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¶ Sofia Loren (38, 24, 37), 19, is the youngest of Italy's screen queens. Insiders give some of the credit for her rapid rise to her harddriving, redheaded Neapolitan mother, who hovers incessantly in the background, pushing her daughter to the front. Honey-blonde Sofia got her start as Miss Rome, went on to dramatic school and a modeling job. She has a thick Neapolitan accent, and in the sultry Roman evenings, loves to turn on the record player, throw off her clothes and dance.
The Cinematic Animal. Gina Lollobrigida (36, 22, 35; 5 ft. 5 in.) does not quite belong in the bouquet. It is true that she was plucked as casually as any of the other gorgeous flowers (a director spotted her on the street), and that she probably has no more talent than it takes for a black-eyed Susan to allure a bee. Beauty she has to a thrilling degree—the helpless beauty of a dark little nymph who seems to wake the satyr in men. But the secret of Gina's success is not beauty, not brains, not even luck. Hers is the first appearance in sunny Italy of a stormy Hollywood phenomenon: the Star Type.
"Gina," says a producer who knows her well, "is the cinematic animal, as specialized as a hunting dog. She is governed by a perfect, sure instinct for what she does. She gets up in the morning and thinks of the movies. She works at them, and at lunch she talks about them. She knows nothing whatever about ordinary little details of life . . . how much a ticket from Rome to Paris costs, or what time the train leaves. She would think nothing of it if you told her you had paid $500 for a Cadillac. But she knows how much a good scriptwriter should get, or what the going rate is for a technician, or what any given cameraman's strong points are."
Gina has the iron will of the true star personality. She is up at 5 every morning, works hard until 6 in the evening, studies her part or reads scripts for an hour before bed at 10. She neither smokes nor drinks, never takes a real vacation (studio technicians for Beat the Devil called her "Lollofrigida"). On the set, says Director Vittorio De Sica, "Gina is really brava." She memorizes the whole script in advance, not just a scene at a time, as the shooting schedule calls for it. She is always on time, always "reacts immediately to advice," says Director René Clair.
Gina is, furthermore, a reluctant girl with a lira. She lives plainly in a small apartment in an unfashionable district with her business-manager husband, a 34-year-old Yugoslav physician named Mirko Skofic (rhymes with so rich), who is now so busy with Gina's career that he has had to give up his medical practice.