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Gina Lollobrigida
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From All Movie Guide: Known as "La Lollo," Gina Lollobrigida was the first sex symbol to emerge from post-WWII Europe at a time when Italians were giving up on neorealism in favor of Hollywood glamour. Coming in third place at the 1947 Miss Italia contest made her the ideal star for escapist cinema. Arriving perfectly on time, the actress moved to Rome after the war to study sculpture while working as a singer and an artist's model. She made her film debut with Aquila Nera and went on to star in several more Italian films, usually playing a seductress. After Fanfan la Tulipe and Beauties of the Night, she was well known throughout Western Europe. By that time, she had married Dr. Drago Milko Skofic.
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Gina Lollobrigida was one of the first European sex symbols to emerge from the rubble of World War II. "La Lollo" used a mix of voluptuous curves and intelligent sensuality to conquer Europe and then the world in movies and magazines in the 1950s. A former art student and model, Lollobrigida spent most of her career in Italy, where the title of her 1955 film The Most Beautiful Woman in the World (La Donna Piu Bella del Mondo) became her nickname. She ... starred in a handful of American films, including Beat the Devil (1953, with Humphrey Bogart), Solomon and Sheba (1959, with La Lollo as the Queen of Sheba and Yul Brynner as Solomon), and the romantic comedy Come September (1961, with Rock Hudson). In later years Lollobrigida became both a sculptor and a photojournalist and published several books of photography.
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Born into a working-class background, Gina Lollobrigida attended an artistic high school and entered the Miss Italia beauty contest in 1947, finishing third (after Lucia Bosé and Gianna Maria Canale). After several small parts, she came to public notice in films such as "Flesh Will Surrender (Il delitto di Giovanni Episcopo)" (1947) by Alberto Lattuada and "Campane a martello" (1949) by Luigi Zampa. In the early 1950s, she built up her reputation with a series of films in Italy and abroad, from "Fan-Fan the Tulip (Fanfan la Tulipe)" (1951) by Christian-Jacque and "Beauties of the Night (Le belle della notte)" (1952) by René Clair to "Infidelity (Altri tempi)" (1952) by Alessandro Blasetti and "The Wayward Wife (La provinciale)" (1953) by Mario Soldati, which saw her in one of her finest performances as the unhappy adulteress Gemma. But it was not until the diptych "Bread, Love and Dreams (Pane amore e fantasia)" (1953) and "Bread, Love and Jealousy (Pane amore e gelosia)" (1954) by Luigi Comencini that she rose to stardom. This marked the beginning of the genre of "romantic neorealism", followed by the comedy genre in the subsequent decade. The sanguine and provocative figure of Maria "la Bersagliera", a young, easy-going working-class beauty, disturbed the respectability of post-war Italy in the period between reconstruction and boom.
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Italian film legend Gina Lollobrigida listens to a journalist question during a press conference in Rome, in this file photo taken Wednesday Oct. 11, 2006. The wedding between Italian actress Gina Lollobrigida and her longtime Spanish boyfriend has been called off, news reports in Italy and Spain said Wednesday, Dec. 6, 2006. Lollobrigida, 79, had been scheduled to marry Javier Rigau y Rafols, 45, of Barcelona, Spain, on Jan. 27. The couple, who met at a party in Monte Carlo, Monaco, had been dating for 22 years.
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Gina Lollobrigida was born in Subiaco, Italy. Gina, destined to be called "The Most Beautiful Woman in the World, " possibly had St. Brigid as part of her surname. She was the daughter of a furniture manufacturer, and grew up in the pictorial mountain village. The young Gina did some modeling, and from there she went to participate successfully in several beauty contests. In 1947, Gina entered a beauty competition for Miss Italy. [Surprisingly, Gina came in 3rd.
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According to museum staff, 38 of Lollobrigida's sculptures are "entirely new for the Russian viewer." The actress's sculpting and drawing career began when she was still a child. As a young girl, she helped her not very rich family by selling the caricatures she had drawn herself. Further on, she went to the Academy of Fine Arts. As soon as her acting career was over, she began sculpting again.
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