• DOI:10.1080/713669741
• Corpus ID: 193186413

National Body: Gina Lollobrigida and the cult of the star in the 1950s

@article{Buckley2000NationalBG,
  title={National Body: Gina Lollobrigida and the cult of the star in the 1950s},
  author={R{\'e}ka Buckley},
  journal={Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television},
  year={2000},
  volume={20},
  pages={527 - 547}
}

• Réka Buckley
• Published 1 October 2000
• History
• Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television

On 4 July 1997 Gina Lollobrigida celebrated her 70th birthday. Numerous Italian newspapers dedicated articles to her, relating the facts of her life, her career, her rise to fame and her prominent position at the head of a long line of a new type of female Ž lm star to emerge in Italian cinema after World War II, the so-called maggiorata Ž sica (literally, ‘physically over-developed woman’). La Repubblica was one of several national newspapers to run a story on Lollobrigida, in the article entitled ‘Auguri, Lollo “Sì, sono sempre una grande diva” ’, which charted her life and her cinematic career [1]. Even the British press did not fail to remember the star’s birthday, as Richard Owen’s article ‘La Lollo’s ageless glamour draws breathless praise’ demonstrates [2]. The purpose of this article is to examine the place of Gina Lollobrigida (affectionately referred to as La Lollo or La Lollo nazionale) in Italian culture. Three questions in particular will be asked. What did she represent for Italians, and for women in particular, in the 1950s? Why does she still hold an important position in Italian society and in the minds of her fellow Italians some 20 years after the release of her last Ž lm? Why is she still remembered with such fervour in France, the USA and, to a certain extent, Britain? Obviously, such questions can only be answered by means of a detailed examination of Lollobrigida’s career. By focusing on her rise to stardom and her Ž lm roles, as well as her life off-screen and public perceptions of her, I will seek to explain why she has not been forgotten by her fellow Italians and by those who have grown up in the shadow of her Ž lms, even though her heyday was over by 1960.