Mara Berni
Italian postcard by Bromostampa, Milano, no. 170.
Mara Berni was born in 1932 in Brunate, Lombardy, Italy as Mara Rita Antonia Bernasconi. Following her parents' wishes, Mara Berni made her debut as a child in Wanda Petrini's "Compagnia dei piccoli", while at the same time taking lessons from the elderly actress Teresa Franchini. After finishing her studies, she studied dance and piano and made her debut as a television presenter and announcer. Berni debuted in Italian cinema as one of the marathon dancers in Luigi Comencini's La tratta delle bianche (1952). Blonde, shapely, with fresh and sensual beauty, Mara Berni took part in about forty films made between the 1950s and 1960s, mostly in the comical genre, alongside big names such as Alberto Sordi in Buonanotte... avvocato! (1955, her first main credit after many minor parts), Accadde al penitenziario (1955), and Il moralista (1959), all three by Giorgio Bianchi, and Il vigile (1960) by Luigi Zampa, and Totò in Totò, Peppino e... la dolce vita (1961) by Sergio Corbucci. Occasionally, she also worked in Spain and France, while in the early 1960s she acted in various peplum films.
Gifted with grace and ease, Berni was often relegated to the role of 'femme fatale', even in a comic vein, and it can be said that she was not exploited to the best of her ability. From the mid-1960s onward she abandoned the screen but worked occasionally for television, both acting in TV adaptations of novels, where she e.g. played the brief but intense role of Cecilia's mother in Sandro Bolchi's I promessi sposi (1967), and participating in variety shows (a fitting tribute to her beauty was paid when she was chosen to play the part of the goddess Venus in Antonello Falqui's brilliant musical show Biblioteca di Studio Uno, with the Cetra Quartet, in the episode dedicated to the Odyssey) until the end of the 1980s. In October 1989, she married a rich Pakistani industrialist Tarik Mamoud Rana (with whom she had a daughter in 1990, at the age of 58), and currently lives between Los Angeles and Italy.
Sources: Wikipedia (Italian) and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Mara Berni
Italian postcard by Bromostampa, Milano, no. 170.
Mara Berni was born in 1932 in Brunate, Lombardy, Italy as Mara Rita Antonia Bernasconi. Following her parents' wishes, Mara Berni made her debut as a child in Wanda Petrini's "Compagnia dei piccoli", while at the same time taking lessons from the elderly actress Teresa Franchini. After finishing her studies, she studied dance and piano and made her debut as a television presenter and announcer. Berni debuted in Italian cinema as one of the marathon dancers in Luigi Comencini's La tratta delle bianche (1952). Blonde, shapely, with fresh and sensual beauty, Mara Berni took part in about forty films made between the 1950s and 1960s, mostly in the comical genre, alongside big names such as Alberto Sordi in Buonanotte... avvocato! (1955, her first main credit after many minor parts), Accadde al penitenziario (1955), and Il moralista (1959), all three by Giorgio Bianchi, and Il vigile (1960) by Luigi Zampa, and Totò in Totò, Peppino e... la dolce vita (1961) by Sergio Corbucci. Occasionally, she also worked in Spain and France, while in the early 1960s she acted in various peplum films.
Gifted with grace and ease, Berni was often relegated to the role of 'femme fatale', even in a comic vein, and it can be said that she was not exploited to the best of her ability. From the mid-1960s onward she abandoned the screen but worked occasionally for television, both acting in TV adaptations of novels, where she e.g. played the brief but intense role of Cecilia's mother in Sandro Bolchi's I promessi sposi (1967), and participating in variety shows (a fitting tribute to her beauty was paid when she was chosen to play the part of the goddess Venus in Antonello Falqui's brilliant musical show Biblioteca di Studio Uno, with the Cetra Quartet, in the episode dedicated to the Odyssey) until the end of the 1980s. In October 1989, she married a rich Pakistani industrialist Tarik Mamoud Rana (with whom she had a daughter in 1990, at the age of 58), and currently lives between Los Angeles and Italy.
Sources: Wikipedia (Italian) and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.