Warren G. Harris

Born out of wedlock in fascist Italy, Sofia Scicolone seemed destined for a life of shame, poverty, and suffering. That she survived the bombings, food shortages, and epidemics of World War II was a miracle in itself. But she went on to astound the world as Sophia Loren, one of the most beautiful and talented superstars of this century. She costarred with Cary Grant and Frank Sinatra in her very first international film, and went on to work opposite many of their peers, including Clark Gable, John Wayne, Alan Ladd, William Holden, Marlon Brando, Gregory Peck, Charlton Heston, Paul Newman, David Niven, Peter O'Toole, Anthony Quinn, Peter Finch, Omar Sharif, and Richard Burton. Sophia Loren reveals the truth behind the legend who was once described as Italy's most perfect - and enigmatic - work of art since the Mona Lisa. The story of her rise from homely and skinny toothpick to awesome love goddess begins with Sophia's frustrated mother, a Greta Garbo lookalike who transferred her own dreams of stardom to her daughter. Following a chance meeting with producer Carlo Ponti, Sophia became his "protegee," acting in some of his films and becoming the married Ponti's mistress. Sophia and Ponti have been together ever since. For nearly two decades they were treated like criminals in Italy, where, until 1970, citizens were denied the right to divorce without approval from the Vatican. Facing criminal prosecution, Sophia and Ponti became exiles. The story of how they were eventually able to return to Italy, only to be later prosecuted for alleged tax evasion, is just part of author Warren G. Harris's intimate portrait of one of the celebrity world's most remarkable - and secretive - marriages. Also covered in depth are Sophia's remarkable personal relationships with Cary Grant, Peter Sellers, Richard Burton, and others who fell under her spell. The Pontis are one of the wealthiest couples in Europe. Their magnificent villa near Rome once contained a collection of paintings and antiques worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Though Ponti produced the majority of Sophia's films, their fortune was built largely from his earnings from two movies that he made without her - the worldwide blockbusters Doctor Zhivago and Blow-Up. Most of Sophia's films for Hollywood were box-office duds. But under master director Vittorio De Sica, Sophia won an Oscar as Best Actress of 1961 for Two Women, the only time in the history of the Academy Awards that a non-English-speaking performance was so honored. De Sica costarred Sophia with Marcello Mastroianni in two comedies that quickly established them as one of the screen's supreme acting teams. But Sophia wanted nothing more than to be a mother, and she eventually gave birth to two sons, Carlo in 1968 and Edoardo in 1973, after a heartbreaking series of miscarriages. She then branched into commerce and earned millions with her "Sophia" perfume and a line of eyeglass frames that she designed. With Sophia now in her sixties, her luminous qualities remain undimmed and her infrequent screen appearances are still a joy to watch.

Biography of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz, their marriage, their hit TV show, and their closeness until Desi's death.

He was the all-time all-American virility symbol, perhaps the most successful male actor of his time, the acknowledged "King" of Hollywood in the hungry 1930s; she was the great all-American sex symbol, a tough-talking, beautiful blonde at the height of stardom, "America's Madcap Playgirl #1." He was separated from his wife; she had divorced William Powell ("The son of a bitch is acting even when he takes his pajamas off!") and was recovering from the death of her friend Russ Columbo, accidentally shot in one of Hollywood's more bizarre and notorious scandals. They fell in love in 1936 (a leap year) at the full-dress White Mayfair Hollywood society ball. Until then, she had thought him stuffy; he had objected to her profane language and boisterous public behavior. The next day she had a pair of doves sneaked into his hotel room while he slept, and before long they were obviously, publicly, happily in love, to the pleasure of several million fans and the rage of Louis B.^ Mayer, Gable's boss, who feared a scandal. Soon they were living together, and America's number one blonde bombshell was learning to hunt, ride, shoot and fish, while Gable sweated out his divorce and suffered through the skirmishing that preceded the filming of Gone With the Wind, worrying about a role he found uncomfortable, but which was to crown his reputation. Together, they make for a book that is lusty, funny, and full of the glittering gossip and real-life tragedy that occur only in Hollywood lives. This book is the story of two otherwise quite ordinary American kids who somehow grew up to become Clark Gable and Carole Lombard, fell in love, married, and lived happily until the day in 1942 when Lombard was killed in a plane crash, plunging the United States into a mourning that eclipsed the war news and leaving Gable a lonely man whose last wish was to be buried beside his beloved Carole.^ Packed with anecdotes about famous stars, famous houses, famous movies, and famous parties, Gable and Lombard is at once a triumph of nostalgia and a brilliant retelling of romantic legend that seemed to many Americans of the time more real than life itself--and more romantic than the movies--but which was, in fact, simply a love story.--Adapted from dust jacket.

Richard Schickel's text, combining critical analysis and a re-interpretation of all the available biographical information, masterfully maps the intersections where a great star's personal history and his screen personality met in a style as elegant, graceful and witty as the actor himself.

Marilyn Miller, that is--the beloved star of Broadway revues and 1920s musicals who died at age 37 in 1936. Harris (Gable and Lombard) follows Miller from her childhood, as the youngest member of a family vaudeville act (stage mother, tyrannical stepfather), to her discovery by Lee Shubert--which led to a solo turn in Broadway's Passing Show of 1914. (""Too early her career became her life."") Her sunny, dancing-singing appeal soon thereafter became one of Flo Ziegfeld's major attractions--in Sally, Sunny, and Rosalie; but though Flo obsessively doted on Marilyn, alternately feuding and fawning (""at times all but groveling at her tiny, size-one feet""), Harris scoffs at rumors of a Marilyn/Flo affair. (""There was no need for her to resort to sex as a bargaining tactic."") Indeed, Marilyn preferred younger men: after her brief, golden marriage to musical-comedy hero Frank Carter ended with Frank's auto-crash death, she went through assorted lovers--from syphilitic Jack Pickford (Mary's brother) to suave Jack Buchanan, from Jack Warner to Charles Lederer to ""handsome hunk"" Don Alvarado to chorus-boy Chet O'Brien, hubby #3. (As for her handpicked corps of male dancers, ""whether Marilyn was selecting them for sexual purposes as well is really impossible to know."") Her career started downhill about 1930, however--with a few Hollywood ups-and-downs, with less demand on B'way for Marilyn's unsophisticated musical-comedy style. And, despite a last hurrah in As Thousands Cheer, she ""simply lost the will to carry on"": after ""incompetent medical treatment"" (a botched sinus operation, improper drugs), she died from brain-swelling and toxically high fever. Throughout, Harris writes serviceably at best, with frequent lapses into fatuousness and vulgarity; his command of the Broadway/Hollywood-musical history involved often seems shaky; Marilyn herself, part child and part ""tough, foul-mouthed bitch,"" emerges neither in three dimensions nor very sympathetically. So this remains a show-biz bio of the most superficial, tacky sort--chiefly for devotees of 50-year-old gossip.

La couverture porte en sous-titre : Histoire d'une femme d'exception.