Maria Grazia Buccella

Sexy Italian film Actress Maria Grazia Buccella (1940) was a former glamour model and Miss Italy contestant (1959). She was the busty and a bit dizzy beauty in many Italian comedies of the 1960s and 1970s.


Yugoslavian postcard by Cik Razglednica. Photo: publicity still for Sissignore (Ugo Tognazzi, 1968).

Miss Universe

Maria Grazia Buccella was born in Milan, Italy in 1940. At 11, she made her film debut with a bit role in the French-Italian crime drama Le cap de l'espérance/The Cape of Hope (Raymond Bernard, 1951), starring Edwige Feuillère.

At 17 she was chosen as Miss Venezia Tridentina. In 1959, she was one of the contestants of the Miss Italy contest. She represented Italy at the Miss Europe contest, where she came in third, and at the Miss Universe contest. After that, she started to play small parts in films again.

Her first bigger role was in the comedy Fontana di Trevi/Fountain of Trevi (Carlo Campogalliani, 1960) with Claudio Villa. In the following years, she played big roles in forgettable comedies and a small part in Il boom/The Boom (Vittorio De Sica, 1963) starring Alberto Sordi. Other films were Cover Girls (José Bénazéraf, 1964) with Giorgia Moll, and Menage all'italiana/Menage Italian Style (Franco Indovina, 1965) with Ugo Tognazzi.

She screen-tested for the role of Domino Derval in the James Bond film Thunderball (Terence Young, 1965), but the role eventually went to French actress, Claudine Auger. That year, she appeared in the Italian film Il Gaucho/The Gaucho (Dino Risi, 1965) which co-starred Vittorio Gassman.

She appeared with Gassman again in the comedy Una vergine per il principe/A Maiden for a Prince (Pasquale Festa Campanile, 1966) and in the action comedy L'armata Brancaleone/For Love and Gold (Mario Monicelli, 1966). That year, she also played the beauty Miss Okra in the Peter Sellers film Caccia alla volpe/After the Fox (Vittorio De Sica, 1966), in which she flirted with Sellers while lip-synching dialogue by Akim Tamiroff.


Maria Grazia Buccella with Edward G. Robinson and Rosella Como in Uno scacco tutto matto/Checkmate for McDowell (Roberto Fizz, 1967). Photo: Gráfica Cifra. Source: Manuel Palomino Arjona @ Flickr.


Source: Las Desperadas.

Playmen

In 1968, Maria Grazia Buccella won a Silver Ribbon award at the Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists for Best Supporting Actress in the film Ti ho sposato per allegria/I Married You for Fun (Luciano Salce, 1967).

She had the female lead in the American Western Villa Rides (Buzz Kulik, 1968) starring Yul Brynner as Pancho Villa. In the situation comedy Sissignore (Ugo Tognazzi, 1968) her co-star and director was Ugo Tognazzi. And she was one of the beautiful women around the young Giacomo Casanova (Leonard Whiting) in Infanzia, vocazione e prime esperienze di Giacomo Casanova, veneziano/Giacomo Casanova: Childhood and Adolescence (Luigi Comencini, 1969).

During the 1970s, she played in genre films, such as the Spaghetti Western La collera del vento/ The Wind's Anger (Mario Camus, 1970) starring Terence Hill. In Il provincial/The Provincial (Luciano Salce, 1971), she played a callgirl who seduces provincial Gianni Morandi.

After an interval in her career, she was featured on the cover of Playmen magazine in November 1976, and a year later she appeared in the Italian Playboy. But her following films were only minor comedies. Buccella recorded some songs like 'Ballo del Popo' (The Dance of Poo, 1978) which she performed in revealing dresses on Italian TV shows.

Maria Grazia Buccella virtually retired from film in 1979 although she made two small appearances in the 1980s. Her final appearance was in the TV series Hotel Otello (Andrea Biagini, Leonardo Scucchi, 2000). For years, she was the girlfriend of film producer Vittorio Cecchi Gori.


Maria Grazia Buccella does a striptease in Canzoni in... bikini/Songs in Bikini (Giuseppe Vari, 1963). Source: fardonrocknroll (YouTube).

Source: Las Desperadas (Italian - now defunct), Wikipedia (Italian and English) and IMDb.

This post was last updated on 20 August 2023.