The Italian diva Gina Lollobrigida, eternal rival of Sophia Loren according to the tabloid media, died on Monday in Rome at the age of 95after a film career that earned him huge popularity in his country and then screened it in Hollywood and other locations.
It was the time when beauty pageants were in fashion all over the world, long before the parameters and the evaluation of the feminine changed, and Lollobrigida enrolled dreaming of becoming Miss Italy 1947.
He started third behind Lucia Bosè, and Gianna Maria Canale.
Lollobrigida, who had sought her destiny in the plastic arts and photography, did not know at the time that she was going to become a international starrecognized with awards such as the five David de Donatello awards that he received for his work -two of them honorary-, a Golden Globe and with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Coincidentally, in those years in Argentina the “girls from Divito” were in fashion, a creation of the cartoonist Guillermo Divito (1914-1969), which reflected a universal trend of how young women should be in the Second World War: curvilinear although stylized and inevitably attractive, like her.
Gina Lollobrigida’s visit to Argentina
Also due to this privileged figure, the Italian artist was invited to the Mar del Plata Film Festival organized in March 1954 but was unable to participate and would only arrive in the country eight months later, when she had meetings with the press in Buenos Aires and Juan Domingo Perón an admirer of her beauty who offers to take her by train to Mar del Plata, where she visited the works of the Eva Perón Foundation in Chapadmalal, and then returned to take a ride on the presidential yacht Tequará on the Tigre river before leaving.
From that visit and that dazzle survives a myth spread by the opposition to discredit the president about the use of an X-ray camera that would allow him to photograph the diva furtively without clothes
In November 1996, after 26 years of hiatus, the Mar del Plata Festival finally had the presence of Lollobrigida, in addition to Raquel Welch, Jacqueline Bisset and Elsa Martinelliwhich called its organizer Julio Maharbiz then in front of the Incaa and the sample and where they had a meeting with the then president Carlos Saul Menem and his vice eduardo duhalde.
??? Gina Lollobrigida travels by train to Mar del Plata and the crowds follow her. Province of Buenos Aires, 1954.
? Argentine Events 836. Video document. ID: 81.C35.1.A pic.twitter.com/4xQNAWQP93– General Archive (@AGNArgentina) July 21, 2021
The origins of Gina Lollobrigida
Luigia or Luigina Lollobrigida was born in the Roman municipality of Subiaco, on July 4, 1927, and in the hard times of the 1940s she was a photographic model under the name of Diana Loris and toured the film studios -as Anna Magnani did to place her daughter in the film “Bellissima”, by Luchino Visconti-, because hunger was getting worse and it was necessary to get a location.
In 1946, before the Miss Italy contest, he managed to integrate the cast of “Black Eagle”, directed by the named Riccardo Freda, and later he shot other films supporting figures such as Silvana Pampanini, Aldo Fabrizzi, Folco Lulli, the baritone and actor Tito Gobbi, Raf Vallone, Amedeo Nazzari, Gérard Philipe and Martine Carol -in France-, until in 1952 he achieved a leading role in “Woman for one night”, by Mario Camerini, a sign that his name and presence were recognized by the industry.
That same year, he starred in “Otros tiempos”, by Alessandro Blasetti, forming a pairing with an essential name in his immediate future, Vittorio de Sica, along with whom he achieved the hit of “Bread, love and fantasy” (1953), by Luigi Comencini, who returned to direct them in “Bread, love and jealousy” (1954).
In 1949 she had married her second husband, Milko Skofic, a prestigious Yugoslavian doctor with whom she was until 1971 and was the father of her only child, Milko Skofic Jr, and already then she was known in Italy as “la Lollo” and labeled as “The most beautiful woman in the world”, as was the title that he later shot with Vittorio Gassman in 1955, already in its prime.
“Fanfan La Tulipe” (1952), by the French Christian-Jaque, united her on the front line with Gérard Philipe, and in 1953 she moved to Great Britain to film “The Devil’s Trick” under the orders of John Huston, along with Humphrey Bogart, Jennifer Jones, who inaugurated her performances in English, in France she worked for Robert Siodmak in “The Great Game” (1954) and returned to her land to shoot “La Romana”, by Luigi Zampa, and in 1957, in Gallic lands filmed Jean Delannoy’s “Notre Dame de Paris” alongside stars Anthony Quinn and Alain Cuny.
Already at his peak, he starred in the spectacular “Trapeze” (1956), by Carol Reed, in the United States, alongside Burt Lancaster, Tony Curtis and Katy Jurado, and where it was said that he performed with his acrobat suit that skilfully concealed his advanced pregnancy; This film was followed by “Anna from Brooklyn”, with De Sica, and “The Law”, by Jules Dassin, both from 1958 and in Italy, until the biblical “Solomon and the Queen of Sheba” (1959, in the United States). ), by King Vidor, famous because during filming the titular Tyrone Power died, who had to be replaced by Yul Brynner in a wig.
He also acted with Frank Sinatra in “When Blood Boils” (1959, in the United States), by John Sturges, “Nude for the World” (1960, idem), with Anthony Franciosa and Ernest Bognine, and “Yours in September” ( 1961, ibid), by Robert Mulligan, with Rock Hudson and Bobby Darin, which swept the world box office.
Already at 35 he was an undisputed star and returned to Italy to shoot “The Beauty of Hippolyta” (1962), alongside Enrico Maria Salerno and the singer Milva, and crossed over to France for the sumptuous “Imperial Venus” (1962), by Jean Delannoy, with Stephen Boyd, and Back in his homeland he starred in “Mare matto” (1963), by Castellani, which was his meeting with Jean-Paul Belmondo.
The following year he starred in Basil Dearden’s “The Straw Woman” in the United Kingdom, along with Sean Connery and Ralph Richardson, and “Hotel Paradiso” (1966), with Alec Guinness, and in Hollywood he again formed a couple with Rock Hudson in Melvin Frank’s “Half Husband” (1965), but the success was not the same as “Yours in September.”
In between, she was one of “The Dolls” (1964), in the Italian collective film directed by Comencini, Dino Risi, Franco Rossi and Mauro Bolognini, where she was accompanied by Elke Sommer, Virna Lisi and Monica Vitti, the most leading men of the time.
He sought the public’s attention with titles such as “Me, Me and Always Me” (1965), by Alessandro Blasetti, with de Sica, Silvana Mangano, Marcello Mastroianni and Manfredi, “Pleasurable Nights”, in which he performed with Gassman and Ugo Tognazzi, and “The Italian lover” (1966, in France), by Delannoy, with Louis Jourdan and Philippe Noiret.
At the end of the 1960s, Lollobrigida began to express discomfort about his career and his intention to dedicate himself to photojournalism.: His last, though intense, works were for Melvin Frank in the United States -“Buona sera, Mrs. Campbell” (1969) -, Bolognini in Italy – “Your Passionate November” (1969) -, Jerzy Skolimowski in the United Kingdom- “The king, queen and knight” (1972), together with David Niven- and in 1995 he briefly participated together with other figures in an experiment by Agnès Varda entitled “Les cent et une nuits de Simon Cinéma”. In the 80s she participated in the series “Falcon Crest”.
After moving away from the screens, he brought all his passion to photography and had as models, among others, Salvador Dalí, Paul Newman and Fidel Castro, but his life did not find peace. She had some romances that were not without scandals, in particular the last one, with his partner Andrea Piazzola, 34 years younger, who served as administrator of his vast fortune – 40 million euros – and ended up invading his house moving in with another woman and his own daughter .
Even her own son Milko Jr. and her only grandson, Dmitri, who did not want to wait for the inheritance in due time, accused her of senility. before the judges to keep their properties, but they ruled, when Gina was 93 years old, that she was fully capable of making decisions.
