5 million pageviews for EFSP - Marina Vlady

The pageview teller of European Film Star Postcards passed the 5,000,000 on 11 August 2018. We commemorate this milestone with updates of our five most popular posts of all times. Today number 2, Marina Vlady, last updated on 7 July 2012. It had 13,785 page views. This summer, Ms. Vlady attended a screening of one her first films, Giorni d'amore/Days of Love (Giuseppe de Santis, 1954), at Cinema Ritrovato in Bologna, where we took a snapshot which we added to this post.

Sensual and alluring French star Marina Vlady (1938) had the makings of just another blonde bombshell, but in 1963 she stunned everybody with her performance in L’Ape Regine/The Conjugal Bed. At the Cannes Film Festival the feline beauty won that year the Golden Palm for Best Actress.


French postcard by E.D.U.G., no. 74. Photo: Sam Lévin.


German postcard by Ufa, Berlin-Tempelhof, no. CK-76. Photo: Unifrance Film.


German postcard by Krüger.

Vision of Loveliness

Marina Vlady was born Marina De Poliakoff-Baidaroff in Clichy, France, as the daughter of a noted, Russian born painter and opera singer Vladimir de Poliakof and star dancer Militza Envald. She is the youngest sister of the actresses Odile Versois, Hélène Vallier, and Olga Baïdar-Poliakoff.

Like her siblings, she began acting as a child and for a while she pursued a ballet career. Marina and Olga both made their minor film debuts in Orage d'été/Summer Storm (Jean Gehret, 1949) which featured their sister Odile.

Marina caught the eye of talent agents. She was a vision of loveliness alongside Marcello Mastroianni in the touching WW II drama Penne nere/Black Feathers (Oreste Biancoli, 1952).

The following year, she co-starred with Italy's top character actor Aldo Fabrizi as his daughter in L’età dell'amore/Too Young for Love (Lionello De Felice, 1953).

In 1955, at the ripe young age of 17, Vlady met and married actor-writer-director Robert Hossein, who featured her prominently and seductively in a number of his films.

These films included Les salauds vont en enfer/The Wicked Go to Hell (Robert Hossein, 1956) as a femme fatale bent on revenge, Pardonnez nos offenses(Robert Hossein, 1956), La nuit des espions/Double Agents (Robert Hossein, 1959), and notably, Toi, le venin/Nude in a White Car (Robert Hossein, 1958) which co-starred her sister Odile.

With her sensual and alluring image Marina Vlady gained international renown. The marriage with Hossein lasted only a few years.


French postcard by Editions du Globe (E.D.U.G.), Paris, no. 470. Photo: Studio Harcourt.


Collectors card. Photo: Sam Lévin.


German postcard by Kolibri-Verlag G.m.b.H., Minden/Westf., no. 2476. Photo: Cinepress / Stempka.


East-German postcard by VEB Progress Film-Vertrieb, Berlin, no. 1842, 1963. Retail price: 0,20 DM. Publicity still for La liberté surveillée/Provisional Liberty (1958, Henri Aisner, Vladimír Vlcek) with Robert Hossein.

Sexually Insatiable Wife

Marina Vlady could have ended up in the film history annals as merely a second-rate Brigitte Bardot, but the provocative sex kitten proved that she was capable of much more.

In 1961 her role in the costume drama La Princesse de Clèves/Princess of Cleves (Jean Delannoy, 1961) at the side of Jean Marais was reviewed favorably.

In 1963 she gave a stunning performance as the sexually insatiable wife in L’Ape Regine/The Conjugal Bed (Marco Ferreri, 1963) opposite Ugo Tognazzi. She was nominated for a Golden Globe, and won the Best Actress Award at the 1963 Cannes Film Festival.

She also starred in Godard’s essay on Paris, prostitution and cinema, 2 ou 3 choses que je sais d'elle/Two or Three Things I Know About Her (Jean-Luc Godard, 1967).


French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, offered by Les Carbones Korès 'Carboplane, no. 950. Photo: Studio Bernard & Vauclair.


French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, no. 1093. Photo: Ektachrome Anders. This postcard was offered by Corvisart (a biscuit factory), Epinal.



Israelian postcard by Editions de Luxe, no. 120.


Russian postcard by Izdanije Byuro Propogandy Sovietskogo Kinoiskusstva, no. 3624, 1975. This postcard was printed in an edition of 200.000 cards. Retail price: 5 kop.

Caustic Characters

Gracing both French and Italian productions throughout most of her career, Marina Vlady was not shy at playing unsympathetic, even caustic characters, and proved adept at both saucy comedy and edgy drama.

One of her rare English roles was Kate Percy in the William Shakespeare adaptation Campanadas a medianoche/Chimes at Midnight (Orson Welles, 1965).

In 1967 she played at the Théâtre Hébertot in Paris with her three sisters, Hélène Vallier, Odile Versois, and Olga Poliakoff, and they had 250 performances.

Her later films included Ök ketten/The Two of Them (Márta Mészarós, 1977), Tangos, l'exil de Gardel/Tangos, the Exile of Gardel (Fernando Solanas, 1985), Splendor (Ettore Scola, 1989), and she also worked a lot for TV. Five years later followed Jeunesse/Youth (Noel Alpi, 1995).

In 2011 she returned to the screen in the French-Algerian film Quelques jours de répit/A Few Days of Respite (Amor Hakkar, 2011). It competed in the World Cinema section at the 2011 Sundance Film Festival. Recently, she could be seen in the short film, L'air d'un oubli/Maxence & Clara (Olivier Fely-Biolet, 2016) and gave her voice to another short, La lettre à Noémie/The Letter to Noémie (Micheline Abergel, Natasha Mashkevich, 2017).

Marina Vlady was married four times. She has two sons with Robert Hossein, Igor and Pierre Her second husband was Jean-Claude Brouillet.

In 1969 (or 1970 - the sources differ about the date) she married Russian poet, song-writer and actor Vladimir Vysotsky, who died in 1980 of a drug overdose aggravated by chronic alcoholism. About their love affair she wrote the memoir Vladimir, or the Aborted Flight. Her fourth husband, doctor Léon Schwartzenberg, passed away in 2003.


East-German card by VEB Progress Film-Vertrieb, Berlin. Photo: Les Films Metzger & Woog und Productions Iena, no. 1/457. Still from La Sorcière/The Blonde Witch (André Michel, 1956). In this film Marina Vlady plays Ina, a Swedish nature-girl, who meets Brulard, a French civil engineer on assignment in Sweden for a lumber company. They fall in love, and have an affair. He tries to convert her to 'civilization', but ends up getting her killed by superstitious villagers instead.


Serbian postcard by ZK, no. 2183. Sent by mail in 1961.


East-German card by VEB Progress Film-Vertrieb, Berlin. Retail price: 0,20 DM. Photo: Les Films Metzger & Woog u. Productions Iena, no. 1.375, 1957. Still from La Sorcière/The Blonde Witch (André Michel, 1956), with Maurice Ronet.


Scene with Marina Vlady and Maurice Ronet in La Sorcière/The Blonde Witch (André Michel, 1956). Source: Jinochka (YouTube).


Marina Vlady was one of the guests at Cinema Ritrovato 2018. Here, she is interviewed by festival director Gian Luca Farinelli before the screening of Giorni d'amore/Days of Love (Giuseppe de Santis, 1954) at the Cinema Arlecchino. She was funny and very alert and looked amazing.

Sources: Gary Brumburgh (IMDb), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Ciné-Ressources (French), Wikipedia, and IMDb.

5 million pageviews for EFSP - Bud Spencer

On 11 August 2018, the pageview teller of European Film Star Postcards passed the 5,000,000. We commemorate this milestone with updates of our five most popular posts of all times. Today we update number 3, an I.M. for Bud Spencer (1929-2016) on 10 July 2016. Spencer had passed away two weeks earlier. 10,704 page views were counted for this post.

On 27 June, 86-years old Bud Spencer has died in Rome, Italy of natural causes. The huge Italian actor with his trademark black beard was the popular star of many Spaghetti Westerns and low-budget action films of the late 1960s and 1970s. In 18 films he co-starred with his long time film partner Terence Hill. In his youth, Spencer (then: Carlo Pedersoli) was the first Italian to swim 100 metres in less than a minute. He also had a degree in law, and he registered several patents.


German autograph card by BRAVO.


With Terence Hill. German autograph card by BRAVO.


Italian postcard. Promotional card for Io Sto Con Gli Ippopotami/I'm for the Hippopotamus (Italo Zingarelli, 1979).

Bitten By the Acting Bug

Bud Spencer was born Carlo Pedersoli in Santa Lucia, a historical part of the city of Naples, in 1929. He was educated as an attorney and he even got a Juris Doctor degree, but Carlo was bitten by the acting bug.

His first film role was as a member of the Praetorian guard in the MGM epic Quo Vadis (Mervyn Leroy, 1951), shot in Italy. During the 1950s, he appeared in minor parts in various films made for the Italian market. Italian director Mario Monicelli gave him his first big role in Un eroe dei nostri tempi/A Hero of Our Times (Mario Monicelli, 1955) with Alberto Sordi.

Pedersoli was also a successful swimmer. In 1950, he was the first Italian to swim the 100 m freestyle in less than one minute (59.5 seconds). In the 1951 Mediterranean Games, he won a silver medal in the same 100 m freestyle event.

He participated in the 1952 Olympic Games in Helsinki, Finland, reaching the semi-finals in the 100 m freestyle (58.8 s heats, 58.9 s semi final). Four years later, in Melbourne, he also entered the semi-finals in the same category (58.5 s heat, 59.0 s semi final). As a water polo player, he won the Italian Championship in 1954, with S.S. Lazio. His swimming career ended abruptly in 1957.

Pedersoli appeared in some more Italian films such as the Peplum Annibale/Hannibal (Carlo Ludovico Bragaglia, Edgar G. Ulmer, 1959) starring Victor Mature, but for most of the 1960s his film career would stay minor league.


Italian postcard by Alterocca, Ferni.


Terence Hill. Italian postcard by Alterocca, Ferni.

God Forgives... I Don't!

In 1967 Carlo Pedersoli changed his screen name to Bud Spencer. Reportedly he chose this pseudonym to pay homage to Hollywood star Spencer Tracy as well as to his favourite Czech-American beer, Budweiser. Other sources report that he found it funny to call himself ‘Bud’ despite his weight and his height at 1.94 m, which made him beloved as 'the big friendly giant' of the screen.

With Terence Hill a.k.a. Mario Girotti, he appeared in the Spaghetti Western Dio perdona... Io no!/God Forgives... I Don't! (Giuseppe Colizzi, 1967). Their pairing was a coincidence while a foot injury had forced lead actor Peter Martell (Pietro Martellanza) off the picture. Terence Hill took over the part of the pistolero Cat Stevens, and the rest is history.

Their dual outings made both actors famous, particularly in Europe. At IMDb, reviewer Benjamin Gauss calls Dio perdona... Io no!/God Forgives... I Don't! one of their best films: “Although the movie has many gags and humorous parts, God Forgives... I Don't! is not one of the usual Spencer/Hill comedies, but a pretty brutal and rather serious Spaghetti Western”.

Dio perdona... Io no!/God Forgives... I Don't! wasn’t their first film together. Both had also appeared in the Peplum Annibale/Hannibal (1959). After the success of Dio perdona... Io no! followed such Westerns as I quattro dell'Ave Maria/Ace High (Giuseppe Colizzi, 1967) with Eli Wallach, and La collina degli stivali/Boot Hill (Giuseppe Colizzi, 1969) with Woody Strode.

Then they played two brothers in Lo chiamavano Trinità.../They Call Me Trinity (Enzo Barboni a.k.a. E.B. Clucher, 1970), a comedic spoof of the Spaghetti Western genre. They Call Me Trinity became Italy’s top-grossing title.The enormous success lead to the sequel ...continuavano a chiamarlo Trinità/Trinity Is STILL My Name! (Enzo Barboni, 1971) with Harry Carey Jr., which became an even bigger success.

Most of these films have alternate titles, depending upon the country and distributor. Some films have longer Italian versions that were edited for release abroad. Hill and Spencer also appeared together in other action genres, such as in the pirate adventure Il corsaro nero/Blackie the Pirate (Lorenzo Gicca Palli, 1971), the action film ...Altrimenti ci arrabbiamo!/Watch Out, We're Mad (Marcello Fondato, 1974) with Donald Pleasence, and another actioner I due superpiedi quasi piatti/Crime Busters (Enzo Barboni, 1977).

Practically all of Bud Spencer's films have him playing the role of a bearded, balding, and brawny omnipotent who usually ends a fist fight by striking a hammer-like blow on the top of his opponent's head.


Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin. Photo: publicity still for Continuavano a chiamarlo Trinità/Trinity is still my name (Enzo Barboni a.k.a. E.B. Clucher, 1971) with Terence Hill.


Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin, no. 53189.


Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin, no. 43 157. Photo: publicity still for Piedone l'africano/The knock-out cop (Steno, 1978) with Baldwin Dakile.

Extralarge

Bud Spencer also appeared solo in many films. He played in the Spaghetti Westerns Oggi a me... domani a te!/Today It's Me (Tonino Cervi, 1968) starring Brett Halsey aka Montgomery Ford, and Un esercito di cinque uomini/The Five Man Army (Don Taylor, Italo Zingarelli, 1969) with Peter Graves.

Spenver made a rare entry in the horror genre in 4 mosche di velluto grigio/4 Flies on Grey Velvet (Dario Argento, 1971) with Mimsy Farmer. Then he played a dramatic role as a man innocently kept in prison in Torino nera/Black Turin (Carlo Lizzani, 1972) with Françoise Fabian as his wife.

Later films include the action-packed potboilers Piedone lo sbirro/Piedone, the cop (Steno, 1973), and Lo chiamavano Bulldozer/They Call Him Bulldozer (Michele Lupo, 1978) with Raimund Harmstorf. Spencer also wrote the complete or partial screenplay for some of his films.

His feature film career slowed down after 1983, shifting more toward television. He also became a jet airplane and helicopter pilot in 1972. He established Mistral Air in 1984, an air-mail company that also transported pilgrims. He later sold it to Poste Italiane to buy a textile mill that produced clothes for children. He also has registered several patents.

In the 1990s he acted on TV in the comic action series Extralarge (Enzo G. Castellari, 1990-1993) and Noi siamo angeli/We Are Angels (Ruggero Deodato, 1997), both with Philip Michael Thomas, best known from the 1980s TV hit Miami Vice. His final film with Terence Hill was Botte di Natale/Troublemakers (Terence Hill, 1994).

After he made a film with internationally renowned Italian director Ermanno Olmi, Cantando dietro i paraventi/Singing Behind Screens (2003), Spencer confessed that was perhaps the first time he felt he was an actor. “I always said that I was only a character” as opposed to an actor, he said. The adventure-drama is loosely inspired to real life events of Chinese pirate Ching Shih. The film won three David di Donatello and four Nastro d'Argento Awards.

In 2005, Pedersoli briefly entered politics. Then-Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi asked him to run as a regional councilor in Lazio for the centre-right Forza Italia party, but he was not elected. That same year he was awarded with the Caimano d'oro (Gold Caiman) by the Italian Swimming Federation. Two years later, he received swim and water polo coach diplomas from the Italian Swimming Federation's president Paolo Barelli.

Bud Spencer continued to appear on TV, and could be seen in the Italian Giallo-comedy television series I delitti del cuoco/Recipe for Crime (Alessandro Capone, 2010) and in an episode of the American comedy series Ninja the Mission Force (2013).

Since 1960, Carlo Pedersoli was married to Maria Amato. They had three children: Giuseppe (1961), Christine (1962) and Diamante (1972).

Pedersoli passed away “peacefully” in Rome on 27 June 2016, his son Giuseppe  said in a media statement. Spencer said sports taught him humility. “One day you wake up and someone goes better than you. And you’re not anyone anymore. It’s the same way in cinema.”


Trailer of I quattro dell'Ave Maria/Ace High (1968). Source: Bud Spencer Official (YouTube).


Trailer of ...continuavano a chiamarlo Trinità/Trinity Is STILL My Name! (1971). Source: spencerhilltrailer (YouTube).


Trailer for Pari e dispari/Odds and Evens (1978). Source: Bud Spencer Official (YouTube).


Trailer for Non c'è due senza quattro/Double Trouble (1984). Source: spencerhilltrailer (YouTube).

Sources: Jon C. Hopwood (IMDb), Sandra Brennan (AllMovie), Nick Vivarelli (Variety), The Washington Times, Wikipedia, and IMDb.

5 million pageviews for EFSP - Claudia Cardinale

On 11 August 2018, the pageview teller of European Film Star Postcards passed the 5,000,000. We commemorate this milestone with updates of our five most popular posts of all times. Today number 4, the first part of a double post on Claudia Cardinale. It was last updated on 16 November 2015 and counted 9822 page views. Click here for Part 2.

Italian actress Claudia Cardinale (1938) is one of Europe's iconic and most versatile film stars. The combination of her beauty, dark, flashing eyes, explosive sexuality and genuine acting talent virtually guaranteed her stardom. Her most notable films include the classics 8½ (Federico Fellini, 1963), Il Gattopardo (Luchino Visconti, 1963), and Once Upon a Time in the West (Sergio Leone, 1968).


German postcard by Krüger, no. 902/164. Photo: Georg Michalke / UFA.


German postcard by Krüger, no. 902/132. Photo: Sam Levin / Ufa.


French postcard by E.D.U.G., no. 243, offered by Les Carbones Korès Carboplane. Photo: Sam Lévin.


German postcard by Filmbilder-Vertrieb Ernst Freihoff, Essen, no. H 72.


German postcard by Krüger, no. 902/115.

The most beautiful Italian girl in Tunisia

Claude Joséphine Rose Cardinale was born in La Goulette in Tunisia in 1938 (some sources claim 1939). Her mother, Yolande Greco, was born in Tunisia to Italian (Sicilian) emigrants from Trapani, Italy. Her father was an Italian (Sicilian) railway worker, born in Gela, Italy.

Her native languages were Tunisian Arabic and French. She received a French education and she had to learn Italian once she pursued her acting career.

She had her break in films after she was voted the most beautiful Italian girl in Tunisia in 1957. The contest of the Italian embassy had as a prize a trip to the Venice Film Festival. She made her film debut in the French-Tunisian coproduction Goha (Jacques Baratier, 1958) starring Omar Sharif.

After attending the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia in Rome for two months, she signed a 7-year contract with the Vides studios. The contract forbade her to cut her hair, to marry or to gain weight.

Later that year she had a role in the heist comedy I soliti ignoti/Big Deal On Madonna Street (Mario Monicelli, 1958) with Vittorio Gassman and Renato Salvatori. The film was an international success, and her film career was off and running.


French postcard by Editions P.I., no. FK 104. Photo: Herbert Fried / Ufa.


German postcard by Kolibri (W. Sander Verlag, Minden), no. 1865.


German postcard by Kolibri (W. Sander Verlag, Minden), no. 1968.


Dutch postcard.


French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, French licency holder for Ufa, presented by Les Carbones Korès 'Carboplane', no. FK 99 B Photo: Gérard Décaux / Ufa.

After BB Comes CC

At this point, the press, noting her initials, announced that CC was the natural successor to BB (Brigitte Bardot), and began beating the drum on her behalf.

Dozens of alluring photographs of Claudia Cardinale were displayed in newspapers and magazines throughout the world. According to IMDb, she has appeared on more than 900 magazine covers in over 25 countries.

The contrast between these pictures and those of Marilyn Monroe or Jayne Mansfield is striking. Cardinale never appeared in a nude or fully topless scene. Her pictures promoted an image of a shy family girl who just happened to have a beautiful face and a sexy body.

A photograph of Cardinale was featured in the original gate fold artwork to Bob Dylan's album Blonde on Blonde (1966), but because it was used without Cardinale's permission, the photo was removed from the cover art in later pressings.


East-German postcard by VEB Progress Filmvertrieb, no. 1187, 1960. Publicity still for Tre straniere a Roma/Three Strangers in Rome (Claudio Gora, 1958) with Yvonne Monlaur and Francoise Darnell.


East-German postcard by VEB Progress Filmvertrieb. Publicity still for Tre straniere a Roma/Three Strangers in Rome (Claudio Gora, 1958) with Leonardo Botta.


East-German postcard by VEB Progress Filmvertrieb, Berlin, no. 2569, 1965.


East-German postcard by VEB Progress Filmvertrieb, Berlin, no. 2388, 1965.


East-German postcard by VEB Progress Filmvertrieb, Berlin, no. 2268, 1965.


East-German postcard by VEB Progress Filmvertrieb, Berlin, no. 2949, 1967.

Manager-Producer-Husband

Claudia Cardinale's early career was largely managed producer Franco Cristaldi. Because of her film contract, she told everyone that her son Patrizio was her baby brother. He was born out of wedlock when she was 17; the father was a mysterious Frenchman. She did not reveal to the child that he was her son until he was 19 years old. In 1966, she married Cristaldi, who adopted Patrizio.

In only three years she made a stream of great films. First she made three successful comedies, Un Maledetto imbroglio/The Facts of Murder (Pietro Germi, 1959), Il Bell'Antonio/Bell'Antonio (Mauro Bolognini, 1960) featuring Marcello Mastroianni, and Audace colpo dei soliti ignoti/Fiasco in Milan (Nanni Loy, 1960).

Cardinale had a supporting part in the epic drama Rocco e i suoi fratelli/Rocco and His Brothers (Luchino Visconti, 1960) in which she played the sister-in-law of Alain Delon and Renato Salvatori.

And then followed leading parts in La Ragazza con la valigia/Girl with a Suitcase (Valerio Zurlini, 1961), La Viaccia/The Lovemakers (Mauro Bolognini, 1961) with Jean-Paul Belmondo, and Senilità/Careless (Mauro Bolognini, 1961).


German postcard by Krüger.


French postcard.


German postcard by ISV, Sort. 10/6.


Dutch postcard, Serie 6.


French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, no. 1084, offered by Corvisart, Epinal. Photo: Ektachrome Anders.


Spanish postcard by Postal Oscar Color, Hospitalet (Barcelona), no. 521, 1963.

Deep voice and heavy accent

Claudia Cardinale had a deep, sultry voice and spoke Italian with a heavy French accent, so her voice was dubbed in her early films.

In Federico Fellini's 8½ (1963), she was finally allowed to dub her own dialogue. In the film, she plays a dream woman - a character named Claudia, who is the object of the fantasies of the director in the film, played by Marcello Mastroianni. With Fellini's surrealistic masterpiece she received her widest exposure to date with this film.

That same year, she also appeared in another masterpiece of the Italian cinema, the epic Il Gattopardo/The Leopard (Luchino Visconti, 1963) with Burt Lancaster and Alain Delon.

The combined success of these two classic films made her rise to the front ranks of the Italian cinema. And it also piqued Hollywood's interest.

To be continued tomorrow.


French postcard by Edition La Malibran, Paris, no. MC 38, 1990. Photo: Claude Schwartz. Publicity still for Otto e Mezzo/8½ (Federico Fellini, 1963) with Marcello Mastroianni.


Vintage card. Photo: publicity still for Il Gattopardo/The Leopard (Luchino Visconti, 1963) with Alain Delon.


Original Italian trailer of 8½ (1963). Source: Raúl Quintanilla (YouTube).


Original Italian trailer of Il Gattopardo/The Leopard (1963). Source: Blondinka Inoz (YouTube).

Sources: Jason Ankeny (AllMovie), Roger Fristoe (TCM), IMDb and Wikipedia.