Dear Readers,
September snippets with an Italian connection, globally gathered: Afghanistan, is where U.S.A. (Michigan) born Debbie Rodriguez went, with nothing but a desire to help the women of Afghanistan and a degree in cosmetology. In Afghanistan she helped set up the Kabul Beauty School and became one of the school’s first teachers.
She stumbled through language barriers, overstepped cultural customs and learned how to empower her students, to become their families’ breadwinners. She taught the women fundamentals of hair coloring techniques, haircutting and make-up.
This instruction was appreciated by Afghan women despite the fact that until Taliban were driven out of Kabul in 2001, the women in public were covered head to toe with a burqua. Before the Taliban took over, there were many beauty salons in Kabul, but then they were squashed out of existence and those that were resurfacing were in rough shape. Many were using twigs and rubber bands for rods and curlers.
The last king, who was in power in the early 1970s, was trying to push Afghanistan into the twentieth century and there were dozens of thriving beauty salons in Kabul. The king’s attempts at modernizing Afghanistan set off a chain reaction of fury in the more conservative countryside and among the city’s most traditional clerics, so when the Taliban took over, along with music, dancing and dozens of other things, they also banned beauty salons.
The Afghan king fled to Italy, where he has been living in exile for over thirty years. The first generous donation of beauty supplies and hair care products for the Kabul teaching beauty salon were donated by Italian American John Paul DeJoria, owner of Paul Mitchell hair products. Debbie had contacted him after finding the company 800 number on a bottle of Paul Mitchell styling gel.
Owner John Paul DeJoria told Debbie to call his general manager, Luke Jacobellis, which she did and within three weeks a semi-truck full of Paul Mitchell products pulled up to her house and the driver started unloading shampoos, conditioners, gel, sprays, colors, perm solutions, color caps and hand mirrors.
Later other beauty industry companies contributed salon furniture, nail products, blow driers and other basic supplies too for the school in Kabul. The book “Kabul Beauty School” authored by Deborah Rodriguez with Kristin Ohlson and published by Random House Trade Paperbacks, N.Y. is a true story that is moving but yet a fun read.
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Afghanistan ex-king Zahir Shah has spent over 30 years exiled in Italy from where he has witnessed his country laid low by war, and the rise of the harsh Islamic regime of the Taliban. Born in Kabul in 1914, Zahir Shah was educated in France and was only 19 when he ascended the throne in 1933 after his father was assassinated.
Amid Kin Zahir Afghanistan modernization were dark undercurrents of wrangling between the country’s tribal factions. In July 1973, while he was in Italy receiving medical treatment for an eye condition, Zahir Shah was ousted in a coup orchestrated by a cousin. Since then the last monarch of a 200 year old Pashtun dynasty has lived quietly in a villa outside Rome.
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Aristocrat Prince Vittorio Emanuele spent some time in California during his “Labor Days” in the United States and in fact helped (behind the scenes) secure the works of Italian artists for the inaugural exhibit of the Museo ItaloAmericano, which opened its doors in San Francisco North Beach atop Malvina’s Coffee in 1978, under the direction of the Museo ItaloAmericano founding Director, Giuliana Nardelli Haight.
As is well known in Europe and belatedly in the U.S. via “Festa della Repubblica” commemorations in Italian American communities, on June 2, 1946, the year following the end of World War II, in a national referendum Italians with good memory voted to abolish the monarchy and turn their nation into a Republic, because in June 1944, shortly after the Allies took Rome, King Victor Emanuel III, in an effort to save crown and carcass resigned and his son Crown Prince Umberto became acting Head of State, leaving confused thousands to battle without direction.
Following the referendum it came to pass that an Italian constitutional law was enacted which prohibited all male members in the succession to the throne from returning to Italy. Thus, a boy of eight Prince Vittorio Emanuele was banned from Italy. The law was repealed in recent years. This man who was destined to rule a nation had been exiled from his country, so he decided to conceal his royal heritage, go out in the world, and prove himself from ground zero. After studying economics he went to the United States with Professor Jacques Piccard on a deep-sea submarine project in San Diego. He liked working anonymously with the American technicians under the guidance of Professor Piccard, and he learned a great deal about technology.
An accident he suffered during an underwater operation precipitated his departure from California. Vittorio Emanulele decided to take a vacation. With his old Dodge, which he had previously fixed himself, he drove for several months all over the United States. When his identity finally became known, President Eisenhower brought him to Washington for an interview. He later met several times with President Nixon.
The Prince worked on Wall Street until he could purchase a small plane in order to start a school of acrobatic flying. His friendship with the Shah of Iran, who shared with the prince a passion for aeronautics, enabled him to go into business selling helicopters to Iran. Victor Emanuele also developed an affinity for Israel, and during the Yom Kippur War he became the first foreigner to volunteer his services for the Israeli air force, though he ultimately was not needed.
It was during this time of personal prosperity that the prince felt financially stable enough to marry Marina, the love of his life. Prince Vittorio Emanuele di Savoia, the son of the last king of Italy Umberto II, was living in Switzerland (before the law was repealed) and spending winters in his chalet in Gstaad with his friends and family. He is married to the beautiful world champion water skier and heiress Marina Doria and they have one son.
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Auto legend Enzo Ferrari (1898-1988) carefully monitored access to both his Ferrari road cars and Grand Turismo models, which were no mere production line cars but rather little rockets, stripped of all nonessential luxury components (the upholstery was canvas, not leather, for instance) and amped up with oversized carburetors, high performance clutches and brakes.
Enzo Ferrari, pasha of the auto dynasty, wanted to assure that Ferraris would be owned and raced only by people who wouldn’t tarnish the name by losing in them or by killing themselves in them (the blood-red paint job on those cars was some claim no joke.) Porfirio Rubirosa, sometime Dominican Republic diplomat, playboy and one time husband of tobacco heiress Doris Duke, acquired a taste for Ferraris during his 1948 stay in Italy, after strongman Trujillo, the self-styled “benefactor” of the Dominican Republic reinstated him as en envoy in Rome. In Italy “Rubi” swapped the luxury cars given to him by Doris for a pair of Ferrari road cars. During the next fifteen years, Rubi would own at least a half-dozen Ferraris, both road cars and Grand Turismo models.
Rubi, who knew Ferrari and his rival auto magnate Giovanni Agnelli from evenings trotting about Rome, was deemed to be qualified to uphold the Ferrari image by signor Ferrari himself. Later, when Rubi fashioned himself a race car driver, there were no objections from Enzo. Danger did not deter Rubi from pursuing his nascent interest in motor sports. He ran his first race in Le Mans in June 1950, in a 2-liter Ferrari 166 MM. In 1954, his new driving partner was Italian Count Innocente Baggio, who charmingly raced in shirt and tie.
They crashed their 375 MM Berlinetta Pinin Farina Ferrari in the fifth lap. Rubi never tried Le Mans again. Over the years Sebring proved Rubi’s favorite track, if only because the race came in March, at the height of the nearby Palm Beach social and polo seasons. Rubi returned in 1955, ’56, and ’58, each time at the wheel of his own Ferrari. In 1956, at age fifty-six, Porfirio Rubirosa, by then living in France, was driving home by the dawn’s dim lights, when his car hit a chestnut tree. He crashed and died in his beloved Ferrari.
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Note: For all you speed demons dreaming of slick, shiny automobiles, Galleria Ferrari will make your heart race. The Ferrari factory, a vast complex employing hundreds, is in Maranello, a suburb of Modena. You can’t get into the factory itself, but the showroom displays trophies, engines, and new and vintage hot rods. Via Dino Ferrari, 43, Maranello.
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