Eleonora Rossi Drago

Voluptuous, visually stunning Italian film actress Eleonora Rossi Drago (1925–2007) played princesses and temptresses throughout Italian cinema of the 1950s and 1960s. She never found the international cross-over fame destined for Sophia Loren and Gina Lollobrigida, but she earned respect as a fine actress playing leading roles in films by such famous directors as Michelangelo Antonioni, Luigi Comencini and Valerio Zurlini.


Italian postcard by Bromofoto, Milano, no. 369. Photo: Minerva Film.


Italian postcard by Rotalfoto, Milano, no. 114.


Italian postcard by B.F.F. Edit, no. 3329. Photo: ENIC.

An Arresting Beauty

Eleonora Rossi Drago was born Palmina Omiccioli near Genoa, Italy, in 1925. She was the daughter of a Spanish sea captain and an Italian mother. At the age of 17, Palmina married to a gentleman named Rossi and bore a daughter, Fiorella. The marriage did not last, and mr. Rossi emigrated to Argentina leaving his wife to raise their daughter by herself. She found work as a department store mannequin and began actually designing couture clothing herself.

An arresting beauty, she started competing in beauty contests and wound up in fourth place in the Miss Italy pageant. Gina Lollobrigida came in third. The attention lured her to films. She moved to Rome and in 1949 began receiving small film roles while using her married name of Rossi.

Her first two big breaks came with Persiane chiuse/Behind Closed Shutters (Luigi Comencini, 1951) with Massimo Girotti, a melodrama about prostitution, and the highly controversial Sensualità/Barefoot Savage (Clemente Fracassi, 1952) in which Marcello Mastroianni and Amedeo Nazzari violently quarrel over her affections.

Persiane chiuse was considered a strong success. The highly impressed director, Luigi Comencini went on to cast Eleonora as a female lead in his next film La tratta delle bianche/The White Slave Trade (Luigi Comencini, 1952), another tawdry melodrama about prostitution that co-starred Vittorio Gassman and also showcased the up-and-coming Sophia Loren.


Italian postcard by Vetta Traldi, Milano, in the series Divi del Cinema, no. 56.


German postcard by Filmbilder-Vertrieb Ernst Freihoff, Essen, no. 118. Retail price: 10 Pfg. Photo: Franco London Film.


French postcard by Editions du Globe, Paris, no. 624. Photo: Sam Lévin.


French postcard by Editions P.I., Paris, no. 483, presented by Les Carbones Korès, no. 27D.

Lady of the Italian Cinema

According to Gary Brumburgh at IMDb, it was obvious that Eleanora Rossi-Drago “had the makings of a bosomy sex goddess but she constantly strove to better her acting reputation in classier material”. She got the nickname of the 'Lady of the Italian Cinema'. In 1954 she appeared opposite Madeleine Robinson in the L'affaire Maurizius/On Trial (Julien Duvivier, 1954), a bleak drama about the miscarriages of justice. In 1955 she won critical notice on stage as Helena opposite Marcello Mastroianni in Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya directed by Luchino Visconti.

Her finest hour in the cinema came about that same year with the release of Le amiche/The Girlfriends (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1955). She starred in this rags-to-riches story as a humble girl who becomes a respected owner of a fashion salon. Among her other standout roles in the 1950´s were Kean (Vittorio Gassman, Francesco Rosi, 1956) again opposite Gassman, Suor Letizia/The Awakening (Mario Camerini, 1957) starring Anna Magnani, the Oscar nominated La strada lunga un anno/The Year Long Road (Giuseppe de Santis, 1958) opposite Silvana Pampanini, and the crime drama Un maledetto imbroglio/An Ugly Mess (Pietro Germi, 1959) with Claudia Cardinale.

In the Italian/French co-production Estate violenta/Violent Summer (Valerio Zurlini, 1959), she played a married woman approaching middle age who surrenders herself to a younger man (Jean-Louis Trintignant) during the summer of '43 and the height of fascism. The film earned her the Nastro d'argento (Silver Ribbon award), voted for by Italian film journalists, and the Best Actress award at the Mar del Plata Film Festival in Argentina.


Italian postcard by Turismofoto, no. 63.


French postcard by Editions P.I., no. FK 3096. Photo: Joachim G. Jung / Ufa.


Russian postcard by Izdanije Byuro Propogandy Sovietskogo Kinoiskusstva, no. 21.250, 1961. Retail price: 8 Kop.

Blending Back Inconspicuously

Eleanora Rossi Drago was forced to take on provocative roles of lesser quality - roles that usually emphasized her physical attributes or enhanced the scenery around her. While Sophia Loren had a Carlo Ponti to promote her internationally, Rossi-Drago was less fortunate. By the 1960´s she was relegated to such unmemorable adventures, horror films and sword-and-sand spectacles as David e Golia/David and Goliath (Ferdinando Baldi, Richard Pottier, 1960) with Orson Welles playing King Saul, and Rosmunda e Alboino/Sword of the Conqueror (Carlo Campogalliani, 1961) opposite a raping and pillaging Jack Palance.

More interesting were her parts in the anthology film L´amour a vingt ans/Love at Twenty (Renzo Rossellini a.o., 1961), Anima nera/Black Soul (Roberto Rossellini, 1962) and the delightful comedy Se permettete parliamo di donne/Let's Talk About Women (Ettore Scola, 1964) starring Vittorio Gassman. In 1964, she also appeared in the TV mini-series La Cittadella (Anton Giulio Majano, 1964), an adaptation of A. J. Cronin's novel, The Citadel. Elsewhere, she was pretty much overlooked in the epic ensemble as Lot's wife in the mammoth failure The Bible: In the Beginning... (John Huston, 1966).

Things did not improve into the decade and after appearing in the elegant erotic drama Camille 2000 (Radley Metzger, 1969), in the critically-panned retelling of The Picture of Dorian Gray, Das Bildnis des Dorian Gray (Massimo Dallamano, 1970) with Helmut Berger, and in the good-looking giallo thriller Nelle pieghe della carne/In the Folds of the Flesh (Sergio Bergonzelli, 1971) with Pier Angeli, she called it quits.

Blending back inconspicuously into mainstream society, she married Sicilian businessman Domenico La Cavera in 1973, and eventually retired to Palermo, Italy. In 1989 she returned once to the screen, for the documentary Ben Webster: The Brute and the Beautiful (John Jeremy, 1989) about jazz saxophonist Ben Webster. In 2007, Eleanora Rossi Drago died of a brain haemorrhage at the age of 82. She was survived by her second husband and her daughter.


Mexican card, no. 320.


Scene from Estate violenta/Violent Summer (1959). Source: bolingbroke70 (YouTube).

Sources: Gary Brumburgh (IMDb), Hal Erickson (AllMovie), Wikipedia and IMDb.

Nino Manfredi

Italian actor Nino Manfredi (1921-2004) was one of the most prominent stars in the Commedia all'italiana genre. He was equally adept at drama and comedy, and also had success as a film director and screenwriter.


Italian postcard by Bromofoto, Milano, no. 1710. Photo: Euro International Films. Publicity still for Carmela è una bambola/Carmela is a Doll (Gianni Puccini, 1958).

A hairdresser in love

Nino Manfredi was born Saturnino Manfredi in Castro dei Volsci, Italy in 1921. He studied law and later took acting lessons at the Accademia d’Arte Drammatica in Rome.

He made his stage debut in the theatre company of Vittorio Gassman and Evi Maltagliati. There, he played mainly dramatic roles. He made a name for himself in the world of Italian show business as a radio and music hall performer in the World War II years.

In 1948 he made his film debut in the short film Tenori per forza/Contents necessarily. In 1949 he played for the Piccolo Teatro in Milan and Rome under Giorgio Strehler, in such tragedies as 'Romeo and Juliet' and 'The Storm'. In 1952-1952 he collaborated with Eduardo De Filippo, along with Paolo Panelli and Bice Valori.

During the 1950s, he mainly played small parts in the cinema and also worked as a voice actor. He dubbed the voice of Gérard Philipe in Italy. He got a bigger role as a hairdresser in love with his colleague in Gli innamorati/The Lovers (Mauro Bolognini, 1955) starring Antonella Lualdi and Franco Interlenghi. The film was presented at Cannes and is still well-known.

In 1959, Nino Manfredi finally had his first important lead role in the satire L’impiegato/The Employee (Gianni Puccini, 1959) with Eleonora Rossi Drago, for which he also wrote the scenario.


Italian postcard by Bromofoto, Milano, no. 1643. Photo G.B. Poletto / Titanus. Nino Manfredi in Audace colpo dei soliti ignoti'/Fiasco in Milan (Nanni Loy, 1960).



Eleonora Rossi Drago. French postcard by Editions du Globe, Paris, no. 624. Photo: Sam Lévin.

Mistaken for an influential fascist

In the early 1960s, Nino Manfredi established himself on stage and in cinema. In 1962, he played the eponymous character in the stage musical 'Rugantino'. In the cinema, he had successes with the role of the inept thief in A cavallo della tigre/Jail Break (Luigi Comencini, 1961) and as a junior office employee, who is mistaken for an influential fascist in Gli Anni ruggenti/Roaring Years (Luigi Zampa, 1962).

He had his definitive breakthrough as the endearing Geppetto in the film/mini-series Le Avventure di Pinocchio/The Adventures of Pinocchio (Luigi Comencini, 1972) with Gina Lollobrigida. Until the late 1970s, he was involved in several Italian-French co-productions and became a popular comedy star of the Italian cinema.

Manfredi worked several times together with director Ettore Scola on such films as Pane e cioccolata/Bread and Chocolate (Ettore Scola, 1974) with Johnny Dorelli, and C'eravamo tanto amati/We All Loved Each Other So Much (Ettore Scola, 1975) with Vittorio Gassman and Stefania Sandrelli.

His internationally best known character is probably the one-eyed patriarch Giacinto Mazzatella in Brutti, sporchi e cattivi/Ugly, Dirty and Bad (Ettore Scola, 1976), who lives with four generations of his relatives cramped together in a shack, managing to get by mainly on thieving and whoring.

His grotesque film characters, also including a church dignitary in In nome del Papa Re/In the Name of the Pope King (Luigi Magni, 1977), the pompous Trafficone in La Mazzetta/The Payoff (Sergio Corbucci, 1978) and the illegal coffee representative Café Express (Nanni Loy, 1980) won him a wide audience.


Russian postcard, no. 757, 1990. Retail price: 8 K.

Embodying the commedia all’Italiana

Nino Manfredi also frequently appeared in TV shows, branched out into film directing and even composed songs for the soundtrack of one of his films. His first film directorial effort was one of the four episodes of L'amore difficile/Erotica (Alberto Bonucci, Luciano Lucignani, Nino Manfredi, Sergio Sollima, 1962). His feature debut, the Commedia all’Italiana Per Grazia Ricevuta/Between Miracles (1971), won the Best First Film award at Cannes.

His next film, Nudo di donna (Nino Manfredi, Alberto Lattuada, 1981), incurred only moderate success. In the 1980s, he reduced his work in film and television in favour of more frequent live performances. Nino Manfredi also published a collection of Roman phrases and a cookbook.

He continued appearing in films and on television into old age. His later films include Colpo di luna/Moon Shadow (Alberto Simone, 1995) with Tchéky Karyo, the Dutch production De vliegende Hollander/The Flying Dutchman (Jos Stelling, 1995), Grazie di tutto/Thanks for everything (1999) directed by his son, writer-director Luca Manfredi, and the Spanish film La luz prodigiosa/The End of a Mystery (Miguel Hermoso, 2003).

In 2004, he died in Rome at the age of 83. Since 1955, he had been married to former model Erminia Ferrari Manfredi, and they had three children: Luca, Giovanna and Roberta. Manfredi also had a daughter, Tonina (1985), from a relationship with a Bulgarian woman.

Nino Manfredi was the last survivor of a generation of great Italian actors who had embodied the Commedia all’Italiana: Ugo Tognazzi, Marcello Mastroianni, Vittorio Gassman and Alberto Sordi. With him disappeared a fine quintet of satiric, talented, loud and seductive comedians.


Trailer for Brutti, sporchi e cattivi/Ugly, Dirty and Bad (1976). Source: CG Entertainment (YouTube).

Sources: Wikipedia (French, German and English), and IMDb.

This post was last updated on 29 April 2025.