Gina Lollobrigida, Movie Star and Sex Symbol, Is Dead at 95

NYT MOVIES: Gina Lollobrigida, Movie Star and Sex Symbol, Is Dead at 95
By Anita Gates
Section: Movies
Source: New York Times
Published Date: January 16, 2023 at 02:00AM

She began her career in her native Italy and, although she achieved fame in America worked more often in Europe. She later had a second career as an artist and filmmaker.

Gina Lollobrigida, the Italian movie actress who became one of the post-World War II era’s first major European sex symbols, died on Monday in Rome. She was 95.

The death was confirmed by her agent, Paola Comin.

Ms. Lollobrigida had already appeared in more than two dozen European films when she made her first English-language movie: John Huston’s 1953 camp drama, “Beat the Devil,” in which she played Humphrey Bogart’s wife and partner in crime. That film, and the attention she garnered in “Fanfan la Tulipe,” an Italian-French period comedy released in the United States the same year, were enough to put her on the cover of Time magazine in 1954.

She went on to unqualified American movie stardom, exuding a wholesome lustiness in a handful of high-profile films. She starred in “Trapeze” (1956) with Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis; “The Hunchback of Notre Dame” (1956), as Esmeralda, Quasimodo’s beloved beauty (Anthony Quinn played Quasimodo); “Solomon and Sheba” (1959), a biblical epic with Yul Brynner; “Come September” (1961), a romantic comedy with Rock Hudson; and “Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell” (1968), a comedy about an unwed mother.

Throughout her career, however, she continued to make many more European films than American ones. She starred with the continent’s leading men, including Jean-Paul Belmondo, Marcello Mastroianni, Jean-Louis Trintignant and Yves Montand.

A 1955 film, “La Donna Più Bella del Mondo” (“The Most Beautiful Woman in the World” — a term some in Hollywood came to use about Ms. Lollobrigida herself), released in the United States as “Beautiful but Dangerous,” brought Ms. Lollobrigida her first major acting award: the David di Donatello, Italy’s equivalent of the Oscar. She won the Donatello twice more, for “Venere Imperial” (1962), in a tie with Silvana Mangano, and for “Buona Sera, Mrs. Campbell,” in a tie with Monica Vitti.

Read More at: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/16/movies/gina-lollobrigida-dead.html

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