Italian actress Gina Lollobrigida, one of the biggest stars of European cinema in the 1950s and ’60s, has died at the age of 95.
Often described as “the most beautiful woman in the world”, her films included Beat the Devil, the Hunchback of Notre Dame and Crossed Swords.
She co-starred alongside the likes of Humphrey Bogart, Frank Sinatra, Rock Hudson and Errol Flynn.
Her career faded in the 1960s and she moved into photography and politics.
Nicknamed La Lollo, she was one of the last surviving icons of the glory days of film, who Bogart said “made Marilyn Monroe look like Shirley Temple”.
Movie mogul Howard Hughes showered her with marriage proposals. Off camera, she enjoyed a feud with fellow Italian star Sophia Loren.
Culture minister Gennaro Sangiuliano wrote on Twitter: “Farewell to a diva of the silver screen, protagonist of more than half a century of Italian cinema history. Her charm will remain eternal.”
She died in a Rome clinic, her former lawyer Giulia Citani told the Reuters news agency.
Luigina Lollobrigida was born on 4 July, 1927. The daughter of a furniture manufacturer, Gina spent her teenage years avoiding wartime bombing raids before studying sculpture at Rome’s Academy of Fine Arts.
A talent scout offered her an audition at Cinecitta – then the largest film studio in Europe and Italy’s thriving “Hollywood on the Tiber”.
Lollobrigida wasn’t keen. “I refused when they offered me my first role,” she recalled. “So, they said they would pay me a thousand lire. I told them my price was one million lire, thinking that would put a stop to the whole thing. But they said yes!”
In 1947, she entered the Miss Italia beauty pageant – a competition that launched many notable careers – and came third. Two years later, she married a Slovenian doctor, Milko Skofic.
Skofic took some bikini-clad publicity shots of his new – and still relatively unknown – wife. Six thousand miles away in Hollywood, the world’s richest man sat up.
Hughes had just taken control of a major studio. He was more than 20 years older than Lollobrigida and famous for a string of affairs with the most glamorous women of the age – including Marlene Dietrich, Rita Hayworth and Ava Gardner.
He tracked Lollobrigida down and offered a screen test. She accepted, expecting her husband to accompany her to America. On the day of departure, only one of the tickets Hughes had promised showed up.
Hughes had divorce lawyers waiting at the airport. She was installed in a luxury hotel, given a secretary and a chauffeur, and bombarded with proposals.
He had prepared everything. Even the screen test turned out to be a scene about the end of a marriage.
The trip lasted nearly three months. She saw him daily – fending off pass after pass. To avoid the press, they often ate at cheap restaurants or in the back of his car.
Although the behaviour was clearly abusive, Lollobrigida said she enjoyed the attention. “He was very tall, very interesting,” she later recalled. “Much more interesting than my husband.”
Before she departed for Rome, Hughes presented her with a seven-year contract. It made it hugely expensive for any other US studio to hire her. “I signed it because I wanted to go home,” she said.
Hughes didn’t give up. His lawyers pursued her as far as the Algerian desert – where she was making a film. Her husband was understanding about the decade-long infatuation. He’d even play the lawyers at tennis.
BBC
