Dear Readers,

Gina Lollobrigida, the beautiful Italian actress who made the world conscious of Italian beauties with difficult names (Silvana Pampanini, Eleonora Rossi Drago, etc.) has a July birthday.

Gina, born Luigina, July 4, 1928 in Subiaco, in the Lazio region near Rome, was the daughter of Giovanni Lollobrigida, owner of a small carpentry business and his wife Giuseppina Mecuri. She had three sisters, Giuliana, Maria and Fernanda.

In 1944 the Lollobrigida family moved to Todi, an Umbrian hill town that once contained 365 castles, one for each day of the year. Work was scarce in Todi, so with the war over, Signor Lollobrigida moved his family to Rome, in 1945.

Gina’s father was unemployed and the early months were hard. Giuliana and Maria found work as usherettes at the cinema, while Gina, for a few lire, sketched caricatures and portraits of American GI’s. As things began to improve, the family moved to an apartment in Via Montebello and Gina won a scholarship to the Academy of Fine Arts. One day, Stefano Canzio stopped her in the street and asked if she would like to be a film extra. Gina agreed, knowing the extra money would help pay for her singing lessons, her true ambition being a career in opera. And so her first screen appearance was in Riccardo Freda’s Aquila Nera (Black Eagle).

On New Year’s Eve Gina met Milko Skofic, the man she would marry two years later. She was again stopped in the street and offered a part in a film, Mario Costa's L'elisir d'amore. Her pay was 15,000 lire, plus overtime. She spent it all on a new coat and umbrella. She appeared in several other films that year and signed a contract to "star" in a "photo-romance" for the magazine Il mio sogno later to become Sogno. The story was entitled "In fondo al cuore" ("At the Bottom of My Heart") and ran over 22 episodes, from May 3rd to October 5th 1947. In the summer, she entered the Miss Rome competition and came in second to a Sicilian girl named Niní du Sac.

Although she had not won, it was through this popular competition that Gina found her next engagement. Mario Costa offered her parts in two of his films: Follie per l'opera and I pagliacci. Audiences and critics alike began to take notice of her.

On January 4, 1949, she and Milko Skofic were married in the church at Terminillo, a ski resort near Rome. Gina and Milko set up house in Via Sambucuccio d'Alando near Piazza Bologna. Milko was a doctor but gave up his profession soon afterward to manage his wife's career. It was during this period that Gina had been engaged by Carlo Ponti, later to marry Gina's "rival," Sophia Loren. It was also the year of Campane a martello, Miss Italia and Cuori senza frontiere.

In 1950 she did two popular films, Aline and Vita da cani. The latter was particularly successful and the offers began to increase. She was invited to Hollywood by producer Howard Hughes. Her trip paid for by RKO, she left unaccompanied for Los Angeles. There, she signed a seven-year contract with Hughes and eagerly started learning English. But her husband wanted her back in Rome. Gina gave in to his entreaties and went home. Despite her contract and Hughes' urgings, this was the end of Gina's Hollywood interlude, at least for the time being.

Returning to Italy, Gina played a minor role in two movies presented at the Venice Film Festival. But it was with a less ambitious movie that Gina finally met with the success she deserved, Gentilomo’s Enrico Caruso, leggenda di una voce. After this she was chosen to star opposite Gerard Philipe in Fanfan la Tulipe. The film shown in Cannes, was enormous popular in France and equally successful in Italy.

In 1952 Gina was directed by Vittorio De Sica in an episode of Blasetti’s Altri tempi. It was another triumph and “La Lollo’s” plunging neckline was the conversation piece of Italians everywhere. Then it was back to France to make Les Belles de nuit, with Gerard Philipe. The film was shown at the Venice Film Festival. There could be no further doubt, Gina Lollobrigida was a star.

In John Huston’s Beat the Devil (1953) for the first time, Gina had to speak in English and shared the screen with famous names as Humphrey Bogart and Jennifer Jones. Next came La maestra di Don Giovanni, an Errol Flynn swashbuckler, Gina first film in color. Another hit was La Provinciale, taken from a story by Alberto Moravia. 1953 was, above all, the year of Pane, amore e fantasia, her greatest and longest lasting success . The box office was outstanding, the critics were united in their praise of her acting, and Gina was Italy’s highest paid actress. She was invited to the White House, The Court of Saint James, by Juan Peron and the Shah of Iran. She was described as Italy’s ambassadress of beauty.

She returned to France, again playing the “Bersagliera” in Pane, amore e gelosia and the film went on to become an even bigger box office hit that the first of the series. While in New York in 1954, Gina had occasion to meet Marilyn Monroe, who told her: “You know, they call me America’s Lollobrigida.”

She starred and co-produced “La donna più bella del mondo” in 1955, a biography of Lina Cavalieri. In it she sang a number of songs and even an aria from “Tosca”.

Still under contract dispute with Hughes, Gina went to Paris to make an American film. The movie was Trapeze, in which she co-starred with Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis and Katy Jurado. In France again, Gina made Jean Delannoy’s version of Notre Dame de Paris with Anthony Quinn. On July 28, 1957 Gina gave birth to a son, Milko junior. A year later Gina went back to motion pictures to star in Anna di Brooklyn, a film produced by her husband Milko Skofic and “supervised”, but really directed by De Sica.

By 1959, Gina was free from her 7 year contract with Howard Hughes and was able to return to Hollywood, where she made three films, two for MGM, Never so Few and Go Naked in the World, and one for United Artist: Salomon and Sheba, shot in Spain. This last film was marked by the untimely death of actor Tyrone Power before shooting had been completed. Yul Brynner was called in to take the role and the film had to be virtually remade.

For Universal Studios, Gina starred (1961) in “Come September” with Rock Hudson. Filmed partly in Italy, this was one of Gina’s biggest Hollywood box office hits. Gina went blonde in “La bellezza d’Ippolita” (1962). In “Venere imperiale”, she played the role of Paolina Borghese then it was off to England to make Woman of Straw with Sean Connery.

In 1966 Gina and Mirko Skofic were separated (they divorced in 1971). She went then to France (Delannoy’s L’Amante Italiana), England (Peter Glenville’s Hotel Paradise) and Spain (Vincent Sherman’s Cervantes). Then it was off to America again for a guest appearance in Frank Tashlin’s The Private Navy of Sgt. O’Farrell starring Bob Hope.

One of my favorite Gina Lollobrigida films “Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell” (1968), is perhaps her best known film outside Italy. The cast included Shelly Winters, Phil Silvers, Peter Lawford, Telly Savalas and L’Italo-Americano long time columnist, actress Argentina Brunetti, who left us at age 98 in December 2005. If your local video rents has a vintage section look for “Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell”, I know you will enjoy it. Gina made many films that continued to delight American audiences by re-release, i.e. Bread Love and Dreams, Trapeze, Salomon and Sheba and Never So Few with Frank Sinatra.

She made her American television debut in a recurring role as Francesca Gioberti in “Falcon Crest” and in 1985 Gina played the part of Princess Alexandria in her first TV movie, Deception, starring Stephanie Powers. After Gina’s voluntary retirement from motion pictures, she dedicated most of her time to her photography, which had grown from a hobby to a true profession. In October 1980, she organized an exhibition in Paris and won the Vermeil award.

She has published “Italia Mia” and “The Wonder of Innocence”, her fifth book of photographs. In his book “Jet Set” memoir of and international playboy, by Massimo Gargia (as told to best selling author, Allan Starkie) Massimo writes:
“Gina is perhaps one of the most fascinating people of our era. There are many beautiful actresses who simply are photogenic. Gina on the other hand, is just as beautiful on and off the screen. She requires no make up and has a sensuality that seems to assault your senses. It is probably that fact that led Humphrey Bogart to say “Gina makes Marilyn Monroe look like Shirley temple at Sunnybrook Farm”.

My personal opinion is that it is a sad thing that Gina was born so beautiful. She was an extraordinarily talented art student when she was finally persuaded to enter the film business. Her beauty and talent as an actress and her subsequent stardom obscured the fact that Gina was something that simply does not exist anymore – a Renaissance person. She paints and sculpts, writes, sings, is an excellent experimental photographer, explorer and sociologist.

In addition to being an actress and artist, Gina had begun photographing world figures, interviewing them, and even making documentaries. In 1972, she published a book called “Italia Mia”, which illustrates the contrast of life: humor and sadness, wealth and poverty.

In 1974, she did a journalism project on Henry Kissinger and Neil Armstrong. Shortly after, she received an invitation from Fidel Castro and created an incisive hour-long documentary on him. A year later, she was trekking through uncharted wilderness to study a newly discovered tribe of Philippine natives that had never encountered civilization. But most of all, Gina is a true friend.”

 

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