Eleonora Rossi Drago(1925-2007)
- Actress
She never found the international cross-over fame destined for
Sophia Loren and
Gina Lollobrigida, and most American
audiences would not recognize her name, but voluptuous, visually
stunning Eleonora Rossi Drago certainly made male hearts pulsate in
Europe with her scores of princesses and temptresses throughout Italian
cinema of the 1950s and 1960s. She eventually earned respect as a fine
actress and elevated her status in the films of
Luigi Comencini and
Michelangelo Antonioni, among
others. But for the most part, she gamely played the sex card in a
career that stretched a bit past two decades.
She was born Palmira Omiccioli (some sources also list Palmina as her
first name, near Genoa, Italy (Columbus' birthplace) on September 23,
1925, the daughter of a sea captain. She married at the age of 17 and
bore a daughter Fiorella but the marriage (to a gentleman named Rossi)
did not last. She then 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 movie roles while
using her married name of Rossi. Her first two big breaks came with
Behind Closed Shutters (1951) [Behind
Closed Shutters] with Massimo Girotti, a
melodrama about prostitution, and the highly controversial
Sensualita (1952) [Sensuality] in
which Marcello Mastroianni and
Amedeo Nazzari violently quarrel over her
affections. The earlier picture was directed by
Luigi Comencini and considered a strong
success. The highly impressed Comencini went on to cast Eleonora as a
female lead in his next film
La tratta delle bianche (1952)
[The White Slave Trade or Girls Marked for Danger], another tawdry
melodrama about prostitution that co-starred
Vittorio Gassman and also showcased the
up-and-coming Sophia Loren.
It was obvious that Rossi-Drago had the makings of a bosomy sex goddess
but she constantly strove to better her acting reputation in classier
material. In 1955 she won critical notice on stage as Helena in
Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya" opposite
Marcello Mastroianni as Astrov. Her
finest hour in films came about that same year with the release of
Antonnini's The Girlfriends (1955) [The
Girlfriends], in which she starred in the rags-to-riches story of a
humble girl who becomes a respected owner of a fashion salon and the
social class struggle therein. Among her other standout roles in the
1950s were Kean: Genius or Scoundrel (1957), again opposite
Vittorio Gassman, who also directed,
and the award-winning Italian/French co-production
Violent Summer (1959), in which
she played a married woman approaching middle age who surrenders
herself to a younger man
(Jean-Louis Trintignant) during
the summer of '43 and height of fascism. The film earned her the
"Silver Ribbon" award, voted for by Italian film journalists, and the
"best actress" award at the Mar del Plata Film Festival in Argentina.
In order to work continuously, however, she 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 1960s she was relegated to such
unmemorable adventures, horrors and sword-and-sand spectacles as
David and Goliath (1960) [David and
Goliath] with Orson Welles playing King
Saul;
The Carpet of Horror (1962)
[The Carpet of Horror]; and
Sword of the Conqueror (1961)
[Sword of the Conqueror] opposite a raping and pillaging
Jack Palance. Elsewhere, she was pretty
much overlooked in the epic ensemble as Lot's wife in
John Huston's mammoth failure
The Bible in the Beginning... (1966).
Things did not improve into the decade and after appearing with
Helmut Berger in the
critically-panned retelling of
Dorian Gray (1970) and
Pier Angeli in the pedestrian
Sergio Bergonzelli giallo
In the Folds of the Flesh (1970)
[In the Folds of the Flesh], she decided to call it quits. Blending
back inconspicuously into mainstream society, she married Sicilian
businessman Domenico La Cavera in 1973, and eventually retired to
Palermo, Italy. She died at age 82 of a brain hemorrhage on December 2,
2007, and was survived by her second husband and daughter.
Sophia Loren and
Gina Lollobrigida, and most American
audiences would not recognize her name, but voluptuous, visually
stunning Eleonora Rossi Drago certainly made male hearts pulsate in
Europe with her scores of princesses and temptresses throughout Italian
cinema of the 1950s and 1960s. She eventually earned respect as a fine
actress and elevated her status in the films of
Luigi Comencini and
Michelangelo Antonioni, among
others. But for the most part, she gamely played the sex card in a
career that stretched a bit past two decades.
She was born Palmira Omiccioli (some sources also list Palmina as her
first name, near Genoa, Italy (Columbus' birthplace) on September 23,
1925, the daughter of a sea captain. She married at the age of 17 and
bore a daughter Fiorella but the marriage (to a gentleman named Rossi)
did not last. She then 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 movie roles while
using her married name of Rossi. Her first two big breaks came with
Behind Closed Shutters (1951) [Behind
Closed Shutters] with Massimo Girotti, a
melodrama about prostitution, and the highly controversial
Sensualita (1952) [Sensuality] in
which Marcello Mastroianni and
Amedeo Nazzari violently quarrel over her
affections. The earlier picture was directed by
Luigi Comencini and considered a strong
success. The highly impressed Comencini went on to cast Eleonora as a
female lead in his next film
La tratta delle bianche (1952)
[The White Slave Trade or Girls Marked for Danger], another tawdry
melodrama about prostitution that co-starred
Vittorio Gassman and also showcased the
up-and-coming Sophia Loren.
It was obvious that Rossi-Drago had the makings of a bosomy sex goddess
but she constantly strove to better her acting reputation in classier
material. In 1955 she won critical notice on stage as Helena in
Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya" opposite
Marcello Mastroianni as Astrov. Her
finest hour in films came about that same year with the release of
Antonnini's The Girlfriends (1955) [The
Girlfriends], in which she starred in the rags-to-riches story of a
humble girl who becomes a respected owner of a fashion salon and the
social class struggle therein. Among her other standout roles in the
1950s were Kean: Genius or Scoundrel (1957), again opposite
Vittorio Gassman, who also directed,
and the award-winning Italian/French co-production
Violent Summer (1959), in which
she played a married woman approaching middle age who surrenders
herself to a younger man
(Jean-Louis Trintignant) during
the summer of '43 and height of fascism. The film earned her the
"Silver Ribbon" award, voted for by Italian film journalists, and the
"best actress" award at the Mar del Plata Film Festival in Argentina.
In order to work continuously, however, she 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 1960s she was relegated to such
unmemorable adventures, horrors and sword-and-sand spectacles as
David and Goliath (1960) [David and
Goliath] with Orson Welles playing King
Saul;
The Carpet of Horror (1962)
[The Carpet of Horror]; and
Sword of the Conqueror (1961)
[Sword of the Conqueror] opposite a raping and pillaging
Jack Palance. Elsewhere, she was pretty
much overlooked in the epic ensemble as Lot's wife in
John Huston's mammoth failure
The Bible in the Beginning... (1966).
Things did not improve into the decade and after appearing with
Helmut Berger in the
critically-panned retelling of
Dorian Gray (1970) and
Pier Angeli in the pedestrian
Sergio Bergonzelli giallo
In the Folds of the Flesh (1970)
[In the Folds of the Flesh], she decided to call it quits. Blending
back inconspicuously into mainstream society, she married Sicilian
businessman Domenico La Cavera in 1973, and eventually retired to
Palermo, Italy. She died at age 82 of a brain hemorrhage on December 2,
2007, and was survived by her second husband and daughter.