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Stephen Gundle
At a time of sharp political divisions, Italian illustrated magazines and newsreels
provided star news over hard news, offering images of glamour as part of their
recipe. 17 They learned to purvey a dream world that keyed in with other images,
of the West as Italy’s destiny, the United States as a model society, new consumer
products, Christian Democratic government, and scientific and technical progress.
The magazines showed old Italian elite centers being taken over or invested once
more with allure by the frequentation of a cosmopolitan elite that would shortly
become the jet set. Capri, Ischia, Portofino, and other locations were playgrounds
of the rich and famous but the undoubted center of this was Rome’s Via Veneto,
with its cafés, hotels, restaurants, nightclubs. It was here that the celebrity photoreporter
was born.
The key elements of the new glamour were ostentation of wealth, especially of
the new variety and sex scandals. In the moralistic official climate of the 1950s,
in which the Church was seeking to win support for the reimposition of conventional
values, standards were rigid. Sex appeal was something which in postwar
Italy was unfamiliar, since sex was either obvious (prostitutes) or very heavily
masked (Italian actresses). In the cinema of the 1930s, the entire weight of
sexuality had been placed on the shoulders of a handful of homegrown femme
fatales (Doris Duranti, Luisa Ferida, and Clara Calamai). The vast majority of
actresses were sexless girls-next-door. Therefore its routine association with
mainstream actors was perplexing. Articles appeared in the film press explaining
what it was and it was joked about in musical revues (where it was Italianized as
sessapiglio). The separation of sexual appeal from commercial sex or sexual favors
appeared improbable to Italians. Yet, with Hollywood stars, sex, occasionally
illicit, and legitimate wealth seemed to go together. Even the saintly Ingrid
Bergman had acquired a sexualized image when she arrived in Italy to begin a
scandalous adulterous affair with director Roberto Rossellini. 18
American stars were perfect consumers. In Hollywood fashion, they were
always beautiful, magnificently groomed, and coiffured; moreover they made
themselves available for consumption by the public in films and images. 19 For
many in postwar Italy, such ideas were unfamiliar and odd. Star sponsorship of
products was rare and most entertainers led modest daily lives. Nevertheless, some
indication of their economic role was perceptible to all: in the late 1940s,
magazines regularly printed Max Factor advertisements featuring Rita Hayworth
as Gilda. Through her, Italian women were invited to participate in the beauty
secrets that the Max Factor company had revealed to all American women, stars
or not. Subsequently, other dimensions were added. Luxury cars and homes,
together with leisure, constituted the foremost way in which the new elite offered
a material extension of the dreams of the masses in the era of the economic
recovery and the miracle.
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