Posted on 01/16/2023 9:36:26 AM PST by Red Badger
Gina Lollobrigida arrives on the red carpet during the 4th Rome International Film Festival in Rome on October 16, 2009. She died Monday at age 95. File Photo by David Silpa/UPI | License Photo
Jan. 16 (UPI) -- Italian screen legend Gina Lollobrigida, whose sultry roles in the 1950s and 1960s established her as a international sex symbol, has died, Italian media reported Monday. She was 95.
Known affectionately to her countrymen as "La Bersagliera" for her starring role in Luigi Comencini's 1953 film Bread, Love and Dreams, Lollobrigida's family broke the news of her death, the Italian agency ANSA reported.
She was hospitalized with a fractured femur and underwent an operation in September following a fall at home, the news service said. The injury came as she was campaigning for an Italian Senate seat.
Four years ago she was similarly hospitalized after a domestic accident.
Lollobrigida was last seen in public on Nov. 21 during a tearful appearance on Italian television in which she talked about a long battle over her estate in which she was fighting against her son and grandson over her move to include her former butler into her will.
"I have the right to live but also to die in peace," she told the RAI Television interviewer.
Lollobrigida appeared in more than 60 movies in a career as a screen diva that took off in the 1950s. She quickly became one of the most recognizable figures of the Italian postwar neorealist cinema movement and was hailed as one of the world's great beauties.
Her reputation in that regard was cemented in 1955 when starred in the film La Donna Piu Bella del Mondo (The World's Most Beautiful Woman), which came shortly after her Hollywood breakout role in director John Huston's 1953 classic Beat the Devil.
Lollobrigida won a Golden Globe award for her performance opposite Rock Hudson in the 1961 romantic comedy Come September.
Long engaged in a rivalry with fellow Italian screen beauty Sophia Loren, Lollobrigida is credited with influencing the look of a generation of Italian women in the 1960s, especially her short hairstyle, and for decades was revered as an archetype of sultry Italian sex appeal.
Is this from ‘Women of Rome’?
Yes
With Gina gone, now have Barbara E. to worry about... She is 2 years older than me, and still stunning...
Hope Jesus has her turn up in Heaven looking like she did circa 1960. That will turn some heads on the streets of the Heavenly City.
Is that by actual measurement, or word of mouth?
I’m just happy she won’t be calling me anymore...
The brings to mind the old joke...
She: Who are you gonna satisfy with that little thing?
He: Me.
😜...............................
Having to choose between 60s era Gina, Sophia and Claudia would put me into an infinite loop.wec
I assume you mean Claudia Cardinale, yes?.....................
I watched a British travel series a while back featuring Joanna Lumley. It was called Joanna Lumley’s Great Cities of the World from 2022. She visited Berlin, Paris and Rome. During her visit to Rome, she met and chatted with Gina Lollobrigida. I was amazed at how beautiful she still looked.
I was in high school when the film "Cleopatra" came out with Liz Taylor and Richard Burton. I always thought that Sophia Loren would have been a much better choice for the role.
I had never thought of it, but Loren definitely would have looked much more the part.
Teeheehee, love it!
Perhaps Audrey Hepburn.
She was wonderful, but a completely different type. (I was thinking about Italians...)
LOL
Who else? What a babe.
No one mentioned Virna Lisi as of yet?
No one mentioned Virna Lisi as of yet?
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