Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow: My Life Read online

  Her small gesture, so generous and selfless, meant so much to me at the time. That’s exactly how it is: what we do or don’t do for others can be far more important than we might imagine.

  The dress looked good on me, but unfortunately it wasn’t enough. As was always the case, the jury, chaired by the great journalist Orio Vergani, didn’t know quite what to make of my peculiar beauty. They couldn’t completely trust all my sharp corners—“too tall, too thin, ungainly”—but they couldn’t pretend they didn’t see me either. And so they gave first prize to Anna Maria Bugliari, and made up a special category for me, as if to say a critics’ prize or a special award: I got up on the podium wearing a lovely sash that read, “Miss Eleganza” (Miss Elegance). Ironic, really, if I think about the randomness of my choice of outfit.

  Nineteen fifty was the first year the winners were announced over the radio. My pictures, taken by Federico Patellani and Fedele Toscani, father of the famous photographer Oliviero Toscani, and one of the first newspaper photographers for the Corriere della Sera (The Evening Courier), an Italian daily newspaper, made the rounds with the movie and photo-romance producers all the same, and maybe that unusual mention aroused some curiosity about my name.

  So exactly twelve months later I was sitting at a table with my friends on the Oppian Hill, right below the stage where the jury was seated, when suddenly, a waiter came up holding a note for me. It read: “Why don’t you join the pageant, too? It would please me if you did.”

  “What does this guy want?” I thought to myself. “And who is he anyway? Nothing doing, I’m not in the mood this evening.”

  But my friends insisted: “These are movie people, this might be your big chance!”

  When I received the invitation a second time, signed Carlo Ponti, I gave in. As I had in other pageants, I came in second, but this time there was a small, but essential difference: I had attracted the gaze of the great producer.

  Carlo was thirty-nine, twenty-two years older than I was. He had already made a name for himself, and he was at the height of his brilliant career. He made sure he told me when he came over to introduce himself, at the end of the contest, that he had scouted some of the greatest stars, names like Gina Lollobrigida, Sylva Koscina, and my very favorite one of all, Lucia Bosè.

  “Shall we take a stroll through the park? It’s a charming place. They call it ‘the rose garden,’ you won’t believe the scent . . .” As he spoke he helped me up, and placed my light organza shawl over my shoulders.

  Here we go again, I thought to myself, preparing to have to rebuke him if he made the moves men usually tried. The truth of the matter is that Carlo was very businesslike, and instantly won my trust. He told me about the movies he was making, he asked me about myself, about my plans for the future.

  “Where are you from, Signorina? Ah, Pozzuoli. If I’m not mistaken, it has a beautiful Roman amphitheater . . . I was there a few years ago.”

  “It’s right behind my house; we can see it from the windows,” I answered, grateful he’d found something we had in common.

  Right from the start he conveyed a wonderful feeling of assurance and familiarity, as if we had always known each other. I had the strange impression that he’d understood me, that behind my impetuous beauty he had read the traces of a reserved personality, my difficult past, my great longing to be successful, seriously, and with passion. It wasn’t just a game for me, it was much more than that.

  He understood and came right to the point.

  “Have you ever had a screen test?” he asked me right off the bat, as our stroll was coming to an end.

  “Well, to be honest . . .”

  “You have a very interesting face,” he continued, with an authority that was hard to say no to. “Come see me in my office and we can run a test, see how you look on the screen.”

  He gave me his address and said good-bye, so kindly it sounded almost formal. He was used to beautiful women, but I think he was especially struck by me because I was so different from the others. I had aspirations, but held within me the sound principles of my Pozzuoli provincial and religious education. I was not open to compromising myself.

  Carlo was born in Magenta, a town near Milan, where his grandfather had been mayor. He would have liked to have studied architecture, but in the end he’d chosen law, even though he’d always loved art and literature. He’d started working in the cinema almost by accident, dealing with contracts. In 1940, when he was still very young, he’d founded the ATA, the Artisti Tecnici Associati film production house, in Milan, challenging the monopoly in Rome. He made his first movie in 1941, Old-Fashioned World, a historical drama that was the first colossal Italian film success, directed by Mario Soldati. It starred Baroness von Altenburger, stage name Alida Valli, and launched her career, but because the movie was about the Italian struggle against the Austrians in the nineteenth century, Carlo was suspected of being anti-Fascist and so was jailed briefly.

  After the war Carlo married the lawyer Giuliana Fiastri, the daughter of a general, and they had two children, Guendalina and Alex. Carlo then moved to Rome to work with Riccardo Gualino, founder of the legendary production house Lux. Carlo respected and admired Gualino, but he was too resourceful to stay behind the scenes, and in 1949, together with Dino De Laurentiis, who had also been raised in Lux’s shadow, he’d created his own production company, which boasted great directors such as Vittorio De Sica and Alberto Lattuada, Luigi Zampa and Roberto Rossellini, Alessandro Blasetti, Mario Camerini, Luchino Visconti. It’s hard to say if I realized all this at the time.

  I do know that my gut feeling told me to accept the invitation I’d received in the romantic rose garden. I don’t remember whether I went there the next morning, or whether I let a day or two go by, but I was eager to find out whether his interest in me as an actress was sincere and well founded, as it had seemed to be. My mother got ready to come with me, but that time I stopped her.

  “Mammina, it’s better if I go alone.”

  The look she gave me was a blend of concern and offense, and she tried to insist. But I had made my decision, and she could not make me change my mind.

  I showed up, all out of breath, at the address Ponti had given me and found myself standing in front of a police station. I was exasperated, and my instinctive mistrust, which my mother had no doubt instilled in me, made me think that it had to be some kind of ugly prank. There, he was kidding me all the time. He’s a producer just like I’m a ballet dancer, I thought. I felt my anger rising, mixed with a feeling of bitter humiliation. How could I have believed him! I was stupid, so stupid! I thought of my father, and the tricks with which he’d drawn Romilda into his web.

  Thank heavens, though, not all stories are the same, and mine had yet to be written. A young policeman who noticed my confusion reassured me: “If you’re looking for the Ponti–De Laurentiis production company, it’s the next door down from here.” I felt silly and childish, thanked him with a big smile, and got ready to enter the heart of Italian cinema. In a few days I was going to be seventeen.

  THE FAVORITE

  After about half an hour Carlo was ready to see me. I’d never been in such an impressive, luxurious office. I still remember how in awe I was when I saw all those telephones in a row on the desk. “They’re for all the different intercontinental lines,” he answered, with his irresistible smile, before I could even ask. I didn’t say much because I wasn’t sure what to say, but strangely enough I felt comfortable, as if I’d always been there. His experience and my freshness met somewhere in the middle, and we were starting to get to know each other.

  Behind the desk Carlo had a trunk, which he’d inherited from a film he’d just produced with Gina Lollobrigida—maybe The White Line or A Dog’s Life. He opened it and pulled out a beautiful dark pink dress. “You might be able to use it for some of the photos,” he said courteously.

  “Maybe, but I’m not sure . . .” I answered shyly. In the end I accepted it, although without trying it on. Even
if I had wanted to, I wouldn’t have known where, and just the thought of it made me blush.

  Taking advantage of a set that was already mounted, Ponti led me to a theater located next to his office, and wasted no time in having me do a screen test. It was neither easy nor fun. And the results were terrible.

  “Here, you, put this on,” the technician said to me, holding out a bathing suit. His rudeness made me gasp. And to think that I was there with the producer. Who knows the kind of treatment I’d get if I were alone, I thought, horrified. I got changed behind the folding screen and then came out to where they were. I felt naked and my bashfulness stung like an open wound. Totally indifferent, the cameramen handed me a cigarette, ordering me to light it and then to walk back and forth while looking into the camera. I’d never smoked before, nor had I ever been alone in front of a movie camera. I felt totally incompetent, and the camera operator seemed to agree with me.

  “Doc, she’s impossible to photograph. Her face is too short, her mouth is too big, and her nose is too long.” As usual I was “too much” of something. But that’s the way I was, what fault was it of mine?

  This first attempt was followed by others, equally disastrous. I was trying not to get discouraged, but my hopes were fading and the cameramen weren’t in the least concerned about being kind to me. They didn’t seem to realize that I was just a kid, that their words could crush me. At last, a somewhat more sensitive, or maybe just slightly older makeup artist came to my aid. Perhaps I reminded him of his daughter, or a younger sister, sparking his compassion.

  “Signori, what they’re saying is just nonsense. All they need to do is change the lighting so that the shadow cast by your nose will be shorter!”

  His spontaneous, genuine words helped me to keep going. When, sometime later, Carlo tried to suggest the idea that a touch-up might be helpful, I wouldn’t even let him finish what he was saying.

  “Sofia, have you ever thought about . . .you know, softening your . . . your . . . dominant profile . . .”

  “Carlo, if you’re suggesting that to be able to make movies I’m going to have to slice off a piece of my nose, well then I’m going back to Pozzuoli because I have no intention of getting a nose job.”

  “No, Sofia, that’s not what I meant . . .”

  “Don’t think I can’t see what you were getting at. I’m not stupid. It’s out of the question, and that’s that. When you change a person’s nose you change everything, and I don’t want to change.”

  I didn’t want a small, turned-up nose. I knew perfectly well that my beauty was the result of a lot of irregularities all blended together in one face, my face. Whether I won or lost, it was going to be in the original version.

  I was so young, and before me was a powerful man, much older and more experienced than me, who held my fate in his hands . . . I don’t know how I found the courage to stick to my guns. Maybe it was the boldness of youth, or maybe a tiny voice inside me was telling me to keep at it and not to give up anything I thought was important. I think Carlo was also taken aback by my determination and self-confidence, despite the hint of shyness and vulnerability I still conveyed. He would always say that he’d seen the artist in me, even before the actress—that something sparkled inside me. I’m not really sure what he meant by that, but it sounded like a compliment, and as such I’ve always treasured it.

  During that period I wasted no time. I was always running from one set to another, from one photo-romance to another. I was trying to find the right path, even though it was hard to navigate those different worlds. In the first half of the year I’d had a bit part—which was much better than playing an extra—in Milan Billionaire and in It Was Him . . .Yes! Yes!, in which I’d been forced to act bare-breasted for the French market. In the former I played a girl who worked in a cafè, in the latter I had two roles: I played a bridal gown model and a concubine. Both were directed by Vittorio Metz and Marcello Marchesi and, although there wasn’t anything special about these movies, they’d allowed me to see how professional actors like Isa Barzizza, a great actress of the stage and films, Tino Scotti, and Walter Chiari, worked. “It’s all good experience!” I’d tell myself, in my youthful wisdom, driven by ambition.

  In Anna, a 1951 hit about a night-club singer turned nun, directed by Alberto Lattuada, starring the actress Silvana Mangano and leading man Vittorio Gassman, I was even given the chance to say a few lines. Lattuada, whom I’d met a year earlier on the set for Variety Lights, in which I’d had a very small part, had encouraged me from the start, reassuring me that I’d rise through the ranks. That might not seem like much, but for a young beginner like me encouragement like his was enough to keep me going for months.

  In Anna and after that, in The Piano Tuner Has Arrived, I was credited for the first time as Sofia Lazzaro. I was earning 50,000 lire a day, the equivalent of about 80 US dollars at the time, a real fortune compared to what my family was accustomed to.

  I made one of my first bit appearances the following year, in the spring of 1952, in Girls Marked Danger. It was a thriller directed by Luigi Comencini, also starring Silvana Pampanini, who had gotten her start as Miss Italia, and Eleonora Rossi Drago, and American actor Marc Lawrence as the male lead. Just a few hours’ work outdoors, near Genoa, allowed me to appear on the movie’s presentation cover for the United States, which read: “Hands Off! They’re TNT! ‘Girls Marked for Danger!’ ” We were three young Italian beauties ready to conquer the world.

  But my real debut in a leading role took place in the spring of 1952 in The Favorite, the movie version of Donizetti’s opera, directed by Cesare Barlacchi. I have always loved music—as a child I had virtually breathed it in my home—and I felt very much at ease in such a melodramatic production. I worked hard to learn the part, and I was paid many compliments. I dare say I was almost taken seriously, although the movie didn’t make a cent. For the arias, I was dubbed by Palmira Vitali Marini. It was excellent training, maybe even a passport to my role for Aida, in which I was soon to be paired with none other than the renowned lyric soprano Renata Tebaldi and her amazing voice. Later, I was to have the honor of meeting this great singer a few times, even though she was always busy traveling around the world. She was a marvelous person. That I had merged my acting with her singing as one person was a source of immense pride for me.

  WHITE SHANTUNG

  My time of subsistence living seemed to be over at last. With my first earnings, which we stuck under the mattress, the three of us—Mammina, Maria, and I—moved to a small furnished room, at first on Via Cosenza, and later on Via Giovanni Severano, near Piazza Bologna. It was a tight fit, but we were happy to be together.

  Maria, who had arrived with Mammina from Pozzuoli, was going through a difficult period, and the big city was no help. She’d been very sick as a child and was still fragile. She’d suffered when Mammina and I left home, even though she was surrounded by the generous, loving arms of Mamma Luisa. The real problem was that she didn’t have a last name because our father had never recognized her. She was only eleven and was ashamed to go to school, where she was forced to make her illegitimate status known. So while Mammina and I were out all day long, working or looking for new jobs, Maria would stay at home by herself. Even today I can’t bear to think about how distressing it must have been for her, how much she must have felt abandoned, invisible. Unfortunately, at the time we had no choice, although I knew deep inside that we were going to have to find a solution, and I kept telling myself that I would do so as soon as possible. Our father, on the other hand, rather than helping us, created more problems for us, and not just by never being around.

  Early one morning we were surprised by someone knocking at the door. When we opened it, we found the police standing there.

  “Villani Romilda? Scicolone Sofia? Come with us.”

  “Why? What have we done? What’s the meaning of this? How dare you?”

  They didn’t even give us time to get dressed nor did they bother to answer our questions.
Mammina and I were whisked off to the police station, and asked to explain how we supported ourselves. Someone had filed a formal complaint, questioning the legality of our presence in Rome, and suggesting that we’d turned our apartment into some sort of house of ill repute—that we were immoral as well as breaking the law.

  “Someone filed a complaint against us? A house of ill repute?” Mammina asked. “Us? Who was it? Who, who can possibly hate us so much they’d want to soil our name?”

  At that point, even the police officers were embarrassed, because they realized they’d been dragged into a family dispute that had nothing to do with the law. Our accuser was none other than Riccardo Scicolone, my father. I still cannot fully express the storm of emotions we felt, the surprise, hurt, disheartenment, fury, and shame that raged inside us. When we recovered our sangfroid, we managed to demonstrate the source of our earnings quite easily, and then headed right back home. But the wound my father had caused us was a deep one, and, for me, it would never heal.

  In that room on Via Severano, Mammina often cooked in the bathroom, on a portable hot plate, even though our landlady had told us not to. We’d wait for her to finish eating and take a nap so that we could prepare a quick sauce in the hope that the aroma wouldn’t reach her nose.

  It’s a habit I’ve always kept, even when, as a successful actress, my destiny has taken me abroad, whether to small or large hotel rooms. Even today, when I’m away and I start missing my home, or I’m too tired to go out, I turn to my hot plate. After all, it takes so little to make a plate of pasta.

  We eventually moved from the furnished room to a small apartment, which was also on Via Severano, and started to live like a real family. I had taken the reins of my—our—life. My mother continued to accompany me to auditions and many other places, although her enthusiasm always had a veiled hint of pessimism. Maria hadn’t spread her wings yet, but her time was soon to come. In any event, although I played the part of the head of the family, I was still subject to the rules of the Villani home. Whenever I got home late, I’d have to tiptoe in to avoid being scolded by my mother: she was going to do everything in her power to keep me from making the same mistakes she’d made.