Word: magnani
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...behind the footlights, Anne Bancroft is always the serious, controlled artist, whose features can change from tenderness to humor to ferocity to sultriness with astonishing ease and conviction. Says her sometime acting coach, Herbert Berghof: "She is like a little daughter of Anna Magnani." In Miracle Worker, she is completely in charge of an extraordinarily demanding role, a role that requires of the actress what it required of Annie Sullivan in real life: the sensitivity of a poet and the strength of a piano mover. It is a role that is doubly difficult because it demands a violation...
...Marie Saint has "a perfectly good figure," that Mitzi Gaynor, in the right kind of "red-spangled straight jacket," exhibits a "rounded female figure, good bosom, tiny waist," or that Hedy Lamarr, though "she's slim, actually," does not allow herself to be padded out. As for Anna Magnani, "When she undressed, we were amazed. Under the black slacks and sweater was the most exquisite of black French foundations." Sophia Loren refuses to wear blue jeans, and Designer Head agrees with her: "There's nothing wrong with her figure, but she isn't the cowboy type...
Good stagy stuff, and more to come. When the girl finally gets a tryout for a walk-on as a French peasant ("He's playing cards in the bar"), she flunks it spectacularly by scuffing onstage like a marked-down Magnani and declaring in a studied crescendo: "He is at the estaminet playing [pause] BEZIQUE!" And when a young playwright takes her to an opening-night party, she gets drunk, embarrasses him and bores everybody else by climbing on the nearest eminence to recite "0 Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?" But suddenly nobody is bored. She is reading...
...rare mention of her erstwhile great and good friend, full-bloomed (49) Cinemactress Anna (Wild Is the Wind) Magnani updated her views of Italian Director Roberto Rossellini, in passing struck a blow for all who are weary of Don Juans in headlines. Simmered Anna: "He could still be a great director if he did not let himself be enveloped in family questions. It's a most depressing and boring story. It's about time for the papers to stop publishing so much gossip about Roberto and Ingrid...
Schulman tells the tale of a Nevada sheep rancher (Quinn), a rough, good-hearted Italian immigrant whose wife has died, and who goes back to Italy to fetch her sister (Magnani) to bed and board. The new wife soon finds out that he is still in love with the old, that he does not want her to be herself, but only to be "like Rosanna." Impossible. Rosanna was a yes woman; Gioia is one of those passionate natures that take time by the forelock and life by the throat. "You look like a slob!" her husband roars...