Ivo's Fresh Pick From Bologna

Last Easter, EFSP contributor and film historian Ivo Blom suffered a mild brain infarction. He survived and has been rehabilitating ever since. A dot on the horizon in his recovery was Il Cinema Ritrovato 2024 in Bologna. Ivo managed to attend the festival, greet all his film friends and even participate in two workshops around the film Quo vadis? (1924). As every year, Ivo also visited the book market at the Cineteca and bought vintage film postcards. Here are his latest trophies.


Italian postcard by Bromostampa, Milano.

Italian film actress Maria-Pia Casilio (1935-2012) appeared in 35 films between 1952 and 1997. She performed in many classic films by such great and respected Italian maestros as Vittorio de Sica and Luigi Comencini.


Italian postcard, no. 278. Photo: Vettori, Bologna.

Italian Dirce Marella (1894-1993) was a soubrette of the Italian operetta, who peaked in the 1920s. A Roman critic wrote about her in 1920 or 1921: "Dirce Marella is the first soubrette of the Stabile and is extremely elegant. She is a beautiful girl with blonde hair and very bright eyes, with a perfect and agile figure. She has a beautiful voice with a very clear timbre, an exceptional dancer and truly perfect." In 1939 she recorded for Parlophon a song, 'El Relicario', accompanied by the famous Trio Lescano and the Orchestra Cetra by Pippo Barzizza. In 1994 Annamaria Demeglio wrote a book about her, 'Irreverente Ardeola'. According to IMDb, Marella only acted in one film, the Ambrosio production Passione slava (1919) by Ermanno Geymonat and Roberto Omegna. Yet, the Museo Nazionale del Cinema of Turin mentions she also had a supporting part as the maid of Ottavia in the early Ambrosio film Nerone (Luigi Maggi, Arturo Ambrosio, 1909). Moreover, Aldo Bernardini and Vittorio Martinelli, in 'Il cinema muto italiano, 1913, part 2', state that Marella also played in a version of Passione slava by Ambrosio (director unknown) of that year instead of 1919. Yet, Martinelli, in his volume on 1919 also mentions the 1919 version, so the 1913 version may have been an error.


Italian postcard by Ed. A. Traldi, Milano, no. 344. Photo: Badodi, Milano.

Anna Fougez (1894-1966) was a Vaudeville star who shone on the Italian stage from the First World War to the mid-1920s. She also played in various Italian films.


Italian postcard. Photo: Cines / ENIC. Columba Dominguez in L'edera/Delitto per amore/Devotion (Augusto Genina, 1950).

L'edera was an Italian rural drama shot in Barbagia, Sardinia. Vitaliano Brancati contributed to the script, based on a novel by Grazia Deledda. The film quite closely follows the novel, which takes place in the province of Nuoro but offers a less drastic finale. Annesa (Columba Dominguez) is adopted by a declining aristocratic family. She is devoted to the family Decherchi, in financial crisis and depending on the heritage of a distant uncle (Gualtiero Tumiati), hosted by the family. Despaired by the uncle's refusal to help the grandson, Don Paulu (Roldano Lupi), her secret lover, she kills the uncle. Despite suspects, Annesa is not unmasked but her remorse pushes her to confess to a priest (Juan De Landa) and leave the family that hosted her. Columba Domínguez Alarid (1929-2014) was a Mexican actress, singer, and painter, remembered for her films Pueblerina (Emilio Fernandez, 1949), shown at the 1949 Cannes Film Festival, and L'edera (Augusto Genina, 1950).


French postcard by F. Nugeron, Ed. Image: Ramsay, Gaumont. Poster designed by René Ferracci for Il Casanova di Federico Fellini/ Fellini's Casanova (Federico Fellini, 1976). This card is an homage to the recently passed-on actor Donald Sutherland.


Italian postcard. Promotion for Clara Della Guardia's Latin American stage tour.

Italian stage actress Clara Della Guardia (1865-1937), an actress of great renown and owner of a vast romantic repertoire, performed in Brazil and elsewhere in Latin America in 1899, 1901, 1903, 1909 and 1912. She performed Italian works by Coelho Netto and Arthur Azevedo, as well as Sardou, Dumas fils, Rostand and other French writers, and Italian writers like D'Annunzio. Around 1900, she was a big success as Roxane in Rostand's 'Cyrano de Bergerac' (1901). In the early 1910s, she had her own stage company, performing such plays as 'La maschera e il volto', 'Odette', 'Francillón', 'Demimonde', 'Douloureuse', 'Zaza', 'Musette', and 'La Gioconda'. She also acted in two films, the Cines production Alma Mater/Fatherland of Italy (1915) by Enrico Guazzoni, and Il dramma di ambizione (Vitale di Stefano, 1916) for Savoia.


German postcard by Verlag Hermann Leiser, Berlin, no. 1676. Photo: Becker & Maass, Berlin.

Ida Orloff (1889-1945) was a Russian-Austrian theatre and silent film actress during the early 20th century. She was already renowned for her performances of modern high literature at leading German theatres before she starred in the classic Danish silent film Atlantis (August Blom, 1913), which was based upon the 1912 novel by Gerhardt Hauptmann and inspired by the Titanic disaster of the same year. The film was a success, but it cost her her engagement at the Vienna Burgtheater. Years later, historians discovered that Orloff had been a secret lover and an inspirational muse for Gerhardt Hauptmann, who was married. She met him in 1905 but their relationship gradually petered out. After Atlantis, Orloff would only perform in one more film, Baccarat (Josef Ewald, Bob Holste, 1919), starring Ludwig Hartau, Reinhold Schünzel, and Stella May. This postcard may have been published for the occasion. After the financial failure of a Russian tour in 1913, she moved from Vienna to Copenhagen when the First World War broke out. Later on, she returned to Vienna later on. By lack of stage offers there she moved to Berlin and acted in various plays. Her financial situation forced her to act in radio plays, including three based on plays by Hauptmann. Between 1933 and 1938 she lived in Florence. When her husband was threatened to be sent to the Nazis, she pleaded with Hauptmann for help - in vain. She left her husband and son in London and returned to Berlin to act. In 1942, she retreated to Tullnerbach near Vienna. Here she committed suicide in 1945 out of fear for the approaching Russian army.


Italian postcard, no. 68. Photo: Rinascimento Film, Roma.

Polish singer and actress Helena Makowska (1893-1964) was a beautiful diva of the Italian silent cinema in the 1910s. During the 1920s, she moved to Berlin and also became a star of the German cinema.


Italian postcard by Ed. A. Traldi, Milano, no. 72. Photo: S.A.I.C. Ruggero Ruggeri in L'uomo più allegro di Vienna/The Most Cheerful Man in Vienna (Amleto Palermi, 1925).

Ruggero Ruggeri (1871-1953) was one the most important Italian stage actors of the first half of the twentieth century, who often performed in the plays by Pirandello. He did perform in films too, both in silent and sound films. Nowadays, he is best remembered as the voice of Jesus in the Don Camillo films.


Italian postcard by Edizione E.F.A. / Ed. A. Traldi, Milano. no. 945. Enrica Fantis as Maria in Die Flucht in die Nacht/Enrico IV/The Flight in the Night (Amleto Palermi, 1926), based on Luigi Pirandello's play 'Enrico IV', starring Conrad Veidt, and shot in Italy.

Italian film actress Enrica Fantis (1906-?) had a rather brief career in Italian silent and sound cinema between 1926 and 1934. She started as the friend of the rich Julia (Lia Maris) in Gli ultimi giorni di Pompei/The Last Days of Pompeii (Carmine Gallone, Amleto Palermi, 1926). In the same year, she played the female lead of Maria in the German film Die Flucht in die Nacht, shot by Palermi in Italy. In 1927 she played the wife of Patapon (Marcel Levesque) in the boulevard comedy Florette e Patapon/Floretta and Patapon (Amleto Palermi, 1927), with Livio Pavanelli and Ossi Oswalda. She also had the title role in another Palermi film: Nanù, la cugina d'Albania (1927), with Sandro Salvini as her love interest and Alba Savelli as the vamp. Fantis's last silent film was Palermi's Le confessioni di una donna/The Confessions of a Woman (1928), again with Fantis in the lead, this time opposite Luigi Serventi. In the early 1930s, Fantis returned to the sets of four Italian sound films: Vele ammainate (Anton Giulio Bragaglia, 1931), starring Dria Paola and Carlo Fontana, La fortuna di zanze (Amleto Palermi, 1933) starring Emma Gramatica, Porto (Amleto Palermi, 1934) starring Irma Gramatica, and Paraninfo/The Matchmaker (Amleto Palermi, 1934) starring Angelo Musco. As Fantis only made one film with another director than Palermi, she was his favourite actress in the late 1920s. Maybe she was more, although he was married to Ida Molinaro and they had three children.


Italian postcard. Sent by mail in Winter 1906-1907.

Leopoldo Fregoli (1867-1936) was one of the first Vaudeville actors who used film in his acts. Fregoli was famous for his rapid transformation acts, in which he did impersonations of famous artistic and political characters. In 1898 he bought a cinematograph from the Lumière brothers and started to show shorts, named Fregoligraph, as part of his stage act. They were recordings of his transformation acts.


German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 3866/2, 1928-1929. Photo: F.P.S.

Beautiful and seductive French actress Lily Damita (1904-1994) appeared in 33 French, Austrian, and Hollywood films between 1922 and 1937. Her marriage with Errol Flynn was rather tempestuous and led to her nickname 'Dynamita'. For FPS-Film GmbH, Damita only acted in two films, Die letzte Nacht/The Queen Was in the Parlour (Graham Cutts, 1927), and Die berühmte Frau (Robert Wiene, 1927).


Italian postcard by Cinema Illustrazione, no. 5, series II. Photo: United Artists (Artisti Associati). Dolores Del Rio and Edmund Lowe in The Bad One (George Fitzmaurice, 1930). Lowe's name is misspelt here.

Mexican-American actress Dolores del Río (1905–1983) was a Hollywood star in the 1920s and 1930s, and one of the most important female actresses of the Golden Age of Mexican cinema in the 1940s and 1950s. Del Río was the first major Latin cross-over star in Hollywood and was considered one of the most beautiful faces that have emerged in Hollywood cinema. She also appeared in several European films. Edmund Lowe (1890-1971) was an American actor of silent and sound cinema, best known for his parts in Raoul Walsh's WWI drama What Price Glory (1926) in which he rivals Victor McLaglen over the love of Dolores del Rio, in the bittersweet comedy Dinner at Eight (George Cukor, 1933) in which Lowe has an affair with Jean Harlow, and in Dillinger (Max Nosseck, 1945). From 1915 to 1960 he starred in some 100 films.


Italian postcard by Cinema Illustrazione, no. 28, series II. Photo: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Raquel Torres and Nils Asther in The Sea Bat (Wesley Ruggles, 1930).

Raquel Torres (1908-1987) was a Mexican-born American film actress. She had her breakthrough as a Polynesian beauty in White Shadows in the South Seas (1928). She played island girls and biracial beauties and was a sexy foil to the Marx Brothers in Duck Soup (1933). After marrying a stockbroker in 1935, she retired. Good-looking Swedish actor Nils Asther (1897-1981) was an intense star of the silent European cinema. In Hollywood, he was the leading man of stars like Pola Negri, Greta Garbo, and Marion Davies and was labelled ‘the male Greta Garbo’.


Italian postcard by Cinema Illustrazione, no. 33, series II. Photo: United Artists (Artisti Associati). Lupe Velez and John Holland in Hell Harbor (Henry King, 1930), produced by Inspiration Pictures and distributed by United Artists.

Lupe Velez (1908-1944) was one of the first Mexican actresses to succeed in Hollywood. Her nicknames were 'The Mexican Spitfire' and 'Hot Pepper'. She was the leading lady in such silent films as The Gaucho (1927), Lady of the Pavements (1928), and Wolf Song (1929). During the 1930s, her well-known explosive screen persona was exploited in a series of successful films like Hot Pepper (1933), Strictly Dynamite (1934), and Hollywood Party (1934). In the 1940s, Vélez's popularity peaked after appearing in the Mexican Spitfire films, a series created to capitalise on Vélez's well-documented fiery personality. She had several highly publicised romances and a stormy marriage. In 1944, Vélez died of an intentional overdose of the barbiturate drug Seconal. Her death and the circumstances surrounding it have been the subject of speculation and controversy. American actor John Holland (1899-1971) appeared in 16 films between 1926 and 1932.