Don't Stop Us if you've heard this before: we've heard it, too--the old "feud" bit between the European screen siren and the home-grown Hollywood honey is at least as old as the Lollobrigida-Monroe fracas of a few years back, and probably a good deal older. But there's a slightly different twist to this newest version of the story, so stick around.
In this corner, we have stackuesque Sophia Loren of Italy, an earthy girl in the classic mold, femmina incarnate. Early in her career (we almost said when she was but a stripling), she portrayed a bare-from-the-belly-up harem morsel in an Italian film called Era Lui, Si, Si, which contained scenes too torrid for even Italian consumption. Today, Signorina Loren is probably more beautiful than ever, but she reveals relatively little of that beauty to the public -- a change in behavior that is not at all unusual; in fact, it's par for the course. For as starlets rise in the Hollywood heavens, becoming honest-to-gosh stars, they just seem to naturally shy away from all that sexy stuff that helped put them up there in the first place.
In the opposite corner is our good friend Jayne Mansfield of the U.S.A. Never a shrinking violet, ever an ebullient extrovert, Jayne endeared herself to us early by ever posing in both public and private in divers states of delightful dishabille. Jayne is now one of the brighter twinklers in the cinematic firmament, and it should logically follow that--like Loren, Lollobrigida, Monroe, et al. -- her days of daring-undo are all behind her. But not so--the more stellar Jayne becomes, the greater the alacrity with which she divests herself of her duds. We applaud this attitude as most refreshing: Jayne has no delusions about the cause of her popularity (a noble cause it is) and to deny or ignore it at this stage of the game apparently strikes her as the worst sort of snobbery.
At a party held at Romanoff's Crown Room in Hollywood to launch Loren upon Tinseltown society, the two ladies met, eye to eye, bodice to bodice. Jayne's publicity agents had shoehorned her into a gown that, even by Hollywood standards, was cut breathtakingly low. Sophia, more decorously decked-out, lamped with anxiety the Mansfield assets -- an anxiety that proved justified a few minutes later when Jayne, bending lensward, was completely taken out of herself, thus writing another charming chapter in the history of Hollywoodensis Sexualis.
The Loren lineaments were displayed in detail (right) in Era Lui, Si, Si (It Was He, Yes, Yes), a vintage Italian film.
But the new, more sophisticated Sophia is shown mirror-gazing below in a costume she considers better suited to her present position, with sex appeal handled more sedately.
Though a firmly established star, Jayne continues to pose for publicity photos like one above, in which she is completely nude under transparent nightie; she would throw off the nightie if her studio would let her.
Below: at Romanoff's Sophia glims Jayne's southbound neckline uneasily, and with good reason
a moment after photo at right was taken, Jayne inhaled herself out of the dress completely. A news photographer snapped the picture, but Up killed it.
