Sophia Loren
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.
Sophia Loren
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.