Pampanini and Eleanora Rossi-Drago in La Tratta Delle Bianche/The White Slave Trade (Luigi Comencini, 1953) and she played, complete with blackface and an Afro, the lead in another filmed opera, Aida (Clemente Fracassi, 1953) by Giuseppe Verdi. Her singing was dubbed by Renata Tebaldi. Ponti eventually changed her name to Sophia Loren.
Sophia Loren appeared for the first time with Marcello Mastroianni in the romantic comedy Peccato che sia una canaglia/Too Bad She's Bad (Alessandro Blasetti, 1954). They would make 13 films together, including Tempi nostri/A Slice of Life (Alessandro Blasetti, Paul Paviot, 1954), La bella mugnaia/The Miller's Wife (Mario Camerini, 1955), and La fortuna di essere donna/What A Woman (Alessandro Blasetti, 1956). L'Oro di Napoli/Gold of Naples (Vittorio de Sica, 1954), an anthology of tales depicting various aspects of Neapolitan life, was distributed internationally. At AllMovie, Jason Ankeny writes that in reviews "Loren was singled out for the strength of her performance as a Neapolitan shopkeeper, surprising many critics who had dismissed her as merely another bombshell". The film established her persona as a sensuous working-class earth mother. It also began a fruitful, career-long collaboration with De Sica. Sophia’s first film to find international success was La Donna del Fiume/The River Girl (Mario Soldati, 1955), in which she danced sensually the Mambo Bacan. Hal Erickson at AllMovie: "Through it all, Sophia Loren looks like a million lire - and she even gets to sing and dance!". She came to the attention of Stanley Kramer who offered her the female lead in The Pride And The Passion (Stanley Kramer, 1957) opposite Cary Grant and Frank Sinatra. Sophia played a Spanish peasant girl involved in an uprising against the French. This was the turning point in her career, and the film proved to be one of the top US box office successes of the year. Her next English-language film was Boy on a Dolphin (Jean Negulesco, 1957) with Alan Ladd, where she was memorable mostly for emerging from the water in a wet, skin-tight, transparent dress. With her va-va-va-voom image, she became an international film star and got a five-picture contract with Paramount Pictures. Among her Paramount films were Desire Under the Elms (Delbert Mann, 1958) with Anthony Perkins and based upon the Eugene O'Neill play, Houseboat (Melville Shavelson, 1958), a romantic comedy co-starring Cary Grant, and the Western Heller in Pink Tights (George Cukor, 1960) in which she appeared for the first time with blonde hair (a wig). Most of these films were received lukewarmly at best.
In 1960 Sophia Loren returned to Italy to star in the biggest success of her career, La Ciociara/Two Women (Vittorio De Sica, 1960). She played a widow desperately trying to protect her daughter from danger during WW II, only to end up in a destructive love triangle with a young radical (Jean Paul Belmondo). Hal Erickson at AllMovie: "A last-minute replacement for Anna Magnani, Sophia Loren brought hitherto untapped depths of emotion to her performance in Two Women; she later stated that she was utilizing 'sensory recall,' dredging up memories of her own wartime experiences." Loren won the Best Actress Oscar for her performance, and also the Cannes, Venice ánd Berlin Film Festivals' best performance prizes. Next, she played in Spain Samuel Bronston's epic production of El Cid (Anthony Mann, 1961) with Charlton Heston, followed by the De Sica episode of the anthology Boccaccio '70 (Vittorio De Sica, Federico Fellini, Luchino Visconti, 1962). On the strength of her Oscar win, she also returned to English-language fare with Five Miles to Midnight (Anatole Litvak, 1963), followed a year later by The Fall of the Roman Empire (Anthony Mann, 1964), for which she received $1 million. Among Loren's other films of this period are The Millionairess (Anthony Asquith, 1960) with Peter Sellers, It Started in Naples (Melville Shavelson, 1960) with Clark Gable, Lady L (Peter Ustinov, 1965) with Paul Newman, Arabesque (Stanley Donen, 1966) with Gregory Peck, and Charlie Chaplin's final film, A Countess from Hong Kong (1967) with Marlon Brando. Despite the failure of many of her films to generate sales at the box office, she invariably turned in a charming performance and she wore some of the most lavish costumes ever created for the cinema. Her best Italian films include the triptych Ieri, oggi, domani/Yesterday, Today And Tomorrow (Vittorio De Sica, 1963), a comedy that poked fun at a Catholic priest and gently mocked the Italian law on birth control, and Matrimonio all' Italiana/Marriage Italian Style (Vittorio De Sica, 1964) with Loren as the hooker who lures Mastroianni into marriage.
After several miscarriages and a highly-publicized struggle to become pregnant, Sophia Loren gave birth to son Hubert Leoni Carlo Ponti in 1968. She started to work less and moved into her 40s and 50s with roles in films like De Sica's war drama I Girasoli/The Sunflowers (Vittorio De Sica, 1972), Il Viaggio/The Voyage (Vittorio De Sica, 1974) opposite Richard Burton, and reuniting with Marcello Mastroianni in the mob comedy La Pupa del Gangster/Get Rita (Giorgio Capitani, 1975). An artistic highlight was Una giornata particolare/A Special Day (Ettore Scola, 1977) which earned a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film. Loren played a bored housewife on the day of the first meeting between Mussolini and Hitler. Left alone in her tenement home when her fascist husband runs off to attend the historic event, Loren strikes up a friendship with her homosexual neighbour (Marcello Mastroianni). As the day segues into night, Loren and Mastroianni develop a very special relationship that will radically alter both of their outlooks on life. When a dubbed version of Una giornata particolare/A Special Day found favour with American audiences, Hollywood again came calling, resulting in a pair of thrillers, The Brass Target (John Hough, 1978) and Firepower (Michael Winner, 1979) which offered her a central role as a widow seeking answers in the murder of her chemist husband. In 1980, Loren portrayed herself, as well as her mother, in Sophia Loren: Her Own Story (Mel Stuart, 1980), a made-for-television biopic adaptation of her autobiography. Actresses Ritza Brown and Chiara Ferrari played Loren at younger ages. She made headlines in 1982 when she served an 18-day prison sentence in Italy on tax evasion charges, a fact that didn't damage her career or popularity. In her 60s, Loren ventured into various areas of business, including cookbooks, eyewear, jewelry, and perfume. In honour of her lengthy career, Loren was the recipient of a special Oscar in 1991. She also made well-received appearances in her final film with Mastroianni, Prêt-à-Porter/Ready to Wear (1994), Robert Altman's take on the French fashion scene, and in the comedy hit Grumpier Old Men (Howard Deutch, 1995) playing a femme fatale opposite Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon. In 1995 she received the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award. At the age of 72, she appeared scantily-clad in the 2007 edition of the famous calendar of Italian racing tire giant Pirelli. It made her the oldest model in the calendar's history. The photos by Dutch photographers Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin proved that she was still a major international sex symbol. In 2007 Carlo Ponti died. It had been controversial in her native Italy when Sophia Loren had married her mentor Ponti in 1957. Not only was he 45 to her 23, but he had been married previously, and neither the Catholic Church nor the Italian government recognised his Mexican divorce. Ponti was charged with bigamy, but the charges were dropped when they had their marriage annulled. They continued living together - scandalous at the time - and remarried after his legal problems had been cleared. Ponti and Loren made three dozen films together. They had two children, symphony conductor Carlo Ponti Jr. and film director Edoardo Ponti. After four years off the big screen, Sophia Loren co-starred in a film version of the Broadway musical Nine (Rob Marshall, 2009). She played the mother of famous film director Guido Contini, portrayed by Daniel Day-Lewis. According to Jason Ankeny at AllMovie, "Loren proved she still had movie star charisma with a role in Chicago director Rob Marshall's Nine - a lavish tribute to all things Italian." Loren made a two-part television biopic of her early life titled La Mia Casa È Piena di Specchi/My House Is Full of Mirrors (Vittorio Sindoni, 2010), based on of the memoir written by her sister Maria Scicolone. At 80, Sophia Loren returned to the screen in Human Voice (2014) directed by her son Edoardo Ponti. At the presentation Tribeca Film Festival in New York, 'the timeless beauty' stunned the press once again when she walked on the red carpet in a chic red pantsuit hand-in-hand with her 41-year-old son to promote the short film. Human Voice is based on the play by iconic French playwright Jean Cocteau and sees La Loren play a woman in her twilight years facing revelations from her past. In late 2014, she also presented her first memoir, Ieri, oggi, domani. La mia vita/Today and Tomorrow: My Life as a Fairy Tale. It includes old pictures, letters, and notes detailing encounters with Cary Grant and other film partners.
Sources: Jason Ankeny (AllMovie), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Shyam Dodge (Daily Mail), Jenny (IMDb), Wikipedia, NNDB, TCM, and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Brooklyn Botanical Gardens
Shakespeare Garden @ www.bbg.org/exp/stroll/shakespeare.html
(Explore #405)
American postcard by Coral-Lee, Rancho Cordova, Ca., no. CL/Personality 21. Photo: Douglas Kirkland, 1978.
American actress Raquel Welch (1940) is one of the icons of the 1960s and 1970s. She first won attention for her role in Fantastic Voyage (1966). In Great Britain, she then made One Million Years B.C. (1966). Although she had only three lines in the film, a poster of Welch in a furry prehistoric bikini became an amazing bestseller and catapulted her to stardom.
Raquel Welch was born Jo Raquel Tejada in 1940 in Chicago, Illinois. She was the first of three children born to Bolivian Armando Carlos Tejada Urquizo, an aerospace engineer, and his Irish-American wife Josephine Sarah Hall, who was the daughter of American architect Emery Stanford Hall. At age 14, she won her first beauty title beauty title as Miss Photogenic. She graduated from high school in 1958 and a year later, after becoming pregnant, married her high school sweetheart, James Welch. Seeking an acting career, Welch won a scholarship in drama, took classes at San Diego State College and won several parts in local theatre productions. She got a job as a weather forecaster at KFMB, a local San Diego television station. After her separation from James Welch, she moved with her two children to Dallas, Texas, where she worked as a model for Neiman Marcus and as a cocktail waitress. In 1963, she went to California, where she met former child star and Hollywood agent Patrick Curtis who became her personal and business manager and second husband. They developed a plan to turn Welch into a sex symbol. After small roles in a few films and TV series, she had her first featured role in the beach film A Swingin' Summer (Robert Sparr, 1965). She landed a seven-year nonexclusive contract at 20th Century Fox and was cast in a leading role in the sci-fi film Fantastic Voyage (Richard Fleischer, 1966) opposite Stephen Boyd. Welch portrayed a member of a medical team that is miniaturized and injected into the body of an injured diplomat with the mission to save his life. The film was a hit and made her a star. Fox Studio loaned her to Hammer Studios in Britain where she starred in One Million Years B.C. (Don Chaffey, 1966). Her only costume was a two-piece deer skin bikini. Gary Brumburgh at MDb: "Tantalizingly wet with her garb clinging to all the right amazonian places, One Million Years B.C. (1966), if nothing else, captured the hearts and libidos of modern men (not to mention their teenage sons) while producing THE most definitive and best-selling pin-up poster of that time." Welch stayed in Europe for the French comedy Le Plus Vieux Métier du monde/The Oldest Profession (Michael Pfleghar a.o., 1967) and the British seven-deadly-sins comedy Bedazzled (Stanley Donen, 1967). She played the deadly sin representing 'lust' for the comedy team of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. In Britain, she was also the title secret agent in the sexy spy spoof Fathom (Leslie H. Martinson, 1967). In Italy, she starred with Monica Vitti and Claudia Cardinale in Le Fate/The Queens (Mauro Bolognini, 1966) and with Edward G. Robinson and Vittorio de Sica in The Biggest Bundle of Them All (Ken Annakin, 1968). Back in the United States, she appeared in the Western Bandolero! (Andrew V. McLaglen, 1968) with James Stewart and Dean Martin, which was followed by the private-eye drama Lady in Cement (Gordon Douglas, 1968) with Frank Sinatra. She caused quite a stir in her ground-breaking sex scenes with black athlete Jim Brown in the Western 100 Rifles (Tom Gries, 1969).
Raquel Welch's most controversial role came in the comedy Myra Breckinridge (Michael Sarne, 1970), based on Gore Vidal's 1968 novel. She took the part of the film's transsexual heroine in an attempt to be taken seriously as an actress. The picture was controversial for its sexual explicitness, but unlike the novel, Myra Breckinridge received little to no critical praise. It is cited in the book The Fifty Worst Films of All Time. Jason Ankeny at AllMovie: "Her situation was unusual; she was certainly a star and a household name, yet few people ever went to see her movies." Welch took a measure of control over her screen persona, producing and starring in Hannie Calder (Burt Kennedy, 1971), the first film in which she carved out a place in movie history portraying strong female characters and breaking the mould of the submissive sex symbol. She altered the image further with Kansas City Bomber (Jerrold Freedman, 1972), insisting on doing her stunts as good-hearted roller derby star Diane 'KC' Carr. She followed that with a series of successful films in Europe that included the thriller Bluebeard (Edward Dmytryk, 1972) starring Richard Burton, the swashbuckler The Three Musketeers (Richard Lester, 1973) - for which she won a Golden Globe, the sequel The Four Musketeers (Richard Lester, 1974) both with Oliver Reed and Michael York, and The Wild Party (James Ivory, 1975). A big hit in Europe was the French action-comedy L'Animal/Animal (Claude Zidi, 1977) starring Jean-Paul Belmondo. Raquel Welch's unique persona on film made her one of the reigning icons of the 1960s and 70s. Later, she made several television variety specials. In 1980, Welch planned on making a comeback in an adaptation of John Steinbeck's Cannery Row (David S. Ward, 1982), but was fired by the producers a few days into production. The producers said that at 40 years old she was too old to play the character. She was replaced by Debra Winger. Welch sued and collected a $10.8 million settlement. She starred on Broadway in Woman of the Year, receiving praise for following Lauren Bacall in the title role. She also starred in Victor/Victoria, having less success. In 1995, Welch was chosen by Empire Magazine as one of the 100 Sexiest Stars in Film History. Her later films include the hit comedy Legally Blonde (Robert Luketic, 2001), starring Reese Witherspoon, and Forget About It (BJ Davis, 2006) with Burt Reynolds. Welch was married four times and is the mother of Damon Welch (1959) and actress Tahnee Welch (1961).
Sources: Jason Ankeny (AllMovie), TCM, Wikipedia and IMDb.
East-German postcard VEB Progress Film-Vertrieb, Berlin, no. 55/71, 1971. Sophia Loren in The Fall of the Roman Empire (Anthony Mann, 1964).
Sophia Loren (1934) rose to fame in post-war Italy as a voluptuous sex goddess. Soon after, she became one of the most successful stars of the 20th Century, who won an Oscar for her mother role in La ciociara (Vittorio De Sica, 1960).
Sophia Loren was born Sofia Villani Scicolone in the charity ward of a Roman hospital in 1934. She was the illegitimate daughter of construction engineer Riccardo Scicolone and piano teacher and aspiring actress Romilda Villani. Riccardo was married to another woman and refused to marry Romilda, leaving her without support. Romilda, Sofia, and sister Maria returned to Pozzuoli to live with Sofia's grandmother. Pozzuoli was a small town outside Naples and one of the hardest hit during World War II. The family shared a two-room apartment with the grandmother and several aunts and uncles. The shy, stick-thin girl regularly went hungry and had to flee from bombings. At 14, Sofia had a voluptuous figure and entered a beauty contest. She was selected as one of the finalists but did not win. In 1950, she was one of the contestants in the Miss Italia competition. She earned 2nd place and was awarded ‘Miss Eleganza’. While attending the Miss Rome beauty contest, earlier in 1950, she had met judge Carlo Ponti, an up-and-coming film producer, 22 years her senior. Ponti had helped launch Gina Lollobrigida's career and now began grooming Sofia for stardom. He hired an acting coach to tutor her. At 16 she was in her first film, the Totó comedy Le Sei Mogli di Barbablù/Bluebeard’s Six Wives (Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia, 1950) under the name Sofia Lazzaro. She also appeared as an extra in Luci del varietà/Lights of the Variety (Federico Fellini, 1950), the smash hit Anna (Alberto Lattuada, 1951), and Quo Vadis (Mervyn Leroy, 1951). During the early 1950s, she secured work modelling for fumetti magazines. These comic-like magazines used actual photographs. The dialogue bubbles were called 'fumetti' - hence the popular name. At 17, she was cast by Ponti in her first larger role as the commoner who caught the prince's eye in the filmed opera La Favorita/The Favorite (Cesare Barlacchi, 1952). The next year she earned third billing after Silvana Pampanini and Eleanora Rossi-Drago in La Tratta Delle Bianche/The White Slave Trade (Luigi Comencini, 1953) and she played, complete with blackface and an Afro, the lead in another filmed opera, Aida (Clemente Fracassi, 1953) by Giuseppe Verdi. Her singing was dubbed by Renata Tebaldi. Ponti eventually changed her name to Sophia Loren.
Sophia Loren appeared for the first time with Marcello Mastroianni in the romantic comedy Peccato che sia una canaglia/Too Bad She's Bad (Alessandro Blasetti, 1954). They would make 13 films together, including Tempi nostri/A Slice of Life (Alessandro Blasetti, Paul Paviot, 1954), La bella mugnaia/The Miller's Wife (Mario Camerini, 1955), and La fortuna di essere donna/What A Woman (Alessandro Blasetti, 1956). L'Oro di Napoli/Gold of Naples (Vittorio de Sica, 1954), an anthology of tales depicting various aspects of Neapolitan life, was distributed internationally. At AllMovie, Jason Ankeny writes that in reviews "Loren was singled out for the strength of her performance as a Neapolitan shopkeeper, surprising many critics who had dismissed her as merely another bombshell". The film established her persona as a sensuous working-class earth mother. It also began a fruitful, career-long collaboration with De Sica. Sophia’s first film to find international success was La Donna del Fiume/The River Girl (Mario Soldati, 1955), in which she danced sensually the Mambo Bacan. Hal Erickson at AllMovie: "Through it all, Sophia Loren looks like a million lire - and she even gets to sing and dance!". She came to the attention of Stanley Kramer who offered her the female lead in The Pride And The Passion (Stanley Kramer, 1957) opposite Cary Grant and Frank Sinatra. Sophia played a Spanish peasant girl involved in an uprising against the French. This was the turning point in her career, and the film proved to be one of the top US box office successes of the year. Her next English-language film was Boy on a Dolphin (Jean Negulesco, 1957) with Alan Ladd, where she was memorable mostly for emerging from the water in a wet, skin-tight, transparent dress. With her va-va-va-voom image, she became an international film star and got a five-picture contract with Paramount Pictures. Among her Paramount films were Desire Under the Elms (Delbert Mann, 1958) with Anthony Perkins and based upon the Eugene O'Neill play, Houseboat (Melville Shavelson, 1958), a romantic comedy co-starring Cary Grant, and the Western Heller in Pink Tights (George Cukor, 1960) in which she appeared for the first time with blonde hair (a wig). Most of these films were received lukewarmly at best.
In 1960 Sophia Loren returned to Italy to star in the biggest success of her career, La Ciociara/Two Women (Vittorio De Sica, 1960). She played a widow desperately trying to protect her daughter from danger during WW II, only to end up in a destructive love triangle with a young radical (Jean-Paul Belmondo). Hal Erickson at AllMovie: "A last-minute replacement for Anna Magnani, Sophia Loren brought hitherto untapped depths of emotion to her performance in Two Women; she later stated that she was utilizing 'sensory recall,' dredging up memories of her own wartime experiences." Loren won the Best Actress Oscar for her performance, and also the Cannes, Venice ánd Berlin Film Festivals' best performance prizes. Next, she played in Spain Samuel Bronston's epic production of El Cid (Anthony Mann, 1961) with Charlton Heston, followed by the De Sica episode of the anthology Boccaccio '70 (Vittorio De Sica, Federico Fellini, Luchino Visconti, 1962). On the strength of her Oscar win, she also returned to English-language fare with Five Miles to Midnight (Anatole Litvak, 1963), followed a year later by The Fall of the Roman Empire (Anthony Mann, 1964), for which she received $1 million. Among Loren's other films of this period are The Millionairess (Anthony Asquith, 1960) with Peter Sellers, It Started in Naples (Melville Shavelson, 1960) with Clark Gable, Lady L (Peter Ustinov, 1965) with Paul Newman, Arabesque (Stanley Donen, 1966) with Gregory Peck, and Charlie Chaplin's final film, A Countess from Hong Kong (1967) with Marlon Brando. Despite the failure of many of her films to generate sales at the box office, she invariably turned in a charming performance and she wore some of the most lavish costumes ever created for the cinema. Her best Italian films include the triptych Ieri, oggi, domani/Yesterday, Today And Tomorrow (Vittorio De Sica, 1963), a comedy that poked fun at a Catholic priest and gently mocked the Italian law on birth control, and Matrimonio all' Italiana/Marriage Italian Style (Vittorio De Sica, 1964) with Loren as the hooker who lures Mastroianni into marriage.
After several miscarriages and a highly-publicized struggle to become pregnant, Sophia Loren gave birth to her son Hubert Leoni Carlo Ponti in 1968. She started to work less and moved into her 40s and 50s with roles in films like De Sica's war drama I Girasoli/The Sunflowers (Vittorio De Sica, 1972), Il Viaggio/The Voyage (Vittorio De Sica, 1974) opposite Richard Burton, and reuniting with Marcello Mastroianni in the mob comedy La Pupa del Gangster/Get Rita (Giorgio Capitani, 1975). An artistic highlight was Una giornata particolare/A Special Day (Ettore Scola, 1977) which earned a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film. Loren played a bored housewife on the day of the first meeting between Mussolini and Hitler. Left alone in her tenement home when her fascist husband runs off to attend the historic event, Loren strikes up a friendship with her homosexual neighbour (Marcello Mastroianni). As the day segues into night, Loren and Mastroianni develop a very special relationship that will radically alter both of their outlooks on life. When a dubbed version of Una giornata particolare/A Special Day found favour with American audiences, Hollywood again came calling, resulting in a pair of thrillers, The Brass Target (John Hough, 1978) and Firepower (Michael Winner, 1979) which offered her a central role as a widow seeking answers in the murder of her chemist husband. In 1980, Loren portrayed herself, as well as her mother, in Sophia Loren: Her Own Story (Mel Stuart, 1980), a made-for-television biopic adaptation of her autobiography. Actresses Ritza Brown and Chiara Ferrari played Loren at younger ages. She made headlines in 1982 when she served an 18-day prison sentence in Italy on tax evasion charges, a fact that didn't damage her career or popularity. In her 60s, Loren ventured into various areas of business, including cookbooks, eyewear, jewellery, and perfume. In honour of her lengthy career, Loren was the recipient of a special Oscar in 1991. She also made well-received appearances in her final film with Mastroianni, Prêt-à-Porter/Ready to Wear (1994), Robert Altman's take on the French fashion scene, and in the comedy hit Grumpier Old Men (Howard Deutch, 1995) playing a femme fatale opposite Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon. In 1995 she received the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award. At the age of 72, she appeared scantily clad in the 2007 edition of the famous calendar of Italian racing tire giant Pirelli. It made her the oldest model in the calendar's history. The photos by Dutch photographers Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin proved that she was still a major international sex symbol. In 2007 Carlo Ponti died. It had been controversial in her native Italy when Sophia Loren had married her mentor Ponti in 1957. Not only was he 45 to her 23, but he had been married previously, and neither the Catholic Church nor the Italian government recognised his Mexican divorce. Ponti was charged with bigamy, but the charges were dropped when they had their marriage annulled. They continued living together - scandalous at the time - and remarried after his legal problems had been cleared. Ponti and Loren made three dozen films together. They had two children, symphony conductor Carlo Ponti Jr. and film director Edoardo Ponti. After four years off the big screen, Sophia Loren co-starred in a film version of the Broadway musical Nine (Rob Marshall, 2009). She played the mother of famous film director Guido Contini, portrayed by Daniel Day-Lewis. According to Jason Ankeny at AllMovie, "Loren proved she still had movie star charisma with a role in Chicago director Rob Marshall's Nine - a lavish tribute to all things Italian." Loren made a two-part television biopic of her early life titled La Mia Casa È Piena di Specchi/My House Is Full of Mirrors (Vittorio Sindoni, 2010), based on of the memoir written by her sister Maria Scicolone. At 80, Sophia Loren returned to the screen in Human Voice (2014) directed by her son Edoardo Ponti. At the presentation at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York, 'the timeless beauty' stunned the press once again when she walked on the red carpet in a chic red pantsuit hand-in-hand with her 41-year-old son to promote the short film. Human Voice is based on the play by iconic French playwright Jean Cocteau and sees La Loren play a woman in her twilight years facing revelations from her past. In late 2014, she also presented her first memoir, Ieri, oggi, domani. La mia vita/Today and Tomorrow: My Life as a Fairy Tale. It includes old pictures, letters, and notes detailing encounters with Cary Grant and other film partners.
Sources: Jason Ankeny (AllMovie), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Shyam Dodge (Daily Mail), Jenny (IMDb), Wikipedia, NNDB, TCM, and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
East-German postcard by VEB Progress Film-Vertrieb, Berlin, no. 21/77. Sophia Loren in La pupa del gangster/Get Rita (Giorgio Capitani, 1975).
Sophia Loren (1934) rose to fame in post-war Italy as a voluptuous sex goddess. Soon after, she became one of the most successful stars of the 20th Century, who won an Oscar for her mother role in La ciociara (Vittorio De Sica, 1960).
Sophia Loren was born Sofia Villani Scicolone in the charity ward of a Roman hospital in 1934. She was the illegitimate daughter of construction engineer Riccardo Scicolone and piano teacher and aspiring actress Romilda Villani. Riccardo was married to another woman and refused to marry Romilda, leaving her without support. Romilda, Sofia, and sister Maria returned to Pozzuoli to live with Sofia's grandmother. Pozzuoli was a small town outside Naples and one of the hardest hit during World War II. The family shared a two-room apartment with the grandmother and several aunts and uncles. The shy, stick-thin girl regularly went hungry and had to flee from bombings. At 14, Sofia had a voluptuous figure and entered a beauty contest. She was selected as one of the finalists but did not win. In 1950, she was one of the contestants in the Miss Italia competition. She earned 2nd place and was awarded ‘Miss Eleganza’. While attending the Miss Rome beauty contest, earlier in 1950, she had met judge Carlo Ponti, an up-and-coming film producer, 22 years her senior. Ponti had helped launch Gina Lollobrigida's career and now began grooming Sofia for stardom. He hired an acting coach to tutor her. At 16 she was in her first film, the Totó comedy Le Sei Mogli di Barbablù/Bluebeard’s Six Wives (Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia, 1950) under the name Sofia Lazzaro. She also appeared as an extra in Luci del varietà/Lights of the Variety (Federico Fellini, 1950), the smash hit Anna (Alberto Lattuada, 1951), and Quo Vadis (Mervyn Leroy, 1951). During the early 1950s, she secured work modelling for fumetti magazines. These comic-like magazines used actual photographs. The dialogue bubbles were called 'fumetti' - hence the popular name. At 17, she was cast by Ponti in her first larger role as the commoner who caught the prince's eye in the filmed opera La Favorita/The Favorite (Cesare Barlacchi, 1952). The next year she earned third billing after Silvana Pampanini and Eleanora Rossi-Drago in La Tratta Delle Bianche/The White Slave Trade (Luigi Comencini, 1953) and she played, complete with blackface and an Afro, the lead in another filmed opera, Aida (Clemente Fracassi, 1953) by Giuseppe Verdi. Her singing was dubbed by Renata Tebaldi. Ponti eventually changed her name to Sophia Loren.
Sophia Loren appeared for the first time with Marcello Mastroianni in the romantic comedy Peccato che sia una canaglia/Too Bad She's Bad (Alessandro Blasetti, 1954). They would make 13 films together, including Tempi nostri/A Slice of Life (Alessandro Blasetti, Paul Paviot, 1954), La bella mugnaia/The Miller's Wife (Mario Camerini, 1955), and La fortuna di essere donna/What A Woman (Alessandro Blasetti, 1956). L'Oro di Napoli/Gold of Naples (Vittorio de Sica, 1954), an anthology of tales depicting various aspects of Neapolitan life, was distributed internationally. At AllMovie, Jason Ankeny writes that in reviews "Loren was singled out for the strength of her performance as a Neapolitan shopkeeper, surprising many critics who had dismissed her as merely another bombshell". The film established her persona as a sensuous working-class earth mother. It also began a fruitful, career-long collaboration with De Sica. Sophia’s first film to find international success was La Donna del Fiume/The River Girl (Mario Soldati, 1955), in which she danced sensually the Mambo Bacan. Hal Erickson at AllMovie: "Through it all, Sophia Loren looks like a million lire - and she even gets to sing and dance!". She came to the attention of Stanley Kramer who offered her the female lead in The Pride And The Passion (Stanley Kramer, 1957) opposite Cary Grant and Frank Sinatra. Sophia played a Spanish peasant girl involved in an uprising against the French. This was the turning point in her career, and the film proved to be one of the top US box office successes of the year. Her next English-language film was Boy on a Dolphin (Jean Negulesco, 1957) with Alan Ladd, where she was memorable mostly for emerging from the water in a wet, skin-tight, transparent dress. With her va-va-va-voom image, she became an international film star and got a five-picture contract with Paramount Pictures. Among her Paramount films were Desire Under the Elms (Delbert Mann, 1958) with Anthony Perkins and based upon the Eugene O'Neill play, Houseboat (Melville Shavelson, 1958), a romantic comedy co-starring Cary Grant, and the Western Heller in Pink Tights (George Cukor, 1960) in which she appeared for the first time with blonde hair (a wig). Most of these films were received lukewarmly at best.
In 1960 Sophia Loren returned to Italy to star in the biggest success of her career, La Ciociara/Two Women (Vittorio De Sica, 1960). She played a widow desperately trying to protect her daughter from danger during WW II, only to end up in a destructive love triangle with a young radical (Jean-Paul Belmondo). Hal Erickson at AllMovie: "A last-minute replacement for Anna Magnani, Sophia Loren brought hitherto untapped depths of emotion to her performance in Two Women; she later stated that she was utilizing 'sensory recall,' dredging up memories of her own wartime experiences." Loren won the Best Actress Oscar for her performance, and also the Cannes, Venice ánd Berlin Film Festivals' best performance prizes. Next, she played in Spain Samuel Bronston's epic production of El Cid (Anthony Mann, 1961) with Charlton Heston, followed by the De Sica episode of the anthology Boccaccio '70 (Vittorio De Sica, Federico Fellini, Luchino Visconti, 1962). On the strength of her Oscar win, she also returned to English-language fare with Five Miles to Midnight (Anatole Litvak, 1963), followed a year later by The Fall of the Roman Empire (Anthony Mann, 1964), for which she received $1 million. Among Loren's other films of this period are The Millionairess (Anthony Asquith, 1960) with Peter Sellers, It Started in Naples (Melville Shavelson, 1960) with Clark Gable, Lady L (Peter Ustinov, 1965) with Paul Newman, Arabesque (Stanley Donen, 1966) with Gregory Peck, and Charlie Chaplin's final film, A Countess from Hong Kong (1967) with Marlon Brando. Despite the failure of many of her films to generate sales at the box office, she invariably turned in a charming performance and she wore some of the most lavish costumes ever created for the cinema. Her best Italian films include the triptych Ieri, oggi, domani/Yesterday, Today And Tomorrow (Vittorio De Sica, 1963), a comedy that poked fun at a Catholic priest and gently mocked the Italian law on birth control, and Matrimonio all' Italiana/Marriage Italian Style (Vittorio De Sica, 1964) with Loren as the hooker who lures Mastroianni into marriage.
After several miscarriages and a highly-publicized struggle to become pregnant, Sophia Loren gave birth to her son Hubert Leoni Carlo Ponti in 1968. She started to work less and moved into her 40s and 50s with roles in films like De Sica's war drama I Girasoli/The Sunflowers (Vittorio De Sica, 1972), Il Viaggio/The Voyage (Vittorio De Sica, 1974) opposite Richard Burton, and reuniting with Marcello Mastroianni in the mob comedy La Pupa del Gangster/Get Rita (Giorgio Capitani, 1975). An artistic highlight was Una giornata particolare/A Special Day (Ettore Scola, 1977) which earned a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film. Loren played a bored housewife on the day of the first meeting between Mussolini and Hitler. Left alone in her tenement home when her fascist husband runs off to attend the historic event, Loren strikes up a friendship with her homosexual neighbour (Marcello Mastroianni). As the day segues into night, Loren and Mastroianni develop a very special relationship that will radically alter both of their outlooks on life. When a dubbed version of Una giornata particolare/A Special Day found favour with American audiences, Hollywood again came calling, resulting in a pair of thrillers, The Brass Target (John Hough, 1978) and Firepower (Michael Winner, 1979) which offered her a central role as a widow seeking answers in the murder of her chemist husband. In 1980, Loren portrayed herself, as well as her mother, in Sophia Loren: Her Own Story (Mel Stuart, 1980), a made-for-television biopic adaptation of her autobiography. Actresses Ritza Brown and Chiara Ferrari played Loren at younger ages. She made headlines in 1982 when she served an 18-day prison sentence in Italy on tax evasion charges, a fact that didn't damage her career or popularity. In her 60s, Loren ventured into various areas of business, including cookbooks, eyewear, jewellery, and perfume. In honour of her lengthy career, Loren was the recipient of a special Oscar in 1991. She also made well-received appearances in her final film with Mastroianni, Prêt-à-Porter/Ready to Wear (1994), Robert Altman's take on the French fashion scene, and in the comedy hit Grumpier Old Men (Howard Deutch, 1995) playing a femme fatale opposite Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon. In 1995 she received the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award. At the age of 72, she appeared scantily clad in the 2007 edition of the famous calendar of Italian racing tire giant Pirelli. It made her the oldest model in the calendar's history. The photos by Dutch photographers Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin proved that she was still a major international sex symbol. In 2007 Carlo Ponti died. It had been controversial in her native Italy when Sophia Loren had married her mentor Ponti in 1957. Not only was he 45 to her 23, but he had been married previously, and neither the Catholic Church nor the Italian government recognised his Mexican divorce. Ponti was charged with bigamy, but the charges were dropped when they had their marriage annulled. They continued living together - scandalous at the time - and remarried after his legal problems had been cleared. Ponti and Loren made three dozen films together. They had two children, symphony conductor Carlo Ponti Jr. and film director Edoardo Ponti. After four years off the big screen, Sophia Loren co-starred in a film version of the Broadway musical Nine (Rob Marshall, 2009). She played the mother of famous film director Guido Contini, portrayed by Daniel Day-Lewis. According to Jason Ankeny at AllMovie, "Loren proved she still had movie star charisma with a role in Chicago director Rob Marshall's Nine - a lavish tribute to all things Italian." Loren made a two-part television biopic of her early life titled La Mia Casa È Piena di Specchi/My House Is Full of Mirrors (Vittorio Sindoni, 2010), based on of the memoir written by her sister Maria Scicolone. At 80, Sophia Loren returned to the screen in Human Voice (2014) directed by her son Edoardo Ponti. At the presentation at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York, 'the timeless beauty' stunned the press once again when she walked on the red carpet in a chic red pantsuit hand-in-hand with her 41-year-old son to promote the short film. Human Voice is based on the play by iconic French playwright Jean Cocteau and sees La Loren play a woman in her twilight years facing revelations from her past. In late 2014, she also presented her first memoir, Ieri, oggi, domani. La mia vita/Today and Tomorrow: My Life as a Fairy Tale. It includes old pictures, letters, and notes detailing encounters with Cary Grant and other film partners. In 2020, Sophia Loren returned to cinema after an 11-year absence. At the age of 86, she played a Jewish Holocaust survivor who befriends a 12-year-old Senegalese orphan in the Netflix film La vita davanti a sé/The Life Ahead, directed by her son Edoardo Ponti. The film is based on the novel 'La vie devant soi' by French author Romain Gary.
Sources: Jason Ankeny (AllMovie), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Shyam Dodge (Daily Mail), Jenny (IMDb), Wikipedia, NNDB, TCM, and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Strange year of phenology: After a late but very sudden and warm spring plants started their blossoming in my roofgarden in a rush and relatively early. But then summer got so hot and unusal sunny that blossoming got weak and came to an early end (despite lots of watering) - seemingly. Now, as it turned cooler and after some fertilizing blossoming restarted with a lot of power, f.e. with my caryopteris, and are now attracting lots of insects. I like this sort of bumble bee on the photo with the red fur :)
Bombus pascuorum:
Italian postcard, no. 100 102. Raquel Welch in One Million Years BC (Don Chaffey, 1966).
American actress Raquel Welch (1940) is one of the icons of the 1960s and 1970s. She first won attention for her role in Fantastic Voyage (1966). In Great Britain, she then made One Million Years B.C. (1966). Although she had only three lines in the film, a poster of Welch in a furry prehistoric bikini became an amazing bestseller and catapulted her to stardom.
Raquel Welch was born Jo Raquel Tejada in 1940 in Chicago, Illinois. She was the first of three children born to Bolivian Armando Carlos Tejada Urquizo, an aerospace engineer, and his Irish-American wife Josephine Sarah Hall, who was the daughter of American architect Emery Stanford Hall. At age 14, Raquel won her first beauty title as Miss Photogenic. She graduated from high school in 1958 and a year later, after becoming pregnant, she married her high school sweetheart, James Welch. Seeking an acting career, Welch won a scholarship in drama, took classes at San Diego State College and won several parts in local theatre productions. She got a job as a weather forecaster at KFMB, a local San Diego television station. After her separation from James Welch, she moved with her two children to Dallas, Texas, where she worked as a model for Neiman Marcus and as a cocktail waitress. In 1963, she went to California, where she met former child star and Hollywood agent Patrick Curtis who became her personal and business manager and second husband. They developed a plan to turn Welch into a sex symbol. After small roles in a few films and TV series, she had her first featured role in the beach film A Swingin' Summer (Robert Sparr, 1965). She landed a seven-year nonexclusive contract at 20th Century Fox and was cast in a leading role in the sci-fi film Fantastic Voyage (Richard Fleischer, 1966) opposite Stephen Boyd. Welch portrayed a member of a medical team that is miniaturized and injected into the body of an injured diplomat with the mission to save his life. The film was a hit and made her a well-known name. Fox Studio loaned her to Hammer Studios in Britain where she starred in One Million Years B.C. (Don Chaffey, 1966). Her only costume was a two-piece deer skin bikini. Gary Brumburgh at IMDb: "Tantalizingly wet with her garb clinging to all the right amazonian places, One Million Years B.C. (1966), if nothing else, captured the hearts and libidos of modern men (not to mention their teenage sons) while producing THE most definitive and best-selling pin-up poster of that time."
Raquel Welch stayed in Europe for the French comedy Le Plus Vieux Métier du monde/The Oldest Profession (Michael Pfleghar a.o., 1967), a typical European anthology film of the 1960s. A collection of sketches on prostitution through the ages, made by a pan-European cast and crew. Some of the most sensual stars of the era played the leads: Michèle Mercier, Elsa Martinelli, Anna Karina, Nadia Gray, Jeanne Moreau and Welch. She played Nini in the episode La belle époque/The Gay Nineties by German director Michael Pfleghar. When Nini discovers by accident that her antiquated customer (Martin Held) is a banker, she pretends to be an honest woman who has fallen in love with him. She even pays him, just like a gigolo! Varlaam at IMDb: "Raquel Welch stars in the most amusing episode, relatively speaking. It's apparently set in the 1890s Vienna (Emperor Franz Josef is on the paper money). One could probably say that Raquel's greatest classic role was as the injured party in the Cannery Row lawsuit. Finely nuanced she was not, normally. But she makes an appealing light comedienne here, and she can really fill a lacy Viennese corset. The Belle Époque it assuredly was." Next, she appeared in the British seven-deadly-sins comedy Bedazzled (Stanley Donen, 1967). She played the deadly sin representing 'lust' for the comedy team of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. In Britain, she was also the title secret agent in the sexy spy spoof Fathom (Leslie H. Martinson, 1967). In Italy, she starred with Monica Vitti and Claudia Cardinale in Le Fate/The Queens (Mauro Bolognini, 1966) and with Edward G. Robinson and Vittorio de Sica in The Biggest Bundle of Them All (Ken Annakin, 1968). Back in the United States, she appeared in the Western Bandolero! (Andrew V. McLaglen, 1968) with James Stewart and Dean Martin, which was followed by the private-eye drama Lady in Cement (Gordon Douglas, 1968) with Frank Sinatra. She caused quite a stir in her ground-breaking sex scenes with black athlete Jim Brown in the Western 100 Rifles (Tom Gries, 1969).
Raquel Welch's most controversial role came in the comedy Myra Breckinridge (Michael Sarne, 1970), based on Gore Vidal's 1968 novel. She took the part of the film's transsexual heroine in an attempt to be taken seriously as an actress. The picture was controversial for its sexual explicitness, but unlike the novel, Myra Breckinridge received little to no critical praise. It is cited in the book The Fifty Worst Films of All Time. Jason Ankeny at AllMovie: "Her situation was unusual; she was certainly a star and a household name, yet few people ever went to see her movies." Welch took a measure of control over her screen persona, producing and starring in Hannie Calder (Burt Kennedy, 1971), the first film in which she carved out a place in movie history portraying strong female characters and breaking the mould of the submissive sex symbol. She altered the image further with Kansas City Bomber (Jerrold Freedman, 1972), insisting on doing her own stunts as good-hearted roller derby star Diane 'KC' Carr. She followed that with a series of successful films in Europe that included the thriller Bluebeard (Edward Dmytryk, 1972) starring Richard Burton, the swashbuckler The Three Musketeers (Richard Lester, 1973) - for which she won a Golden Globe, the sequel The Four Musketeers (Richard Lester, 1974) both with Oliver Reed and Michael York, and The Wild Party (James Ivory, 1975). A big hit in Europe was the French action-comedy L'Animal/Animal (Claude Zidi, 1977) starring Jean-Paul Belmondo. Raquel Welch's unique persona on film made her one of the reigning icons of the 1960s and 1970s. Later, she made several television variety specials. In 1980, Welch planned on making a comeback in an adaptation of John Steinbeck's Cannery Row (David S. Ward, 1982), but was fired by the producers a few days into production. The producers said that at 40 years old she was too old to play the character. She was replaced with Debra Winger. Welch sued and collected a $10.8 million settlement. She starred on Broadway in Woman of the Year, receiving praise for following Lauren Bacall in the title role. She also starred in Victor/Victoria, having less success. In 1995, Welch was chosen by Empire Magazine as one of the 100 Sexiest Stars in Film History.
Sources: Jason Ankeny (AllMovie), Gary Brumburgh (IMDb), David Carless (IMDb), Bob Taylor (IMDb), Varlaam (IMDb), TCM, Wikipedia, and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
The Green bee-eater (Merops orientalis) is a tiny bird that preys regularly on flying insects including bees, dragonflies, flying ants, etc., which are mostly caught in the air.
Though a tiny bird, check out its color combinations...
"Grey" beak, which leads into...
"Black" mask around the eyes.
"Orange" on top of the head.
"Blue" beard below the beak and eyes.
"Green" body all over, giving its name.
"Red" eyes, as though it is bloodshot!
East-German postcard by VEB Progress Film-Vertrieb, Berlin, no. 2/69. Sophia Loren in El Cid (Anthony Mann, 1961).
Sophia Loren (1934) rose to fame in post-war Italy as a voluptuous sex goddess. Soon after, she became one of the most successful stars of the 20th Century, who won an Oscar for her mother role in La ciociara (Vittorio De Sica, 1960).
Sophia Loren was born Sofia Villani Scicolone in the charity ward of a Roman hospital in 1934. She was the illegitimate daughter of construction engineer Riccardo Scicolone and piano teacher and aspiring actress Romilda Villani. Riccardo was married to another woman and refused to marry Romilda, leaving her without support. Romilda, Sofia, and sister Maria returned to Pozzuoli to live with Sofia's grandmother. Pozzuoli was a small town outside Naples and one of the hardest hit during World War II. The family shared a two-room apartment with the grandmother and several aunts and uncles. The shy, stick-thin girl regularly went hungry and had to flee from bombings. At 14, Sofia had a voluptuous figure and entered a beauty contest. She was selected as one of the finalists but did not win. In 1950, she was one of the contestants in the Miss Italia competition. She earned 2nd place and was awarded ‘Miss Eleganza’. While attending the Miss Rome beauty contest, earlier in 1950, she had met judge Carlo Ponti, an up-and-coming film producer, 22 years her senior. Ponti had helped launch Gina Lollobrigida's career and now began grooming Sofia for stardom. He hired an acting coach to tutor her. At 16 she was in her first film, the Totó comedy Le Sei Mogli di Barbablù/Bluebeard’s Six Wives (Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia, 1950) under the name Sofia Lazzaro. She also appeared as an extra in Luci del varietà/Lights of the Variety (Federico Fellini, 1950), the smash hit Anna (Alberto Lattuada, 1951), and Quo Vadis (Mervyn Leroy, 1951). During the early 1950s, she secured work modelling for fumetti magazines. These comic-like magazines used actual photographs. The dialogue bubbles were called 'fumetti' - hence the popular name. At 17, she was cast by Ponti in her first larger role as the commoner who caught the prince's eye in the filmed opera La Favorita/The Favorite (Cesare Barlacchi, 1952). The next year she earned third billing after Silvana Pampanini and Eleanora Rossi-Drago in La Tratta Delle Bianche/The White Slave Trade (Luigi Comencini, 1953) and she played, complete with blackface and an Afro, the lead in another filmed opera, Aida (Clemente Fracassi, 1953) by Giuseppe Verdi. Her singing was dubbed by Renata Tebaldi. Ponti eventually changed her name to Sophia Loren.
Sophia Loren appeared for the first time with Marcello Mastroianni in the romantic comedy Peccato che sia una canaglia/Too Bad She's Bad (Alessandro Blasetti, 1954). They would make 13 films together, including Tempi nostri/A Slice of Life (Alessandro Blasetti, Paul Paviot, 1954), La bella mugnaia/The Miller's Wife (Mario Camerini, 1955), and La fortuna di essere donna/What A Woman (Alessandro Blasetti, 1956). L'Oro di Napoli/Gold of Naples (Vittorio de Sica, 1954), an anthology of tales depicting various aspects of Neapolitan life, was distributed internationally. At AllMovie, Jason Ankeny writes that in reviews "Loren was singled out for the strength of her performance as a Neapolitan shopkeeper, surprising many critics who had dismissed her as merely another bombshell". The film established her persona as a sensuous working-class earth mother. It also began a fruitful, career-long collaboration with De Sica. Sophia’s first film to find international success was La Donna del Fiume/The River Girl (Mario Soldati, 1955), in which she danced sensually the Mambo Bacan. Hal Erickson at AllMovie: "Through it all, Sophia Loren looks like a million lire - and she even gets to sing and dance!". She came to the attention of Stanley Kramer who offered her the female lead in The Pride And The Passion (Stanley Kramer, 1957) opposite Cary Grant and Frank Sinatra. Sophia played a Spanish peasant girl involved in an uprising against the French. This was the turning point in her career, and the film proved to be one of the top US box office successes of the year. Her next English-language film was Boy on a Dolphin (Jean Negulesco, 1957) with Alan Ladd, where she was memorable mostly for emerging from the water in a wet, skin-tight, transparent dress. With her va-va-va-voom image, she became an international film star and got a five-picture contract with Paramount Pictures. Among her Paramount films were Desire Under the Elms (Delbert Mann, 1958) with Anthony Perkins and based upon the Eugene O'Neill play, Houseboat (Melville Shavelson, 1958), a romantic comedy co-starring Cary Grant, and the Western Heller in Pink Tights (George Cukor, 1960) in which she appeared for the first time with blonde hair (a wig). Most of these films were received lukewarmly at best.
In 1960 Sophia Loren returned to Italy to star in the biggest success of her career, La Ciociara/Two Women (Vittorio De Sica, 1960). She played a widow desperately trying to protect her daughter from danger during WW II, only to end up in a destructive love triangle with a young radical (Jean-Paul Belmondo). Hal Erickson at AllMovie: "A last-minute replacement for Anna Magnani, Sophia Loren brought hitherto untapped depths of emotion to her performance in Two Women; she later stated that she was utilizing 'sensory recall,' dredging up memories of her own wartime experiences." Loren won the Best Actress Oscar for her performance, and also the Cannes, Venice ánd Berlin Film Festivals' best performance prizes. Next, she played in Spain Samuel Bronston's epic production of El Cid (Anthony Mann, 1961) with Charlton Heston, followed by the De Sica episode of the anthology Boccaccio '70 (Vittorio De Sica, Federico Fellini, Luchino Visconti, 1962). On the strength of her Oscar win, she also returned to English-language fare with Five Miles to Midnight (Anatole Litvak, 1963), followed a year later by The Fall of the Roman Empire (Anthony Mann, 1964), for which she received $1 million. Among Loren's other films of this period are The Millionairess (Anthony Asquith, 1960) with Peter Sellers, It Started in Naples (Melville Shavelson, 1960) with Clark Gable, Lady L (Peter Ustinov, 1965) with Paul Newman, Arabesque (Stanley Donen, 1966) with Gregory Peck, and Charlie Chaplin's final film, A Countess from Hong Kong (1967) with Marlon Brando. Despite the failure of many of her films to generate sales at the box office, she invariably turned in a charming performance and she wore some of the most lavish costumes ever created for the cinema. Her best Italian films include the triptych Ieri, oggi, domani/Yesterday, Today And Tomorrow (Vittorio De Sica, 1963), a comedy that poked fun at a Catholic priest and gently mocked the Italian law on birth control, and Matrimonio all' Italiana/Marriage Italian Style (Vittorio De Sica, 1964) with Loren as the hooker who lures Mastroianni into marriage.
After several miscarriages and a highly-publicized struggle to become pregnant, Sophia Loren gave birth to her son Hubert Leoni Carlo Ponti in 1968. She started to work less and moved into her 40s and 50s with roles in films like De Sica's war drama I Girasoli/The Sunflowers (Vittorio De Sica, 1972), Il Viaggio/The Voyage (Vittorio De Sica, 1974) opposite Richard Burton, and reuniting with Marcello Mastroianni in the mob comedy La Pupa del Gangster/Get Rita (Giorgio Capitani, 1975). An artistic highlight was Una giornata particolare/A Special Day (Ettore Scola, 1977) which earned a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film. Loren played a bored housewife on the day of the first meeting between Mussolini and Hitler. Left alone in her tenement home when her fascist husband runs off to attend the historic event, Loren strikes up a friendship with her homosexual neighbour (Marcello Mastroianni). As the day segues into night, Loren and Mastroianni develop a very special relationship that will radically alter both of their outlooks on life. When a dubbed version of Una giornata particolare/A Special Day found favour with American audiences, Hollywood again came calling, resulting in a pair of thrillers, The Brass Target (John Hough, 1978) and Firepower (Michael Winner, 1979) which offered her a central role as a widow seeking answers in the murder of her chemist husband. In 1980, Loren portrayed herself, as well as her mother, in Sophia Loren: Her Own Story (Mel Stuart, 1980), a made-for-television biopic adaptation of her autobiography. Actresses Ritza Brown and Chiara Ferrari played Loren at younger ages. She made headlines in 1982 when she served an 18-day prison sentence in Italy on tax evasion charges, a fact that didn't damage her career or popularity. In her 60s, Loren ventured into various areas of business, including cookbooks, eyewear, jewellery, and perfume. In honour of her lengthy career, Loren was the recipient of a special Oscar in 1991. She also made well-received appearances in her final film with Mastroianni, Prêt-à-Porter/Ready to Wear (1994), Robert Altman's take on the French fashion scene, and in the comedy hit Grumpier Old Men (Howard Deutch, 1995) playing a femme fatale opposite Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon. In 1995 she received the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award. At the age of 72, she appeared scantily clad in the 2007 edition of the famous calendar of Italian racing tire giant Pirelli. It made her the oldest model in the calendar's history. The photos by Dutch photographers Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin proved that she was still a major international sex symbol. In 2007 Carlo Ponti died. It had been controversial in her native Italy when Sophia Loren had married her mentor Ponti in 1957. Not only was he 45 to her 23, but he had been married previously, and neither the Catholic Church nor the Italian government recognised his Mexican divorce. Ponti was charged with bigamy, but the charges were dropped when they had their marriage annulled. They continued living together - scandalous at the time - and remarried after his legal problems had been cleared. Ponti and Loren made three dozen films together. They had two children, symphony conductor Carlo Ponti Jr. and film director Edoardo Ponti. After four years off the big screen, Sophia Loren co-starred in a film version of the Broadway musical Nine (Rob Marshall, 2009). She played the mother of famous film director Guido Contini, portrayed by Daniel Day-Lewis. According to Jason Ankeny at AllMovie, "Loren proved she still had movie star charisma with a role in Chicago director Rob Marshall's Nine - a lavish tribute to all things Italian." Loren made a two-part television biopic of her early life titled La Mia Casa È Piena di Specchi/My House Is Full of Mirrors (Vittorio Sindoni, 2010), based on of the memoir written by her sister Maria Scicolone. At 80, Sophia Loren returned to the screen in Human Voice (2014) directed by her son Edoardo Ponti. At the presentation at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York, 'the timeless beauty' stunned the press once again when she walked on the red carpet in a chic red pantsuit hand-in-hand with her 41-year-old son to promote the short film. Human Voice is based on the play by iconic French playwright Jean Cocteau and sees La Loren play a woman in her twilight years facing revelations from her past. In late 2014, she also presented her first memoir, Ieri, oggi, domani. La mia vita/Today and Tomorrow: My Life as a Fairy Tale. It includes old pictures, letters, and notes detailing encounters with Cary Grant and other film partners. In 2020, Sophia Loren returned to cinema after an 11-year absence. At the age of 86, she played a Jewish Holocaust survivor who befriends a 12-year-old Senegalese orphan in the Netflix film La vita davanti a sé/The Life Ahead, directed by her son Edoardo Ponti. The film is based on the novel 'La vie devant soi' by French author Romain Gary.
Sources: Jason Ankeny (AllMovie), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Shyam Dodge (Daily Mail), Jenny (IMDb), Wikipedia, NNDB, TCM, and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
German postcard by Krüger, no. 902/446. Publicity still for La bella mugnaia/The Miller’s Beautiful Wife (Mario Camerini, 1955).
Academy Award-winning film actress Sophia Loren (1934) rose to fame in post-war Italy as a voluptuous sex goddess. She became one of the most successful international stars of the 20th Century and is still a major sex symbol.
Sophia Loren was born Sofia Villani Scicolone in Rome in 1934, to engineer Riccardo Scicolone and piano teacher and aspiring actress Romilda Villani. Riccardo refused to marry Romilda, leaving her without support. Romilda, Sofia and sister Maria returned to Pozzuoli, near Naples, to live with Sofia's grandmother in order to survive. During WW II they lived in abject poverty in the war-torn slums of Naples. At 14, Sofia entered a beauty contest and, while not winning, was selected as one of the finalists. She also was one of the contestants at the 1950 Miss Italia competition, earned the 2nd place and was awarded ‘Miss Eleganza’. Sophia first met producer Carlo Ponti in 1950 during such a beauty contest in which he was a judge. He was some 22 years her senior. He had helped launch Gina Lollobrigida's career, and now began grooming Sophia for stardom. He hired an acting coach to tutor her, and at 16 she was in her first film, the Toto comedy Le Sei Mogli di Barbablù/ Bluebeard’s Six Wives (1950, Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia) under the name Sofia Lazzaro. She also appeared as an extra in Luci del varietà/Lights of the Variety (1950, Federico Fellini), the smash hit Anna (1951, Alberto Lattuada) and Quo Vadis (1951, Mervyn LeRoy), and posed for a flurry of pin-up photographs which emphasised her body. At 17 Ponti cast her in her first larger role as the commoner who caught the prince's eye in the filmed opera La Favorita (1952, Cesare Barlacchi). The next year she earned third billing after Silvana Pampanini and Eleanora Rossi-Drago in La Tratta Delle Bianche/The White Slave Trade (1953, Luigi Comencini) and played the lead in another filmed opera, Aida (1953, Clemente Fracassi), but her songs were dubbed by a better singer. Ponti eventually changed her name to Sophia Loren.
Sophia Loren appeared for the first time with Marcello Mastroianni in the romantic comedy Peccato che sia una canaglia/Too Bad She's Bad (1954, Alessandro Blasetti),. They would make 13 films together, including Tempi nostri/A Slice of Life (1954, Alessandro Blasetti, Paul Paviot), La bella mugnaia/The Miller's Wife (1955, Mario Camerini), and La fortuna di essere donna/What A Woman (1956, Alessandro Blasetti). Sophia’s first film to find international success was La Donna del Fiume/The River Girl (1955, Mario Soldati). She came to the attention of Stanley Kramer who offered her the female lead in The Pride And The Passion (1957, Stanley Kramer) opposite Cary Grant and Frank Sinatra. Sophia played a Spanish peasant girl involved in an uprising against the French. This was the turning point in her career, and the film became a big commercial success. Her next English-language film was Boy on a Dolphin (1957, Jean Negulesco) with Alan Ladd, where she was memorable mostly for emerging from the water in a wet, skin-tight, transparent dress. With her va-va-va-voom image she became an international film star and got a five-picture contract with Paramount Pictures. Among her films at this time were Desire Under the Elms (1958, Delbert Mann) with Anthony Perkins, based upon the Eugene O'Neill play; Houseboat (1958, Melville Shavelson), a romantic comedy co-starring Cary Grant; and the western Heller in Pink Tights (1960, George Cukor) in which she appeared with blonde hair (a wig) for the first time, but most of these films were received lukewarmly at best.
In 1960 Sophia Loren returned to Italy to star in the brutal wartime drama La Ciociara/Two Women (1960, Vittorio De Sica) with Jean-Paul Belmondo. She won the Best Actress Oscar for her performance, and also the Cannes, Venice and Berlin Film Festivals' best performance prizes. Initially, the stark, gritty story of a mother and daughter surviving in war-torn Italy was to cast Anna Magnani as Sophia's mother. Negotiations broke down and the screenplay was rewritten to make Loren the mother; Eleonora Brown portrayed the daughter. She next shot in Spain Samuel Bronston's epic production of El Cid (1961, Anthony Mann) with Charlton Heston, followed by the De Sica episode of the anthology Boccaccio '70 (1962, Vittorio De Sica, Federico Fellini, Luchino Visconti). On the strength of her Oscar win, she also returned to English-language fare with Five Miles to Midnight (1963, Anatole Litvak), followed a year later by The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964, Anthony Mann), for which she received $1 million. Among Loren's other films of this period are The Millionairess (1960, Anthony Asquith) with Peter Sellers, It Started in Naples (1960, Melville Shavelson) with Clark Gable, Lady L (1965, Peter Ustinov) with Paul Newman, Arabesque (1966, Stnaley Donen) with Gregory Peck, and Charlie Chaplin's final film, A Countess from Hong Kong (1967) with Marlon Brando. Despite the failure of many of her films to generate sales at the box office, she invariably turned in a charming performance and worn some of the most lavish costumes ever created for the cinema. Her best Italian films include the triptych Ieri, oggi, domani/Yesterday, Today And Tomorrow (1963, Vittorio De Sica) a comedy that poked fun at a Catholic priest and gently mocked Italian law on birth control, and Matrimonio all'Italiana/Marriage Italian Style(1964, Vittorio De Sica) with Loren as the hooker who lures Mastroianni into marriage.
In 1968 Sophia Loren became a mother, and started to work less. She moved into her 40’s and 50’s with roles in films like the last De Sica film, Il Viaggio/The Voyage (1974, Vittorio De Sica) opposite Richard Burton, and Una giornata particolare/A Special Day (1977, Ettore Scola) with Loren as a bored housewife and Marcello Mastroianni as her gay acquaintance at the day Hitler comes to town. In 1980, Loren portrayed herself, as well as her mother, in Sophia Loren: Her Own Story (1980, Mel Stuart), a made-for-television biopic adaptation of her autobiography. Actresses, Ritza Brown and Chiara Ferrari played Loren at younger ages. She made headlines in 1982 when she served an 18-day prison sentence in Italy on tax evasion charges, a fact that didn't damage her career or popularity. In her 60’s, Loren ventured into various areas of business, including cook books, eyewear, jewelry and perfume. She also made well-received appearances in her final film with Mastroianni, Prêt-à-Porter/Ready to Wear (1994, Robert Altman), and the comedy hit Grumpier Old Men (1995, Howard Deutch) playing a femme fatale opposite Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon. In 1991, Loren received the Academy Honorary Award for her contributions to world cinema and was declared ‘one of the world cinema's treasures’. In 1995, she received the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award. Appeared in the 2007 edition of the famous Pirelli Calendar at the age of 72, making her the oldest model in its history. The photos by Dutch photographers Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin proved that she is still a major international sex symbol.
In 2007 Carlo Ponti died. It was controversial in her native Italy when Sophia Loren had married her mentor Ponti in 1957. Not only was he 45 to her 23, but he had been married previously, and neither the Catholic Church nor Italian government recognized his Mexican divorce. Ponti was charged with bigamy, but the charges were dropped when she had their marriage annulled. They continued living together - scandalous at the time - and remarried after his legal problems had been cleared. Still happily married, Ponti and Loren made three dozen films together. They had two children, symphony conductor Carlo Ponti Jr. and film director Edoardo Ponti. After four years off the big screen, Sophia Loren will star in the film version of the Broadway musical Nine (2009, Rob Marshall). She will play the mother of famous film director Guido Contini, who's portrayed by Daniel Day-Lewis.
Sources: Jason Ankeny (All Movie Guide), Wikipedia, NNDB, Love Goddess and IMDb.
Italian postcard, no. 100 104. Raquel Welch in One Million Years BC (Don Chaffey, 1966).
American actress Raquel Welch (1940) is one of the icons of the 1960s and 1970s. She first won attention for her role in Fantastic Voyage (1966). In Great Britain, she then made One Million Years B.C. (1966). Although she had only three lines in the film, a poster of Welch in a furry prehistoric bikini became an amazing bestseller and catapulted her to stardom.
Raquel Welch was born Jo Raquel Tejada in 1940 in Chicago, Illinois. She was the first of three children born to Bolivian Armando Carlos Tejada Urquizo, an aerospace engineer, and his Irish-American wife Josephine Sarah Hall, who was the daughter of American architect Emery Stanford Hall. At age 14, Raquel won her first beauty title as Miss Photogenic. She graduated from high school in 1958 and a year later, after becoming pregnant, she married her high school sweetheart, James Welch. Seeking an acting career, Welch won a scholarship in drama, took classes at San Diego State College and won several parts in local theatre productions. She got a job as a weather forecaster at KFMB, a local San Diego television station. After her separation from James Welch, she moved with her two children to Dallas, Texas, where she worked as a model for Neiman Marcus and as a cocktail waitress. In 1963, she went to California, where she met former child star and Hollywood agent Patrick Curtis who became her personal and business manager and second husband. They developed a plan to turn Welch into a sex symbol. After small roles in a few films and TV series, she had her first featured role in the beach film A Swingin' Summer (Robert Sparr, 1965). She landed a seven-year nonexclusive contract at 20th Century Fox and was cast in a leading role in the sci-fi film Fantastic Voyage (Richard Fleischer, 1966) opposite Stephen Boyd. Welch portrayed a member of a medical team that is miniaturized and injected into the body of an injured diplomat with the mission to save his life. The film was a hit and made her a well-known name. Fox Studio loaned her to Hammer Studios in Britain where she starred in One Million Years B.C. (Don Chaffey, 1966). Her only costume was a two-piece deer skin bikini. Gary Brumburgh at IMDb: "Tantalizingly wet with her garb clinging to all the right amazonian places, One Million Years B.C. (1966), if nothing else, captured the hearts and libidos of modern men (not to mention their teenage sons) while producing THE most definitive and best-selling pin-up poster of that time."
Raquel Welch stayed in Europe for the French comedy Le Plus Vieux Métier du monde/The Oldest Profession (Michael Pfleghar a.o., 1967), a typical European anthology film of the 1960s. A collection of sketches on prostitution through the ages, made by a pan-European cast and crew. Some of the most sensual stars of the era played the leads: Michèle Mercier, Elsa Martinelli, Anna Karina, Nadia Gray, Jeanne Moreau and Welch. She played Nini in the episode La belle époque/The Gay Nineties by German director Michael Pfleghar. When Nini discovers by accident that her antiquated customer (Martin Held) is a banker, she pretends to be an honest woman who has fallen in love with him. She even pays him, just like a gigolo! Varlaam at IMDb: "Raquel Welch stars in the most amusing episode, relatively speaking. It's apparently set in the 1890s Vienna (Emperor Franz Josef is on the paper money). One could probably say that Raquel's greatest classic role was as the injured party in the Cannery Row lawsuit. Finely nuanced she was not, normally. But she makes an appealing light comedienne here, and she can really fill a lacy Viennese corset. The Belle Époque it assuredly was." Next, she appeared in the British seven-deadly-sins comedy Bedazzled (Stanley Donen, 1967). She played the deadly sin representing 'lust' for the comedy team of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. In Britain, she was also the title secret agent in the sexy spy spoof Fathom (Leslie H. Martinson, 1967). In Italy, she starred with Monica Vitti and Claudia Cardinale in Le Fate/The Queens (Mauro Bolognini, 1966) and with Edward G. Robinson and Vittorio de Sica in The Biggest Bundle of Them All (Ken Annakin, 1968). Back in the United States, she appeared in the Western Bandolero! (Andrew V. McLaglen, 1968) with James Stewart and Dean Martin, which was followed by the private-eye drama Lady in Cement (Gordon Douglas, 1968) with Frank Sinatra. She caused quite a stir in her ground-breaking sex scenes with black athlete Jim Brown in the Western 100 Rifles (Tom Gries, 1969).
Raquel Welch's most controversial role came in the comedy Myra Breckinridge (Michael Sarne, 1970), based on Gore Vidal's 1968 novel. She took the part of the film's transsexual heroine in an attempt to be taken seriously as an actress. The picture was controversial for its sexual explicitness, but unlike the novel, Myra Breckinridge received little to no critical praise. It is cited in the book The Fifty Worst Films of All Time. Jason Ankeny at AllMovie: "Her situation was unusual; she was certainly a star and a household name, yet few people ever went to see her movies." Welch took a measure of control over her screen persona, producing and starring in Hannie Calder (Burt Kennedy, 1971), the first film in which she carved out a place in movie history portraying strong female characters and breaking the mould of the submissive sex symbol. She altered the image further with Kansas City Bomber (Jerrold Freedman, 1972), insisting on doing her own stunts as good-hearted roller derby star Diane 'KC' Carr. She followed that with a series of successful films in Europe that included the thriller Bluebeard (Edward Dmytryk, 1972) starring Richard Burton, the swashbuckler The Three Musketeers (Richard Lester, 1973) - for which she won a Golden Globe, the sequel The Four Musketeers (Richard Lester, 1974) both with Oliver Reed and Michael York, and The Wild Party (James Ivory, 1975). A big hit in Europe was the French action-comedy L'Animal/Animal (Claude Zidi, 1977) starring Jean-Paul Belmondo. Raquel Welch's unique persona on film made her one of the reigning icons of the 1960s and 1970s. Later, she made several television variety specials. In 1980, Welch planned on making a comeback in an adaptation of John Steinbeck's Cannery Row (David S. Ward, 1982), but was fired by the producers a few days into production. The producers said that at 40 years old she was too old to play the character. She was replaced with Debra Winger. Welch sued and collected a $10.8 million settlement. She starred on Broadway in Woman of the Year, receiving praise for following Lauren Bacall in the title role. She also starred in Victor/Victoria, having less success. In 1995, Welch was chosen by Empire Magazine as one of the 100 Sexiest Stars in Film History.
Sources: Jason Ankeny (AllMovie), Gary Brumburgh (IMDb), David Carless (IMDb), Bob Taylor (IMDb), Varlaam (IMDb), TCM, Wikipedia, and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Can't help thinking that these flowers look pretty pleased with themselves, that they're celebrating something? Maybe they're QPR fans happy about the amazing start to the season which sees us 3 points clear at the top of the championship after another win last night? :)
Lots more new flower shots added to the floral gallery on my website this week.
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This image is not available for use on websites, blogs or other media without the explicit written permission of the photographer.
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The acropolis athens greece september 2010
History
Early settlement
While the earliest artifacts date to the Middle Neolithic era, there have been documented habitations in Attica from the Early Neolithic (6th millennium BC). There is little doubt that a Mycenaean megaron stood upon the hill during the late Bronze Age. Nothing of this megaron survives except, probably, a single limestone column-base and pieces of several sandstone steps. Soon after the palace was built a Cyclopean massive circuit wall was built, 760 meters long, up to 10 meters high, and ranging from 3.5 to 6 meters thick. This wall would serve as the main defense for the acropolis until the 5th century The wall consisted of two parapets built with large stone blocks and cemented with an earth mortar called emplekton (Greek: ἔμπλεκτον) The wall follows typical Mycenaean convention in that it followed the natural contour of the terrain and its gate was arranged obliquely, with a parapet and tower overhanging the incomers' right-hand side, thus facilitating defense. There were two lesser approaches up the hill on its north side, consisting of steep, narrow flights of steps cut in the rock. Homer is assumed to refer to this fortification when he mentions the "strong-built House of Erechtheus" . At some point before the 13th century an earthquake caused a fissure near the northeastern edge of the acropolis. This fissure extended some thirty five meters to a bed of soft marl in which a well was dug. An elaborate set of stairs was built and the well was used as a protected source of drinking water during some portion of the Mycenaean period, as it was invaluable in times of siege.
The Dark Ages
There is no conclusive evidence for the existence of a Mycenean palace on top of the Athenian Acropolis. However, if there was such a palace, it seems to have been transplanted by later building activity on the Acropolis. Not much is known as to the architectural appearance of the Acropolis until the archaic era. In the 7th and the 6th centuries BC the site was taken over by Kylon during the failed Kylonian revolt, and twice by Pisistratus: all attempts directed at seizing political power by coups d' etat. Nevertheless it seems that a nine-gate wall, the Enneapylon, had been built around the biggest water spring, the "Clepsydra", at the northwestern foot. It was Pisistratus who initially established a precinct for Artemis on the site.
Archaic Acropolis
A temple sacred to "Athena Polias" (Protectress of the City) was quickly erected by mid-6th century BC. This Doric limestone building, from which many relics survive, is referred to as the "Bluebeard" temple, named after the pedimental three-bodied man-serpent sculpture, whose beards were painted dark blue. Whether this temple replaced an older one, or a mere sacred precinct or altar, is not known. In the late 6th century BC yet another temple was built, usually referred to as the Archaios Naos (Old Temple). This temple of Athena Polias was built upon the Doerpfeld foundations.[6] It is unknown where the "Bluebeard" temple was built. There are two popular theories the "Bluebeard" temple was built upon the Doerpfeld foundations, the "Bluebeard" temple was built where the Parthenon now stands. That being said it is unknown if the "Bluebeard" temple and the Archaios Naos coexisted.
To confuse matters, by the time the "Bluebeard" Temple had been dismantled, a newer and grander marble building, the "Older Parthenon" (often called the "Ur-Parthenon", German for "Early Parthenon"), was started following the victory at Marathon in 490 BC. To accommodate it, the south part of the summit was cleared of older remnants, made level by adding some 8,000 two-ton blocks of Piraeus limestone, a foundation 11 m (36 ft) deep at some points, and the rest filled with earth kept in place by the retaining wall.
The Older Parthenon was still under construction when the Persians sacked the city in 480 BC. The building was burnt and looted along with the Archaios Naos and practically everything else on the rock. After the Persian crisis had subsided the Athenians incorporated many of the unfinished temple's architectural members (still unfluted column drums, triglyphs, metopes, etc.) to the newly built northern curtain wall of the Acropolis, where they also served as a prominent "war memorial" and where they can still be seen today. The devastated site was cleared from debris. Statuary, cult objects, religious offerings and unsalvageable architectural members were buried ceremoniously in several deeply dug pits on the hill, serving conveniently as a fill for the artificial plateau created around the classic Parthenon. This "Persian debris" is the richest archaeological deposit excavated on the Acropolis.
The Periclean building program
Most of the major temples were rebuilt under the leadership of Pericles during the Golden Age of Athens (460–430 BC). Phidias, a great Athenian sculptor, and Ictinus and Callicrates, two famous architects, were responsible for the reconstruction. During the 5th century BC, the Acropolis gained its final shape. After winning at Eurymedon in 468 BC, Cimon and Themistocles ordered the reconstruction of southern and northern walls, and Pericles entrusted the building of the Parthenon to Ictinus and Callicrates
In 437 BC Mnesicles started building the Propylaea, monumental gates with columns of Pentelic marble, partly built upon the old propylaea of Pisistratus. These colonnades were almost finished in 432 BC and had two wings, the northern one serving as picture gallery. At the same time, south of the propylaea, building of the small Ionic Temple of Athena Nike commenced. After an interruption caused by the Peloponnesian War, the temple was finished in the time of Nicias' peace, between 421 BC and 415 BC.
During the same period the building of the Erechtheum, a combination of sacred precincts including the temples of Athena Polias, Poseidon, Erechtheus, Cecrops, Herse, Pandrosos and Aglauros, with its so-called the Kore Porch (or Caryatids' balcony), was begun.
Between the temple of Athena Nike and the Parthenon there was the temenos of Artemis Brauronia or Brauroneion, the goddess represented as a bear and worshipped in the deme of Brauron. The archaic xoanon of the goddess and a statue made by Praxiteles in the 4th century BC were both in the sanctuary.
Behind the Propylaea, Phidias' gigantic bronze statue of Athena Promachos ("she who fights in the front line"), built between 450 BC and 448 BC, dominated. The base was 1.50 m (4 ft 11 in) high, while the total height of the statue was 9 m (30 ft). The goddess held a lance whose gilt tip could be seen as a reflection by crews on ships rounding Cape Sounion, and a giant shield on the left side, decorated by Mys with images of the fight between the Centaurs and the Lapiths. Other monuments that have left almost nothing visible to the present day are the Chalkotheke, the Pandroseion, Pandion's sanctuary, Athena's altar, Zeus Polieus's sanctuary and, from Roman times, the circular temple of Augustus and Rome.
Hellenistic and Roman periodThis section requires expansion.
During the Hellenistic and Roman periods, many of the existing buildings in the area of the Acropolis were repaired, due to damage from age, and occasionally, war Monuments to foreign kings were erected, notably those of the Attalid kings of Pergamon Attalos II (in front of the NW corner of the Parthenon), and Eumenes II, in front of the Propylaia. These were rededicated during the early Roman Empire to Augustus (or perhaps Cladius), and Agrippa, respectively. Eumenes was also responsible for constructing a stoa on the South slope, not unlike that of Attalos in the Agora below.
During the Julio-Claudian period, the Temple of Rome and Augustus, a small, round edifice, about 23 meters from the Parthenon, was to be the last significant ancient construction on the summit of the rock.[10] Around the same time, on the North slope, in a cave next to the one dedicated to Pan since the classical period, a sanctuary was founded where the archons dedicated to Apollo on taking office. In the following century, on the South slope, Herodes Atticus built his grand odeon.
During the 3rd century, under threat from a Herulian invasion, repairs were made to the Acropolis walls, and the "Beule Gate" was constructed to restrict entrance in front of the Propylaia, thus returning the Acropolis to use as a fortress.
Byzantine, Latin and Ottoman period
The Venetian siege of 1687.
In the Byzantine period, the Parthenon was turned into a church, dedicated to the Virgin Mary. Under the Latin Duchy of Athens, the Acropolis functioned as the city's administrative center, with the Parthenon as its cathedral, and the Propylaia as part of the Ducal Palace. A large tower was added, the "Frankopyrgos" (Tower of the Franks), demolished in the 19th century. After the Ottoman conquest, the Parthenon was used as the garrison headquarters of the Turkish army,[13] and the Erechteum was turned into the Governor's private Harem. The buildings of the Acropolis suffered significant damage during the 1687 siege by the Venetians in the Morean War. The Parthenon, which was being used as a gunpowder magazine, was hit by artillery fire and severely damaged.
Archaeological remains
The entrance to the Acropolis was a monumental gateway called the Propylaea. To the south of the entrance is the tiny Temple of Athena Nike. A bronze statue of Athena, sculpted by Phidias, originally stood at its centre. At the centre of the Acropolis is the Parthenon or Temple of Athena Parthenos (Athena the Virgin). East of the entrance and north of the Parthenon is the temple known as the Erechtheum. South of the platform that forms the top of the Acropolis there are also the remains of an outdoor theatre called Theatre of Dionysus. A few hundred metres away, there is the now partially reconstructed Theatre of Herodes Atticus.
All the valuable ancient artifacts are situated in the Acropolis Museum, which resides on the southern slope of the same rock, 280 metres from the Parthenon.
Site plan of the Acropolis at Athens showing the major archaeological remains
Yugoslavian postcard by Cik Razglednica. Photo: Dezo Hoffman.
Today, 15 February 2023, American actress and sex symbol Raquel Welch (1940) has died at the age of 82 after a short illness. She was one of the icons of the 1960s and 1970s. Welch first won attention for her role in Fantastic Voyage (1966). In Great Britain, she then made One Million Years B.C. (1966). Although she had only three lines in the film, a poster of Welch in a furry prehistoric bikini became an amazing bestseller and catapulted her to stardom.
Raquel Welch was born Jo Raquel Tejada in 1940 in Chicago, Illinois. She was the first of three children born to Bolivian Armando Carlos Tejada Urquizo, an aerospace engineer, and his Irish-American wife Josephine Sarah Hall, who was the daughter of American architect Emery Stanford Hall. At age 14, Raquel won her first beauty title as Miss Photogenic. She graduated from high school in 1958 and a year later, after becoming pregnant, she married her high school sweetheart, James Welch. Seeking an acting career, Welch won a scholarship in drama, took classes at San Diego State College and won several parts in local theatre productions. She got a job as a weather forecaster at KFMB, a local San Diego television station. After her separation from James Welch, she moved with her two children to Dallas, Texas, where she worked as a model for Neiman Marcus and as a cocktail waitress. In 1963, she went to California, where she met former child star and Hollywood agent Patrick Curtis who became her personal and business manager and second husband. They developed a plan to turn Welch into a sex symbol. After small roles in a few films and TV series, she had her first featured role in the beach film A Swingin' Summer (Robert Sparr, 1965). She landed a seven-year nonexclusive contract at 20th Century Fox and was cast in a leading role in the sci-fi film Fantastic Voyage (Richard Fleischer, 1966) opposite Stephen Boyd. Welch portrayed a member of a medical team that is miniaturized and injected into the body of an injured diplomat with the mission to save his life. The film was a hit and made her a well-known name. Fox Studio loaned her to Hammer Studios in Britain where she starred in One Million Years B.C. (Don Chaffey, 1966). Her only costume was a two-piece deer skin bikini. Gary Brumburgh at IMDb: "Tantalizingly wet with her garb clinging to all the right amazonian places, One Million Years B.C. (1966), if nothing else, captured the hearts and libidos of modern men (not to mention their teenage sons) while producing THE most definitive and best-selling pin-up poster of that time."
Raquel Welch stayed in Europe for the French comedy Le Plus Vieux Métier du monde/The Oldest Profession (Michael Pfleghar a.o., 1967), a typical European anthology film of the 1960s. A collection of sketches on prostitution through the ages, made by a pan-European cast and crew. Some of the most sensual stars of the era played the leads: Michèle Mercier, Elsa Martinelli, Anna Karina, Nadia Gray, Jeanne Moreau and Welch. She played Nini in the episode La belle époque/The Gay Nineties by German director Michael Pfleghar. When Nini discovers by accident that her antiquated customer (Martin Held) is a banker, she pretends to be an honest woman who has fallen in love with him. She even pays him, just like a gigolo! Varlaam at IMDb: "Raquel Welch stars in the most amusing episode, relatively speaking. It's apparently set in the 1890s Vienna (Emperor Franz Josef is on the paper money). One could probably say that Raquel's greatest classic role was as the injured party in the Cannery Row lawsuit. Finely nuanced she was not, normally. But she makes an appealing light comedienne here, and she can really fill a lacy Viennese corset. The Belle Époque it assuredly was." Next, she appeared in the British seven-deadly-sins comedy Bedazzled (Stanley Donen, 1967). She played the deadly sin representing 'lust' for the comedy team of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. In Britain, she was also the title secret agent in the sexy spy spoof Fathom (Leslie H. Martinson, 1967). In Italy, she starred with Monica Vitti and Claudia Cardinale in Le Fate/The Queens (Mauro Bolognini, 1966) and with Edward G. Robinson and Vittorio de Sica in The Biggest Bundle of Them All (Ken Annakin, 1968). Back in the United States, she appeared in the Western Bandolero! (Andrew V. McLaglen, 1968) with James Stewart and Dean Martin, which was followed by the private-eye drama Lady in Cement (Gordon Douglas, 1968) with Frank Sinatra. She caused quite a stir in her ground-breaking sex scenes with black athlete Jim Brown in the Western 100 Rifles (Tom Gries, 1969).
Raquel Welch's most controversial role came in the comedy Myra Breckinridge (Michael Sarne, 1970), based on Gore Vidal's 1968 novel. She took the part of the film's transsexual heroine in an attempt to be taken seriously as an actress. The picture was controversial for its sexual explicitness, but unlike the novel, Myra Breckinridge received little to no critical praise. It is cited in the book The Fifty Worst Films of All Time. Jason Ankeny at AllMovie: "Her situation was unusual; she was certainly a star and a household name, yet few people ever went to see her movies." Welch took a measure of control over her screen persona, producing and starring in Hannie Calder (Burt Kennedy, 1971), the first film in which she carved out a place in movie history portraying strong female characters and breaking the mould of the submissive sex symbol. She altered the image further with Kansas City Bomber (Jerrold Freedman, 1972), insisting on doing her own stunts as good-hearted roller derby star Diane 'KC' Carr. She followed that with a series of successful films in Europe that included the thriller Bluebeard (Edward Dmytryk, 1972) starring Richard Burton, the swashbuckler The Three Musketeers (Richard Lester, 1973) - for which she won a Golden Globe, the sequel The Four Musketeers (Richard Lester, 1974) both with Oliver Reed and Michael York, and The Wild Party (James Ivory, 1975). A big hit in Europe was the French action-comedy L'Animal/Animal (Claude Zidi, 1977) starring Jean-Paul Belmondo. Raquel Welch's unique persona on film made her one of the reigning icons of the 1960s and 1970s. Later, she made several television variety specials. In 1980, Welch planned on making a comeback in an adaptation of John Steinbeck's Cannery Row (David S. Ward, 1982), but was fired by the producers a few days into production. The producers said that at 40 years old she was too old to play the character. She was replaced with Debra Winger. Welch sued and collected a $10.8 million settlement. She starred on Broadway in Woman of the Year, receiving praise for following Lauren Bacall in the title role. She also starred in Victor/Victoria, having less success. In 1995, Welch was chosen by Empire Magazine as one of the 100 Sexiest Stars in Film History.
Sources: Jason Ankeny (AllMovie), Gary Brumburgh (IMDb), David Carless (IMDb), Bob Taylor (IMDb), Varlaam (IMDb), TCM, Wikipedia, and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin. Raquel Welch in 100 Rifles (Tom Gries, 1969).
Today, 15 February 2023, American actress and sex symbol Raquel Welch (1940) has died at the age of 82 after a short illness. She was one of the icons of the 1960s and 1970s. Welch first won attention for her role in Fantastic Voyage (1966). In Great Britain, she then made One Million Years B.C. (1966). Although she had only three lines in the film, a poster of Welch in a furry prehistoric bikini became an amazing bestseller and catapulted her to stardom.
Raquel Welch was born Jo Raquel Tejada in 1940 in Chicago, Illinois. She was the first of three children born to Bolivian Armando Carlos Tejada Urquizo, an aerospace engineer, and his Irish-American wife Josephine Sarah Hall, who was the daughter of American architect Emery Stanford Hall. At age 14, Raquel won her first beauty title as Miss Photogenic. She graduated from high school in 1958 and a year later, after becoming pregnant, she married her high school sweetheart, James Welch. Seeking an acting career, Welch won a scholarship in drama, took classes at San Diego State College and won several parts in local theatre productions. She got a job as a weather forecaster at KFMB, a local San Diego television station. After her separation from James Welch, she moved with her two children to Dallas, Texas, where she worked as a model for Neiman Marcus and as a cocktail waitress. In 1963, she went to California, where she met former child star and Hollywood agent Patrick Curtis who became her personal and business manager and second husband. They developed a plan to turn Welch into a sex symbol. After small roles in a few films and TV series, she had her first featured role in the beach film A Swingin' Summer (Robert Sparr, 1965). She landed a seven-year nonexclusive contract at 20th Century Fox and was cast in a leading role in the sci-fi film Fantastic Voyage (Richard Fleischer, 1966) opposite Stephen Boyd. Welch portrayed a member of a medical team that is miniaturized and injected into the body of an injured diplomat with the mission to save his life. The film was a hit and made her a well-known name. Fox Studio loaned her to Hammer Studios in Britain where she starred in One Million Years B.C. (Don Chaffey, 1966). Her only costume was a two-piece deer skin bikini. Gary Brumburgh at IMDb: "Tantalizingly wet with her garb clinging to all the right amazonian places, One Million Years B.C. (1966), if nothing else, captured the hearts and libidos of modern men (not to mention their teenage sons) while producing THE most definitive and best-selling pin-up poster of that time."
Raquel Welch stayed in Europe for the French comedy Le Plus Vieux Métier du monde/The Oldest Profession (Michael Pfleghar a.o., 1967), a typical European anthology film of the 1960s. A collection of sketches on prostitution through the ages, made by a pan-European cast and crew. Some of the most sensual stars of the era played the leads: Michèle Mercier, Elsa Martinelli, Anna Karina, Nadia Gray, Jeanne Moreau and Welch. She played Nini in the episode La belle époque/The Gay Nineties by German director Michael Pfleghar. When Nini discovers by accident that her antiquated customer (Martin Held) is a banker, she pretends to be an honest woman who has fallen in love with him. She even pays him, just like a gigolo! Varlaam at IMDb: "Raquel Welch stars in the most amusing episode, relatively speaking. It's apparently set in the 1890s Vienna (Emperor Franz Josef is on the paper money). One could probably say that Raquel's greatest classic role was as the injured party in the Cannery Row lawsuit. Finely nuanced she was not, normally. But she makes an appealing light comedienne here, and she can really fill a lacy Viennese corset. The Belle Époque it assuredly was." Next, she appeared in the British seven-deadly-sins comedy Bedazzled (Stanley Donen, 1967). She played the deadly sin representing 'lust' for the comedy team of Peter Cook and Dudley Moore. In Britain, she was also the title secret agent in the sexy spy spoof Fathom (Leslie H. Martinson, 1967). In Italy, she starred with Monica Vitti and Claudia Cardinale in Le Fate/The Queens (Mauro Bolognini, 1966) and with Edward G. Robinson and Vittorio de Sica in The Biggest Bundle of Them All (Ken Annakin, 1968). Back in the United States, she appeared in the Western Bandolero! (Andrew V. McLaglen, 1968) with James Stewart and Dean Martin, which was followed by the private-eye drama Lady in Cement (Gordon Douglas, 1968) with Frank Sinatra. She caused quite a stir in her ground-breaking sex scenes with black athlete Jim Brown in the Western 100 Rifles (Tom Gries, 1969).
Raquel Welch's most controversial role came in the comedy Myra Breckinridge (Michael Sarne, 1970), based on Gore Vidal's 1968 novel. She took the part of the film's transsexual heroine in an attempt to be taken seriously as an actress. The picture was controversial for its sexual explicitness, but unlike the novel, Myra Breckinridge received little to no critical praise. It is cited in the book The Fifty Worst Films of All Time. Jason Ankeny at AllMovie: "Her situation was unusual; she was certainly a star and a household name, yet few people ever went to see her movies." Welch took a measure of control over her screen persona, producing and starring in Hannie Calder (Burt Kennedy, 1971), the first film in which she carved out a place in movie history portraying strong female characters and breaking the mould of the submissive sex symbol. She altered the image further with Kansas City Bomber (Jerrold Freedman, 1972), insisting on doing her own stunts as good-hearted roller derby star Diane 'KC' Carr. She followed that with a series of successful films in Europe that included the thriller Bluebeard (Edward Dmytryk, 1972) starring Richard Burton, the swashbuckler The Three Musketeers (Richard Lester, 1973) - for which she won a Golden Globe, the sequel The Four Musketeers (Richard Lester, 1974) both with Oliver Reed and Michael York, and The Wild Party (James Ivory, 1975). A big hit in Europe was the French action-comedy L'Animal/Animal (Claude Zidi, 1977) starring Jean-Paul Belmondo. Raquel Welch's unique persona on film made her one of the reigning icons of the 1960s and 1970s. Later, she made several television variety specials. In 1980, Welch planned on making a comeback in an adaptation of John Steinbeck's Cannery Row (David S. Ward, 1982), but was fired by the producers a few days into production. The producers said that at 40 years old she was too old to play the character. She was replaced with Debra Winger. Welch sued and collected a $10.8 million settlement. She starred on Broadway in Woman of the Year, receiving praise for following Lauren Bacall in the title role. She also starred in Victor/Victoria, having less success. In 1995, Welch was chosen by Empire Magazine as one of the 100 Sexiest Stars in Film History.
Sources: Jason Ankeny (AllMovie), Gary Brumburgh (IMDb), David Carless (IMDb), Bob Taylor (IMDb), Varlaam (IMDb), TCM, Wikipedia, and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
French postcard by Editions du Globe, Paris, no. 412. Photo: Teddy Piaz, Paris.
Sophia Loren (1934) rose to fame in post-war Italy as a voluptuous sex goddess. Soon after, she became one of the most successful stars of the 20th Century, who won an Oscar for her mother role in La ciociara/Two Women (Vittorio De Sica, 1960).
Sophia Loren was born Sofia Villani Scicolone in the charity ward of a Roman hospital in 1934. She was the illegitimate daughter of construction engineer Riccardo Scicolone and piano teacher and aspiring actress Romilda Villani. Riccardo was married to another woman and refused to marry Romilda, leaving her without support. Romilda, Sofia, and sister Maria returned to Pozzuoli to live with Sofia's grandmother. Pozzuoli was a small town outside Naples and one of the hardest hit during World War II. The family shared a two-room apartment with the grandmother and several aunts and uncles. The shy, stick-thin girl regularly went hungry and had to flee from bombings. At 14, Sofia had a voluptuous figure and entered a beauty contest. She was selected as one of the finalists but did not win. In 1950, she was one of the contestants at the Miss Italia competition. She earned the 2nd place and was awarded ‘Miss Eleganza’. While attending the Miss Rome beauty contest, earlier in 1950, she had met judge Carlo Ponti, an up-and-coming film producer, 22 years her senior. Ponti had helped launch Gina Lollobrigida's career and now began grooming Sofia for stardom. He hired an acting coach to tutor her. At 16 she was in her first film, the Totó comedy Le Sei Mogli di Barbablù/Bluebeard’s Six Wives (Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia, 1950) under the name Sofia Lazzaro. She also appeared as an extra in Luci del varietà/Lights of the Variety (Federico Fellini, 1950), the smash hit Anna (Alberto Lattuada, 1951) and Quo Vadis (Mervyn Leroy, 1951). During the early 1950s, she secured work modelling for fumetti magazines. These comic-like magazines used actual photographs. The dialogue bubbles were called 'fumetti' - hence the popular name. At 17, she was cast by Ponti in her first larger role as the commoner who caught the prince's eye in the filmed opera La Favorita/The Favorite (Cesare Barlacchi, 1952). The next year she earned third billing after Silvana Pampanini and Eleanora Rossi-Drago in La Tratta Delle Bianche/The White Slave Trade (Luigi Comencini, 1953) and she played, complete with blackface and an Afro, the lead in another filmed opera, Aida (Clemente Fracassi, 1953) by Giuseppe Verdi. Her singing was dubbed by Renata Tebaldi. Ponti eventually changed her name to Sophia Loren.
Sophia Loren appeared for the first time with Marcello Mastroianni in the romantic comedy Peccato che sia una canaglia/Too Bad She's Bad (Alessandro Blasetti, 1954). They would make 13 films together, including Tempi nostri/A Slice of Life (Alessandro Blasetti, Paul Paviot, 1954), La bella mugnaia/The Miller's Wife (Mario Camerini, 1955), and La fortuna di essere donna/What A Woman (Alessandro Blasetti, 1956). L'Oro di Napoli/Gold of Naples (Vittorio de Sica, 1954), an anthology of tales depicting various aspects of Neapolitan life, was distributed internationally. At AllMovie, Jason Ankeny writes that in reviews "Loren was singled out for the strength of her performance as a Neapolitan shopkeeper, surprising many critics who had dismissed her as merely another bombshell". The film established her persona as a sensuous working-class earth mother. It also began a fruitful, career-long collaboration with De Sica. Sophia’s first film to find international success was La Donna del Fiume/The River Girl (Mario Soldati, 1955), in which she danced sensually the Mambo Bacan. Hal Erickson at AllMovie: "Through it all, Sophia Loren looks like a million lire - and she even gets to sing and dance!". She came to the attention of Stanley Kramer who offered her the female lead in The Pride And The Passion (Stanley Kramer, 1957) opposite Cary Grant and Frank Sinatra. Sophia played a Spanish peasant girl involved in an uprising against the French. This was the turning point in her career, and the film proved to be one of the top US box office successes of the year. Her next English-language film was Boy on a Dolphin (Jean Negulesco, 1957) with Alan Ladd, where she was memorable mostly for emerging from the water in a wet, skin-tight, transparent dress. With her va-va-va-voom image, she became an international film star and got a five-picture contract with Paramount Pictures. Among her Paramount films were Desire Under the Elms (Delbert Mann, 1958) with Anthony Perkins and based upon the Eugene O'Neill play, Houseboat (Melville Shavelson, 1958), a romantic comedy co-starring Cary Grant, and the Western Heller in Pink Tights (George Cukor, 1960) in which she appeared for the first time with blonde hair (a wig). Most of these films were received lukewarmly at best.
In 1960 Sophia Loren returned to Italy to star in the biggest success of her career, La Ciociara/Two Women (Vittorio De Sica, 1960). She played a widow desperately trying to protect her daughter from danger during WW II, only to end up in a destructive love triangle with a young radical (Jean Paul Belmondo). Hal Erickson at AllMovie: "A last-minute replacement for Anna Magnani, Sophia Loren brought hitherto untapped depths of emotion to her performance in Two Women; she later stated that she was utilizing 'sensory recall,' dredging up memories of her own wartime experiences." Loren won the Best Actress Oscar for her performance, and also the Cannes, Venice ánd Berlin Film Festivals' best performance prizes. Next, she played in Spain Samuel Bronston's epic production of El Cid (Anthony Mann, 1961) with Charlton Heston, followed by the De Sica episode of the anthology Boccaccio '70 (Vittorio De Sica, Federico Fellini, Luchino Visconti, 1962). On the strength of her Oscar win, she also returned to English-language fare with Five Miles to Midnight (Anatole Litvak, 1963), followed a year later by The Fall of the Roman Empire (Anthony Mann, 1964), for which she received $1 million. Among Loren's other films of this period are The Millionairess (Anthony Asquith, 1960) with Peter Sellers, It Started in Naples (Melville Shavelson, 1960) with Clark Gable, Lady L (Peter Ustinov, 1965) with Paul Newman, Arabesque (Stanley Donen, 1966) with Gregory Peck, and Charlie Chaplin's final film, A Countess from Hong Kong (1967) with Marlon Brando. Despite the failure of many of her films to generate sales at the box office, she invariably turned in a charming performance and she wore some of the most lavish costumes ever created for the cinema. Her best Italian films include the triptych Ieri, oggi, domani/Yesterday, Today And Tomorrow (Vittorio De Sica, 1963), a comedy that poked fun at a Catholic priest and gently mocked the Italian law on birth control, and Matrimonio all' Italiana/Marriage Italian Style (Vittorio De Sica, 1964) with Loren as the hooker who lures Mastroianni into marriage.
After several miscarriages and a highly-publicized struggle to become pregnant, Sophia Loren gave birth to son Hubert Leoni Carlo Ponti in 1968. She started to work less and moved into her 40s and 50s with roles in films like De Sica's war drama I Girasoli/The Sunflowers (Vittorio De Sica, 1972), Il Viaggio/The Voyage (Vittorio De Sica, 1974) opposite Richard Burton, and reuniting with Marcello Mastroianni in the mob comedy La Pupa del Gangster/Get Rita (Giorgio Capitani, 1975). An artistic highlight was Una giornata particolare/A Special Day (Ettore Scola, 1977) which earned a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film. Loren played a bored housewife on the day of the first meeting between Mussolini and Hitler. Left alone in her tenement home when her fascist husband runs off to attend the historic event, Loren strikes up a friendship with her homosexual neighbour (Marcello Mastroianni). As the day segues into night, Loren and Mastroianni develop a very special relationship that will radically alter both of their outlooks on life. When a dubbed version of Una giornata particolare/A Special Day found favour with American audiences, Hollywood again came calling, resulting in a pair of thrillers, The Brass Target (John Hough, 1978) and Firepower (Michael Winner, 1979) which offered her a central role as a widow seeking answers in the murder of her chemist husband. In 1980, Loren portrayed herself, as well as her mother, in Sophia Loren: Her Own Story (Mel Stuart, 1980), a made-for-television biopic adaptation of her autobiography. Actresses Ritza Brown and Chiara Ferrari played Loren at younger ages. She made headlines in 1982 when she served an 18-day prison sentence in Italy on tax evasion charges, a fact that didn't damage her career or popularity. In her 60s, Loren ventured into various areas of business, including cookbooks, eyewear, jewelry, and perfume. In honour of her lengthy career, Loren was the recipient of a special Oscar in 1991. She also made well-received appearances in her final film with Mastroianni, Prêt-à-Porter/Ready to Wear (1994), Robert Altman's take on the French fashion scene, and in the comedy hit Grumpier Old Men (Howard Deutch, 1995) playing a femme fatale opposite Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon. In 1995 she received the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award. At the age of 72, she appeared scantily-clad in the 2007 edition of the famous calendar of Italian racing tire giant Pirelli. It made her the oldest model in the calendar's history. The photos by Dutch photographers Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin proved that she was still a major international sex symbol. In 2007 Carlo Ponti died. It had been controversial in her native Italy when Sophia Loren had married her mentor Ponti in 1957. Not only was he 45 to her 23, but he had been married previously, and neither the Catholic Church nor the Italian government recognised his Mexican divorce. Ponti was charged with bigamy, but the charges were dropped when they had their marriage annulled. They continued living together - scandalous at the time - and remarried after his legal problems had been cleared. Ponti and Loren made three dozen films together. They had two children, symphony conductor Carlo Ponti Jr. and film director Edoardo Ponti. After four years off the big screen, Sophia Loren co-starred in a film version of the Broadway musical Nine (Rob Marshall, 2009). She played the mother of famous film director Guido Contini, portrayed by Daniel Day-Lewis. According to Jason Ankeny at AllMovie, "Loren proved she still had movie star charisma with a role in Chicago director Rob Marshall's Nine - a lavish tribute to all things Italian." Loren made a two-part television biopic of her early life titled La Mia Casa È Piena di Specchi/My House Is Full of Mirrors (Vittorio Sindoni, 2010), based on of the memoir written by her sister Maria Scicolone. At 80, Sophia Loren returned to the screen in Human Voice (2014) directed by her son Edoardo Ponti. At the presentation Tribeca Film Festival in New York, 'the timeless beauty' stunned the press once again when she walked on the red carpet in a chic red pantsuit hand-in-hand with her 41-year-old son to promote the short film. Human Voice is based on the play by iconic French playwright Jean Cocteau and sees La Loren play a woman in her twilight years facing revelations from her past. In late 2014, she also presented her first memoir, Ieri, oggi, domani. La mia vita/Today and Tomorrow: My Life as a Fairy Tale. It includes old pictures, letters, and notes detailing encounters with Cary Grant and other film partners.
Sources: Jason Ankeny (AllMovie), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Shyam Dodge (Daily Mail), Jenny (IMDb), Wikipedia, NNDB, TCM, and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Photo taken at the Henry Doorly Zoo and Aquarium, located in Omaha Nebraska. The flower's scientific name is Caryopteris incana.
See the Virgin Islands set.
A woman relaxes by the pool at Bluebeard's Castle Resort on St. Thomas, Virgin Islands. Look closely and you'll notice that her mug has the inscription 'Commander In Chief'. Hmmmmmmmmmmm.
Spanish card, no. 2735. Sophia Loren in La bella mugnaia/The Miller's Beautiful Wife (Mario Camerini, 1955).
Sophia Loren (1934) rose to fame in post-war Italy as a voluptuous sex goddess. Soon after, she became one of the most successful stars of the 20th Century, who won an Oscar for her mother role in La ciociara/Two Women (Vittorio De Sica, 1960).
Sophia Loren was born Sofia Villani Scicolone in the charity ward of a Roman hospital in 1934. She was the illegitimate daughter of construction engineer Riccardo Scicolone and piano teacher and aspiring actress Romilda Villani. Riccardo was married to another woman and refused to marry Romilda, leaving her without support. Romilda, Sofia, and sister Maria returned to Pozzuoli to live with Sofia's grandmother. Pozzuoli was a small town outside Naples and one of the hardest hit during World War II. The family shared a two-room apartment with the grandmother and several aunts and uncles. The shy, stick-thin girl regularly went hungry and had to flee from bombings. At 14, Sofia had a voluptuous figure and entered a beauty contest. She was selected as one of the finalists but did not win. In 1950, she was one of the contestants at the Miss Italia competition. She earned the 2nd place and was awarded ‘Miss Eleganza’. While attending the Miss Rome beauty contest, earlier in 1950, she had met judge Carlo Ponti, an up-and-coming film producer, 22 years her senior. Ponti had helped launch Gina Lollobrigida's career and now began grooming Sofia for stardom. He hired an acting coach to tutor her. At 16 she was in her first film, the Totó comedy Le Sei Mogli di Barbablù/Bluebeard’s Six Wives (Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia, 1950) under the name Sofia Lazzaro. She also appeared as an extra in Luci del varietà/Lights of the Variety (Federico Fellini, 1950), the smash hit Anna (Alberto Lattuada, 1951) and Quo Vadis (Mervyn Leroy, 1951). During the early 1950s, she secured work modelling for fumetti magazines. These comic-like magazines used actual photographs. The dialogue bubbles were called 'fumetti' - hence the popular name. At 17, she was cast by Ponti in her first larger role as the commoner who caught the prince's eye in the filmed opera La Favorita/The Favorite (Cesare Barlacchi, 1952). The next year she earned third billing after Silvana Pampanini and Eleanora Rossi-Drago in La Tratta Delle Bianche/The White Slave Trade (Luigi Comencini, 1953) and she played, complete with blackface and an Afro, the lead in another filmed opera, Aida (Clemente Fracassi, 1953) by Giuseppe Verdi. Her singing was dubbed by Renata Tebaldi. Ponti eventually changed her name to Sophia Loren.
Sophia Loren appeared for the first time with Marcello Mastroianni in the romantic comedy Peccato che sia una canaglia/Too Bad She's Bad (Alessandro Blasetti, 1954). They would make 13 films together, including Tempi nostri/A Slice of Life (Alessandro Blasetti, Paul Paviot, 1954), La bella mugnaia/The Miller's Wife (Mario Camerini, 1955), and La fortuna di essere donna/What A Woman (Alessandro Blasetti, 1956). L'Oro di Napoli/Gold of Naples (Vittorio de Sica, 1954), an anthology of tales depicting various aspects of Neapolitan life, was distributed internationally. At AllMovie, Jason Ankeny writes that in reviews "Loren was singled out for the strength of her performance as a Neapolitan shopkeeper, surprising many critics who had dismissed her as merely another bombshell". The film established her persona as a sensuous working-class earth mother. It also began a fruitful, career-long collaboration with De Sica. Sophia’s first film to find international success was La Donna del Fiume/The River Girl (Mario Soldati, 1955), in which she danced sensually the Mambo Bacan. Hal Erickson at AllMovie: "Through it all, Sophia Loren looks like a million lire - and she even gets to sing and dance!". She came to the attention of Stanley Kramer who offered her the female lead in The Pride And The Passion (Stanley Kramer, 1957) opposite Cary Grant and Frank Sinatra. Sophia played a Spanish peasant girl involved in an uprising against the French. This was the turning point in her career, and the film proved to be one of the top US box office successes of the year. Her next English-language film was Boy on a Dolphin (Jean Negulesco, 1957) with Alan Ladd, where she was memorable mostly for emerging from the water in a wet, skin-tight, transparent dress. With her va-va-va-voom image, she became an international film star and got a five-picture contract with Paramount Pictures. Among her Paramount films were Desire Under the Elms (Delbert Mann, 1958) with Anthony Perkins and based upon the Eugene O'Neill play, Houseboat (Melville Shavelson, 1958), a romantic comedy co-starring Cary Grant, and the Western Heller in Pink Tights (George Cukor, 1960) in which she appeared for the first time with blonde hair (a wig). Most of these films were received lukewarmly at best.
In 1960 Sophia Loren returned to Italy to star in the biggest success of her career, La Ciociara/Two Women (Vittorio De Sica, 1960). She played a widow desperately trying to protect her daughter from danger during WW II, only to end up in a destructive love triangle with a young radical (Jean Paul Belmondo). Hal Erickson at AllMovie: "A last-minute replacement for Anna Magnani, Sophia Loren brought hitherto untapped depths of emotion to her performance in Two Women; she later stated that she was utilizing 'sensory recall,' dredging up memories of her own wartime experiences." Loren won the Best Actress Oscar for her performance, and also the Cannes, Venice ánd Berlin Film Festivals' best performance prizes. Next, she played in Spain Samuel Bronston's epic production of El Cid (Anthony Mann, 1961) with Charlton Heston, followed by the De Sica episode of the anthology Boccaccio '70 (Vittorio De Sica, Federico Fellini, Luchino Visconti, 1962). On the strength of her Oscar win, she also returned to English-language fare with Five Miles to Midnight (Anatole Litvak, 1963), followed a year later by The Fall of the Roman Empire (Anthony Mann, 1964), for which she received $1 million. Among Loren's other films of this period are The Millionairess (Anthony Asquith, 1960) with Peter Sellers, It Started in Naples (Melville Shavelson, 1960) with Clark Gable, Lady L (Peter Ustinov, 1965) with Paul Newman, Arabesque (Stanley Donen, 1966) with Gregory Peck, and Charlie Chaplin's final film, A Countess from Hong Kong (1967) with Marlon Brando. Despite the failure of many of her films to generate sales at the box office, she invariably turned in a charming performance and she wore some of the most lavish costumes ever created for the cinema. Her best Italian films include the triptych Ieri, oggi, domani/Yesterday, Today And Tomorrow (Vittorio De Sica, 1963), a comedy that poked fun at a Catholic priest and gently mocked the Italian law on birth control, and Matrimonio all' Italiana/Marriage Italian Style (Vittorio De Sica, 1964) with Loren as the hooker who lures Mastroianni into marriage.
After several miscarriages and a highly-publicized struggle to become pregnant, Sophia Loren gave birth to son Hubert Leoni Carlo Ponti in 1968. She started to work less and moved into her 40s and 50s with roles in films like De Sica's war drama I Girasoli/The Sunflowers (Vittorio De Sica, 1972), Il Viaggio/The Voyage (Vittorio De Sica, 1974) opposite Richard Burton, and reuniting with Marcello Mastroianni in the mob comedy La Pupa del Gangster/Get Rita (Giorgio Capitani, 1975). An artistic highlight was Una giornata particolare/A Special Day (Ettore Scola, 1977) which earned a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film. Loren played a bored housewife on the day of the first meeting between Mussolini and Hitler. Left alone in her tenement home when her fascist husband runs off to attend the historic event, Loren strikes up a friendship with her homosexual neighbour (Marcello Mastroianni). As the day segues into night, Loren and Mastroianni develop a very special relationship that will radically alter both of their outlooks on life. When a dubbed version of Una giornata particolare/A Special Day found favour with American audiences, Hollywood again came calling, resulting in a pair of thrillers, The Brass Target (John Hough, 1978) and Firepower (Michael Winner, 1979) which offered her a central role as a widow seeking answers in the murder of her chemist husband. In 1980, Loren portrayed herself, as well as her mother, in Sophia Loren: Her Own Story (Mel Stuart, 1980), a made-for-television biopic adaptation of her autobiography. Actresses Ritza Brown and Chiara Ferrari played Loren at younger ages. She made headlines in 1982 when she served an 18-day prison sentence in Italy on tax evasion charges, a fact that didn't damage her career or popularity. In her 60s, Loren ventured into various areas of business, including cookbooks, eyewear, jewelry, and perfume. In honour of her lengthy career, Loren was the recipient of a special Oscar in 1991. She also made well-received appearances in her final film with Mastroianni, Prêt-à-Porter/Ready to Wear (1994), Robert Altman's take on the French fashion scene, and in the comedy hit Grumpier Old Men (Howard Deutch, 1995) playing a femme fatale opposite Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon. In 1995 she received the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award. At the age of 72, she appeared scantily-clad in the 2007 edition of the famous calendar of Italian racing tire giant Pirelli. It made her the oldest model in the calendar's history. The photos by Dutch photographers Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin proved that she was still a major international sex symbol. In 2007 Carlo Ponti died. It had been controversial in her native Italy when Sophia Loren had married her mentor Ponti in 1957. Not only was he 45 to her 23, but he had been married previously, and neither the Catholic Church nor the Italian government recognised his Mexican divorce. Ponti was charged with bigamy, but the charges were dropped when they had their marriage annulled. They continued living together - scandalous at the time - and remarried after his legal problems had been cleared. Ponti and Loren made three dozen films together. They had two children, symphony conductor Carlo Ponti Jr. and film director Edoardo Ponti. After four years off the big screen, Sophia Loren co-starred in a film version of the Broadway musical Nine (Rob Marshall, 2009). She played the mother of famous film director Guido Contini, portrayed by Daniel Day-Lewis. According to Jason Ankeny at AllMovie, "Loren proved she still had movie star charisma with a role in Chicago director Rob Marshall's Nine - a lavish tribute to all things Italian." Loren made a two-part television biopic of her early life titled La Mia Casa È Piena di Specchi/My House Is Full of Mirrors (Vittorio Sindoni, 2010), based on of the memoir written by her sister Maria Scicolone. At 80, Sophia Loren returned to the screen in Human Voice (2014) directed by her son Edoardo Ponti. At the presentation Tribeca Film Festival in New York, 'the timeless beauty' stunned the press once again when she walked on the red carpet in a chic red pantsuit hand-in-hand with her 41-year-old son to promote the short film. Human Voice is based on the play by iconic French playwright Jean Cocteau and sees La Loren play a woman in her twilight years facing revelations from her past. In late 2014, she also presented her first memoir, Ieri, oggi, domani. La mia vita/Today and Tomorrow: My Life as a Fairy Tale. It includes old pictures, letters, and notes detailing encounters with Cary Grant and other film partners.
Sources: Jason Ankeny (AllMovie), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Shyam Dodge (Daily Mail), Jenny (IMDb), Wikipedia, NNDB, TCM, and IMDb.
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West German postcard by Rüdel-Verlag, Hamburg-Bergedorf, no. 3073. Photo: FFP / Europa / Gabriele. Juliette Mayniel in Kirmes/The Fair (Wolfgang Staudte, 1960).
On 21 July 2023, doe-eyed French actress Juliette Mayniel (1936) passed away in San Miguel de Allende in Mexico. She appeared in 35 films and TV films between 1958 and 1978. Her film career made a jump start with two masterpieces, Claude Chabrol’s Les Cousins (1959) and the horror film Les Yeux Sans Visage (1960). Juliette Mayniel was 87.
Juliette Mayniel was born in Saint Hippolyte, France in 1936. Her first film appearance was an uncredited bit role in the comedy Premier mai (1958, Luis Saslavsky) starring Yves Montand, but she had her breakthrough with her second film, the classic Nouvelle Vague film Les Cousins/The Cousins (Claude Chabrol, 1959). She is the girl between the two cousins Jean-Claude Brialy and Gérard Blain. The film was an immediate success and remains one of Chabrol’s most striking films. Next Mayniel had unwillingly her face removed by a mad doctor (Pierre Brasseur) in the masterpiece Les Yeux Sans Visage/Eyes Without a Face (Georges Franju, 1960). Hal Erickson at AllMovie calls the film ‘an unsettling, sometimes poetic horror film’: “Franju's haunting, muted handling of basic horror material is what lifts Eyes Without a Face out of the ordinary and into the realm of near-classic.” James Travers adds at Films de France: “Les Yeux sans visage differs from virtually all other films in the fantasy-horror genre. It doesn’t set out to shock us with gruesome images or insult our intelligence with an implausible plot or fantastic characters. Everything it shows us is frighteningly plausible, but presented to us in a dreamlike manner which, if anything, softens the horror of the situation. Crucially, it is not evil which provides the stimulus for the horror, but love, the love of a father determined to give his daughter back her life. In the end, it is the film’s haunting poetry, not its horror connotations, which have the deepest impact on the spectator.” In the compelling WW II drama Kirmes/The Fair (Wolfgang Staudte, 1960) a young soldier (Götz George) who had often been ordered to execute women and children deserts the German army and tries to find a hiding place in his native village. He is sheltered by a priest and a young French woman (Mayniel) with whom he falls in love. At the 10th Berlin International Film Festival, Mayniel won the Silver Bear for Best Actress for her role.
Juliette Mayniel had a small part in Les Godelureaux/The Wise Guys (Claude Chabrol, 1961), a Nouvelle Vague drama about a trio of youths (including Jean-Claude Brialy and Bernadette Lafont) looking to debunk hypocrisy wherever they find it. In Italy, she appeared in the Peplum La Guerra di Troia/The Trojan Horse (Giorgio Ferroni, 1962), a retelling of the final year of the siege of Troy from the point of view of Aeneas (Steve Reeves). Bruce Eder at AllMovie calls it: “one of the best examples of Italy's sword-and-sandal genre”. She reunited with director Claude Chabrol for Ophelia (1962), a curious, modern version of Hamlet, co-starring André Jocelyn and Alida Valli, and for Landru/Bluebeard (Claude Chabrol, 1963), a black comedy based on the dastardly deeds of serial killer Henri-Desire Landru (Charles Denner), who wined, dined, scammed, and dismembered over 10 women (including Danielle Darrieux and Michele Morgan) during WW I. Juliette Mayniel was married to Robert Auboyneau till 1964. From 1964 until 1968 she was the partner of actor Vittorio Gassman. They have a son, actor Alessandro Gassman. During this period Mayniel didn’t work in the cinema. In 1968 she returned as Circe in the Italian TV series L'odissea/The Odyssee (Franco Rossi, Piero Schivazappa, Mario Bava, 1968) based on Homer and starring Bekim Fehmiu and Irene Papas. She then appeared in the drama Scusi, Facciamo L'Amore?/Listen, Let's Make Love? (Vittorio Caprioli, 1968) about a young gigolo (Pierre Clementi). In Quella Piccola Differenza/That Little Difference (Duccio Tessari, 1970) she was the wife of a virile macho (Pino Caruso) who changes in three days into a woman. Mayniel played the female lead in the Bud Spencer comedy Piedone Lo Sbirro/A Fistful of Hell (Steno, 1973) and in the soft sex comedy Peccati in Famiglia/Sins in the Family (Bruno Gaburro, 1975) opposite Michele Placido. On TV she appeared in Un anno di scuola/A Year of School (Franco Giraldi, 1977) with Mario Adorf and in the mini-series Madame Bovary (Daniele D'Anza, 1978) with Carla Gravina as the heroin of Gustave Flaubert’s novel. Her last film roles were a supporting part in the Giallo thriller Solamente Nero/The Blood Stained Shadow (Antonio Bido, 1978) with Stefania Casini and Massimo Serato, and eight years later another small part in Molly O (Gino Bortoloni, 1986). As herself, Juliette Mayniel appeared in the TV documentaries Portrait de Vittorio Gassman (Pierre Laforêt, 1979) and Di padre in figlio/From Father To Son (Alessandro Gassman, Vittorio Gassman, 1982). Juliette Mayniel died on 21 July 2023, at the age of 87.
Sources: James Travers (Films de France), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), John Conomos (Senses of Cinema), Wikipedia, and IMDb.