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About Medford mail tribune. (Medford, Or.) 1909-1989 | View Entire Issue (June 9, 1963)
CLAUDIA CARDINALE: Stardom, Italian Style By PEER I. OPPENHEIMER FOR the first time in al most a decade, Italy has produced a smoldering beauty who is likely to become a world renowned personality like So phia Loren. She's brown-eyed and brown-haired, 23-year-old Claudia Cardinale. 1 n ri-J tit ! Si Ul U U U U U L-T-J o w 0 (II Ii n , . i -1 - more COntrOl: more rubber on the road gives you up to 20 better skid resistance ... for better steering, quicker stops. more COmfOrt: modern tread design plus larger air chamber gives a softer, smoother ride . . . minimizes road noise. more mileage : new tread design and new rubber compounds give the New Atlas Plycron Tire 25 more mileage. GvlraMteFllS7iii!lini NOW FROM ATLAS RESEARCH, tires that give you more because they put more rubber to work! Rigid laboratory and road tests (over 7,000,000 miles!) proved the superiority of New Atlas Plycron Tires. PLUS 2 QUICK-ACTION GUARANTEES! You choose the one that benefits you most Adjustments are prorated either on LIFE OF TREAD based on original tread depth remaining or num'wr of MONTHS IN USE since purchase date, and on current retail price at time and place of adjustment Either guarantee protects against damage incurred under normal driving conditions. Honored on the spot at more than 50,000 service stations in aH 50 states and Canada. Mm nycraa' Ittm MfM HttUHHUHUHIUIIIHIUHHHH Recently I visited Claudia in Italy, and naturally I was struck by her sultry Mediterranean loveliness. But oddly enough, she also reminded me of an early-day Debbie Reynolds. Claudia's straightforwardness, sim- When the choice is yours. ..choose U t Pa Off OIMJ Mm tmt C . ftewart 1. N J. ATLAS 551 iminnmimiataiH plicity, and innocence would be sur prising in Hollywood but in Rome it came as an absolute shock! This may not be accidental Claudia is the careful product of a resourceful Italian producer, Franco Cristaldi, who tutored and guided her with the utmost care and attention. Claudia first came to public atten tion four years ago when she won the title, "Most Beautiful Italian Girl," in her native Tunis in North Africa. (Ac tually, she is of French and Italian origin.) First prize was a trip to Ven ice, and there she was spotted by Cristaldi, who put her under contract six months later. When she returned to Italy, she brought along her entire family her father (a technical engineer), her mother, her younger sister, and her two brothers. Cristaldi installed them in one of his own villas, staffed with servants, a secretary, a publicist, and HitittmtMit n ii i f tit i tti it i mm 1 1 P lllllll lllfl I tllllll II t?l fit Itfl III til a chauffeur, and promptly enrolled Claudia in an acting school in Rome. The latter brought fierce resistance from hia protegee. "I stayed for a month," Claudia told me, "and then I quit I simply could not become a tree. rily Wwkl. Jut , IMJ MOVIES That's what they asked me to da grow and than fall and die like a tree. You call this the Method' in your country? I thought it was craxy." Reassured by the tremendous suc cess of her first picture, "Big Deal on Madonna Street," Cristaldi agreed that she could do without a for mal acting education. Subsequent events have proved him right; she has won critical acclaim in 21 films ' including "Bell' Antonio" opposite Marcello Mastroianni and "The Leo pard" opposite Burt Lancaster. She currently is starring in "The Pink Panther" with David Niven, Peter Sellers, and Robert Wagner. Claudia always had a mind of her own. As a teen-ager in Tunis, she was never allowed to go out by herself. "It just wasn't safe for young European girls," she recalls. "My parents were so concerned that when we were at our beach house, they had a servant girl sleep at the foot of my bed." But Claudia's stubbornness was ob vious to her parents at an early age. "When I was 15, it was fashionable Jto dress like a beatnik you know, with black pull-over, black skirt, pony tail, and all that But Mother refused to buy me black things, so I solved the problem by secretly dyeing a plaid skirt black and wearing it with a pull over, which I also dyed." Slanted eyes were in fashion, so Claudia pulled her eyes back every day. Since make-up was prohibited In the convent school she attended, (he made up her eyes and eyebrows with a lead pencil the moment she left school. Claudia's provincial upbringing hardly prepared her for interna tional stardom. So as his ft rut step, Cristaldi hired young woman from Greensboro, N.C., to be her tutor. Caroline Pfeiffer taught Claudia to speak almost flawless English, super vised her manners, and accompanied her on shopping trips. Even now, whenever Claudia leaves the housey she is accompanied either by a mem ber of her family or by Caroline. It seems hard to believe that a breath-takingly beautiful girl like Claudia could lead such a restricted life. I asked her about it when I visited her at the handsomely fur nished farmhouse outside Rome where she makes her home. "It's easy," she said with a smile. "When I'm not working, I spend one week a month in Paris. It's not hard to get lost in the crowd there." There was one question left in my mind before I said good-by. "Don't you want to get married?" "Someday, but not soon," she said without hesitation. "Does that mean you're too ambi tious now?" "If I weren't ambitious, I wouldn't be in pictures," she said frankly. So smart, so frank, and so beautiful; Move over, Sophia, Gina, and Brigitte. Pimlly WMkly. JaM . IMJ
