Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow: My Life Page 11

We worked hard and often went over the scenes for the next day together, but we also set aside some private time for us. We’d have dinner in some small family-run restaurants on the Ávila hills, sipping summer red wine and listening to the flamenco. I had a lot to learn, but something to teach, too.

  One evening a gentleman approached our table.

  “Mr. Grant, could I have your autograph?”

  Cary rudely brushed him away from our table to defend our privacy. I scolded him gently.

  “Why did you treat him like that? It’s important to him, and it doesn’t cost us anything.”

  Cary humbly said I was right and called the admirer back over. We both gave him our autographs along with a dedication.

  Fortunately, we were staying in two different hotels, and this helped us to at least keep some distance between us. When we weren’t working, I’d often sit out on the terrace of my room to get some sun. I tried not to overdo it, otherwise the following morning I’d show up too tanned.

  Cary and I would talk about our dreams, which weren’t about fame or wealth—which he already had, along with the respect and the love of the whole world—but about our more intimate dreams, which many took for granted: the miracle of a house, a person with whom to laugh and share one’s life. “What kind of house would you like? Do you care for dogs? What names would you choose for your child?” I was charmed by his words, but I always stayed one step back. I didn’t want to, and couldn’t, raise his hopes.

  In the meantime, we’d reached a turning point. The end of the movie was close at hand, and the situation between us showed no sign of being resolved. I was more and more muddled, torn between two men and two worlds. I woke up every morning wondering what was going to happen. I knew that my place was next to Carlo—he was my safe harbor, even though I was still waiting for him to make his decision; our furtive relationship couldn’t go on much longer. I also knew for a fact that I didn’t want to move permanently to the United States. I was afraid of having to give myself over completely to another culture, so different from my own. At the same time, it was hard to resist the magnetism of a man like Cary, who said he was willing to give up everything for me.

  The last night, he invited me out, more solemn than usual. Inside I was afraid. I wasn’t prepared for what he was about to say to me. Out of the blue, with a gorgeous sunset outside, he stopped, looked me in the eyes, and simply said: “Will you marry me?”

  My words got caught in my throat. I felt like the character in a movie who has forgotten her lines. I had no answer to give him, I had never led him on, and had no intention of ever doing so. I couldn’t show him a sign of certainty that I couldn’t even find within myself.

  “Cary, dear, I need time,” I whispered breathlessly. I felt so small before this impossible decision.

  He understood, and tried to soften the blow of my answer with a light touch of humor: “Why don’t we get married first, and then think about it?”

  The next morning I left for Greece, where I was going to make my second American movie, Boy on a Dolphin. When I arrived in Athens, I found a bunch of roses and a pale blue note in my hotel room.

  “Forgive me, dear girl—I press you too much. Pray—and so will I. Until next week. Goodbye Sophia, Cary.”

  We didn’t see each other the following week, however—it was no more than a hope, promise, a dream. But I never forgot the words on the envelope—“With only happy thoughts.” His happy thoughts are still with me.

  In fact, these shared dreams of family kept us united as friends long after the movie was finished. Cary showed me great joy when my sons, Carlo Jr. and Edoardo, were born. And I felt the same happiness for him, years later, at the birth of his daughter, Jennifer, whom he’d so longed for. And I was delighted when I met his splendid wife, Barbara, whom he loved to the very end. This is true friendship, being happy together in the fullness of life’s little and big miracles.

  HOW DEEP IS THE SEA

  After that dry hot summer in the heart of the Spanish Meseta, a period that was as exciting as it was laborious, it was almost a relief to be able to dive into the blue of Greece. I was tired, both physically and psychologically, and the sea, the wind, the sun of the beautiful island of Hydra made me feel right at home. I rediscovered the scents of my world, the light and the horizons reminiscent of where I’d grown up.

  Boy on a Dolphin was an adventure film, a sort of archeological thriller where I acted alongside Alan Ladd. Alan was slightly shorter than me, so to shoot many of the scenes he had to stand on a stool. It wasn’t anyone’s fault, but it made him suffer, and he’d created a few too many complexes for himself. I, on my part, acted foolishly and wasn’t very kind to him. I enjoyed poking fun at him and I played around all the time, as if life were nothing more than a comedy.

  Back then, I was very different from the professional I was to become. I enjoyed working, I committed myself to it in full, but I was still a young woman and I needed to feel carefree. It made up for not having been carefree when I was a child. As a young girl at Cinecittà, I’d known I couldn’t afford to make a single mistake—those hard times of the war were still so recent. Now that things were starting to look up, I could laugh and joke around. I didn’t do it because I wanted to be mean—it was just a way to pass the time, to get the better of my nerves, the insecurity that never left me. And it was also a way to create my character, which in Boy on a Dolphin was in fact a lively, exuberant woman. As I’d never gone to acting school, I’d never done any theater, I had to find my inspiration elsewhere. And so sometimes I’d mix fact and fiction to better prepare for the part.

  Even now, I draw from everything I possibly can to give my characters substance and physical presence: I draw from reality, memory, from other actors in other movies. Recently, I was struck by the last scene in Blue Jasmine, where Cate Blanchett has an expression on her face I’d never seen before. That expression crept inside me, and it lies there waiting to germinate a new plant, a new flower.

  Jean Negulesco, the director of Boy on a Dolphin, was an American of Romanian origin. He was cheerful and bursting with life. We got along fine and in the evening he’d take us out fishing on lampare (boats used for night fishing). I loved spending the night out at sea. It took me back to when, while shooting Africa under the Seas, I’d sail out in the waters of Palmarola, near Ponza, with Antonio Cifariello.

  Antonio was just a few years younger than I was, and, like me, came from Naples. Off the set, we were like two young kids, and it didn’t take much for us to have fun. I was distraught when, a few years later, I learned of his death in Zambia. He had been making a documentary for RAI and his plane crashed. He was only thirty-eight and had a little boy. He had had his whole life in front of him.

  Negulesco was enchanted by the landscape, by that sundrenched, ancient nature that spoke to us about our origins. Whether he wanted to or not, he ended up putting the Mediterranean Sea at the heart of the movie. After all, he was an artist, too. Hidden where I couldn’t see him, he sketched some wonderful portraits of me, which he exhibited in a show the following December, once we returned to Rome for the studio shoots. The profits from the show were dedicated to Hungary, which had just been invaded by Soviet tanks. Negulesco’s wife was Hungarian and she loved her country dearly.

  The Cold War was raging, but that Greek autumn for me was a period of calm and budding happiness. Carlo often came to see me, letting me know that he was working on a solution for us. And in spite of my mother’s warnings I trusted him.

  We celebrated Christmas of 1956 in John Wayne’s hotel suite. He was just passing through Rome to do screen tests for Legend of the Lost, which we were to start shooting with the new year. To prepare for the Christmas party the whole crew went to Piazza Navona to buy gifts from the market stands: shepherds for the manger, handmade photo albums, special nougat candy from Benevento. The streets were filled with a festive din. Bagpipers were at every corner to serenade us, a tradition that goes back to ancient Rome, and the smell of ro
asted chestnuts was in the air. Our fellow actors who were American mixed in with the thousands of tourists, and they loved this typically Italian crowd and confusion, accustomed as they were to living on ranches and mansions with a view of the ocean. It was a brief time of normality before I had to leave again for the African desert. A few days later, on January 2, we’d be off to Ghadames, in Libya.

  I had grown up on a little street, Via Solfatara, in a small town, Pozzuoli, but I was beginning to see the world now, and I could hardly believe it.

  AFRICAN FEVER

  Legend of the Lost was the last “American” movie I made before moving to the United States. The shooting was done in the harshest conditions, in the middle of the desert, close to the ancient Roman port of Leptis Magna, one of the jewels of the empire, and also to the town of Ghadames, which is known as the pearl of the desert. It was a surreal and fantastic place, brimming with magic, but with hazards, too. Cockroaches, scorpions, snakes, sandstorms, the heat, the thirst . . . And the Tuaregs, “blue men,” who both attracted and frightened me at the same time, with their mystery and their differentness. It’s a good thing John Wayne was there to protect us!

  I have never ceased to be amazed at the fact that the king of Westerns seen from up close was exactly as I expected him to be. Duke, which is what everyone called him, really was a cowboy, a big, solid, authoritative one, and very sure of himself. But he was always with his wife, a petite Mexican woman without whom he felt lost. To him I was just a little girl. He liked watching me play around, and whenever someone tried to put a damper on my exuberance, he’d say: “C’mon, leave her alone, she’s young . . . Let her laugh.” I remember it as though he were standing in front of me right now. I could have been his daughter, and when I was close to him I felt safe. I wasn’t afraid of anything. He was our undisputed leader, but he never took advantage of his power over us—he didn’t have any bad habits; he never threw any tantrums. He didn’t need to. We all tried to anticipate his desires, to learn from what he had to say. He was a professional, who worked with the patience of a great person.

  Only once did his legend run the risk of cracking. One day he fell off his horse—hard to imagine, isn’t it?—and he broke his ankle. We expected him to swallow his pain with a shot of whisky. Instead, he started howling like a madman. We stood there looking at him our eyes popping out of our heads, astounded to discover the man behind the hero. But he soon got over it, and in no time at all he’d put his John Wayne costume back on, as if nothing had ever happened. I still have the stirrups from his horse hanging on the wall of my office. Accidents aside, he was a living legend, and he always will be.

  The other main character in the movie, Rossano Brazzi, was quite the opposite of Duke. The embodiment of the Latin lover, Rossano was handsome and jovial, and so focused on himself and his good looks that he never even realized when I was joking. I’d say to him, “Quanto sii bbello”(You’re so adorable), as though he were a child. Maybe he took me seriously. Rossano was always singing. During break after break, he chirped away as though he were still in South Pacific, which he’d filmed recently: “Some enchanted evening, you may see a stranger, across a crowded room . . .” with dreamy eyes and a fixed smile. He’d arrived from the set for Summertime with Katharine Hepburn in Venice, and it seemed from his look that he still was under the effect of her style and elegance. Rossano seemed sometimes to be in another world. However, when the time came, he was there to save my life. If it hadn’t been for him I probably wouldn’t even be here to tell this story today.

  It was a very cold night, and my small hotel room was heated by a gas stove. There was room for a bed, a dressing table for me to put my makeup on, but not much more than that. I felt like a prisoner. I was always sealing the windows and doors because I was fearful, and it never even dawned on me that it might be dangerous. But that night I learned the hard way. I woke up during the night in the middle of a terrible nightmare. My head throbbing, I was in a state of confusion, and I felt like I might faint. I didn’t know it, but I was asphyxiating from the gas stove’s fumes. Somehow I managed to crawl on my knees to the door and open it, but then I collapsed. Rossano, who was just getting back to his room, found me unconscious and called out. “Help! Help! Sophia is dying!” They saved me in the nick of time; another second and it would have been too late.

  The scare didn’t stop me from continuing to work, even though that toxic headache lingered for a few days more. In the morning we’d arrive on the set wearing our fur coats, that’s how cold it was. But then, as the hours passed and the sun became scorching, we took off layer after layer. The director, Henry Hathaway, was very ill at the time, but he stuck it out and saw the movie through. All of us worked together so well. We even came to the aid of the mayor of the nearby town of Ghadames, whose first wife became very ill one night and needed to be flown out to a hospital for treatment that wasn’t available in Ghadames. Because the runway there had no lights, a plane couldn’t land to take her to the clinic. We all decided to use the lights from the set and arrange them so that they would light up the runway and a small twin jet could land, get her on board and rush her to the hospital. It was a real triumph, and made all the effort it was taking to make the movie worth it.

  When we left Africa we felt a sharp pang of regret. The desert was magical, a lost horizon. I now understood perfectly how it could bewitch and bind itself to the imagination of so many people. But my imagination was busy focusing on something else now, and not even the most beautiful desert in the world could stop me, for waiting for me at the end of the road was Hollywood.

  HOLLYWOOD PARTIES

  On April 6, 1957, I boarded an SAS flight to Los Angeles along with my sister, Maria. The tears ran down my face as I hugged my mother, who accompanied us as far as the stairs leading up to the plane.

  “Mammina, you’ll see, I’ll be fine, and you will be, too. We’ll write to each other, I’ll call you every day, statte accuorta (take care of yourself).”

  It was our first big separation. I was making a leap in the dark, into a celluloid world in another country, from which I didn’t know what to expect. I was leaving the Pizza Girl, the Fishmonger, and a piece of my life behind. I was now an international actress, but one tiny part of me was still a girl venturing into the unknown.

  In Los Angeles we were greeted in grand style by all the American newspapers as well as a sea of people. At the foot of the plane was a little boy, John Minervini, who, with the shyness of a four-year-old, gave me a kiss on behalf of the whole Italian-American community. “Welcome to America, Miss Loren,” he mumbled, tripping over his words like at a Christmas pageant. I left a trace of lipstick on his cheek. He was the most photographed child that day.

  Now and again Maria and I would look at each other and burst out laughing. We pinched each other’s cheeks to make sure we weren’t dreaming.

  “Is this really happening to us? To Maria? To Sophia? Who could ever have imagined!”

  And yet you can grow used to the role of the star. I soon learned that what was important was to see things for what they were, to not let all this emphasis, this impressive show, change my way of thinking. I knew exactly what I was looking for. I had wanted this success and it drove me to do even better. But inside me, I still yearned for a family, children, the normal life I’d never had.

  Actually, America finally gave me the chance to live with Carlo. He traveled back and forth between Italy and LA, but when he was in Hollywood I had his undivided attention.

  It had been a while since he’d finished with the Ponti–De Laurentiis company and created the Champion film company together with Marcello Girosi, a Neapolitan who spoke English very well. Girosi helped Carlo to expand his business across the ocean. They had signed an agreement with Paramount and I was entering the front door of one of the most important stables in the world.

  My first Hollywood appointment was in fact a cocktail party organized by Paramount at Romanoff’s, a famous Beverly Hills restaurant popula
r with the stars. In my honor they’d given everything a Mediterranean touch, with that slightly childish American way of transforming and reshaping reality. Everyone was there. I was the phenomenon of the moment, the person everyone wanted to meet, at the event not to be missed. I looked in one direction and there was Gary Cooper—so handsome he left one breathless—I looked in another direction and there was Barbara Stanwyck, smiling, and if I looked out the window I could see Fred Astaire chatting with Gene Kelly. Mamma mia!

  At that moment, Jayne Mansfield arrived. The crowd of guests parted to let her through as she headed straight for my table. She moved forward, swaying on her heels, perhaps not completely sober, with something grand and imperious about each step she took. She knew that everyone had their eyes on her, and how could anyone not gape at her neckline, which was more than generous. It was as if she were saying: “Here comes Jayne Mansfield. The Blond Bombshell!” She sat next to me at the table and started talking—it was like a volcano erupting. As she got more and more worked up, suddenly I found one of her breasts in my plate. I looked up at her, terrified. She barely noticed, regained her composure, and left. One especially quick reporter took a picture of the scene, and the image went around the world. I refused to autograph it. Hidden behind Hollywood’s enchanted kingdom were some coarse and grotesque sides, which I refused to have anything to do with.

  That first party was followed by others, always the same and always different. For me it was one big adventure, a merry-go-round, a stellar whirlwind of faces, names, fashions. I was struck by the limousines and Cadillacs, the gaudy mansions, and also by the motels and drive-ins. I discovered supermarkets and shopping centers, drinks on the patio around the swimming pool, and cottage cheese with fruit salad. I met the legends of my youth, and felt like I was at the heart of the world. But all we ever talked about was cinema, and I missed my country, steeped in history, wit, humanity. Ordinary people just didn’t seem to exist in Hollywood.