In this memoir, named after one of her films, Italian actress Sophia Loren recounts an early screen test, where it was declared: “Her face is too short, her mouth is too big, and her nose is too long.” As well as being talented (winning an Oscar for 1960’s Two Women – the first for a foreign language performance), Loren went on to be hailed as one of cinema’s great beauties alongside the likes of Marilyn Monroe, Elizabeth Taylor and Ava Gardner. Loren was also a star at a time when mystique ruled supreme. In many ways then, this is a true Old Hollywood memoir, as distanced from today’s smash-and-grab fame landscape as it’s possible to get.
Born in 1934, and growing up in extreme poverty in Naples, Loren, labelled “toothpick” on account of her skinny legs, had grandparents she called Mama and Papa, an absent father, and a young unmarried mother she called Mammina (“Little Mother”). Escaping this inauspicious start, she found herself starring in films opposite the likes of Marcello Mastroianni, directed by such greats as Vittorio De Sica.
Loren also became involved young with the film producer Carlo Ponti, whom she had difficulty marrying – first because he already had a wife, then because of the disapproval of the Catholic church. Their relationship spanned five decades, produced two sons, and the grandchildren to whom Loren dedicates the book.
Loren’s early marriage had the effect of placing her firmly into the Hollywood observer, rather than participant, camp. She rebuffs Marlon Brando, leaving him “deflating like a balloon”, the only hot-and-heavy you get from Richard Burton is when he bitches disloyally about Elizabeth Taylor in a letter to Loren (“Such love as I had has turned to pity”), and there’s a bizarre, entirely unconsummated affair with Cary Grant, with no reference to the fact that he’s since been revealed to be bisexual.
In a disturbing passage, Loren tells how, after she mentions Grant has sent her flowers, Ponti publicly slaps her across the face. She writes, “Inside I knew that I had somehow deserved it”, and still seems to view Ponti’s violence as the gesture of “a man in love”, and confirmation that she’d chosen right. Hmm yes, a jealous man who hits you – that’s the dream! Even accounting for different times, and their ensuing long marriage, this incident remains disquieting, and you wonder why Loren included it.
Elsewhere, Loren’s life ricochets from highs (longed-for motherhood, professional fulfilment, winning an Oscar she was too shy to collect), to lows (miscarriages, imprisonment for tax evasion she insists was a mistake). There are some terrific photos, but far too much luvvie-anecdotage – preparing for parts, wonderful fellow thesps, overlong reminiscences such as Omar Sharif yammering on about his mother’s aubergine recipe. (Memo to Ms Loren – no one cares).
Much more amusing is a bizarre micro-lunch with Audrey Hepburn (comprising one lettuce leaf with a curl of cheese on it), and the explanation for the famous photograph of Loren giving Jayne Mansfield an arch sideways glance – it seems that one of Mansfield’s breasts had fallen on to Loren’s dinner plate. “Hidden behind Hollywood’s enchanted kingdom were some coarse and grotesque sides, which I refused to have anything to do with,” writes Loren rather grandly.
There are times when this book comes across as a little stiff and formal. However, one is left with the impression of Loren as a caring, complex, grounded character, a woman who decided to be a real person, almost in defiance of her great beauty.
Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow: My Life is published by Simon & Schuster (£20). Click here to buy it for £16
