Word: sica
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Quick Riches. Maggiorani's own story began in the spring of 1948, when his plump, eternally optimistic wife Giuseppina pushed him into the movie. With a snapshot of their ten-year-old son Enrico, she had answered a call at De Sica's office for a small boy. Maggiorani was in the snapshot too, and the movie people liked his looks for the role of Antonio. He balked. He had worked for 16 years as a machinist in the Breda steel works, and the job was good enough to support his wife and three children. "A steady...
...Giuseppina pleaded, so he put on his only good suit, joined 20 other applicants at the studio and got the role. For three months a black limousine picked him up every day at his tenement and took him to work. For his labors in De Sica's classic he got $1,000. With it he bought the new dining-room furniture that Giuseppina had always wanted, new clothes for themselves and the children, a family holiday in Florence. After that, he went back to his old job, and the-factory proudly gave him a medal...
Then the plot took a twist that De Sica could appreciate. The factory laid off 350 employees, and the manager called in Maggiorani. "Your companions are grumbling," he said. "They claim you made millions from the movie. It's not fair to fire them and keep you." So Maggiorani was fired. "Never mind," said Giuseppina cheerfully. "Since your role in The Bicycle Thief you have actually become Antonio. You feel downtrodden, and now your bicycle has been stolen. We will .merely tell De Sica you want to make another picture...
Would Director De Sica help? Well, he would give Maggiorani a job as a prop man in his next movie. "I don't think he has any future as an actor," De Sica said, "except occasionally in workmen's roles . . . I think he should go on with his regular...
...Bicycle Thief. Italian Director Vittorio (Shoeshine) De Sica's carefully made classic of a worker and his small child hopelessly scouring Rome for a stolen bicycle (TIME...