The History Press first edition - 2018
Having recently watched Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck in that delightful 'Roman Holiday', the cover on this book caught my eye and I purchased it via a remainder online firm.
The author heads each chapter with the single Christian name of the actress (they are all actresses apart from chapters 2 and 18, which are headed Tennessee [Williams] and Richard [Burton]). I had heard of all of them apart from Anna Magnani, Italy's most enigmatic movie star, providing hope and inspiration through her strong, heartfelt performances at the tail end of the war. In fact, the whole period between 1945 and 1960 seemed to be an attempt at a joyous, almost dreamlike, escape from the horrors of the second great and awful conflict of the first half of the 20th century. Rather like the hedonistic days in the London and Paris after the Great War, the goings-on in the famous Via Veneto were focused on live for the day, with lashings of booze, drugs, tobacco and sex, supported by an almost unimaginable effulgence of wealth. Authors such as Tennessee Williams, Truman Capote and Gore Vidal mixed with the actors and directors
The actresses seem to appear on the pages, and in Rome, on a never-ending conveyor belt. I warmed to a few and recoiled from others. The gamine, fresh-faced Hepburn would still be at the top of my tree, notwithstanding her questionable taste in men - the wooden, controlling Mel Ferrer, the playboy Andrea Dotti. There is something about the earthy Anna Magnani - who was named as Best International Actress at the Venice Film Festival in 1947 - which attracted rather than repelled me. A regular sight on the Via Veneto, speeding along in her green Fiat station wagon, hopping into the bars dressed casually in black slacks, with uncombed hair and accompanied by her white poodle, Pipo, and black German Shepherd, Micia. Ingrid Bergman's life-changing decision to leave her husband for Roberto Rossellini, led her to Rome and Italy. One of Hollywood's biggest stars, she was considered a natural, wholesome actress and a devoted wife and mother. That image came crashing down when she departed Hollywood for Rossellini, another control freak. She became the Scarlet Woman.
A young Italian, Sofia Scicolone, whose mother Romilda regularly took to the Cinecittà gates looking for work as an extra in the movies, finally got the part of a Christian slave girl for one day's filming in Quo Vadis in 1950. Her name was changed to Sofia Lazzaro, as it was thought to be more exotic. Gracing cover pages of magazines, coming second in the Miss Italy competition in 1950, she caught the eye of the producer Carlo Ponti. From then on her career was assured and she also became the 'wife' of Ponti. By now, she had changed her name yet again - to Sophia Loren. Later chapters tell the stories of Ava Gardner (1966 The Bible, In the Beginning), Anita Ekberg (1960 La Dolce Vita), Brigitte Bardot (1956 Helen of Troy) and Jane Fonda (1967 Barbarella). Perhaps the most famous couple were Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton and the most [in]famous movie being Cleopatra (1963). The film's production resembled something like a huge thousand-man circus coming to town...there were 90 Americans, 350 Italians and 16 Britons hired on the crew... Burton exuded confidence, personality and sex appeal. Yet, behind this glamour lay an alcoholic, whose drinking became prodigious. Taylor was not that far behind. The best assessment of their tempestuous time together can be summed up as they deserved each other. In some ways, I found them the least attractive of a pretty unattractive bunch.
Apart from Gregory Peck, it is the men who come across as bounders, as hangers-on, as control freaks and, often, less talented than their partners. One has to give Benito Mussolini credit for introducing the first Venice Film Festival in 1932 and opening Cinecittà (cinema city) in 1937. The early films - Roberto Rossellini's Rome, Open City(1945), Vittorio De Sica's The Bicycle Thief (1948) - were followed by Joseph Mankiewicz's The Barefoot Contessa (1954) and Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita (1960)
Caroline Young is very good at describing the fast-moving, over-the-top luxury times, centred on Rome in the two decades after the War. Her grammar occasionally jars and there are one or two typos which should have been spotted by a more careful editor or proof reader. Her Prologue gives a good summary of Rome in the 1950s, from the point of view of the movie industry and its stars:
So here you would find Ingrid Bergman, under self-imposed exile after coming to Rome for love; Audrey Hepburn, who represented joyful holidays in the city in the early 1950s; Ava Gardner, whose tempestuous love life and appreciation of the nightlife always served for a good photo; Elizabeth Taylor, the queen of Hollywood excess and jet-set lifestyle; and Anita Ekberg, the face and body of la dolce vita. Sophia Loren was the home-grown star who captivated Hollywood and who represented the struggles and dream of young girls who survived the Second World War and lived through Rome's 1950s recovery, and Anna Magnani, the icon of Italian neorealism and one of the most admired, revered women in the country.
All now gone (well, not quite)
DEATHS:
September 1973 - Anna Magnani
August 1982 - Ingrid Bergman
[August 1984 - Richard Burton]
January 1990 - Ava Gardner
January 1993 - Audrey Hepburn
March 2011 - Elizabeth Taylor
January 2015 - Anita Ekberg
Sophia Loren is still alive at the grand age of 89.
I am not sure why Gina Lollobrigida (July 1927 - January 2023) - dubbed 'the most beautiful woman in the world', who died aged 95, was not mentioned in the book. Still alive in 2018, when the book was published, perhaps she forbade her inclusion?
No comments:
Post a Comment