Saturdays with the Stars: Gina Lollobrigida

Each month of 2020 we will be looking at the movies of some of Hollywood's most famous sex symbols, women whose intense beauty frequently overshadowed their filmic careers.  Last month, our focus was on Sophia Loren, whose iconic beauty in an era where American audiences came to be fascinated with foreign-language films in a way they haven't before-or-since, managed to make her the rare sex symbol to gain critical acclaim not just later, but in her own time.  This month, we'll be taking a look at one of Loren's fellow countrywomen, an actress of a similar glamour who rose to prominence during the 1950's and 60's as well, and who has maintained a longstanding feud (though both women deny being the one who started the feud) with Loren for over fifty years.  This month, our star is Gina Lollobrigida.

Born in 1927 (making her seven years Loren's senior) in rural Italy, Lollobrigida seemed destined for fame in the movies at a very young age.  Despite her modest upbringing, she started modeling and doing minor film-work at a young age, and eventually gained fame in 1947 for coming in third in the Miss Italy beauty pageant, which brought her to the attention of Howard Hughes, who signed her to an exclusive contract in 1950.  Hughes & Lollobrigida clashed heavily while she was under contract to him, and he made life miserable for her, hampering her ability to have a significant career in American film (which may be why Loren ended up being a more memorable figure in American-lensed movies, thanks to her actually getting to use her contract with Paramount to make movies with Cary Grant & Anthony Perkins that encouraged success in the states).

Lollobrigida's career isn't as well-known today by cinephiles as Loren or even Brigitte Bardot (our last two stars), but looking at the directors that she worked with, it's hard to understand why.  Despite the limitations of her contract with Hughes, she was able to make movies with John Huston, Carol Reed, and King Vidor, all Grade-A directors, won the Golden Globe Award (for 1961's Come September), and starred in films that feel ripe for rediscovery by film buffs (or Criterion) such as Bread, Love, and Dreams.

Instead, Lollobrigida is best known for her fantastical personal life (it's hard to tell whether or not she was even married to Javier Rigau y Rafols, a man 34 years her junior who has been an on-again-off-again romantic partner of Lollobrigida's for years, and a fixture of the Italian tabloid press).  She's interviewed Fidel Castro and in 2013 she sold all of her jewelry to fund stem cell research.  Just two years ago she finally won a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and if the Oscars ever want to get around to it they could do worse than honor the aging star.  This month, though, we're going to take a look at Lollobrigida herself, with the knowledge of Sophia Loren last month in our back-pocket but more trying to figure out why she wasn't able to gain the same sort of immortal fame that her rival was able to achieve in film history, and see what she left behind in her (on-paper) impressive looking filmography.