July 2018

When Maryam Morrison, who first met Gina Lollobrigida in Rome, at the age of sixteen, told me she would be featuring her in the July issue of The Eden Magazine, my emotions ranged from ecstatic to elated to OMG I’m going to scream so loud my neighbors are going to hear me and call the police! I had to pinch myself.

Being Italian and growing up in an Italian household in Canada, I was well aware from an early age of who Gina Lollobrigida was and what she meant to Italians. After all, she was an Italian treasure, an Italian export through her work in film, a woman of immeasurable beauty and talent, a trendsetter in style and appearance and an icon to the entire world. Women were cutting off their long tresses to sport a much shorter do, so they could resemble her. My own mother cut off her long braids to copy the “Gina” look!

Gina Lollobrigida, legend, icon, star, actress, artist, photojournalist, sculptor, humanitarian, philanthropist, opera singer, fashion designer, sex symbol, and so much more, was born Luigina Lollobrigida in Subiaco, Lazio, Italy on July 4, 1927. Since July is Lollobrigida’s birthday month, The Eden Magazine thought it would be most fitting to feature her this month.

Lollobrigida has starred in over 60 films and worked extensively in television and theater. She was directed by such greats as John Huston, Renato Castellani, Mario Monicelli, Luigi Comencini, Carol Reed, Rene Clair, Christian-Jaque and Vittorio DeSica, sometimes acting in three different languages alongside stars like Humphrey Bogart, Alec Guinness, Gérard Philipe, Vittorio Gassman, Yul Brynner, Sean Connery, Marcello Mastroianni, Frank Sinatra, Rock Hudson, Anthony Quinn Sandra Dee, Bobby Darin, Ernest Borgnine, Anthony Franciosa, Yves Montand, Jennifer Jones, Burt Lancaster, Shelley Winters, Bob Hope, David Niven, Stephen Boyd, Peter Lawford, Telly Savalas, Phil Silvers, Errol Flynn, and so many more.

Lollobrigida has made a significant contribution to the art of movie making throughout her long illustrious career, devoting her life and talent to upholding the prestige of Italian cinema and representing Italy with distinction in the rest of the world. I must highlight that Lollobrigida is also an outstanding singer and has brilliantly belted out songs in movies and on stage!

She has published many photography books and has directed three documentaries, one on Fidel Castro in 1974, one on Indira Gandhi in 1976, and one which was shot on 35mm film, called The Philippines. In 1980 her photographs were displayed at the Carnavalet Museum of Paris, an event that gained her the Golden Medal of the city. The influential French newspaper “Le Monde”, wrote about her photographic works and said, “Her eye is that of a Cartier Bresson, she has talent, is full of energy and her shots contain an overwhelming force. She truly is a great artist.”

As a photojournalist, Lollobrigida has photographed many notable names including Paul Newman, Salvador Dalí, Henry Kissinger, David Cassidy, Audrey Hepburn, and Ella Fitzgerald to name a select few.

She knew contemporary artists such as Francesco Messina, Giacomo Manzù, Ilja Glazunov, Giorgio de Chirico, Salvador Dalí and Jacob Epstein. When they asked her to pose, she was highly flattered and agreed, but then she watched the way they worked with great attention, so she could grasp the secrets of their art and talent. Besides personally knowing these great artists, she also knew many internationally renowned figures including, Indira Gandhi, the Shah of Iran, Mother Teresa of Calcutta, Imelda Marcos, and Fidel Castro to name a select few.

Over the years she continued to produce pieces of sculptures but it was while observing sculptor Giacomo Manzu, that she decided to return definitively to this art: “It was from him that I learned the humility and the passion indispensable in sculpture.”

She represented Italy at the 1992 Expo in Seville with a sculpture entitled Living Together, which was a sculpture of a child riding on a great eagle. François Mitterrand, complimented Lollobrigida on her piece and awarded her the Legion of Honor for artistic merit, describing her as an “artiste de velour.” Year’s prior to that honor, in 1980, she was awarded the Honorary Member of the Florence Academy of Fine Arts. She was the third woman to receive this honor after astronomer Margherita Hack and the Nobel laureate, Rita Levi Montalcini.

As a sculptor, Lollobrigida has produced over sixty breathtakingly beautiful pieces. In the studios and foundries of Pietrasanta, she has followed all the phases of the process, from the initial idea to the preparation, firming the clay modeling, wax finishing touches, and final bronze casting. She has personally worked on completing the most delicate parts, handling milling cutters and emery paper like a skilled worker, up to the gilding in 24-carat gold of many of her sculptures, which are based on some of the characters she has portrayed in her films.

In 2003, the first great exhibition of her works was held in Moscow’s renowned Pushkin Museum, the most important center for the Fine Arts of the Russian capital, which ended with an encounter with Vladimir Putin, who warmly complimented the artist, at his Novo-Ogaryovo residence. Four thousand visitors a day have admired her works and during the weekends the numbers would rise to six thousand! This success deeply touched her. She really wasn’t expecting it. Afterward, in the fall, Lollobrigida’s sculptures were displayed at the Venice Lido for the Open 2003 Art and Cinema event and from there at the Musée de la Monnaie in Paris. Due to the great success obtained there, both by critics and the public, the French Minister of Culture, Jean Jacques Aillagon, awarded Lollobrigida with the highest international decoration for an artist: Commandeur de l’Ordre des arts e des letters.

Lollobrigida has appeared on the cover of Time Magazine and is the first woman ever to have had her face on four postage stamps. Her awards and accolades are plenty and continue to grow. She won a Golden Globe, four David of Donatello awards, two Nastro D’Argento awards, six Bambi awards, a winner at the Berlin International Film Festival, Rome Film Festival, Taormina Film Festival, and Art Film Awards, the Legion of Honor by François Mitterrand, and the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic. In 2002 over 500,000 people turned out to applaud and celebrate her during an important and unusual event held at Jesolo, a seaside resort beach town in Venice when a two-kilometer stretch of seafront was named, “Gina Lollobrigida Italian artist”. It’s very seldom that streets are named after someone who is still living, but then Gina Lollobrigida is a living legend!

A similar event took place a year later in Subiaco, when a marble plaque was placed amid the enthusiastic acclaim of her fellow citizens, on the house where she was born. In 2007, she became Honorary Citizen of Pietrasanta, and in 2008 in Washington D.C., Lollobrigida was bestowed the Lifetime Achievement Award by NIAF, the National Italian American Foundation.

In February 2018, the legend that is Gina Lollobrigida was immortalized with a Star on the Walk of Fame in Hollywood, California.

Prior to our interview, I had done endless research. I scoured books, articles, and pictures to learn as much as I could about Lollobrigida. There was so much to take in and digest. I learned that her life has been so full, rich and colorful and that she has no interest in slowing down!

The interview took place on a sunny Sunday in May while I was comfortably seated at home in Los Angeles, and she was comfortably seated in her home in Rome. Technology bridged the gap for us, and we chatted for two hours. She was so gracious and sweet, so accommodating and generous with her time, and so ready and excited to share her incredibly rich stories. The only way I can describe what I came away with after our interview is that what Lollobrigida has done in 91 years, most could not do in 900 years. She is a woman who has accomplished so much and a true inspiration!

For weeks, I pondered what my first question should be. And then it came to me and I thought that a good place to start would be at the very beginning.

Enjoy!

Read the entire interview with Gina Lollobrigida in our July 2018 issue. 

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