Small German collectors card in the 'Film Stars der Welt ' series by Greiling-Sammelbilder, series E, no. 104. Photo: Deutsche Commerz. Leonora Ruffa and Gino Leurini in La regina di Saba/The Queen of Sheba (Pietro Francisci, 1952).

Italian film actress Leonora Ruffo (1935-2007) was active in peplum and adventure films. An exception is her role as the sensible Sandra Rubini in Federico Fellini's I Vitelloni (1954). Ruffo also starred in a number of 'Fotoromanzi'. She retired from acting in the late 1960s.

Italian film, stage and television actor Gino Leurini (1934-2014) made his film debut in the drama Legge di sangue (Luigi Capuano, 1947). One year later, he got the role of Garrone in Vittorio De Sica and Duilio Coletti's Cuore/Heart and Soul (1948). A critical and commercial success was Léonide Moguy's Domani è troppo tardi/Tomorrow Is Too Late (1949), in which Leurini played the young student Franco opposite Pier Angeli. After this success followed some major roles in adventure films and melodramas.

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

Tags:   Leonora Ruffa Leonora Ruffa Italian Actress Actrice Gino Leurini Gino Leurini Actor Attore Acteur European Film Star Film Cine Kino Cinema Movie Movies Picture Screen Filmster Star Vintage Collectors Card Cartolina Carte Tarjet Sammelkarte Verzamelkaart Film Stars der Welt Greiling-Sammelbilder Greiling Deutsche Commerz La regina di Saba The Queen of Sheba 1952 Antiquity

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Romanian postcard by Casa Filmului Acin. Richard Johnsion in Columna/Trajan's Column (Mircea Dragan, 1968) Collection: Alina Deaconu.

British stage and screen actor and producer Richard Johnson (1927-2015) conferred his dark, handsome, saturnine features, assertive jaw, emphatic eyebrows and air of intelligence on scores of classic parts in the theatre, and on a wide range of film and television roles. Johnson was considered for the role of James Bond in the first Bond film, Dr. No. He declined the part as he did not favour a lengthy contract.

Richard Keith Johnson was born at Upminster, Essex, in 1927, the son of Frances Louisa Olive (née Tweed) and Keith Holcombe Johnson. He was educated at Parkfield School and Felsted School before training for the stage at RADA. He claimed to have started acting as a child and then became a professional actor because it made him feel alive, and less aware of his ‘insufficiencies’. During the Second World War he served in the Royal Navy. His career began with a walk-on part in John Gielgud’s 1944 production of 'Hamlet' in Manchester. He moved to the West End as part of a classical repertoire at the Haymarket where he took small parts in 'Love for Love', 'The Circle', and 'The Duchess of Malfi'. After a season of old melodrama in Camden Town, he was in two West End productions, 'The Madwoman of Chaillot' and 'After My Fashion', as well as open-air Shakespeare in Regent’s Park, before a season with the Bristol Old Vic company in 1953. He spent the next season in broadcasting, but in 1955 he got his first real break in Jean Anouilh’s version of the Joan of Arc story, 'The Lark', playing Warwick, one of his favourite parts, to Dorothy Tutin’s Joan. A few months later he was cast as Laertes in Peter Brook’s production of 'Hamlet', starring Paul Scofield (1955). After two more West End productions, playing Jack Absolute in 'The Rivals' and Lord Plynlimmon in 'Plaintiff in a Pretty Hat', he joined the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre at Stratford-upon-Avon. Among his roles were Orlando in 'As You Like It', Mark Antony in 'Julius Caesar', Leonatus in 'Cymbeline' and Ferdinand in 'The Tempest' which transferred to Drury Lane in 1957. The following season he played Romeo and Sir Andrew Aguecheek as well as the title role in 'Pericles' and Don John in 'Much Ado About Nothing', visiting Moscow and Leningrad as Romeo and Aguecheek. During the 1960s Johnson became involved with Sir Peter Hall’s production of 'Cymbeline', leading to Hall inviting him to join him in the Royal Shakespeare Company. There, in 1961, he acted Hans in Jean Giraudoux’s 'Ondine'. He also gave one of his finest performances as Urbaine in John Whiting’s 'The Devils', a study of 17th-century witchcraft directed by Peter Brook.

In 1959, Richard Johnson made his film debut in a major co-star role in the MGM war drama Never So Few (John Sturges, 1959), starring Frank Sinatra and Gina Lollobrigida. Subsequently he was contracted by MGM to appear in 1 film per year over 6 years. There he made his biggest films including Robert Wise’s The Haunting (1963), The Pumpkin Eater (Jack Clayton, 1964) and Khartoum (Basil Dearden, Eliot Elisofon, 1966), starring Laurence Olivier and Charlton Heston. In the early 1960s the director Terence Young had wanted Johnson to play James Bond in preference to Sean Connery. Johnson declined because he was under contract to MGM and did not relish the seven-year commitment. If the stardom for which his career seemed to be heading in the cinema of the early 1960s eluded him, he cut a dashingly romantic figure opposite Kim Novak, whom he married in real life at this time (albeit briefly – they divorced a year later), in the all-star romp, The Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders (Terence Johnson, 1965). Johnson certainly displayed Bond-like qualities in some of his film roles, notably when he played a modern-day Bulldog Drummond (reimagined as a 007-type hero) in Deadlier Than the Male (Ralph Thomas, 1967) with Elke Sommer and Sylva Koscina and its less satisfactory sequel, Some Girls Do (Ralph Thomas, 1969) with Daliah Lavi. In 1969 he founded a production company called Pageant Entertainments Ltd. Its earliest productions included John Aubrey’s Brief Lives at the Criterion (1969). His feature films included the thriller Danger Route (Seth Holt, 1967), Oedipus the King (Philip Saville, 1968), Le calde notti di Lady Hamilton/Lady Hamilton (Christian-Jaque, 1968) starring Michèle Mercier, Julius Caesar (Stuart Burge, 1970), and Hennessy (Don Sharp, 1975) for which he also wrote the original story.

Returning to the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1972, Richard Johnson played (both at Stratford and in London) Mark Antony in 'Julius Caesar', and Antony in Trevor Nunn’s 'Antony and Cleopatra' opposite Janet Suzman. His performance was variously described as “fruity”, “genial” and “declining into a business ruffian”, but also firmly defining the warrior’s handsome gravity. After starring in a West End musical comedy, 'Thomas and the King', in 1975, in which he played Thomas, he joined the National Theatre Company for a couple of seasons, showing, again under Peter Hall’s direction, a sharp gift for farce in Noël Coward’s 'Blithe Spirit', and playing Pontius Pilate in 'The Passion' (1977), Pinchwife in Wycherley’s 'The Country Wife' (1977) and Nendor in 'The Guardsman' in 1978. He went on to appear in such films as The Four Feathers (Don Sharp, 1978). He also appeared in several Italian films, including Lucio Fulci's cult classic, Zombi 2/Zombie (1979) which was banned for some years, and L'isola degli uomini pesce/Island of the Fishmen (Sergio Martino, 1979) with Barbara Bach. In 1983 Johnson became founder, chairman, and joint chief executive of a production company, United Artists, with Diana Rigg as director, and the actors Albert Finney and Glenda Jackson. They promoted such films as Turtle Diary (John Irvin, 1985) starring Glenda Jackson and Ben Kingsley, Castaway (Nicolas Roeg, 1986) with Oliver Reed, and The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (Jack Clayton, 1987) starring Maggie Smith. He made something of a comeback at Stratford-on-Avon in 1992 as Antony in Antony and Cleopatra, having two years earlier re-established himself on the television screen in two plays, The Camomile Lawn and Anglo-Saxon Attitudes. In later years, he was a charismatic presence in television productions such as Midsomer Murders, Waking the Dead, Silent Witness and Doc Martin. His later films include Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (Simon West, 2001) and The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (Mark Herman, 2008). His last known film appearance was in Radiator (Tom Browne, 2014). Richard Johnson was married four times; first, in 1957 to the actress Sheila Sweet, by whom he had a son and daughter (the photographer, Sukey Parnell). After their divorce he married, in 1965, Kim Novak, a marriage which lasted a few months. In 1982 he married Mary-Louise Norlund, by whom he had a daughter. He also had a son with the French actress, Françoise Pascal. His fourth wife was Lynne Gurney, whom he married on a beach in Goa in 2004. She survives him with his four children and his stepson, the actor Paris Arrowsmith. Johnson’s family said he died on Saturday in the Royal Marsden hospital in Chelsea, west London, after a short illness.

Sources: The Telegraph, The New York Times, The Guardian, Wikipedia and IMDb.

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

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Vintage Italian postcard. Ambrosio Film. Unione Cinematografica Italiana. Series Teodora, No. 10. Postcard for the Italian silent film Teodora (Leopoldo Carlucci, Ambrosio Film/ UCI 1921). Caption: "The quarters of the animals."

Tags:   Teodora UCI Ambrosio 1921 Antiquity Byzantium 1920s Italian Italy Italia Italiano Italiana scenography set design art direction Brasini Vintage Vedette Postcard Postkarte POstale Postkaart Postal Picture Cinema Carte Cartolina Cine Carte Postale Card Celebrity Costume Cinema Italiano Film Film Star Movies Movie Movie Star Muet Muto Screen Star Silent Sepia Stummfilm Ansichtkaart Ansichtskarte lions Period piece Historical Costume Historical film Leopoldo Carlucci adaptation Victorien Sardou play

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Vintage Italian postcard. Ambrosio Film. Unione Cinematografica Italiana. Series Teodora, No. 7. Postcard for the Italian silent film Teodora (Leopoldo Carlucci, Ambrosio Film/ UCI 1921), here with Rita Jolivet in the title role and René Maupré as her lover Andrea. Caption: "In the inebration of a night of love, Andrea imprudently reveals the secret of the conspiracy against the emperor."

Rita Jolivet (1885 - 1962), an American-born British actress of French descent, was already an acclaimed stage actress of the British, American, and international stage when she debuted in film. Noticing Jolivet's performance at the Garrick Theatre in New York, the American distributor and importer of European films George Kleine proposed her to make films in Italy. Enthusiastic about the Guazzoni epics and Borelli's Love Everlasting (Ma l'amor mion non muore), Jolivet went to Turin where she worked for Ambrosio. After acting in Fata Morgana (Eduardo Bencivenga, 1914), with René Maupré, and Cuore ed arte (Bencivenga, 1915), with Hamilton Revelle, however, she returned to the US to play in Cecil B. deMille's The Unafraid (1915), with House Peters. The film was a huge success and Jolivet acted in another four American films.

Embarked on the Lusitania in May 1915 in order to shoot two more films at Ambrosio and to marry an Italian count, Jolivet was one of the few survivors when a German submarine destroys the transatlantic. Her theatrical producer and mentor Charles Frohmann was on board as well but he perished, after which Jolivet's stage career came to halt and henceforth she focused on film acting. Safely escorted to Britain, she married count Cippico di Zara in London, and reaching Italy, she played in two more Ambrosio productions, La mano di Fatma (1916) and Zvani (1916), both by Gino Zaccaria. Returned to the States, Rita acted in four films in 1916-1917, and contributed to a Red-Cross film. In 1918 she decided to produce Lest We Forget, a romanticized version of the fatal events of the Lusitania, directed by French director Léonce Perret. Jolivet personally presented the film in roadshows all along the States. The revenues of Lest We Forget were donated to war victims. Also, Jolivet was the best Liberty Bonds seller of the US, supposedly selling them more than Fairbanks, Pickford and Chaplin together.

After the war, Jolivet returned to Italy to star in a long cherished project: the life of Theodora, Empress of Byzantium, directed by Leopoldo Carlucci, based on Victorien Sardou's play, and with enormous, imposing sets by Armando Brasini. On stage, Sardou's play had been a major hit for Sarah Bernhardt. Because of various economical problems and censorship, the production slowly proceeded in 1919 and 1920 and was finally premiered in the US in October 1921. It was a huge succes. One year after, success was even bigger in Italy, with audiences flocking to see the film. The critics were enthusiastic both about the film with its gigantic sets and about Jolivet's performance. In-between theatrical performances Jolivet made 1 American and 3 more films in France: The Bride's Confession ( Ivan Abramson, 1921) with Leah Baird, Roger la Honte (Jacques de Baroncelli, 1922) with Gabriel Signoret, Le mariage de minuit (Armand du Plessy, 1923) with Gabriel de Gravone, Le marchand de bonheur (Giuseppe Guarino, 1926) with Georges Melchior, and Phi-Phi (Georges Pallu, 1927) with Georges Gauthier and Gaston Norès. She then remarried a rich Scotsman in 1928 after divorcing Cippico, retreated from stage and screen world, and moved to New York.

Source: Vittorio Martinelli, Le dive del silenzio, English Wikipedia, IMDB.

Tags:   Teodora UCI Ambrosio 1921 Antiquity Byzantium 1920s Italian Italy Italia Italiano Italiana scenography set design art direction Brasini Vintage Vedette Postcard Postkarte POstale Postkaart Postal Picture Cinema Carte Cartolina Cine Carte Postale Card Celebrity Costume Cinema Italiano Film Film Star Movies Movie Movie Star Muet Muto Screen Star Silent Sepia Stummfilm Ansichtkaart Ansichtskarte Rita Jolivet Schauspielerin Darstellerin ACtress Actrice Attrice Actor Acteur Attore SChauspieler Darsteller Period piece Historical Costume Historical film Leopoldo Carlucci adaptation play Victorien Sardou

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Italian postcard by Unione Cinematografica Italiana, series Teodora, no. 6. Photo: Ambrosio Film. Rita Jolivet in Teodora (Leopoldo Carlucci, 1921). Caption: "Searching for her lovers, Teodora descends to the lowest quarters of the city."

Rita Jolivet (1885 - 1962), an American-born British actress of French descent, was already an acclaimed stage actress on the British, American, and international stages when she debuted in film. Noticing Jolivet's performance at the Garrick Theatre in New York, the American distributor and importer of European films George Kleine proposed she make films in Italy. Enthusiastic about the Guazzoni epics and Borelli's Love Everlasting (Ma l'amor mion non muore), Jolivet went to Turin where she worked for Ambrosio. After acting in Fata Morgana (Eduardo Bencivenga, 1914), with René Maupré, and Cuore ed arte (Bencivenga, 1915), with Hamilton Revelle, however, she returned to the US to play in Cecil B. DeMille's The Unafraid (1915), with House Peters. The film was a huge success and Jolivet acted in four more American films.

Embarked on the Lusitania in May 1915 in order to shoot two more films at Ambrosio and to marry an Italian count, Jolivet was one of the few survivors when a German submarine destroys the transatlantic. Her theatrical producer and mentor Charles Frohmann was on board as well but he perished, after which Jolivet's stage career came to halt and henceforth she focused on film acting. Safely escorted to Britain, she married count Cippico di Zara in London, and reaching Italy, she played in two more Ambrosio productions, La mano di Fatma (1916) and Zvani (1916), both by Gino Zaccaria. Returned to the States, Rita acted in four films in 1916-1917, and contributed to a Red-Cross film. In 1918 she decided to produce Lest We Forget, a romanticized version of the fatal events of the Lusitania, directed by French director Léonce Perret. Jolivet personally presented the film in roadshows all along the States. The revenues of Lest We Forget were donated to war victims. Also, Jolivet was the best Liberty Bonds seller of the US, supposedly selling them more than Fairbanks, Pickford and Chaplin together.

After the war, Jolivet returned to Italy to star in a long cherished project: the life of Theodora, Empress of Byzantium, directed by Leopoldo Carlucci, based on Victorien Sardou's play, and with enormous, imposing sets by Armando Brasini. On stage, Sardou's play had been a major hit for Sarah Bernhardt. Because of various economical problems and censorship, the production slowly proceeded in 1919 and 1920 and was finally premiered in the US in October 1921. It was a huge succes. One year after, success was even bigger in Italy, with audiences flocking to see the film. The critics were enthusiastic both about the film with its gigantic sets and about Jolivet's performance. In-between theatrical performances Jolivet made 1 American and 3 more films in France: The Bride's Confession ( Ivan Abramson, 1921) with Leah Baird, Roger la Honte (Jacques de Baroncelli, 1922) with Gabriel Signoret, Le mariage de minuit (Armand du Plessy, 1923) with Gabriel de Gravone, Le marchand de bonheur (Giuseppe Guarino, 1926) with Georges Melchior, and Phi-Phi (Georges Pallu, 1927) with Georges Gauthier and Gaston Norès. She then remarried a rich Scotsman in 1928 after divorcing Cippico, retreated from stage and screen world, and moved to New York.

Source: Vittorio Martinelli, Le dive del silenzio, English Wikipedia, IMDB.

Tags:   Teodora UCI Ambrosio 1921 Antiquity Byzantium 1920s Italian Italy Italia Italiano Italiana scenography set design art direction Brasini Vintage Vedette Postcard Postkarte POstale Postkaart Postal Picture Cinema Carte Cartolina Cine Carte Postale Card Celebrity Costume Cinema Italiano Film Film Star Movies Movie Movie Star Muet Muto Screen Star Silent Sepia Stummfilm Ansichtkaart Ansichtskarte Rita Jolivet Schauspielerin Darstellerin ACtress Actrice Attrice Period piece Historical Costume Historical film adaptation Victorien Sardou Leopoldo Carlucci

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