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Back with Baby. Sophia was born in Rome in 1934 as the result of a natural union between Riccardo Scicolone, who called himself a "construction engineer," and a tall, red-haired girl named Romilda Villani. Scicolone did nothing constructive, preferring to hang around the edges of show business. Romilda was a would-be actress with a striking resemblance to Greta Garbo. Entering her picture in a contest, Romilda won a trip to the U.S.
to work as Garbo's double, but Romilda's mother refused to let her go on the ground that Rudolph Valentino had reportedly been poisoned and that was a portent of what a good Italian could expect in America. So Romilda began living with Scicolone instead, and ended up by returning to her native Pozzuoli with a baby daughter.
Pozzuoli, on the Bay of Naples, has been described in a travel book as "perhaps the most squalid city in Italy." The most squalid city in Italy has music in its streets, cluttered pink and white buildings, seagulls screaming overhead, a bright blue waterfront, a Roman amphitheater where Gennaro—patron saint of Naples—achieved his exaltation simply because a pride of lions refused to eat him. It now has a municipal slogan: "What a woman we have exported." Romilda's health was poor, and her breasts went dry. Little Sofia—the ph was inserted later because it seems more exotic to the Italian eye—was turned over to a hired wet nurse. From a bed swarming with six grandchildren, the wet nurse last week reminisced: "Sophia was the ugliest child I ever saw in my life. She was so ugly that I am sure no one else would have wanted to give her milk. It was my milk that made Sophia beautiful, and now she doesn't even remember me. I gave milk to hundreds of children, but none of them drank as much as Sophia. Her mother gave me 50 lire a month. Sophia drank at least 100 lire worth of milk. Madònna mia!" Justice & Poetry. Scicolone dropped in on the Villani family in Pozzuoli from time to time, and soon Romilda had another daughter, called Maria. "That pig was free to marry me," complains Sophia's mother, "but instead he dumped me and married another woman." Not much was heard from Scicolone until Sophia became a movie star and he tried unsuccessfully to take over the financial management of his daughter's affairs.
Last month Maria Scicolone was married to Romano Mussolini, son of Il Duce and now a jazz pianist. "Since Maria has been married in white in church and in the eye of the world, my happiness is nearly complete as a mother." says Romilda. "But never as long as I live will I overcome my hate for Scicolone. Now he comes around trying to be friendly, but we don't want him, and my vendetta was nearly complete when Maria refused to let him come to her wedding. That is poetic justice." Nonetheless, when he comes around, Romilda still sets a place for Scicolone if he is hungry for a plate of pasta. That is merely poetic.