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Few of the new Italian actresses had any notion of acting when they went to work; indeed, the finest actress in Italy, 46-year-old Anna (Open City) Magnani, has been so thoroughly overlooked in the girly-burly that she has not made a picture in two years. Six of the new top ten were picked by their directors out of beauty contests. In their films, as a rule, they do not even have to speak; the Italian system of dubbing sound track into a film after the camerawork is done makes it possible, as one director explains, "to put the acting in later"—in somebody else's voice. Says one wag: "An actress in Italy needs only two expressions—horizontal and vertical."
Among the dubbed Buses, these are currently the favorites: CJ Silvana Mangano (bust 36 in., waist 25 in., hips 35 in.), known as "the Italian Rita Hayworth." really looks more like Ingrid Bergman. The 24-year-old daughter of an Englishwoman and a Sicilian railroad conductor, she stands about 5 ft. 6 in., weighs about 128 Ibs., has brown eyes and chestnut hair. Picked as Miss Rome of 1946, she went on to a bit part in a film and a job modeling clothes, was finally offered the role of the girl who gets attacked by the sadist in Bitter Rice. The salary: $800. "The day after the picture was released," says an Italian moviemaker, "she was worth $8,000,000." She promptly married her producer, had a baby, bulged to a maternal 192 Ibs. Reluctantly reduced, she played a nun in Anna and both Circe and Penelope in Ulysses. She owns a Hudson in which one of the seats can be converted into a canasta table.
¶ Silvana Pampanini (37, 24, 36") plays the sort of part Yvonne de Carlo does for Hollywood. The 25-year-old daughter of a Roman typesetter, she stands 5 ft. 8^ in., weighs close to 140, has black hair and green eyes and runs heavily to chest. In 1946 she came in second in the Miss Italy contest. She gets the heaviest fan mail of any Italian actress. Her main complaint: producers always want her to do scenes in the near-nude, "as if I were some kind of prize pig." ¶ Eleonora Rossi-Drago (35, 24, 33), one of the few Italian actresses to whom it has occurred that sex might not be enough, tries sophistication too. She has red hair and green eyes, stands 5 ft. 7 in. and is 28 years old. Because her beauty was marred by a mildly misshapen nose. Eleonora won no beauty contests, had to come up the hard way. She won the La Victoire Prize, the French equivalent of Hollywood's Oscar, in 1954, and about the same time had her nose fixed up by Paris surgeons. "I would give up everything for my career," she says, "and I mean everything." She has a speaking voice that would send her back to Genoa if her fans ever got to hear it. ¶ Rossana Podesta (35, 21, 33) stands 5 ft. 4 in., has dark hair and eyes, and is about the nearest thing the Italians have to Terry Moore. Born in Tripoli, North Africa, she wanted to be a doctor until she was discovered by a movieman in a swimming pool four years ago. Since then she has made 16 pictures. She was signed for the title role in Helen of Troy, but her acting did not measure up to her looks. After she blew her lines in 36 takes of a singfe scene, the picture was changed from a love story to a spectacle, in order (the word went around) to get more excitement and less Rossana.