Beauty will save

Kim and Roberto, real prototypes of iconic characters. Beautiful love story of chewing gum liners ‘Love is…

Beautiful love story of chewing gum liners
The sweet romantic series “Love is …” has become the most popular in the post-Soviet space and the former republics of the USSR. The liners of this Turkish chewing gum were collectible and exchanged. Fortunately, I also have such a romantic collection. But I couldn’t even guess about a beautiful love story behind these bright images. It turns out that behind the images of a romantic couple of lovers were real prototypes. Actually, it was a story about love conquering death.

The author of these images was a cartoonist from New Zealand Kim Grove Casali. Aged 19, she began traveling around the world, and after 6 years she settled in California. There she met her future Italian husband Roberto Casali. It was he who inspired her to create two funny characters – a couple of lovers, the prototypes of which were they themselves.

Kim began to draw various episodes from the life of a married couple on napkins, signing above: “Love is …”, and ending the phrase below with text that matches the picture. According to the artist, it was like keeping a personal diary, which describes how her feelings developed.
Read more »

Beautiful Soviet Russian actress Larisa Udovichenko

Russian actress Larisa Udovichenko was born April 29, 1955 in Vienna (Austria), where her father, Ivan Nikonovich, served as a military doctor. Her mother, Muza Alekseevna, at one time she graduated from the Leningrad Institute of Theater, Music and Cinematography, but did not become an actress. However, she tried to instill in her daughter a love for the theater, and was not opposed to her becoming an actress. Unfortunately, Larisa’s mother did not live up to her daughter’s finest hour – she died when the girl was 18 years old.

As a child, Larisa had two serious hobbies: sports and theater. For seven years she went to a sports school and had high grades in sports and rhythmic gymnastics. The coach predicted a good sporting future for her, but her love of art turned out to be stronger. Thus, in the 9th grade, the girl entered the national film actor’s studio, created at the Odessa film studio. It was on the stage of this collective in 1970 that the director Alexander Pavlovsky saw her, who had previously unsuccessfully searched for the leading actor.
Read more »

Polish actress, Jewish beauty Bella Darvi (23 October 1928 – 11 September 1971)

Jewish beauty Bella Darvi
Born Bajla Węgier October 23, 1928, Bella Darvi was one of the most beautiful Polish actresses, Golden Globe Award winner (1954). She grew up in a large Jewish family of five children. Her father Haim Vegier and mother Chaya Vegier were bakers. During the second world war, she was imprisoned by the Nazis in World War II, and released in 1943.

On October 7, 1950, she married businessman Elban Cavalkade and moved with him to Monaco. In Paris, Virginia Fox met her and became fascinated by her voice and appearance. She reminded her Ingrid Bergman. Virginia introduced Bella to her husband, magnate Darryl F. Zanuk. In 1952, Bella divorced from Cavalcade and moved with Zanuk and his wife to Hollywood (California, USA) – they became her mentors.
Read more »

Born Anastasia Noris Von Gerzfeld, 1930s beauty icon Italian actress Assia Noris (16 February 1912 – 27 January 1998)

1930s beauty icon Italian actress Assia Noris
Born 16 February 1912 in St. Petersburg, Anastasia Noris Von Gerzfeld grew up in the Russian-German family of wealthy parents. However, like many of the rich compatriots of that time, Asya’s parents had to leave Russia after the October Revolution. They settled in France, and Anastasia spent her childhood in Nice, where she graduated from school. Meanwhile, in 1929 Anastasia went to Italy, where she began to take lessons in acting. Soon she marries an Italian Gaetano Assia. Thus, Anastasia took her husband’s surname as a creative pseudonym, having started acting in films.

She made her debut on the big screen in 1932 with a small role in Mario Bonnard’s comedy “Three Men in Thaws”. However, the fame came to her in the mid-30’s thanks to the films of the director Mario Camerini, who later became the next actress’s spouse (1940 – 1943). In his comedies, which fit into the then fashionable trend in Italian cinema, the so-called “Cinema of White Phones” actress often acted in the roles of naive young girls, whose love sought by experienced smoothies. Her partners in the films of those years were young even then, but already popular in Italy, Vittorio De Sica (for example, “Dame Million”, 1937, or “But it’s not serious”, 1937). Also, no less famous Amedeo Nadzari (the comedy “One Hundred Thousand Dollars”, 1940).
Read more »

Baroness Alida Maria Laura Altenburger von Marckenstein-Frauenberg (31 May 1921 – 22 April 2006). Film Actress Alida Valli

Italian Baroness Film Actress Alida Valli
Born in the family of an Austrian baron, journalist, professor of philosophy and Italian mother, Alida Valli became the legendary Italian actress. She became a movie star back in the time of Mussolini, filming since 1935. And the most successful works of the fascist period were “Little Old World” (1941) by Mario Soldati, the digest of Goffredo Alessandrini “We Are Alive” and “Farewell, Cyrus” (1942).

In the late 1940s Hollywood producer David Selznik noticed her, and decided to make the second Ingrid Bergman from Valli. In Hollywood, Alida Valli appeared in several films, including Alfred Hitchcock’s 1947 Case of Paradain and Carol Reed’s The Third Man (1949).

At the Venice Film Festival in 1997, the actress received an honorary “Golden Lion” for her long career in film.
Read more »

Divinely beautiful Swedish born actress Ann-Margaret Olsson

Swedish born actress Ann-Margaret Olsson
Born in Stockholm on April 28, 1941, Ann-Margaret spent her first five years in a small town of Valsjobyn. Back in 1941, Ann’s father moved to the United States, intending to transfer the whole family there, but the Second World War broke his plans. Only on November 29, 1946, Ann and her mother came to New York. The girl was then five years old and she did not speak English. Having settled in Fox Lake, in 1948 the family moved to Wilmette. And three years later, in 1949, Ann-Margaret became a naturalized US citizen.

The girl showed ner talents very early, and in 1950 Ann-Margret began to dance at a local studio. Then, in 1954, thirteen year-old girl became a cheerleader at school. In addition, she continued studies at New Trier High School, Winnetka, and Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois.
Read more »

Charming Italian film actress Stefania Sandrelli

Beautiful Italian film actress Stefania Sandrelli
The journal “Actors of foreign cinema” (1970) wrote about Stefania, that she is too young, so young that it is not easy to outline her creative profile. Indeed, she can still change, and able to reveal completely different, new for us sides of her talent. But still, the fact that she is very talented is undoubtful. Stefania Sandrelli does not possess the self-confident, aggressive beauty of Sofia Lauren, the soft femininity of Gina Lollobrigida, the exotic charm of Claudia Cardinale. However, at her twenty-four she is almost as widely popular in Italy as these famous movie stars, and fame came to her without long, painful years of waiting.

Her path to the top was swift, and glory evidenced by the fact that in Italy Stefania Sandrelli – for everyone is already just SS. Thanks to Stefania, who still has so much angularity and timidity of a teenager, managed to become one of the brightest young actresses of Italian cinema, rival # 1 of her much more experienced and, perhaps, more beautiful sisters on the screen? Moreover, she does not use either excessive help from producers or the support of a powerful advertising machine, her name and photos do not appear in newspapers and magazines, and not accompanied by sentimental or scandalous stories …
Read more »