Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow: My Life Read online

  “Do you realize how late it is? Who were you with? Does this seem like the right thing to be doing? You and him alone? Just who do you think you are? Sofia, Sofia, have you learned nothing from our situation?”

  By that time, however, whenever I went out it was with Carlo. True, he was married and we had to be careful, although there was still nothing between us. Only later would our fondness turn into love. At that point it would be too late to go back, but for the time being, I was content to be lucky enough to finally have someone beside me who knew how to speak to me, who could give me advice, who supported me in the parts I chose, which is crucial when an actor is just starting out. I was trying to get ahead but without taking any false steps, and knowing that Carlo was on my side was a huge help. There was something fatherly about his presence, too, and I’d never had a real father. He gave me a rootedness and stability that kept me grounded, while the world around me seemed to swirl dizzyingly, excitingly.

  Carlo had a lot to teach me, and I wanted nothing more than to learn. Little by little he was becoming an essential part of my life, without my realizing it. Or maybe I did realize it, but had a hard time owning up to it.

  In 1950, I had tried, in vain, to join the Experimental Film Center, but they’d told me I wasn’t suited to it. I liked the environment; there were beautiful gardens and a huge glass windowpane that I remember clearly. It was a very professional school, maybe too much so for me. By that time my place was on the movie set more than in a classroom. It was there that, ever since I’d worked as an extra, I’d observe everything, try to absorb as much as possible, and discard anything I couldn’t use. I would spend day after day there, accumulating experiences. But it was Carlo who helped me shed my Neapolitan accent and hone my elocution. Carlo also suggested I read some very good books out loud, recording myself as I did so that I could hear the mistakes I made. He taught me how to answer questions during interviews and even how to dress well and find my own sense of style.

  One day, I don’t remember what the occasion was, Carlo came to see me with a huge package, an elegant one with the label of one of the finest boutiques in Rome. I opened it trembling, pleased by his attentions. Inside the box was a beautiful white shantung woman’s suit.

  “Thank you . . .” I said softly. I was very moved.

  “You should always wear suits,” he replied, “. . . and always white ones.” I pretended to agree with him, but I knew it wasn’t true. In those days, I could wear anything I wanted to, everything looked good on me.

  One of the first evenings we spent together we went out to dinner. I wasn’t used to eating at a restaurant, and I thought it would be best if I ordered something soft, so I wouldn’t have to struggle with the different utensils and be embarrassed. I ordered an omelet. But just as I was about to use my knife to cut the first slice, Carlo looked at me sharply and whispered, “No, not the knife, you don’t need it.” From that day on I never ordered an omelet again, that’s how ashamed I felt . . .

  Every situation I found myself in seemed to be a test. And every situation presented constant challenges. My life was like a minefield through which I slowly made my way. I went from launch to launch, movie to movie, and dinner to dinner. Facing each challenge allowed me to get closer to what I dreamed of becoming.

  LIKE A FISH

  It may have been Carlo who called Goffredo Lombardo, or maybe it was Goffredo who noticed me. The truth is that when the Neapolitan producer summoned me in 1952 to offer me the leading role in Africa under the Seas, directed by Giovanni Roccardi, I was again ready to say “Yes,” just as I had done with Mervyn LeRoy. This time, however, the stakes were higher and the risks were a lot greater.

  The movie tells the story of a rich industrialist who hosts a group of scientists on board his yacht in the Red Sea. He takes advantage of the trip to bring his daughter with him, too, a bored, spoiled, and rebellious young woman, who ends up loving underwater diving, as well as the captain . . . Most of the story takes place in the water, if not actually underwater.

  “Signorina, you come from near Naples. You know how to swim, don’t you?” Lombardo asked me.

  “Of course, Doc,” I lied, without realizing the trouble I was getting myself into. “Like a fish!”

  I wasn’t the first or the last Neapolitan who didn’t know how to swim, but I’m sure I was the first to sign a contract to act on the high seas. Besides blessing me with this role, Lombardo was also the person responsible for my artistic christening. He didn’t like my acting name Lazzaro, and liked Scicolone even less. He wanted to give me a short name that was easy to pronounce, a name with a certain allure. So, while staring at a poster hanging behind him which showed the beautiful Swedish actress Märta Torèn, he recited the alphabet: Toren, Soren, Roren, back to the L, Loren. Yes, that’s it! Sofia Loren! And while we were at it, he decided to also replace the f with a ph and voilà, it was the right name for an international star. People in Pozzuoli somehow became convinced I’d changed my name to Sopìa, with a p, although they didn’t understand why.

  The drama of Africa under the Seas took place off the coast of the island of Ponza. There I was standing on the deck of the large motorboat, the movie cameras ready to start filming, the director shouting into his megaphone: “Jump!”

  I didn’t wait to feel scared, I just pretended I knew how to swim and jumped in.

  Almost as soon as I hit the water I was grabbed by the strong arms of the stagehand who was responsible for all the underwater shooting. In just a few days he would teach me all there was to know about swimming. At that moment, however, my savior was furious at the director, who had me jump in just a few yards away from the churning propellers. They’d made me take a huge risk and had endangered my life. Thanks to the stagehand, however, I had survived, and I went on to learn how to handle scuba tanks and snorkels, fins, wetsuits, and fish. At the end of the movie I really had become a fish, and I had overcome one of my many phobias, as well.

  HEAVENLY AIDA

  My first big opportunity—although every opportunity is a big opportunity, especially when you’re starting out—came on the wings of the heavenly music of Verdi. While we were working on a movie together (I think it was The Vow), the excellent actress Doris Duranti told me that at Scalera, one of the most famous movie studios in Rome, the film director Clemente Fracassi was starting to shoot Aida. “Go find out,” she suggested. After all, I had already acted in The Favorite, where I had proven to be quite skilled at playing the opera stand-in. The producers had had a black actress come over from America, but they weren’t convinced she was the right choice. That’s how I got the part, maybe thanks also to the intervention of Renzo Rossellini, Roberto’s brother, who was the movie’s musical consultant.

  I didn’t have much time to learn the lines before my first shoot, and I was supposed to synchronize them perfectly with the singer’s. So to be able to concentrate and learn my part quickly and thoroughly, I would lock myself inside the small office of the production studio, in the freezing cold of winter. Neither the office nor the set had any heating, and it was so cold that I could see my breath. So before each take, they’d make me chew ice to lessen the puff of cloud that emerged whenever I’d say my lines. And they had one of the stagehands follow me around with a hair dryer out of range of the camera’s frame!

  Each and every day, I’d spend four hours, which seemed endless, in makeup. My entire body, from head to toe, was made up to transform me into Aida. Darker makeup was used at the hairline and on my forehead to hide the tulle of the wig. But I have to admit it was worth it. Providing Renata Tebaldi’s voice with a body was a special emotion for me, and one that would be hard to repeat. In the end, we were like one person. I was the only member of the cast who had to act, and not just sing, and this made my job even harder. The audience wasn’t supposed to know there was a record guiding the way my lips moved. Even Carlo was amazed. I think that was when he really started believing in me.

  I started to believe in myself, to
o, and with the money I earned—a million lire, about 1,500 American dollars at the time—Mammina, Maria, and I were able to move to a larger apartment on Via Balzani and I was finally able to set right my sister’s honor. My father, as little as he’d ever been in our lives, had pretty much abandoned us. I no longer tried to love him. So when he’d heard I’d made some money and contacted us to ask for it, I had no difficulty giving him all the money I’d earned for Aida in exchange for his name for my sister. That name, which for me had been merely a hollow shell, for my sister was salvation. Maria Villani became Maria Scicolone and she could finally go to school and start living without shame.

  There’s no need to go into more about that heartbreaking exchange. The important thing was that with my own means, and as well as I knew how, I had gone back over our family history, to try to understand things that had been too big for me to deal with when I was a child. And I had drawn my own conclusions. Not all men were like Riccardo Scicolone; I knew that not every story was the same. In the future, I wanted a different kind of person by my side, someone who could really make me happy. I still wasn’t completely sure who that could be, but life would soon show me that I had already met my ideal man.

  IV

  WHO’S THAT PICCERELLA?

  THE BENCH

  “Sofia, Sofì, when you were fifteen you said ‘yes’ to me,” reads the signature on a photograph of Vittorio De Sica, the great director, which I pull next from my treasure trove of memories. Well, did I really have a choice? Without De Sica I would never have become what I am, I would never have found my true voice. His talent and his trust are two of the greatest gifts that life could ever have given me, and I will keep them alive forever in my heart.

  That day at Cinecittà—I was actually nineteen, not fifteen—I was wandering from set to set. Who knows what I was looking for, but I do know that I loved the hustle and bustle of the scenes, the noisy crowd of extras, the papier-mâché backdrops that each time would open up to a whole new world. I liked spending my days there. There was work to be found. On every corner you might come across an idea or have an important encounter. And every encounter could turn into a unique opportunity, to be seized at once.

  Cinecittà was a wonderland, a landscape of dreams in the making, all shuffled up like a house of cards. Ancient Romans sipped coffee with young soubrettes, great condottieri chatted with chorus girls, working-class women had a sandwich with men in tails. Throughout the lots, small time wheeler-dealers did business, while the most impassioned film directors were also busy talking to technicians and stagehands. And everyone was checking out the extras.

  It was a universe of the imagination, and I raced through it at full gallop, pursuing my destiny. I raced and dreamed, and yet I wasn’t just a dreamer. My feet were firmly rooted to the ground, I was ready to make the big leap forward. I was down-to-earth and always on time. I really wanted to work, and I was willing to risk everything I had on my own certainty.

  That day, while I was walking along the lanes, I could tell that two men sitting on a bench smoking were watching me. One of them was Peppino Annunziata, who would eventually become my never-to-be-forgotten makeup artist, as well as a kind of bodyguard, chosen by Carlo to stay beside me at all times. The other man was Vittorio De Sica himself, the greatest creator of neorealist films that Italian cinema has ever known. I could hear them conferring in a Neapolitan accent and realized that I was the subject of their discussion. The musicality of their conversation made me think of home. Glancing in their direction, I broke into a smile.

  “Sophia, Sophia, come here, I want you to meet . . .” Peppino called me over.

  De Sica turned to me with his beautiful, melodious, kind voice, flattering me, giving me the usual compliments that men in those days would always give pretty girls. He also gave me some fatherly advice:

  “It’s a jungle out there. You have to keep your eyes wide open . . .” he said. “But if you have passion, and it looks to me like you have lots of it, trust yourself and everything will work out fine!”

  I could hardly believe it. That was the renowned Vittorio De Sica sitting there talking to me.

  Vittorio De Sica began his great adventure in cinema as an actor—and had been called the Italian Cary Grant. He went into directing during the war and made The Children Are Watching Us in 1944, a deeply affecting film about a neglected little boy. He succeeded in capturing the spirit of the moment, the struggles of real working people, the call of the street, the poverty of postwar towns. De Sica threw himself into filmmaking heart and soul, searching in the faces of ordinary people for traces of the new world that was rising up from the heaps of rubble. He restored the voice of the elderly and of children, shoe-shiners and the homeless, prostitutes and the unemployed. He denounced the injustices he saw, and his emotions were stirred in the same way as the emotions of his characters—and of his audience.

  Vittorio’s experience as an actor and his filmmaker’s eye made him a well-rounded maestro. He understood the person in the actor standing before him with infallible instinct, so that he could get what he wanted out of them, sometimes even without having to say a single word. He would, if necessary, even go so far as to make children cry deliberately for the sake of a scene, as if he were stealing their emotions! Whether they were the marvelous kids in Shoeshine, or the destitute in Miracle in Milan, great actors, would-be ones, or nonprofessionals from the towns where he filmed, all of them responded to his guidance and encouragement, and did what he wanted them to as well as they could.

  A short time after that first encounter on the streets of the studio, I saw him again in the offices of Ponti–De Laurentiis. He was then working on The Gold of Naples, a tribute to Naples written in six episodes. Perhaps Carlo had mentioned me to him, thinking I might be suited for the part of the Pizzaiola (the Pizza Girl). Vittorio had no recollection of me from the Cinecitta lot, but I had not forgotten his encouragement from the bench where I’d seen him for the first time. We talked about this and that, he asked me a few questions, where I came from, what I was working on. I told him about Pozzuoli and my debut in Sogno, about The Favorite and Africa under the Seas, and I confessed that screen tests terrified me.

  “Interesting,” he said. He was only pretending to listen to what I was saying as he observed me with his third eye, which was trained to discover the actor behind the appearances, the talent that lay behind the insignificance of a resumé diligently rattled off. I did my utmost to make a good impression, but he was noncommittal, and motionless as he watched me. I was honored by his interest, but convinced by his demeanor that nothing would come of it. “Torna cu’ ’e piedi pe’ terra, Sofì’, ’e suonn’ nun servono a niente” (Put your feet back on the ground, Sofì, dreaming is useless), I thought.

  Just as I had resigned myself to not getting the part, De Sica shifted suddenly to the informal “tu” form of address and said, “You leave for Naples tomorrow. I’m going to make a movie in episodes, taken from a collection of stories by Giuseppe Marotta, the Neapolitan writer. The cast is first-rate.”

  I was floored and looked at him in awe. “One of the episodes is all about a young woman named Sofia,” he continued with his mysterious serenity. “She’s exactly like you, no need to do a screen test to find that out. I’ll have someone get you your train ticket.”

  Of course I said yes. The cards had been dealt and I’d come up trumps. I should have known that good things come of having the courage to dream.

  GOLD FEVER

  So I set out, my eyes closed, toward the fairy tale of my life.

  My mother, who was always mistrustful, tried to make me stay: “Ma si’ asciut’ pazz’? Ma addò vaje ca manc’ ’e cunusc’ a chisti ccà? Chi te dice ca teneno bbuoni penziere?” (Are you crazy? Where on earth are you going with someone you don’t even know? How do we know he has clean thoughts?)

  But I, by that time, knew exactly what I was doing: “Ma no, nun ce pensà” (Please, don’t worry about it), I tried to reassure her. “Eve
rything will be fine.”

  She was happy they’d chosen me, of course, but she couldn’t help being anxious, making mountains out of molehills, asking silly questions like: “What will you wear?”

  She didn’t even know what part I’d been given. And for this part, I didn’t need anything special. Pizzaiole, the women who make pizza in Naples, wear ordinary clothes.

  I behaved with Mammina as though I were a grown-up daughter, showing off a self-confidence that I didn’t at all have. Inside, I was both terrified and excited.

  Am I up to this? I wondered. What if De Sica is wrong? What if he thinks I’m a real actress? Maronna mia, ch’aggia fa’? (Holy Mary, what should I do?)

  I remember my first day on the job as if it were yesterday. In February 1954, it was freezing cold, and I had barely slept from anxiety. Standing before the maestro, I felt like a child, my legs shaking, my voice a mere whisper. I hadn’t been back to Naples since the Queen of the Sea pageant, where I’d been a pawn in a spectacle that had already been written, a little statue chauffeured around in a carriage. Now I had the leading part in something that had to happen right there, right before our eyes, and that in one way or another depended on me. Naples’ bassi, the city’s poorest quarters, were counting on me.

  Vittorio knew what he wanted, and he showed me the way: “Sofì, you have everything you need inside already. Let it all come out, let yourself go! Fish out the emotions in what you’ve seen, in what you’ve experienced, go back to Via Solfatara, that’s where it all starts.”

  Vittorio had recognized that, underneath my reserve and my sometimes animated persona, lay a pool of strong memories. Within my youthfulness, he saw a sensitivity, born out of a difficult childhood, that was seeking a way to express itself, to be transformed into art.