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 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.
Sophia certainly would have been easier to work with.
I once had this argument with my ex Italian wife. She voted for Loren but my bathroom time as a youngster was spent with Gina.
Loren probably had too much daunting class to inspire such...activity.
I had the thrill of meeting Gina Lolobrigida in person in New York in 1969 when she was filming a radio commercial for one of her movies — That Splendid November.
She was 42 years and still looking gorgeous. I’ll never forget that brief chat with her all those years ago in a Manhattan recording studio at Times Square. She was nearly old enough to be my mother, who was 2 years older.
Rest In Peace, dear lovely Gina.
That's what I thought too.
No Liz and Dick drama.
She would have had the gravitas, too.
The movie was fun when it came out, but I watched it again a couple of years ago, and it’s horribly dated.
Oh those Italian babes are so beautiful!
We lived in her hometown of Pozzuoli for three years when we were stationed in Naples. (I was a “tween.)
The locals who knew her had nothing but good things to say about her. She was clearly loved and admired there.
RIP beautiful lady…
Nor Raffaella(”I always vote communist”)Carrà
[inside an Italian train with a cramped seat Fred's asleep]
Ethel Mertz : Fred, Fred, wake up sleeping beauty.
Lucy Ricardo : You couldn't wake him up with a stick of dynamite.
Ethel Mertz : Hey I got an idea
[yells]
Ethel Mertz : Hey look there goes Gina Lollobrigida.
Fred Mertz : [gets up from his seat excited] Where? Where? Where?
Liz was notoriously difficult to work with on anything by then. Sophia worked on set as a professional would.
I read a while ago that you often see Brit actors hired to play American roles now because they tend go show up on time ready to work. Even the big names. Not so much with the ego problems.
Lucy Ricardo: [after seeing an Italian movie, Lucy wants to change her look] You know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna get an Italian haircut.
Ricky Ricardo: Oh, no you're not.
Lucy Ricardo: Why not?
Ricky Ricardo: Because I like your hair the way it is.
Lucy Ricardo: Yeah, but it would look so good short. Please?
Ricky Ricardo: Look, for my son's sake, No.
Lucy Ricardo: What do you mean, for your son's sake?
Ricky Ricardo: I'll 'splain.
Lucy Ricardo: OK, 'splain.
Ricky Ricardo: All people in the world are divided into two groups: men and women.
Lucy Ricardo: I know, it's a wonderful arrangement.
Ricky Ricardo: Now, men have short hair, and women have long hair. That's the difference between 'em.
Lucy Ricardo: Oh? Ricky Ricardo: I don't want my son to be confused. He should know whether he should call you 'mother' or 'father'.
That episode must be destroyed!.................
In the movie, all the men are going gaga over Gina Lollobrigida, and acting like Jennifer Jones is some kind if Frump. I kept thinking: "What the heck is wrong with these men!?"
“When you look good, you feel good....When you feel good, you play good.....When you play good, they pay good!” - Deion Sanders..................
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