Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television

Vol. 26, No. 3, August 2006, pp. 327340

ELSA MARTINELLI: ITALYS AUDREY HEPBURN

Reka Buckley

A slender young woman, with dark hair and large dark feline-shaped eyes hurries
along the streets of Rome in one of the opening scenes of Mario Monicellis film
Donatella (1956). Her beige-coloured mackintosh is drawn tightly together with a
belt, emphasising yet further her slim, androgynous figure, in much the same way as
Audrey Hepburn would be remembered some five years later in one of the final
scenes of Breakfast at Tiffanys (1961). She stops occasionally to gaze in at the shop
windows brimming with expensive consumer goods, able only to dream of such
luxuries. Good fortune, however, comes her way in the form of a wealthy American
womans handbag left lying on the roadside. The honesty of the young woman, who
returns the handbag, intact, is rewarded with the American heiress offering the young
Donatella (Elsa Martinelli) employment as the guardian of her home while she is away
in the US for six weeks. Donatella thus enters into a world of beautiful clothes (which
she has at her disposition), fabulous bubble baths, fast cars, a chauffeur, maids and a
card of free entry into 1950s Roman high society.
One evening, a male friend of the American heiress invites Donatella to a
fashionable party, and it is here that she metamorphoses from Cinders into Cinderella.
As she descends the magnificent staircase of the beautiful palazzo, her elegance and
model-like demeanour transfix both her escort and the audience. She is dressed in a
sumptuous, heavily surface-decorated ample-skirted dress, with perfectly applied
make-up, immaculately coiffed hair decorated with a diamante head-dress, long white
gloves and a fur stole draped around her shoulders. And once again, the audience is
reminded of a similar transformationthrough the use of clothes, make-up, hairstyle
and accessoriesof the character played by Audrey Hepburn in the earlier film
Sabrina (1954), where upon her return from Paris she undergoes a similar
metamorphosis to Donatella.

Correspondence: Reka Buckley, School of Creative Arts, Film and Media, University of
Portsmouth, St. Georges Building, 141 High St., Portsmouth, Hampshire, PO1 2DZ, UK.
E-mail: reka.buckley@port.ac.uk

ISSN 0143-9685 (print)/ISSN 1465-3451 (online)/06/03032714 ! 2006 IAMHIST & Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/01439680600799298
328 HISTORICAL JOURNAL OF FILM, RADIO AND TELEVISION

Elsa Martinelli was one of Italys major stars in the 1950s, yet today is largely
forgotten. Sometimes referred to as Italys Audrey Hepburn,1 Martinelli was the
antithesis of the dominant image of the 1950s maggiorata (physically well-endowed)
star. Gamine, slim and elegant, Martinelli was at the forefront of a new image of the
more modern, urban woman to emerge in Italian cinema as a direct contrast to such
shapely stars as Silvana Mangano, Silvana Pampanini, Gina Lollobrigida and Sophia
Loren.2
The alternatives to this type of voluptuous femininity were mainly foreign and
embodied by stars such as Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn and Deborah Kerr. These
were stylish, elegant and highly feminine women; the type of woman that ordinary
Italian women could associate with and aspire to. However, there were a few figures in
Italy in the 1950s who were close to this foreign model of femininity. Elsa Martinelli
was one such example.
In order to examine Martinelli as an alternative model of femininity available in
the Italian cinema of the 1950s, attention will focus on three key areas: Martinellis
film career, elegance and fashion, and how Martinelli was distinctive with respect
to both the maggiorata stars and Audrey Hepburn. Particular stress will be placed on
the contribution that Martinelli made, with her unconventional lifestyle, to the
construction in Italy of a modern urban culture that was not just prosperous but also
less restrictive, especially for women.

Elsa Martinellis film career

Italian cinema in the late 1940s to mid-1950s was populated with buxom beauties who
had largely emerged through the beauty pageants of the immediate post-war years.
Silvana Pampanini, Silvana Mangano, Gina Lollobrigida and Sophia Loren, to name
just four, had all attracted the attention of members of the jury (composed largely of
people from the world of Italian cinema) at the regional and national finals of the Miss
Italy contest; all had achieved success in their national cinema. Their beauty, youth and
shapeliness had marked a complete break with Fascism and Fascist cinema, where the
stars of the White Telephone filmsa name used to describe the escapist comedies
made during the Fascist period, which tended to focus on the foibles of upper-class life
symbolised by the white telephone in the boudoirhad largely been blonde, aloof and
foreign-looking. At a time when Italy had only just renounced its monarchy, in the
1946 referendum, and was trying to escape the legacy of Fascism and military defeat,
there was a need for a new sense of national identity that broke with the past. The
young, shapely and beautiful women, through their screen roles and private lives,
became symbols of a new, developing and consumer-orientated Italy.3
Many of the new faces of Italian cinema in the post-war decade were requiredin
the early stages of their careersto play peasant-type roles, which emphasised their
opulent physiques and which rendered them as poor, highly spirited, fiery and overtly
sexy women. Riso amaro (Bitter Rice, 1949)which told the tale of a young seasonal
rice-weeder enticed by consumerism and Americaunexpectedly became the star
vehicle for the 1947 winner of the Miss Rome beauty contest, Silvana Mangano. Her
shorts and tight-fitting V-necked sweater, which showcased her curvaceous body,
turned Mangano into a star. Similarly, Pane, amore e fantasia (1953) brought one of the
 ELSA MARTINELLI: ITALYS AUDREY HEPBURN 329

runners up of the Miss Italia 1947 contest to international stardom. A tale about the
day-to-day lives of villagers of Saglieno, a small imaginary village set in the mountains
of the Abruzzo region of southern Italy in the immediate post-war period, Pane, amore
e fantasia tells the story of four characters: the sheriff of Saglieno (Vittorio De Sica);
the beautiful, but poorest young woman of the village, La Bersagliera (Gina
Lollobrigida); the young carabiniere, Stelluti, from the north of Italy who has been
drafted to Saglieno for his military servicewhere he falls in love with the
Bersagliera; and finally, the Sheriffs love interest, the mysterious Annarella, the
local midwife. This film and its sequel, Pane, amore e gelosia (1954), saw the young
Gina Lollobrigida squeezed into figure-hugging rags and titillating audiences world-
wide.4 Sophia Lorenelected Miss Elegance in the finals of the 1950 Miss Italia
beauty pageantstarred in Mario Soldatis rural drama La donna del fiume (1956), in
which she played an unwed mother who was forced to seek work as a seasonal reed-
cutter along the River Po delta in order to maintain her young son. Once again,
attention is drawn to the womanly curves of Lorens body, as she stands thigh-deep in
water, clad in tight-fitting shorts, shirt and a high elasticised belt to set off her narrow
waist and ample bosom. These rural dramas acted as a rite of passage, which many of
the new Italian actresses of the post-war period had to experience. A passage that
involved an emphasis on the body and the physicality of the young women.5
Elsa Martinelli, born in Grosetto in 1935, was also a beauty pageant winner who
was elected Miss Le Ore 1954. She became a professional model at the age of 16 and
subsequently entered the world of Italian cinema. Tall, slim, flat-chested and waiflike,
she was the antithesis of the buxom stars of the 1950s. More akin to Audrey Hepburn,
she represented poise and style and not a peasant-like, earthy, voluptuous beauty.6 For
this reason, cinema did not first appear as a realistic option for her. In an interview
with a journalist, Martinelli said: They did ten screen-tests of me: ten you know? All
of them failures. They arent interested in me. Im of no value to them as an actress.
Perhaps its because I am too flat-chested!7
Unlike her Italian contemporaries, Martinelli made her debut in Hollywood, not
Cinecitta.8 Thanks to a photograph in Life magazine, in which her slim figure and regal
and aloof beauty were put into evidence, Martinelli caught the eye of the Hollywood
star and producer, Kirk Douglas. So impressed was he with her image that he
contacted Martinelli personally and asked her to play the female lead and his co-star in
Indian Fighter (1955),9 in which she was cast as his love interest, a Red Indian girl.
It was only following the success of her Hollywood debut that Martinelli
eventually received her break in Italian cinemawith the film La risaia (1956), a re-
working of Riso amaroabout a young illegitimate girl who finds employment as a
seasonal rice-weeder and who, in the process, discovers love, tragedy and her father.
This opportunity arose because, in the meantime, she had become famous as a cover
girl and had acquired experience in Hollywood. But the fact that Martinelli, as a young
woman more used to fashion shoots than rice paddies, was also constrained to pass
through the rural film genre at the beginning of her Italian film career, dressed in tight
shorts and long shorn-off black stockings, serves to highlight, once more, the
significance of rural dramas in the early careers of Italys post-war actresses. However,
unlike many of her shapely contemporaries, Martinelli seemed out of place in such a
casting. As Roberto Campari intimates even when she works in the fields, [. . .],
Martinelli looks like she has just stepped out of Vogue. [. . .] as a woman of the people,
330 HISTORICAL JOURNAL OF FILM, RADIO AND TELEVISION

in fact, Martinelli would be hard to believe [. . .].10 Furthermore, it was a role in

which Martinelli herself did not feel comfortable and to which she felt ill-suited.11
Martinelli also made a number of other successful Italian films in the late 1950s
besides the aforementioned Donatella, most notably La notte brava (1959), in which she
convincingly portrayed a foul-mouthed, yet warm-hearted, Roman prostitute,
co-starring alongside a host of other leading lights of Italian cinema of the period,
including: Rosanna Schiaffino, Antonella Lualdi, Anna Maria Ferrero and Franco
Interlenghi. She also appeared in the light-hearted but poignant film Costa Azzurra
(1959) in the role of Doriana, the young kept mistress of a wealthy and much older
businessman, who falls in love with a younger, but poorer man. When given the
choice between love and poverty or a life of luxury without love, Doriana opts for the
latter saying that she never wishes to experience the poverty that she had suffered
during and in the immediate aftermath of the war in Italy. Here Martinellis character
represents the desire for prosperity and a world of consumerism, and consequently
a move away from the memories of the immediate post-war period in Italy.
Martinellis unconventional figure combined with the fact that she lacked the
backing of a powerful male figure in Italian cinema prevented her film career from
progressing as she had hoped. Many of the more significant actresses of the period had
personal relationships with producers: Sophia Loren with Carlo Ponti, Silvana
Mangano with Dino De Laurentiis, Claudia Cardinale with Franco Cristaldi and
Rosanna Schiaffino with Alfredo Bini. Martinelli herself has confirmed this:

[. . .] Loren, Mangano, Schiaffino and Claudia Cardinale, after their debuts in sexy
roles which concentrated on their busty charms had, by now, the support of their
men, who were important and powerful producers who imposed their women
onto the market. They were offered the best scripts by the most celebrated
scriptwriters, in films directed by the best directors. With the exception of Gina
Lollobrigida who, irrespective of her physical attributes, managedall on her
ownto carve out a career for herself and to achieve a vast international
following, [. . .] without the aid of a producer to support one, [. . .] there was
little hope for anyone else. At that time, whilst Schiaffino was busy making Rosis
beautiful film La sfida and Cardinale was appearing in Monicellis I soliti ignoti,
Loren had already established herself internationally, as had Mangano. As such I
had no chance of getting my hands on a good script, or on a good role. This was
the reality of the situation then!12

As a result, Martinelli was forced to work mostly outside of Italy,13 appearing in

French productions such as Roger Vadims racey vampire drama Blood and Roses
(1960), in which she appeared as a lesbian vampire, co-starring with Catherine
Deneuve. Martinelli made a number of Hollywood films and co-starred with some of
Americas biggest stars, including the aforementioned Kirk Douglas, John Wayne,
Robert Mitchum, Richard Burton and Charlton Heston, and was highly sought after
by film directors like Orson Welles, Henry Hathaway and Howard Hawks.
It was her Hollywood films that defined the roles that best suited her and which
subsequently influenced the parts that she went on to play in Italian movies. In
Hollywood productions, she was often cast as an Italian. Her nationality was usually
referred to in passing, but not dwelt upon, (for example in Rampage where Martinellis
 ELSA MARTINELLI: ITALYS AUDREY HEPBURN 331

characterAnnabriefly reveals her Italian origins to Robert Mitchum whilst on

board her lovers private jet), as was the case with Gina Lollobrigida where 11 out of
12 of her Hollywood films (between the period 19531967) saw her play Italians and
where her national specificity was usually an integral part of the films story line.14
Martinelli, on the other hand, appeared as the most cosmopolitan of all the Italian
stars of her generation. Furthermore, she was often cast as a professional woman. For
example, she was a photographer for a Swiss zoo on safari in Tanganyika in Hatari
(1962); in Maroc 7 (1967) she was a fashion model. Martinelli was an active presence
in films and never merely ornamental. What her Hollywood films showed was that
Martinelli was far different to the young woman working in the rice paddies in La
risaia. Instead, she was a sophisticated, modern, urban cosmopolitan woman with an
air of elegance and a sense of style.

Elegance and fashion

Elsa Martinelli was the first Italian actress to successfully merge the worlds of fashion
and film, in much the same way as Audrey Hepburn did in Hollywood. This derived
from her own background.
The international dimension in Martinellis career was established early. In fact,
she was only 16 years old when she started modelling. At 17, she went
unaccompanied to the USA as a freelance model. As a freelance, Martinelli was
able to have a greater say over her public image and her choice of modelling
assignments and she was not limited to one fashion house alone. Furthermore, the fact
that she went to the US unaccompanied demonstrates an early independent
personality. This carefree, unconventional approach was to become one of her
hallmarks. Alberto Ongaro suggests that:

at that age, only the precocious adventurers, or fallen girls or those destined to
fall from grace would dare to be so foolish as to leave their own homes and to
transfer themselves to another country and into a completely alien environment
[. . .]. From then on her name was associated with all that was controversial, new
and without scruples [. . .].15

Martinelli fast became one of the most successful models internationally and her
image appeared in magazines such as Vogue, Bellezza, Harpers Bazaar, Life, and Esquire.16
She was photographed by the top photographers of the day, including Richard Avedon,
Irving Penn, Bill Hepburn, Horst, and Lillian Bassman.17 In an era when only a few
models were known by name, Martinelli was one of them. As she recounts in her
autobiography:

In those years weekly current events magazines such as Oggi, La Settimana Incom,
and Settimo Giorno had a large readership and fashion spreads became a staple diet
for them. There was also a desire to discover new personalities at this time and,
from what I could gather from what was being written about me in the
magazines, I understood that I was really going to become someone as a photo
332 HISTORICAL JOURNAL OF FILM, RADIO AND TELEVISION

model when my name was cited in the fashion spreadssomething that rarely
occurred with models. I began to be referred to as La Martinelli.18

Not only, therefore, did she adorn the pages of countless magazines, but she also
aroused considerable interest in her private life. Mention of her was often made in
gossip columns and even whole articles were dedicated to her. Life magazine, for
example, put Martinelli on its front cover in 1956 and included a fourfive page
article (with further images) on her.19
This unconventional aspect distinguished Martinelli from Hepburn. But the link
with the fashion world was an important point that they had in common. Both
actresses became the muses of influential fashion designers. Hepburns lengthy
association with Hubert De Givenchy for both her on and off-screen wardrobes is well
known. Martinellis place as an international icon of the fashion world was established
by her links with the young and talented Roman fashion designer, Roberto Capucci.
Martinelli acknowledged Capucci as having been responsible, in part, for creating her
look. As one journalist confirmed as an aside in an interview with Martinelli in
1956: [. . .] the young Roman designer was, for a long time, her best teacher. From
him she learnt how to apply make-up to her eyes to make them felinesque, following
in the line of the fashion that Audrey Hepburn would later launch on-screen. She
learnt from him how to hold herself, how to smile, and how to walk as a real
model.20
Martinellis elegance and refined appearance were often referred to. For example
the French photographer (who was later to became her second husband), Willy Rizzo,
believed Martinelli to be The most elegant woman around, claiming that she
incarnated the ideal of refinement that a few years earlier had been represented by the
model Suzy Parker.21 It was this elegance and poise that made her ideal to star in
fashion films (i.e. films where fashion was fundamental to the storyline) which
became increasingly popular in Italy from the mid-1950s onwards.
Donatella (1956) was Martinellis most successful film. A modern-day Cinderella
tale, it showed the evolution of the female character, Donatella (played by Martinelli),
through fashion. As Roberto Campari suggests:

Donatella [. . . was] a sort of Sabrina Made in Italy, a Cinderella story where the
sudden change of class (and hence the possibility of marrying the prince) takes
place chiefly through a variation of dress [. . .]. Wilders film boasts Audrey
Hepburn and the myth of French fashion (she returns from Paris smartly dressed
and, although shes the chauffeurs daughter, succeeds in wooing the young
master); Monicellis features Martinelli and an unidentified high fashion.

He goes on to say: [In Donatella], as in Sabrina, the evolution of the female character
[who finds a wealthy bachelor to replace her gas station attendant boyfriend] is mainly
a question of look, of glittering evening gowns that replace the sad sweaters and
simple dresses of the trasteverina.22 This issue of look was informed by Martinellis
off-screen persona. Due to her earlier career as a fashion model, she was the most
fashionable person in Italian cinema in the 1950s and set the trend, followed later by
other actresses, of heavy, feline dark kohl-rimmed eyes. She carried her own personal
 ELSA MARTINELLI: ITALYS AUDREY HEPBURN 333

style and beauty tricks into the films in which she starred. Undoubtedly, she was
responsible for closing the gap between the world of fashion and film.
There is an issue of authorship of the clothes worn by Martinelli in Donatella.
Though Campari states that the costumes for the film were designed by Piero
Gherardi, one of Italys most notable costume designers, Martinelli claims that her
personal outfits were designed, as a special favour to her, by Roberto Capucci (while
Gherardi designed the costumes for the rest of the film). The designer received
neither pay nor credit in the titles for his creation of some of the most beautiful
costumes showcased in Italian cinema in the mid-1950s.23 Capuccis collaboration
with Martinelli here reveals the extent to which Martinelli was personally responsible
for drawing together the worlds of Italian fashion and film in the 1950s, something
that would become more commonplace as the decade unfolded.
In Vittorio Salas film Costa Azzurra (1959) Martinelli is a fashionable, well-
groomed woman whose elegance and poise belie her more ordinary background. In
Maroc 7 (1967), she plays a murderous and deceptive fashion model. Throughout the
film, the audience is treated to scenes of the actress at work as a model. Her
professionalism in this field is exhibited through the numerous and varied costumes
that she must wear for the shoots as well as her dexterity at manipulating her facial
expressions and body. A journalist once suggested in an article that Martinelli was
known for her unpredictable poses and above all for her exceptional photographic
quality, saying: I have never seen a woman able to transform herself and adopt so
many different expressions in so little time.24 Once again, therefore, Martinelli was
able to merge these two worlds of fashion and film, in this instance making the fashion
world itself the focus of the spectacle. Martinellis elegance drew her closer to a
symbol of a type of aristocratic appeal that industrial civilisation has never
renounced.25
In much the same way as her character in Donatella, Martinellis real life appeared
to be a fairytale. Born into a modest family, she became a highly paid model and then a
film star and then finally married not a prince, but a CountFranco Mancinelli
Scottiwho was related to the deposed Italian monarchy. At a time when Italy had
only recently witnessed the end of its monarchy (in the 1946 referendum), the notion
of nobility still had the aura of social distinction. In the early 1950s, Italian women had
been enchanted by Audrey Hepburn as the princess in Roman Holiday (1954).
Martinellis personal life fulfilled a similar popular dream with Italian women at the
time. At such a moment when Italy was undergoing social and economic changes, the
possibility of progressing socially was a dream that many aspired to and which
Martinelli publicly demonstrated was possible.
Martinelli was also significant in challenging notions of Italian femininity in the
1950s. In her article, Piera de Tassis argues that, although a transformation occurred
in the ideal of femininity towards slimmer, more elegant models of womanhood, that
it was in fact the maggiorate (full-figured) stars who continued to offer the most
successful, and most widely accepted, image of femininity in Italy during the decade.26
This view can be disputed for, while it was the maggiorate such as Lollobrigida,
Pampanini and Loren who were the most notable Italian stars of the 1950s, they too,
upon reaching fame aimed to transform their appearance in line with an elegant ideal.
They did this through dieting and through the refinement of their image in terms of
their clothes, their make-up and their hairstyles. This was evident not only off-screen,
334 HISTORICAL JOURNAL OF FILM, RADIO AND TELEVISION

but also in the urban dramas in which they increasingly starred. They were not alone
in preferring a more slim-line figure than in their earlier rural dramas. They were
joined by other actresses like Eleonora Rossi-Drago, Lucia Bose and Silvana Mangano,
whose images also underwent radical changes from their appearances in rural dramas.
The introduction of an ex-fashion model, Martinelli, into Italian cinema in the
mid-1950s demonstrates most vividly, however, the importance of this new trend
whereby femininity was defined through elegance and thinness and not through the
more opulent curves of the maggiorata bodies. The more androgynous lines of the
slight figure of Martinelli illustrated a new path for Italian femininity in the 1950s. De
Tassis seems to believe that Martinellis emergence and the transformation of Bose and
Mangano was merely an anticipation of what was to come in the 1960s. This is not
entirely correct. By the mid-1950s, the change in the representation of women on
screen was already well underway. The elegance of the thinner actresses coupled with
the refinement of the images of the maggiorata stars illustrated that the more aloof,
aristocratic look was already the principal model in operation at the time. Perhaps the
most significant example of this lies in the fact that when the maggiorata stars appeared
in fashion films, as was the case with Lollobrigida in La provinciale (1953) and Loren
in La fortuna di essere donna (1956), the question of their transformation is raised. In the
first film a slimmer, more polished Lollobrigida is introduced, while in the second,
Lorens character must undergo the refinement process if she hopes to become
successful. What better evidence is this then that the refined model of femininity was
already the leading one by the second half of the 1950s?27
The refinement of the image of the stars had important consequences in terms of
rendering their image more material and imitable. A key area in which Italian stars
broadened their public image and also earned considerable sums of money was by
endorsing products. Martinelli, Lollobrigida, Virna Lisi and Rossana Podesta all
endorsed various products at this time. Moreover, they often appeared in
advertisements sporting pearl necklaces. The significance of pearls, as opposed to
diamonds or other such similar precious stones, lay in their long-standing association
with established, refined taste.

The distinctive profile of Elsa Martinelli

On-screen, Elsa Martinelli combined the qualities of cool, calm, elegant femininity
with the feisty, fiery temperament associated with the buxom Italian stars of her
generation. Off-screen, she set herself apart from both the Italian maggiorata stars, as
well as Audrey Hepburn, in terms of her public profile. Publicly, Hepburn appeared
demure, not rebellious and not outspoken. In other words, she presented herself as a
conformist. By the same token, many of the new stars of Italian cinema attempted to
adhere to certain traditional behavioural models.28 Most of these stars tried not to be
too outspoken in their views and opinions. By contrast, Martinelli was well known for
her rebellious, independent and outspoken nature. As Nazareno Fabbretti intimated:
Elsa has always said what she thought: whether it be on naked women, free love,
marriage, or divorce.29 In an article entitled Elsa Martinelli anticipated feminism in
her own life the journalist Giulia Borgese wrote of the actress: Had she limited
herself to living according to her own principles, her ideas would not have caused such
 ELSA MARTINELLI: ITALYS AUDREY HEPBURN 335

a great scandal, after all she wasnt the only one to do so in those first, distant years
between the end of the 1950s and the beginning of the 1960s. The fact was, however,
that she didnt miss an opportunity to shoot off her ideas in lengthy articles written by
some of the most famous journalists of the time, such as Alberto Ongaro, Oriana
Fallaci, and Paul Bodin.30 Fabbretti found Martinellis frankness refreshing in a time
when other actresses tended to keep any unconventional opinions to themselves.
However, Martinellis sincerity sometimes landed her in trouble. Once, when asked
what she detested, the stars candid reply was that she hated poor people, sick
people, hypocrites and winter sports. According to Fabretti: other stars thought like
her, if not worse than her, but they would never have admitted to it, at any cost, in
order save their careers.31
It was not only Martinellis forthright opinions, but her position on controversial
subject matters that marked her out as quite different to many of her fellow Italian
actresses in the 1950s and 1960s. She openly tackled the sensitive subjects of
premarital sex and sex in general, marriage and divorce, womens liberation, and the
equality of the sexes in Italian society. Martinelli, to a certain extent, could be
accredited with anticipating the permissive society in Italy. She spoke out publicly in
favour of pre-marital sex for women and Borgese even makes the claim in her article
that it was Martinelli in fact who was above all the first person to suggest to young
lovers that they should not waste time . . . in lengthy courting rituals, that in fact
virginity was made in order to be lost.32 This was viewed as shocking at a time when
female sexuality was still rigidly controlled. As Marta Boneschi explains: a clear
distinction divided the two worlds of the virgins and good girls from that of the
non-virgins, or fallen girls.33 She suggests, with reference to articles published in
contemporary 1950s magazines, that: In 1959 virginity was still a social obligation
over and above a personal choice. It was a matter of the most precious possession
that a young girl can offer the man that she loves. She should never be able to
compare me to another man traditional men affirm, scared of competition and
uncertain of their own virility.34 By contrast, it was felt that if a man had a little
experience prior to his marriage it was positive.35 This double standard has also been
highlighted by Stephen Gundle, who writes: As far as mens behaviour is concerned,
they could do whatever they liked, but in general (with the exception only of the most
forward-thinking sectors of the educated middle-class) it was expected that
respectable women or unmarried girls adhered to the strictest of social codes of
conduct.36 Elsa Martinellis deviation from the generally accepted model of female
behaviour and her open declaration of her own abortion and sexual experiences prior
to her first marriage can be found in her autobiography.37 She was married at the age
of 22 (in 1958), separated by the time she was 24 years old and lived together with
Willy Rizzo for a number of years before eventually marrying him in 1965. She spoke
out against the fact that Italy failed to allow divorce and openly declared her
agreement with the idea of the piccolo divorzio (mini-divorce), which allowed divorce
to take place on highly specific grounds.38
At a time when Italys legal system continued to differentiate between the legal
position of husbands and wives, Martinelli spoke out in favour of a greater sense of
judicial equality. This was courageous in a conservative society. In 1953, the Appeals
Court of Florence still considered it cause for prosecution if a bride failed to mention
to her future husband that she had lost her virginity prior to her marriage.
336 HISTORICAL JOURNAL OF FILM, RADIO AND TELEVISION

This constituted a grave injustice and justified separation. Ten years later, in 1963, the
Appeals Court was still shown to be understanding towards a husband who kept silent
about his impotence prior to his marriage, while two years later, in 1965, it proved
particularly severe with a wife who had failed to reveal the fact that she was sterile
prior to her marriage.39 Furthermore, up until 1968 adultery committed by a wife
was considered, legally, more grave than that carried out by a husband, and they were
even tried under different laws. The man was only prosecuted if he were to make his
lover into a concubine and bring her into the family home, or to support her in a
house other than the one in which his wife and family lived. By contrast, adulterous
women could even be sent to jail. This had occurred with Giulia Occhini, a married
mother of two who made the mistake of falling in love and having an affair with Fausto
Coppi, the national cycling champion. Divorce first became legal in 1970 and the law
was confirmed in a hotly contested referendum in 1974.40
In what was still a greatly traditional, patriarchal society, Martinelli was one of the
beacons challenging the old, and arguing in favour of greater equality and rights for
women in Italy. One such area was the use of contraceptives. When interviewed in
1966 by Paul Bodin, the Italian star was asked whether she agreed with the use of the
contraceptive pill, which had only recently appeared on the market and was vigorously
resisted by the Church. Martinelli replied: If the pill doesnt present any of the bad
side-effects that one is currently hearing about, such as loss of hair or more dangerous
side-effects, then of course I would be in favour of it!41 The question of side-effects
were her only concern; moral questions posed at the time were viewed as irrelevant if
it meant that a woman could enjoy a full sexual life without the worry of becoming
pregnant should she not wish to be.

Development and decline

Elsa Martinelli was one of the most notable members of Romes Dolce vita in the
1950s and 1960s as well as being part of the new international jet set of the period.
She was friends with some of the most prominent names of the day, from Frank
Sinatra to Brigitte Bardot and Roger Vadim, from Irving Penn and Diana Vreeland to
John Kennedy and Aristotle Onassis. She was at the heart of what was new, trendy and
stylish. She was equally a part of the emergence of Italian haute couture in the 1950s
as she was a part of Flower Power and Go-go girls fashion of the 1960s.
The 1960s was the most prolific period of her acting career when she appeared
in some 33 films, including Hatari (1962); Orson Welles film The VIPs (1963), which
also starred Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton; the sci-fi adventure La decima vittima
(1965), co-starring alongside Marcello Mastroianni and Ursula Andress; as a
murderous fashion model in Maroc 7 (1967); and in the leading role as the male-
dressing, cigar-smoking outlaw, Belle Starr, in Lina Wertmullers spaghetti western
style film The Belle Starr Story (1968). But as the decade drew to a close, Martinellis
roles became less and less substantial, and often she took parts as a secondary or more
minor character. By the 1970s, her prolific acting period was over, as she made just
three relatively forgettable films. Since then, she has made only a few other minor
appearances in films and television series. She did not have the dramatic talent,
nor indeed the powerful producer backing her that some of her contemporaries had.
 ELSA MARTINELLI: ITALYS AUDREY HEPBURN 337

As such, the daring, elegant figure who had adorned the pages of some of the worlds
most prominent magazines in the 1950s, and went on to become a highly recognisable
international celebrity and outspoken advocate of womens rights was largely
forgotten by succeeding generations. She had neither the permanent star status of
Loren and Lollobrigida, who were also fundamental models of Italian national identity
in the 1950s, nor did she possess the iconic status that Audrey Hepburn achieved
(in particular since her death in 1993). Where once Martinelli acted as a beacon of
style and cutting-edge views, she later became outdated. Magazine articles that
occasionally appear about hersuch as Cesare Cunaccias article in Italian Vogue
dedicated to Martinellis elegance (September 2003)now constantly pay homage to
her place as a model in the 1950s and as a key member of Italys dolce vita, as well as
to her outspoken nature. However, all this is consigned to the past and her role is
reduced to that of witness.
Yet while the magnitude of Martinellis stardom was never equal to that of her
contemporary, Sophia Loren, she marked a key moment in Italys transition to
modernity. In addition, she was the most significant figure in drawing together the
world of Italian fashion and Italian film. She also acted, with her outspoken views and
liberated lifestyle, as a harbinger of Italys difficult transition to a more prosperous and
permissive society. The historical analysis of the conflicts through which this transition
occurred have highlighted the role of patriarchal forces and social movements.42
However, celebrities also made a significant contribution. By linking tolerant
permissive views with a certain elitist elegance, Martinelli did not just help to displace
conservative social mores from their dominant position in Italian society. She also
provided a means whereby style and liberal views could be used to bolster a new
configuration of power after 1968 and the divorce referendum of 1974. This gave her
a social relevance in Italy that Hepburn would never have, in Italy or elsewhere. But it
would also limit her to a phase that, while important, was also relatively brief.

Notes
1 See Stefano Masi and Enrico Lancia, Stelle dItalia: Piccole e grandi divi del cinema
italiano dal 1945 al 1968 (Rome, Gremese, 1989), 7980, at 80. Martinelli also
makes a comparison between Hepburn and herself in her autobiography: I was by
nowaccording to the reports in the papersthe Italian answer to Audrey
Hepburn who with Roman Holiday had managed to usurp the model of the
maggiorata (physically well-endowed woman), Elsa Martinelli, Sono come sono:
Dalla dolce vita e ritorno (Milan, Rusconi, 1995), 57.
2 Martinelli claims that They [articles in newspapers] also referred to me as
Cinderella with the doe-like eyes, alternatively they would write: Enough with
the maggiorate. A new look has been born with Elsa Martinelli. The stick-thin
woman has arrived, Sono come sono, 57.
3 For a further discussion of this, see Reka Buckley, The Female Film Star in Postwar Italy
(19481960) (Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of London, 2002). See also
Stephen Gundle, Feminine Beauty, national identity and political conflict in postwar
Italy, 19451954, Contemporary European History, 8 (3) (1999), 359378.
338 HISTORICAL JOURNAL OF FILM, RADIO AND TELEVISION

4 For a more in-depth assessment of the early stages of Gina Lollobrigidas film
career, see Reka Buckley, National body: Gina Lollobrigida and the cult of the star
in the 1950s, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 20(4) (2000), 527547,
at 528532.
5 For a further analysis of this, see Reka Buckley, The Female Film Star in Postwar Italy
(19481960), Chapter 2: Eroticised bodies in the landscape, 72117.
6 See notes 1 and 2.
7 E.L., Elsa Martinelli: Da Trastevere a Hollywood, la lunga strada verso il successo
della ragazza che in Italia non riusciva a fare del cinema, Bolero Film (2 December
1956), 1617.
8 Martinelli recounts a conversation with Renzino Avanzo, brother-in-law of Luchino
Visconti and the then Director of Technicolor, about the reason for Martinellis
offer of her first film role in Italian cinema. Avanzo: They want you because you
have made a film in Hollywood and everyone is talking about you [this refers to
Indian Fighter]. Its a tall story but you have really got nothing to do with that role
[. . .]. Avanzo continued: [. . .] But its on the back of your name alone that they
have already managed to sell the film abroad, Ibid., 160.
9 Ibid., 142.
10 Roberto Campari, Film and fashion, in Gloria Bianchino et al. (eds) Italian Fashion:
the origins of high fashion and knitwear (Milan, Electra, 1987), 198211, at 209.
11 Martinelli writes in her autobiography of her inadequacy (in terms of her look) for
the role as a rice-weeder: Physically I was about as unsuited as a cauliflower served
at afternoon tea, Sono come sono, 160.
12 See Martinelli, Ibid., 182.
13 See Lucherini cited in Martinelli, Ibid., 181182.
14 See Reka Buckley, The Female Film Star in Postwar Italy (19481960), 143.
15 Alberto Ongaro, La ragazza controcorrente, originally published in LEuropeo
(1967), republished in LEuropeo: Gli scandalosiSanti, furfanti, geni, provocatori del
nostro tempo (July 2002), 140146, at 140. Though Ongaro claims that Martinelli
left for the USA aged 16, Martinelli claims that she was in fact 17 when she
embarked on her American modelling career. See Martinellis interview with Paul
Bodin, LItaliana piu spregiudicata, in LEuropeo (1966, no. 46), re-published in
LEuropeo (July 2002), 147148, at 147. See Martinellis explanation of her
departure for the US in her autobiography, Sono come sono, 75.
16 Martinelli writes in her autobiography: When I finished with the runway shows I
went straight on to the photo shoots, and as a result the newspapers were inundated
with my image, Sono come sono, 56. Furthermore, a detailed examination
undertaken of the monthly fashion magazine Bellezza revealed the full extent of
Martinellis omnipresence. In the July 1954 issue, Martinelli appeared in a total of
18 photographs, while in the September 1954 issue there were 13 images of her. In
both cases, the frequency of her appearance in a number of different photographic
services far outnumbered those of any other single model in the same issues.
17 Alberto Ongaro, La ragazza controcorrente, 142.
18 Martinelli, Sono come sono, 55.
19 Ibid., see 178.
20 E.L., Elsa Martinelli: Da Trastevere a Hollywood, 1617.
21 Willy Rizzo, cited in Il MitoLa Donna in Italia, LEuropeo (12 December
1965), 45.
 ELSA MARTINELLI: ITALYS AUDREY HEPBURN 339

22 Roberto Campari, Film and fashion, in Gloria Bianchino et al. (eds) The Origins of
High Fashion and Knitwear (Milan, Electra, 1987), 209210.
23 Martinelli, Sono come sono, 171.
24 E.L., Elsa Martinelli: Da Trastevere a Hollywood, 1617.
25 Willy Rizzo, cited in Il MitoLa Donna in Italia, LEuropeo (12 December 1965),
45. It is worthy of note that a similar trend was apparent in Germany at the same
time. In her study of women in post-war Germany, Erica Carter analyses fashion
photographs from a 1953 issue of Film und Frau. One photograph, taken by F.C.
Gundlabach, shows the model posing, her body [. . .] frozen into a posture of
haughty unavailability [. . .] and the clothes she wears [. . .] bear the stamp of
smartness, the defining feature of a woman equipped for public business. Carter
proceeds to say that the models facial expression, equally, testifies to a hierarchical
relation of difference; eyebrows raised, lips pursed and curving slightly downward,
this woman repels contact, remains cool, aloof, and distant. All these traits are
familiar in the images seen in the Italian press of royalty and aristocrats. The same
was also true of the aristocratic-type stars like Martinelli, Erica Carter, How
German Is She?: Postwar West German reconstruction and the consuming woman (Ann
Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 1997), 209210.
26 Piera de Tassis writes in Corpi recuperati per il proprio sguardo: Cinema e
immaginario negli anni 50, Memoria 6(3) (1982): the transformation of the female
ideal could only take place on an international plane, where the idea of a body
continues always to draw closer to supernational models on the market. In actual
fact, the opposite occurred, with the conquest of the international market by typical
Italian beauties like Gina Lollobrigida and Sophia Loren. She goes on to conclude
her article stating that in the 1950s: authors were beginning to discover the
nervous women, women who would dominate the coming decade of the 1960s,
but the people could only truly love the maggiorate [. . .], 3031.
27 For a further discussion of this, see Reka Buckley, The Female Film Star in Postwar Italy
(19481960), Chapter 5: Refining the star image, 210257.
28 An example of which is the 1957 proxy marriage of Carlo Ponti and Sophia Loren,
which caused untold scandal in Italy, as Ponti was already married and had two
young children, and in Catholic Italy, divorce was still not permitted. Ironically,
though Loren came to symbolise the transition from the traditional ideas of
marriage to a more modern idea of marriage, however, her desire to wed Ponti
stemmed from her wish to adhere to a traditionally acceptable portrayal of married
life and to ensure that any future children would not have to face the prejudices
associated with illegitimacy.
29 Nazareno Fabbretti, A proposito di unintervista: Elsa e i brutti, Gazzetta del Popolo
(14 August 1967), page un-numbered.
30 Giulia Borgese, Elsa Martinelli anticipo il femminismo nella vita, LEuropeo (July
2002), 138.
31 Nazareno Fabbretti, A proposito di unintervista: Elsa e i brutti, page
un-numbered.
32 Borgese, Elsa Martinelli anticipo il femminismo nella vita, 138.
33 Marta Boneschi, Santa Pazienza: La storia delle donne italiane dal dopoguerra a oggi
(Milan, Mondadori, 1998), 63.
34 Ibid., 64.
35 Boneschi, Poveri ma belli: I nostri anni cinquanta (Milan, Mondadori, 1995), 312.
340 HISTORICAL JOURNAL OF FILM, RADIO AND TELEVISION

36 Stephen Gundle, I comunisti italiani tra Hollywood e Mosca: la sfida della cultura di massa
(19431991) (Florence, Giunti, 1995), 175.
37 Elsa Martinelli, Sono come sono, 185198.
38 Paul Bodin, Litaliana piu spregiudicata, LEuropeo, (1966), reprinted in LEuropeo:
Gli scandalosiSanti, furfanti, geni, provocatori del nostro tempo (July 2002), 14749,
at 147.
39 Boneschi, Santa Pazienza, 67.
40 See Gian Franco Vene, Vola colomba: Vita quotidiana degli italiani negli anni del
dopoguerra: 19451960 (Milan, Mondadori, 1990), 216223.
41 Paul Bodin, Litaliana piu spregiudicata, 148.
42 See Paul Ginsborg, A History of Contemporary Italy: Society and Politics, 19431988
(London, Penguin, 1990), in particular Chapter 7, 210253.

Reka Buckley is Senior Lecturer in Film Studies at Portsmouth University. She completed her
Ph.D. in 2002 on The Female Film Star in Postwar Italy (19481960) at Royal Holloway,
University of London. She has researched on stars and their consumption by audiences,
looking at stars in the context of Italian society and examining issues of gender, fashion,
national identity and fandom. She has published articles on the post-war Italian star system,
including National Body: Gina Lollobrigida and the cult of the star in the 1950s, Historical
Journal of Film, Radio and Television, 20(4) (2000), 527547.