During the eight years that have elapsed since Elsa Martinelli untied her barmaid's apron in a Florentine trattoria and set out for Hollywood (via Rome, Paris and New York), she has been bussed by the best in the business (see below). But in Rampage, her newest flick, she is bussed as never before. Elsa, who is also the Contessa Mancinelli Scotti, is one of nine children of a waiter. Eventually she became a barmaid in a small café frequented, fortunately, by dress designer Roberto Capucci, who spied beneath her apron the assorted charms that have since made Elsa the subject of as much cinematic smoochery as any other star of our time. Capucci sped her to Rome where she became a model. Later she invaded Hollywood and has appeared in more than 20 films, although never before in such a delightful state of altogetherness as in the Seven Arts production of Rampage (see following pages).
The fine Italian hand (and practically everything else) of Elsa Martinelli is on display in this scene from Rampage, in which Elsa and Cely Carrillo dally deshabillé in a mountain stream. The film, which concerns the efforts of two men to capture a rare leopard in darkest Malaya (it was filmed in Hawaii), contains ingredients customarily served up in cinematic potpourris of this sort: jungle drums, roaring beasts, dry rot, bead curtains and The Eternal Triangle. But something new has been added: the most sensational aquatic smooch ever screened (see next spread).
Although she remains an authentic countess (her husband, Count Franco Mancinelli Scotti, holds one of the oldest titles in Rome), Elsa Martinelli has renounced her marriage and now travels about the world in the company of Italian photographer Willy Rizzo, who shot for Playboy these exclusive pictures of his unadorned inamorata as she water-skied in the Mediterranean off the French Riviera shortly after the filming of Rampage was completed in Hawaii. For Elsa and Willy, love remains a many-splendored adventure, but life, they have discovered, can sometimes be difficult. Because a divorce for Elsa is unobtainable under Italian statute, she and Willy find themselves continually living under a cloud of scandal ("At the cafés on the Via Veneto they consume gossip as though it were grappa," says Elsa). In New York, London, Hollywood and elsewhere they must always have two hotel room (preferably adjoining) for, says Willy, "If a man shares a single hotel room with a woman not his wife, this is adultery. And all over the world they throw you into Prison for this -- except, of course, in the civilized nation of France. Ah, what a wonderful country is France!"
