Marlon Brando & Sophia Loren On the Waterfront Italian Screening Vint Photograph

Description

ITEM: This is a 1954 vintage and original International News photograph of Marlon Brando and Sophia Loren seated together during a special screening of Brando's Academy Award winning film
On the Waterfront
(1954). The special showing in Rome was done to benefit victims of flooding in Italy. This image of the beautiful screen stars was published in U.S. newspapers and one such example is shown above for reference only and is not included in the final sale.
The press snipe on verso reads:
MARLON BRANDO SEES HIMSELF AS OTHERS SEE HIM----
ROME, ITALY...ACTOR MARLON BRANDO, WHOSE ENGAGEMENT TO THE DAUGHTER OF A FRENCH FISHERMAN HAS HELD THE HEADLINES RECENTLY, PROLONGED HIS VISIT IN ROME TO ATTEND A SPECIAL SHOWING OF "WATERFRONT" IN WHICH HE STARS. THE SHOWING WAS GIVEN FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE SALERNO FLOOD VICTIMS. HE IS SHOWN WITH ITALIAN ACTRESS SOPHIA LOREN AS THEY WATCHED THE FILM UNFOLD.
Photograph measures 7" x 9" on a glossy single weight paper stock. Paper caption, International News Photos ink stamp, and handwritten notations on verso.
Guaranteed to be 100% vintage and original from Grapefruit Moon Gallery.
More about Sophia Loren:
Italian actress and bona fide screen goddess Sophia Loren made over 100 films in her 50-year career, remaining one of the most beloved and recognizable figures in the international film world. Much of her success could be found in the films of Italian director Vittorio De Sica, who called her "the essential Italian woman" and who captured her earthy, authentic sensibilities in romantic comedies and gut-wrenching dramas alike. Throughout her career, Loren worked with some of film's most renowned directors and leading men, but the bulk of her artistic achievements were in Italian cinema and opposite her frequent lead, Marcello Mastroianni. In addition to her many European accolades, Hollywood recognized her with Academy Award nominations, including a Best Actress win for "Ciociara, La" ("Two Women") (1960) and years later, an honorary Oscar for her many contributions to both American and Italian cinema.
Sophia Loren was born Sofia Scicolone in the charity ward of a Rome hospital on Sept. 20, 1934. Her parents were never married, and her father left her mother Romilda Villani to raise her daughter on her own. Romilda, an aspiring actress and piano player, moved with Sophia and second daughter, Maria, to Pozzuoli, a small town outside Naples and one of the hardest hit during World War II. The family shared a two-room apartment with a grandmother and several aunts and uncles, where the shy, stick thin girl regularly went hungry and had to flee from bombings. Underneath the hardship and poverty, Loren later claimed she was born an actress and sought to perform from the age of 12. There were few financial opportunities for a single parent in the devastated post-war city, so Loren's ambitious mother decided to take advantage of her 14-year-old daughter's voluptuous figure and enter her into a local beauty contest. Loren placed second and set off in search of modeling work in Rome, where her exotic looks and pin-up figure found success in "fumetti" - comic-strip serials that used real photos instead of illustrations.
In 1949, Loren was runner-up in the Miss Italy contest and began to make small film appearances under the name Sofia Lazzaro. While attending the Miss Rome beauty contest, she met judge Carlo Ponti, an up-and-coming film producer and key player in the post war European cinema scene. He had already launched actress and model Gina Lollobrigida into stardom, and he sensed similar potential in Loren though her's was a less glamorous, more salt-of-the-earth appeal. The newcomer took drama lessons and appeared in over a dozen small films as directors struggled to find a niche for her charismatic presence. Her first sizeable role - and the first in which she used the Ponti-created stage name Sophia Loren - was 1952's "La Favorita," but her starring role in the 1953 film adaptation of Verdi's "Aida" was a major breakthrough which earned her critical notice and a production deal with Ponti. Vittorio De Sica's "Gold of Naples" (1954), which featured an inordinately long tracking shot of Loren as she swayed her hourglass figure through a village street, was her star-making performance and one that established her persona as a sensuous working class earth mother. It also began a fruitful, career-long collaboration with De Sica.
With "Gold of Naples," critics who had written her off as a pin-up girl now understood that Loren possessed originality, talent and palpable onscreen passion. She advanced to the forefront of Italian cinema with starring roles as plucky peasants, street thieves, and fishmongers in a dozen films, including "Too Bad She's Bad" (1954), which began her career-long on-screen pairing with Marcello Mastroianni. Loren co-starred with Anthony Quinn in the French production "Attila" (1954) and began to study English in anticipation of branching out internationally. Some of her films had been dubbed in English and released overseas to lukewarm reception, but Hollywood producers were certain she could become a star on U.S. soil if she were showcased in typical American-made fare. While still in Europe, she got her Hollywood feet wet in the Napoleonic epic "The Pride and the Passion" (1957), which billed Loren third after stars Frank Sinatra and Cary Grant, and proved to be one of the top U.S. box office successes of the year.
Loren's personal life grew extremely complicated during the production, however, as co-star Grant fell instantly in love with Loren and vowed to divorce his wife and marry her. The pair dated for a while (despite the fact that Grant was married and 30 years her senior), but Loren did not fall as hard as Grant did, despite the fact that she had grown up with a schoolgirl crush on the movie star. At the same time, Ponti - also married and 30 years her senior - stepped forward to declare that he, too, was in love with Loren. The pair had grown close during their years working together, with Ponti serving as a career mentor and also a kind, guiding father figure for the fatherless young adult. Later in the year, when Loren arrived in Hollywood preceded by a huge press campaign, Ponti's lawyers obtained a Mexican divorce for him and he and Loren were married. The actress jetted back to Cinecitta studios in Rome to shoot the silly aquatic romance "The Boy on the Dolphin" (1957), which sought to capitalize more on Loren's figure in a bathing suit than her insightful acting or wit. Grant was understandably devastated by Loren's decision of choosing Ponti over him and it took him a long time to recover.
The young ingénue was paired with dusty screen cowboy John Wayne in "Legend of the Lost" (1957), a lackluster African adventure, but was given more of a chance to use her talents in the adaptation of Eugene O'Neil's "Desire Under the Elms" (1958), where she was the center of a love triangle between a New England father (Burl Ives) and son (Anthony Perkins). It was the first product of a newly-inked deal between Loren and Paramount. What followed next was the hit romantic comedy "Houseboat" (1958) co-starring spurned lover Cary Grant as a single dad and Loren as their nanny. Not unexpectedly, the shoot was difficult for both, with Grant still harboring love for his ex. Loren was embraced by American audiences, though many of her supporters were disappointed to see her "dolled up" and playing a European aristocrat, which was about as far from her native appeal as possible. Paramount was intent on maintaining this image of Loren and again she appeared as a sophisticated urban woman in Sidney Lumet's clichéd melodrama "That Kind of Woman" (1959). Martin Ritt finally gave Loren a meaty character to inhabit in "The Black Orchid" (1958), where she played opposite Anthony Quinn as a hard-working mob widow. Her performance was recognized with a Best Actress honor at the Venice Film Festival, but the film did not draw American filmg rs.
When box office numbers for George Cukor's offbeat Western "Heller in Pink Tights" (1960) failed to excite Paramount execs, they cut Loren loose from her contract. Her final Paramount release - the romantic comedy "It Started in Naples" (1960) co-starring yet another older male co-star, Clark Gable - was a summer success, but by the time it was released, Loren and Ponti had returned to Europe. The pair received a chilly reception in Italy, which did not recognize divorce and considered Ponti a bigamist. The Catholic Church annulled Loren and Ponti's marriage, so the pair and Ponti's first wife moved to France, where divorce was legal, and began to establish citizenship with an eye towards clearing up the whole mess. Loren got right back to work, co-starring opposite Peter Sellers in the hit British comedy "The Millionairess" (1960), where she built on comic singing talents she had begun to display as a cabaret singer in "It Started in Naples." But she experienced the biggest success of her career when she reunited with director De Sica for "Two Women" (1960), which saw Loren reliving her war-torn youth to play a widow desperately trying to protect her daughter from danger, only to end up in a destructive love triangle with a young radical (Jean Paul Belmondo). She earned a Best Actress Academy Award, the first actress ever to do so for a foreign language performance.
In one of the better offerings from the "historic epic" trend of the era, Loren co-starred opposite Charlton Heston in "El Cid" (1961), a grand-scale adaptation of the life of the 11th century Castilian military general. She continued to work steadily in Italian, French and American productions, earning steady accolades for her work with De Sica and Mastroianni in the Best Foreign Film Academy Award winner "Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow" (1963) and "Marriage, Italian Style" (1964), which earned Loren an Academy nomination again for Best Actress. Among her bigger English language successes of the 1960s was Stanley Donen's stylish comic thriller "Arabesque" (1966) which co-starred Gregory Peck. The British production "A Countess from Hong Kong" (1967), co-starring Loren and Marlon Brando, was a flop but notable for being the final film directed by comic-turned-director, Charles Chaplin. The same year, Loren returned to her film roots with her role as a Spanish peasant opposite Omar Sharif as a marriage-minded prince in the lighthearted fairy tale "More than a Miracle" (1967). Off-screen, her own fairy tale romance finally had a happy ending when she and Ponti, now French citizens, were officially married.
After several miscarriages and a highly-publicized struggle to become pregnant, Loren gave birth to son Hubert Leoni Carlo Ponti in 1968. She returned to the screen to star opposite Mastroianni in De Sica's war drama "I Girasoli" (1972) and the following year, gave birth to her second son, Eduardo. Italian authorities dismissed Ponti's outstanding bigamy charges and the family was free to move back to their homeland, where Loren spent the majority of the decade in Italian productions. 1974's "Il Viaggio" marked the final directorial effort of De Sica, but Loren continued to enjoy onscreen success opposite Mastroianni in the mob comedy "La Pupa del Gangster" (1975) and in Ettore Scola's considerably more sophisticated drama, "A Special Day" (1977), which found favor with American audiences and earned a Golden Globe for Best Foreign Film. Seeking to capitalize on Loren's latest U.S. success, Hollywood tapped Loren for a pair of thrillers - the WW II-set "The Brass Target" (1978) and "Firepower" (1979) which offered her a central role as a widow seeking answers in the murder of her chemist husband.
During the 1980s, Loren made only a few feature films while she raised her teenaged sons, but her status as a "legend" and a "survivor" was unshakably secure. She released the autobiography Sophia Loren: Living and Loving in 1979, and the following year starred in a made-for-TV adaptation entitled "Sophia Loren: Her Own Story" (1980), where she played both herself and her mother. In 1981, she became the first female celebrity to launch her own perfume, Sophia, and a brand of eyewear followed soon thereafter. Still an international symbol of beauty well into her 40s, she published another book, Women and Beauty (1984). More American TV movies followed, including "The Fortunate Pilgrim" (1988), Mario Puzo's miniseries about the Italian American experience. In 1990, Loren was awarded a second, honorary Oscar for her lifetime achievement in film, and in 1994, she returned to U.S. theaters in Robert Altman's much ballyho d (but disappointing) take on the French fashion scene, "Ready to Wear," which paired her one last time with Mastroianni. She followed up with her biggest U.S. hit in decades, the aging buddy comedy "Grumpier Old Men" (1995) starring Jack Lemmon, Walter Matthau and Ann-Margret as clashing citizens of a sleepy Minnesota town.
In 2007, Loren proved that she still had sizzle when she posed in a calendar for Italian racing tire giant Pirelli, appearing tousled and partially clothed in an unkempt bed. Sadly, that same year she lost her husband of 50 years, Carlo Ponti, who was said to have continually wo d his wife during all those decades by giving her a single rose every day of their marriage. The secret to their marital success was simple. Despite their position as showbiz royalty in their native land, the pair had relished their discrete, low profile lifestyle, with Loren claiming through the years that "show business is what we do, not what we are."
Biography From: TCM | Turner Classic Movies
More about Marlon Brando:
Widely regarded as the greatest actor of his generation, Marlon Brando crafted several of the most iconic characterizations in the history of cinema, a legacy that would shine bright even after his death. One of Hollywood's earliest "method" actors, Brando leapt from the New York stage to film notoriety with his electrifying portrayal of the brutish Stanley Kowalksi in director Elia Kazan's adaptation of "A Streetcar Named Desire" (1951). The roles that followed - in films such as "The Wild One" (1953) and "On the Waterfront" (1954) - were primeval displays of the human condition, never before seen quite that raw on film, that would go on to inspire future acting giants such as Robert De Niro and Jack Nicholson. In later years, Brando enjoyed an unprecedented career rebirth with his Oscar-winning portrayal of Don Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola's "The Godfather" (1972). Then, in a one-two punch, he left audiences speechless with his brave performance in Bernardo Bertolucci's "Last Tango in Paris" (1973). He also appeared as Jor-El in "Superman" (1978) and as the mad Col. Kurtz in Coppola's wartime opus, "Apocalypse Now" (1979). Nothing could overshadow the scope and artistic brilliance of the body of work Brando had committed to film in a career that spanned more than 50 years.
The youngest of three children, Marlon Brando, Jr. was born on April 3, 1924 in Omaha, NE to parents Marlon, Sr., a pesticide salesman who had changed his last name from Brandeaux, and Dorothy, a local actress. While Brando was still young, the family moved to Illinois - initially, to the town of Evanston, and later to Libertyville. It was a tumultuous time for the Brando clan, marked by Dorothy's alcoholism and her brief separation from Marlon, Sr. A precocious child from a young age, Brando - a poor student who had already been held back a year - was expelled from Libertyville High School after one particularly egregious prank. Enraged, his father sent him to his alma mater, Shattuck Military Academy in Minnesota, in the hopes that it would straighten the boy out. By most accounts, it did not. Although he excelled in the academy's drama program, the young Brando continued to clash with authority, a tendency that led to a near expulsion before he ultimately decided to drop out altogether. When his attempt to join the Army failed to pan out - a trick knee from a football injury rendered him 4-F status - the 19-year-old Brando chose to follow his sisters to New York City in 1943. He began studying at the Dramatic Workshop at the New School as well as with the Actors Studio. It was during this time that Brando worked with legendary acting coach Stella Adler and became indoctrinated in the acting method of the Stanislavski System - an approach that utilized emotions and physical action rather than more traditional stagecraft techniques.
Brando flourished under Adler's tutelage and within the year made his Broadway debut in the sentimental hit "I Remember Mama" (1944). He later co-starred opposite Katharine Cornell in "Candida" (1946) and briefly toured with Tallulah Bankhead in "The Eagle Has Two Heads" the same year. His breakthrough came with his searing portrayal of Stanley Kowalski in Tennessee Williams' "A Streetcar Named Desire" (1947), directed by Elia Kazan for the stage. Although some - including co-star Jessica Tandy - took issue with the mumbled delivery of his dialogue, the role established a new order of acting intensity and made him a known quantity in the world of theatre. After making his television debut on an episode of "Actor's Studio" (CBS, 1948-1950) in 1949, Brando's first film was Fred Zinnemann's "The Men" (1950), in which he gave an against-type performance as an embittered, paraplegic war veteran struggling for dignity. Kazan's film version of "A Streetcar Named Desire" (1951) followed, forever linking Brando to the image of the sexually voracious, brutish Kowalski, and making him one of the first "new generation" actors to achieve full-fledged stardom. His impassioned screaming of "Stella!" also became an iconic moment on film - remarkable for an actor just beginning his career. The role earned him the first of four consecutive Best Actor Academy Award nominations. He followed with a pair of impressive, individualistic performances as a Mexican revolutionary in "Viva Zapata!" (1952), and as Marc Anthony in Joseph L Mankiewicz's adaptation of Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar" (1953).
Brando's status as a newly minted film star was confirmed with the release of "The Wild One" (1953), a motorcycle melodrama, which set the tone for future tales of youth rebellion and established the leather jacket as de rigueur for tough guys everywhere. With his simmering portrayal of anarchic gang leader Johnny Strabler, both the actor and character instantaneously became movie icons to a generation. Brando went on to earn a richly-deserved Best Actor Oscar for his multi-layered performance as a conflicted ex-prize fighter torn between his connection to a corrupt union official and pangs of guilt after witnessing a murder in Kazan's gritty masterpiece "On the Waterfront" (1954). For the second time in three years, Brando scored another iconic film moment with his backseat speech lamenting that he "could've been a contender." Enjoying unprecedented box-office and critical success, the young actor had, in less than five years, become one of the most influential performers in Hollywood. Never one to do the expected, he followed with a series of unconventional roles in his subsequent projects. He raged as the little conqueror Napoleon Bonaparte in the historical biopic "Desiree" (1954), tried his hand at musicals as a smarmy singing gambler in "Guys and Dolls" (1955), and played a Japanese interpreter in "The Teahouse of the August Moon" (1956). Other notable roles included a turn as a Korean War pilot in love with a Japanese entertainer in Joshua Logan's "Sayonara" (1957) - for which he received yet another Best Actor nomination - portrayed a sympathetic Nazi officer in "The Young Lions" (1958), and played an enigmatic drifter in the steamy melodrama "The Fugitive Kind" (1960).
By the dawn of the 1960s, Brando had gained a reputation as being not only exceptionally talented, but exceedingly difficult, especially when it came to working with directors. Initially slated as a project for director Stanley Kubrick, the revenge western "One-Eyed Jacks" (1961) became Brando's sole directorial effort after he and Kubrick parted ways because of creative differences. Tales of bad behavior abounded on the set of the remake of the nautical adventure "Mutiny on the Bounty" (1962). In addition to claims that his antics caused the production to run over schedule and budget - as they had on "One Eyed Jacks" - Brando raised eyebrows with his insistence on giving his character of 1st Lt. Fletcher Christian a decidedly effete British accent. Working steadily, despite his eccentricities, he appeared as a U.S. diplomat in "The Ugly American" (1963), as a scheming gigolo in the comedy "Bedtime Story" (1964), and as a sheriff charged with capturing escaped convict Robert Redford in "The Chase" (1966). Having accumulated tremendous wealth by this time, Brando, who had fallen in love with the island nation of Tahiti while filming "Bounty," purchased the island of Tetiaroa in 1967. He would later open a hotel on the island with his third wife, Tarita Teriipia - his love interest in "Bounty" - which they would operate for nearly 25 years. Despite complex performances as a repressed gay military officer in John Huston's "Reflections in a Golden Eye" (1967) and as a 19th Century mercenary in "Burn!" (1969), Brando's films increasingly met with indifference from audiences. By the end of the decade the former box office titan had been reduced to a marginalized presence on the cinematic landscape.
It was not until Francis Ford Coppola cast Brando - in the face of fierce studio resistance - in the title role of "The Godfather" (1972) that he regained his once vaunted stature. His inventive and nuanced turn as the aging mafia boss Don Corleone set the tone for the entire film, received nearly universal critical praise, and earned him a second Oscar for Best Actor. Ever the eccentric, Brando became only the second actor to refuse to personally accept an Academy Award - George C. Scott had been the first - when he sent purported Native American Sacheen Littlefeather in his place, who then read from a prepared statement by the actor decrying America's ill-treatment of its native population. It was later revealed that Miss "Littlefeather" was in fact an actress named Maria Cruz. He followed with a riveting method performance as a self-destructive American in Bernardo Bertolucci's controversial "Last Tango in Paris" (1972). The sexually-charged film earned an X-rating at the time of its release due to its raw depictions of eroticism, and garnered Brando his seventh Best Actor nomination for his uncompromising portrayal. After a four-year hiatus, he next appeared in Arthur Penn's Western deconstruction "The Missouri Breaks" (1976), opposite Jack Nicholson. As Brando's follow-up to "Godfather" and "Last Tango," the unconventional film was perhaps a victim of unreasonably high expectation when it failed at the box-office. In his later years, the actor stated that many of the films that followed were merely jobs he accepted for the financial compensation. His brief cameo - for which he commanded the staggering sum of .7 million - as Jor-El, the father of "Superman" (1978) in Richard Donner's superhero spectacular bore the claim out.
Brando made a rare television appearance with an Emmy-winning cameo as American Nazi leader George Lincoln Rockwell in "Roots: The Next Generation" (ABC, 1979), before returning to theaters in one of the last truly memorable performances of his illustrious career. As Col. Kurtz, the dark heart of Coppola's hallucinogenic war drama "Apocalypse Now" (1979), Brando was simultaneously terrifying, riveting, and utterly insane. At the height of his professional eccentricity, the actor engaged in a legendary game of cat-and-mouse with his frantic director when he arrived weeks late for filming, grossly overweight, and having personally rewritten his scenes. In spite of this, Brando went on to deliver one of the most compelling and avant-garde performances of his career. Although it met with mixed reviews upon initial release, over the passage of time the film would be regarded as one of the most important films about the Vietnam War ever made. Brando went on to team with fellow Oscar snubber George C. Scott for the turgid corporate thriller "The Formula" (1980), before taking a break from film for several years. Upon his return, Brando earned a well-deserved Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for his engaging performance as a crusty South African civil rights lawyer in Euzhan Palcy's "A Dry White Season" (1989).
The next decade began with tragedy for Brando and his family. In May of 1990 after an alcohol-fueled altercation, his eldest son, Christian, shot and killed Dag Drollet, the Tahitian boyfriend of his half-sister, Cheyenne. Following a trial that saw a tearful Brando admitting to having failed as a father, Christian pled guilty to voluntary manslaughter and spent the next five years in a California state prison. Juxtaposed against the calamity of his personal life, Brando impressed critics and audiences with his comic send-up of Don Corleone in the lightweight romp "The Freshman" (1990) alongside a youthful Matthew Broderick. He kept a low-profile for much of the duration of his son's incarceration, but reappeared as a complacent psychiatrist in the romantic comedy "Don Juan DeMarco" (1995), opposite Faye Dunaway and Johnny Depp; with the latter playing a delusional young man who claims to be the legendary lover. With Christian's release from prison only a year away, reverberations from the horrific events of the past continued when Cheyenne, still despondent over the death of Drollet and diagnosed with schizophrenia, hung herself at her mother's home in Tahiti in 1995. Still reeling from his daughter's suicide, Brando's experience on the set of "The Island of Dr. Moreau" (1996) was, understandably, not a happy one. Compounding the problems were the reprehensible behavior of co-star Val Kilmer, last minute changes in the cast and crew, and constant delays due to a script that was being rewritten in the midst of filming. Not surprisingly, the completed film was met with disastrous reviews, bombed at the box-office, and earned the revered thespian a "Razzie" Award for Worst Supporting Actor.
Brando's last original screen outing was in the routine heist thriller "The Score" (2001), as a past-his-prime "fence" opposite acting heavyweights of subsequent generations Robert De Niro and Edward Norton. Having been morbidly obese since the 1990s, Brando's health continued to deteriorate due to a host of infirmities, including diabetes, liver disease, and congestive heart failure. On July 1, 2004 he died in Los Angeles from respiratory failure brought on by pulmonary fibrosis at the age of 80. However, the world would be given one last performance by the actor when footage shot during Richard Donner's "Superman" films - some never before seen - was utilized for an appearance of Brando as Jor-El in director Bryan Singer's relaunch "Superman Returns" (2006). Another project which Brando had been collaborating on up until a week before his death, "Citizen Brando" - originally titled "Brando and Brando" - was completed in 2006 as a homage to the late actor.
Biography From TCM | Turner Classic Movies