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only 49
struggle
for respectability
Sophia loren handed me a clipping
from an Italian newspaper while we
were having tea in her overstuffed Vic
torian apartment in Vienna, where "A
Breath of Scandal" was being filmed.
"This will spoil everything," she said.
The clipping reported that the Rome
attorney general had ordered formal
bigamy proceedings against Sophia and
her husband, producer Carlo Ponti, be
cause Italy didn't recognize Ponti's
Mexican divorce from his first wife.
"Would it mean a fine or a jail sen-;
tence?" I asked the voluptuous, green
eyed young woman who had risen from
the slums of Naples to become a film
star of international repute.
Sophia tried hard to suppress her
tears. "I don't care what they do to me!"
she replied. "All I want is to be recog
nized as Mrs. Carlo Ponti. All my life
I've fought to be respectable, and I never
seem to make the grade!"
Sophia's fight for respectability dates
back to her childhood in Pozzuoli, a vil
lage near Naples. She remembers how
other children used to call her ugly
names that she didn't understand. All
she knew was that her father was never
around.
Sophia has only seen her father three
times twice as a youngster, the last
time in 1955. And then only because
his wife tried to have Sophia's sister
denied the use of their father's name.
The constant teasing by other chil
dren made Sophia shy and unsure of
herself. "Most of the time I just wanted
to hide," she recalls.
When Sophia was seven and Italy
- r - r.--' v m ah- i t -- tm
Peasant-girl Sophia Loren, shown on the set of "A Breath of Scandal," was made a
star by her balding husband. Carlo Ponti. He couldn't make her a lady, though.
joined Germany in the war against the
Allies, her own lot became easier. For
once she had something in common with
others even if it was hardships, bomb
ing attacks, and malnutrition.
She was a hungry 10-year-old when
Gen. Mark Clark's forces entered Na
ples. She remembers how eagerly
she grabbed the chocolate bars and
C-rations of friendly GIs. But while So
phia was grateful for the food, she hated
having to accept charity.
It soon became an obsession with her
to find a job that would make her inde
pendent "My only real friend was my
science teacher; I wanted to follow in
her footsteps and become a teacher, too."
Indirectly, the teacher was responsible
for Sophia's career. "I always thought
of myself as an ugly girl," she admits.
Her friend's insistence that she was
beautiful encouraged her to enter a
Naples beauty contest when she was 15.
She won second prize, and sufficient
confidence to give up her teaching am
bitions and move to Rome to try for a
career as an actress.
Sophia made the rounds of the movie
studios every day, taking on modeling
jobs to support herself and her mother
and pay for drama lessons.
It was Carlo Ponti who discovered So
phia when she entered another beauty
contest in which he was a judge. He in
troduced her to a director-friend who
gave her a bit part in a movie.
"Carlo instinctively sensed what I
wanted most," she told me. "Naturally
I wanted financial security. But most
of all, I wanted to be accepted socially."
Sophia's first aim was compara
tively easy to achieve. With Poiti
master-minding her career, her third
year as an actress, 1955, was known in
Italy as "The Year of Sophia." Since
then he has managed to make her an
international star and to increase their
joint fortune to a reported $10,000,000
safely stored away in Swiss banks. Her
other objective to be accepted socially
was a little harder to accomplish.
"All the odds were against me," she
insists. "I didn't speak properly, not even
Italian. I didn't know how to dress, eat,
or carry on a conversation."
Ponti set out to correct the situation.
One noon they were lunching in one
of Rome's better restaurants when he
Family Weekly, January 10. 1960