When Sophia Loren, a modern-day Aphrodite, first invaded Hollywood in 1957 to sign a two-million-dollar film contract, she blinked her sultry green eyes at reporters and sighed, "Do you think America will understand I?" Even blase newsmen were moved to dissolve her doubts. It was a storybook day for the earthy Italian actress with the unforgettably opulent figure: just ten years before, as fifteen-year-old Sophia Scicolone, she was living a drab existence in a crumby Naples suburb, "the scarecrow of a girl buried in poverty," as she recalls. A year later, padded properly by pasta, she first began to inspire second glances. Her mama turned a set of window curtains into a dress; in it, Sophia won a Naples beauty contest. Burning for fame, mother and daughter turned up in Rome as extras in Quo Vadis. Producer Carlo Ponti (to whom she's now married) sensed her natural, animal charms and nailed Sophia for her first starring role, in Africa Under the Sea.Producers, directors, actors and panting fans cheered for her success. She starred in Aida; then, as the tide of interest in her rose still further, in twenty Italian films in three years. She wriggled and slinked in her own special fashion, hugged a slew of hungry heroes and blithely bared her bountiful bosom. Hollywood took notice and Sophia found her sensuous self caressing the likes of Frank Sinatra, Alan Ladd
John Wayne, William Holden, Cary Grant and several other soundstage stalwarts. The wide, inviting lips, the Saracen-like eyes, the full-blown figure (she's 5 feet, 8 inches tall, with a 38inch chest) combined to decorate this stunning Italian gift to the world. As an actress she has progressed, too. The 1958 Venice Film Festival award for her performance in Black Orchid saluted "a tour de force accomplishment by an actress who only recently was known mainly for her physique."
Her physique in itself, of course, is sufficient to delight connoisseurs – as our delectable dossier of photographic highlights from her career clearly indicates. Whether writhing voluptuously through a harem scene, emerging languorously from the sea, perching prettily on a chair or lingering enticingly in a pool, Sophia is always a splendid sight. From a skinny teenager known to her Naples neighbors as Stecchetta – the toothpick – Sophia has grown, literally and figuratively, into the Vista Vision vision who now charms Clark Gable in the just released It Started in Naples. Indeed, it did.
