GINA LOLLOBRIGIDA, ONE OF THE FIRST BIKINI GIRL, DIES AT THE AGE OF 95.

In a previous article (https://bikiniandpompomgirls.blogspot.com/2020/12/the-most-beautiful-girl-in-world-to.html), we saw that after its creation, in 1946, by the French engineer Louis Réard, and the fashion designer Jacques Heim, the bikini, considered too daring for the mores of the time, did not know an immediate popular success.  It wasn't until the early 1950s, when movie stars like Brigitte Bardot and Gina Lollobrigida wore it, either in films, or posing for wide-ranging photos, that common women began to wear it timidly, and then increasingly in the 1960s.

Legendary diva Gina Lollobrigida died last week at the venerable age of 95.  Back in 1950, her photos showing her in a bikini played an important role in launching her great film career.  At the age of 20, in 1947, she studied at the School of Fine Arts in Rome.  To pay for her studies and bring home some money, after her family was ruined by the 39-45 war, she landed a few small roles in the cinema and she participated in beauty contests.

Her first big film contract will be granted to her by the renowned American producer Howard Hughes.  Falling under the spell of the young woman after seeing one of these photos where she poses in a bikini, Hughes brings her to Hollywood after signing her a contract.

Literally crazy about her body, of sculptural beauty, with voluptuous forms, he will lock her up for months in a Los Angeles hotel room.  Sometimes, during the night, he rents an orchestra, and he takes her out of the room to dance with her in the hotel restaurant.  Lollo, as she was later nicknamed, will eventually free herself from her confinement and she will participate in some American films.  For thirteen years, Hughes will try to seduce her.  In vain ...

Subsequently, Gina Lollobrigida will play the main roles (in 30 years she turned in more than sixty films) in cinematographic successes such as «Fanfan la Tulipe» (Best Director Award at the Cannes Film Festival in 1952), in which she plays a bohemian character fortune teller, alongside the formidable French actor Gérard Philipe.

The same year, she burst onto the screen in her role as Leila, in René Clair's famous film «Les Belles de Nuit».

In 1957, Gina Lollobrigida won a Bambis Award for Best Actress for her unforgettable role as Esmeralda in the film «Notre-Dame de Paris».

In 1959, her bewitching beauty reached a peak when she played the Queen of Sheba in the film «Solomon and the Queen of Sheba».  His partner, Yul Brynner, who plays King Solomon, is bewitched by the splendid Italian actress.  In scenes where the two actors kiss, they continue to do so even after the director shouts : «cut» !

Subsequently, her career faded somewhat when Sophia Loren, another Italian actress -another beauty queen- came to compete with her.  At first jealous of her new rival, Lollo will eventually make a great friend of her.

Provocative, characterized by her ember gaze reflecting her fiery temperament, she will go too far in 1966, in a new sketch film («The Dolls»), wearing outfits deemed too daring.  She was sentenced to two months in prison, but was fortunately amnestied.

In the 1970s, like Brigitte Bardot, she grew tired of cinema and became a photo journalist.  She also returned to her first love at the School of Fine Arts in Rome by devoting herself to sculpture and drawing.  She will explain that she began to make cinema by pure chance, and that she continued out of curiosity.

From her youth, she dreamed of being a painter.  Her goal was first and foremost to become a visual artist, but she did not regret her career in cinema.  A career that she considered very successful and satisfactory.

Like Bardot, too, at the beginning of her career, she will have the audacity to ask for an exorbitant fee (one million) to turn in films.  Launched as a joke, this immense request, unimaginable fortune for the time, will be accepted, to the great surprise of Gina !

Like Bardot, Lollobrigida will long be considered the most beautiful woman in the world.  Ambitious, she said she wanted to become a very great actress and she refused to be reduced to a status of sex symbol.

In her long and wonderful career, she played with the greatest actors of her time.  Marilyn Monroe will take Gina as a model and the Italian super star will influence her a lot by her advice.  It has been said that she "sculptured" the legendary American blonde actress.

Orson Welles, another great actor, director and producer, called Gina Lollobrigida : «the most fabulous woman in the world, the Queen».

The Italian novelist and journalist Alberto Moravia called her «the archetype of Italian female beauty».  Italians loved her so much that the used to say that she was the greatest discovery since the invention of spaghetti !

Gina Lollobrigida received many prizes and awards (more than 20) for her fabulous career, but the one that perhaps pleased her the most was the latest : her star on the Walk of Fame on Hollywood Boulevard, in Los Angeles, in 2018.  A kind of final consecration or crowning.  She received this ultimute honor with her characteristic exuberance.

Although Gina Lollobrigida married in 1949, at the age of 22, to a Yugoslav doctor named Milko Skofic, who became her manager, and divorced him in 1971 after giving him an only son, she later declared that her only regret in life was never meeting the soul mate.  Many of her countless admirers, for whom she was an extraordinary sexual fantasy, would certainly have liked to be that ideal lover she never found.

In 2017, in some od her latest public confidences, Lollo confessed to having suffered two sexual assaults in her youth.  Events that marked her character and that she was never able to erase from her memory and her being.

After her death on January 16, photographer Rino Barillari, a renowned Italian paparazzi, paid tribute to the late diva : «She was fashion, everyone imitated her.  A person like that will never be reborn.  It is not only a diva of the cinema who has left, but a real global star.  Gina Lollobrigida was something idescribable, everyone was losing their minds for her.  Damn beautiful and a feminity that has marked history».  Including the bikini story, I might add !

Here are some of the eternal looks of Gina Lollobrigida, in a montage on Giorgia's song «Quando Una Stella Muore» (When a Star Dies)...