Italian postcard by Nannina, Milano.

Distinguished American actor Robert Ryan (1909-1973) was known for his portrayals of hardened cops and ruthless villains. In 1948, he was nominated for an Oscar for his supporting role in Crossfire (1947). He achieved more fame with roles in Bad Day at Black Rock (1955), The Dirty Dozen (1967) and The Wild Bunch (1969).

Robert Bushnell Ryan was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1909. He was the first child of Mabel Arbutus (née Bushnell), a secretary, and Timothy Aloysius Ryan, who was from a wealthy family who owned a real estate firm. Ryan's first successes came at Dartmouth College, where he held the school's heavyweight boxing title for all four years of his attendance, along with lettering in football and track. After graduating in 1932, he worked in various odd jobs: as a stoker on a ship that travelled to Africa and as a roustabout on a ranch in Montana. He returned home in 1936 when his father died, and after a brief stint modelling clothes for a department store, he decided to become an actor. In 1937 Ryan joined a little theatre group in Chicago. The following year he enrolled in the Max Reinhardt Workshop in Hollywood. His role in the 1939 play 'Too Many Husbands' brought an offer from Paramount. Although he had done a screen test for them in 1938 and been turned down as "not the right type", the studio offered him a $ 75-a-week contract. He made his debut as a boxer in Golden Gloves (Edward Dmytryk, 1940), Throughout the 1940s, he appeared on stage or in supporting roles in films on several occasions. In 1943, he signed a contract with RKO and was fourth-billed in Behind the Rising Sun (Edward Dmytryk, 1943), which was a huge box-office success. RKO promoted him to star status in Tender Comrade (Edward Dmytryk, 1943), where he was Ginger Rogers' leading man. It was another big hit. In 1944, he joined the United States Marine Corps and was active as a drill instructor at Camp Pendleton, in Southern California. There, he befriended writer/director Richard Brooks. After his discharge from the Marine Corps, RKO immediately cast Ryan in the Randolph Scott Western, Trail Street (Ray Enright, 1947), which was very popular. However, his next film, The Woman on the Beach (Jean Renoir, 1947) with Joan Bennett, lost money. Ryan's big film breakthrough came with his role in Edward Dmytryk's superb Film Noir Crossfire (1947), based on the novel by Richard Brooks. For his portrayal of the anti-Semitic bully and murderer Montgomery, Ryan was nominated for an Oscar in the category of Best Supporting Actor in 1948. Ryan went on to become one of Hollywood's most versatile actors, able to play both the sympathetic leading man and the film villain. Some of Ryan's portrayals also blurred the lines between good and evil, which is probably why he was often cast in Film Noirs. In his personal favourite, The Set-Up (Robert Wise, 1949) he played a washed-up boxer who has to pay dearly for his last success in the ring,

For RKO, Robert Ryan starred in the Film Noir On Dangerous Ground (Nicholas Ray, 1951) in which he played a hostile and jaded cop opposite Gloria Grahame. Ryan went to MGM where he played a villain in Anthony Mann's Western The Naked Spur (1953), starring James Stewart. The picture was very popular. Other successes were the suspense film Bad Day at Black Rock (John Sturges, 1955) in which he played the head villain opposite intrepid investigator Spencer Tracy and the grimy, gangster film Odds Against Tomorrow (Robert Wise, 1959) starring Harry Belafonte. In the summer of 1960, Ryan starred opposite Katharine Hepburn at the American Shakespeare Theatre in Stratford, Connecticut, playing Antony to Hepburn's Cleopatra. Ryan remained in high demand throughout the 1960s and was part of some big productions that could count on an all-star cast. For instance, Ryan starred in the biblical epic King of Kings (Nicholas Ray, 1961), the all-star war film The Longest Day (Ken Annakin, Andrew Marton, Bernhard Wicki, Darryl F. Zanuck, 1962), the war adventure The Dirty Dozen (Robert Aldrich, 1967) and the violent Western The Wild Bunch (Sam Peckinpah, 1969). On the political front, Ryan also made himself heard on several occasions. He was a liberal Democrat and a great defender of civil rights. In the McCarthy era, he joined the short-lived Committee for the First Amendment and protested against the persecution of the Hollywood Ten. Ryan's later political activities included efforts to fight racial discrimination. He served in the cultural division of the Committee to Defend Martin Luther King Jr., and helped organise the short-lived Artists Help All Blacks, with Bill Cosby, Robert Culp, and Sidney Poitier. In 1972, Ryan's wife, former actress Jessica Cadwalader died of cancer. The two had been married to each other since 1939. Robert Ryan, a heavy smoker, died of lung cancer a year later at the age of 63. He left behind two sons and a daughter. His final film role was as the terminally-ill political activist Larry Slade in the drama The Iceman Cometh (John Frankenheimer, 1973), based on the play by Eugene O'Neill. For his performance, he was posthumously honoured with several awards including the National Board of Review Award.

Sources: Wikipedia (Dutch, German and English) and IMDb.

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Italian postcard by Nannina, Milano.

Slight, blonde Richard Widmark (1914-2008) suddenly established himself as an icon of American cinema with his debut as a giggling psychopath in Kiss of Death (1947). He was one of the most sought-after actors in Hollywood for a good three decades and appeared in 75 films.

Richard Weedt Widmark was born in Sunrise County, Minnesota, in 1914. His parents were Carl Henry Widmark, a Swedish immigrant and travelling salesman, and his wife Ethel Mae Barr. Widmark could already read before he went to school and studied law after graduation to become a lawyer. He also became enthusiastic about acting at an early age. In 1938 Widmark moved to New York with his future wife Jean Hazlewood, a screenwriter he had met as a colleague in Lake Forrest, and married her in 1942. Their only child, Anne Heath Widmark, was born in 1945. In 1943 Widmark made his Broadway debut in George Abbott's theatrical production of 'Kiss and Tell'. Widmark worked as a radio announcer for ten years before making his film acting debut. Widmark made his breakthrough with his debut role as Tommy Udo in the Film Noir Kiss of Death (Henry Hathaway, 1947) starring Victor Maure. Udo is a criminal who cold-heartedly pushes a paraplegic old woman down a flight of stairs in her wheelchair in the film's most famous scene. For this role, he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Male Supporting Actor. Widmark received a seven-year contract with 20th Century Fox. After his successful debut, Widmark was initially confined to the role of the villain for years. He brought a new kind of deeply troubled or corrupt character to the screen: a hard-boiled type who does not actively court the sympathy of the audience. In the 1950s the actor managed to get away from this type and establish himself as a versatile leading man in all genres. Elia Kazan cast Widmark in his thriller Panick in the Streets (1950), not as the heavy but as the physician who tracks down Jack Palance, who has the plague, in tandem with detective Paul Douglas. He went on to play notable roles as the penny-ante hustler Harry Fabian in the Film Noir Night and the City (Jules Dassin, 1950) with Gene Tierney, and an airline pilot who pursues a babysitter in his hotel (Marilyn Monroe) and gradually realises she's dangerous in Don't Bother to Knock (Roy Ward Baker, 1952). He later played in the Western The Alamo (John Wayne, 1960), the drama Judgment at Nuremberg (Stanley Kramer, 1961) starring Spencer Tracy, and the epic Western How the West Was Won (John Ford, Henry Hathaway, George Marshall, 1962).

During the 1970s and 1980s, Richard Widmark advanced over the years to become a sought-after character actor. He starred in such well-known films as the Agatha Christie adaptation Murder on the Orient Express (Sidney Lumet, 1974), the disaster thriller Rollercoaster (James Goldstone, 1977), the thriller Coma (Michael Crichton, 1978) starring Genevieve Bujold and Michael Douglas, and the Neo Noir Against All Odds (Taylor Hackford, 1984) with Jeff Bridges. In 1987 he appeared with Louis Gossett jr. in Volker Schlöndorff's film A Gathering of Old Men, based on the novel 'A Gathering of Old Men' by Ernest J. Gaines. In 1991 Richard Widmark appeared in front of the film camera for the last time in the political thriller True Colors (Herbert Ross, 1991) starring John Cusack. His last work was a voice-over for the television film Lincoln (Peter W. Kunhardt, James A. Edgar, 1992). Widmark spent his retirement in seclusion on his farm in Connecticut. Widmark was first married to Jean Hazlewood from 1952 until her death in 1997. A daughter was born to Hazlewood. He married Susan Blanchard, who had previously been married to Henry Fonda, in 1999 and remained with her until his death. In 2008, Richard Widmark died at home in Roxbury, Connecticut, at the age of 93. His death followed a fall in 2007, which he did not recover from.

Sources: Martin Lewison and Jon C. Hopwood (IMDb), Wikipedia (Dutch and German) and IMDb.

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Italian postcard by Nannina, Milano.

Petite American actress Mari Blanchard (1927–1970) was known for her roles as a B movie femme fatale in American films of the 1950s and early 1960s.

The daughter of an oil tycoon and a psychotherapist, Mari Blanchard suffered from severe poliomyelitis at the age of nine. She fought back against her illness and was walking again by age eleven. To exercise her limbs, she swam daily for several years afterwards. At 17 she ran away from home to join the Cole Brothers Circus and learned how to ride elephants, perform bareback on horses and fly on the trapeze bar. Her mother found her and took her back home. In the late 1940s, she was a successful print model and film extra. In 1948, Mari's beautiful blue-eyed brunet (later blonde) looks and 36-25-36 figure became the inspiration for cartoonist Al Capp in creating the voluptuous Stupefyin' Jones character for his L'il Abner comics. After she was seen by a Paramount producer in a bubble bath commercial ad for Kodak that appeared in The Hollywood Reporter, she was offered a film contract. From 1951 to 1952, she took small roles in a number of films at MGM, RKO, and Paramount, until she was signed by Universal-International in 1952. Her first film at the studio was Back at the Front (George Sherman, 1952). One of her more memorable roles was the Venusian queen, Allura, in the comedy Abbott and Costello Go to Mars (Charles Lamont,1953). Reportedly with allure, she starred with Audie Murphy in the Western Destry (George Marshall, 1954), but her contract was not renewed by Universal.

Mari Blanchard worked for television and for minor studios. She continued to excell at playing bad girls and ladies of ill-repute. On TV, she starred in episodes of such series as Climax! (1955) and Casablanca (1956). She played a female monster in The B-movie She Devil (Kurt Neumann, 1957) and was the love interest of Lex Barker in Jungle Heat (Howard W. Koch , 1957). A curiosity was her appearance in the Turkish film Karasu (Turgut Demirag, 1958). In the 1960–1961 television season, she starred as Kathy O'Hara in the NBC Western series Klondike with James Coburn. She also guest starred in episodes of Rawhide (1959-1961), 77 Sunset Strip (1961) and Perry Mason (1962). Among her later films were the musical Don't Knock the Twist (Oscar Rudolph, 1962) with Chubby Checker and the horror film Twice-Told Tales (Sidney Salkow, 1963) starring Vincent Price. In 1963 she had a small but flamboyant role as Camille in the John Wayne Western McLintock! (Andrew V. McLaglen, 1963). It was her final film appearance. She was diagnosed with cancer. Blanchard retired, and acted only in a few TV programs when her cancer temporarily went into renmission. Following a struggle of seven years, Mari Blanchard died in 1970. She was only 43.

Sources: I.S. Mowis (IMDb), Brian J. Walker (Brian's Drive-in Theater), Wikipedia and IMDb.

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Italian postcard by Nannina, Milano, no. 30.

Glenn Ford (1916-2006) was a Canadian-American actor whose career lasted more than 50 years. Although he played different types of roles in many film genres, Ford was best known for playing ordinary men in unusual circumstances. He was one of the biggest box-office draws of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. Some of his most significant roles were in the Film Noirs Gilda (1946) and The Big Heat (1953), and the high school angst film Blackboard Jungle (1955). However, it was for comedies or Westerns which he received acting laurels, including three Golden Globe nominations for Best Actor in a Comedy, winning for Pocketful of Miracles (1961). He also played a supporting role as Clark Kent's adoptive father in Superman (1978).

Gwyllyn Samuel Newton Ford was born in 1916, in Sainte-Christine-d'Auvergne, Quebec. He was the son of Hannah Wood (née Mitchell) and Newton Ford, an engineer with the Canadian Pacific Railway. In 1922, when Ford was six, the family moved first to Venice and then to Santa Monica, California. Newton became a motorman for the Venice Electric Tram Company, a job he held until he died at age 50 in 1940. While attending Santa Monica High School, Glenn was active in school drama productions with other future actors such as James Griffith. After graduation, he began working in small theatre groups. While in high school, he took odd jobs, including working for Will Rogers, who taught him horsemanship. Ford became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1939. Ford acted in West Coast stage companies before joining Columbia Pictures in 1939. His stage name came from his father's hometown of Glenford, Alberta. His first major film part was in Heaven with a Barbed Wire Fence (Ricardo Cortez, 1939). Top Hollywood director John Cromwell was impressed enough with his work to borrow him from Columbia for the independently produced drama, So Ends Our Night (1941), where Ford delivered a poignant portrayal of a 19-year-old German exile on the run in Nazi-occupied Europe. Working with Academy Award-winning Fredric March and wooing (onscreen) 30-year-old Margaret Sullavan, recently nominated for an Oscar, Ford's shy, ardent young refugee riveted attention even in such stellar company. "Glenn Ford, a most promising newcomer," wrote The New York Times's Bosley Crowther, "draws more substance and appealing simplicity from his role of the boy than any one else in the cast." After 35 interviews and glowing reviews for him personally, Glenn Ford had young female fans begging for his autograph, too. However, the young man was disappointed when Columbia Pictures did nothing with this prestige and new visibility and instead kept plugging him into conventional films for the rest of his 7-year contract. His next picture, Texas (George Marshall, 1941), was his first Western, a genre with which he would be associated for the rest of his life. Set after the Civil War, it paired him with another young male star under contract, William Holden, who became a lifelong friend. More routine films followed, none of them memorable, but lucrative enough to allow Ford to buy his mother and himself a beautiful new home in the Pacific Palisades. So Ends Our Night (John Cromwell, 1941) also affected the young star in another way: in the summer of 1941, while the United States was still technically neutral, he enlisted in the Coast Guard Auxiliary. Ten months after Ford's portrait of a young anti-Nazi exile, the United States entered World War II. After playing a young pilot in his 11th Columbia film, Flight Lieutenant (Sidney Salkow, 1942), Ford went on a cross-country 12-city tour to sell war bonds for Army and Navy Relief. In the midst of the many stars also donating their time – from Bob Hope to Cary Grant to Claudette Colbert – he met the popular dancing star, Eleanor Powell. The two soon fell in love; they attended the official opening of the Hollywood USO together in October. Then, while making another war drama, Destroyer (William A. Seiter, 1943), with Edward G. Robinson, an ardent anti-fascist, Glenn impulsively volunteered for the United States Marine Corps Reserve in December 1942. The startled studio had to beg the Marines to give their second male lead four more weeks to complete shooting. In the meantime, Ford proposed to Eleanor Powell, who subsequently announced her retirement from the screen to be near her fiancé as he started boot camp.

Glenn Ford was assigned in March 1943 to active duty at the Marine Corps Base in San Diego. With his Coast Guard service, he was offered a position as an officer, but Ford declined, feeling it would be interpreted as preferential treatment for a movie star and instead entered the Marines as a private. He trained at the Marine base in San Diego, where Tyrone Power, the number-one male movie star at the time, was also based. Power suggested Ford join him in the Marines' weekly radio show 'Halls of Montezuma', broadcast Sunday evenings from San Diego. Ford excelled in training, winning the Rifle Marksman Badge and being named "Honor Man" of the platoon and promoted to sergeant by the time he finished. Awaiting assignment at Camp Pendleton, Marine Corps base, Ford volunteered to play a Marine raider – uncredited – in the film Guadalcanal Diary, made by Fox, with Ford and others charging up the beaches of Southern California. After being sent to Marine Corps Schools Detachment (Photographic Section) in Quantico, Virginia, three months later, Ford returned to the San Diego base in February 1944 and was assigned to the radio section of the Public Relations Office, Headquarters Company, Base Headquarters Battalion, where he resumed work on 'Halls of Montezuma'. Though without the combat duty he had been hoping for, Ford was awarded several service medals for his three years in the Marines Reserve Corps. The most memorable role of Ford's career came with his first postwar film, Gilda (Charles Vidor, 1946), in which he starred alongside Rita Hayworth. This was Glenn Ford's second pairing with Hayworth; his first was in The Lady In Question (Charles Vidor, 1940), a well-received courtroom drama in which Glenn plays a boy who falls in love with Rita Hayworth when his father, Brian Aherne, tries to rehabilitate her in their bicycle shop. Directed by Hungarian emigre Charles Vidor, the two rising young stars instantly bonded. Their on-screen chemistry was not immortalised, however, until Gilda, also directed by Charles Vidor, who knew a good thing when he saw it. Ford went on to be a leading man opposite Hayworth in a total of five films, and the two, after their location romance (his marriage survived, hers did not) became lifelong friends and next-door neighbors. Beautifully shot in black-and-white by cinematographer Rudolph Mate, Gilda has endured as a classic of Film Noir.

Both Glenn Ford and his friend William Holden flourished throughout the 1950s and 1960s, but Ford was frustrated that he was not given the opportunity to work with directors of the caliber that Holden did in his Oscar-winning career, such as Billy Wilder and David Lean. He missed out on From Here to Eternity when production was stalled by Columbia studio head Harry Cohn. He also made the mistake, which he bitterly regretted later, of turning down the lead in the brilliant comedy Born Yesterday (George Cukor, 1950), which Holden then snatched up. He instead continued to turn in solid performances in thrillers; dramas such as A Stolen Life (Curtis Bernhardt, 1946) with Bette Davis; action films such as Appointment in Honduras (Jacques Tourneur, 1953) with Ann Sheridan, and Film Noirs such as The Big Heat (Fritz Lang, 1953), co-starring Gloria Grahame, with whom he re-teamed the following year in Human Desire (Fritz Lang, 1954), loosely based on La Bête Humaine, the 1870 Emile Zola novel. Blackboard Jungle (Richard Brooks, 1955) was a landmark film of teen angst. It tackled racial conflicts head-on as Ford played an idealistic, harassed teacher at an urban high school that included a very young Sidney Poitier and other black and Hispanic cast members, while Vic Morrow played a dangerous juvenile delinquent. Bill Haley's "Rock Around the Clock" under the opening credits was the first use of a rock and roll song in a Hollywood film. Richard Brooks, the film's writer and director, had discovered the music when he heard Ford's son Peter playing the record at Glenn Ford's home. In Interrupted Melody (Curtis Bernhardt, 1955), Ford starred with Eleanor Parker. The Westerns with which he always was associated included The Secret of Convict Lake (Michael Gordon, 1951) with Gene Tierney, Jubal (Delmer Daves, 1956), The Fastest Gun Alive (Russell Rouse, 1956), 3:10 to Yuma (Delmer Daves, 1957), and Cimarron (Anthony Mann, 1960) with Maria Schell. Ford's versatility allowed him to star in a number of popular comedies, almost always as the beleaguered, well-meaning but nonplussed straight man, set upon by circumstances as in The Teahouse of the August Moon (Daniel Mann, 1957), with Marlon Brando. He played an American soldier sent to Okinawa to convert the occupied island's natives to the American way of life and is instead converted by them. Also, he starred in Don't Go Near The Water (Charles Walters, 1957) with Gia Scala, and the romantic comedy The Courtship of Eddie's Father (Vincente Minnelli, 1963) with the young Ron Howard as his son Eddie. In 1958, Ford was ranked the number one box-office star in America. He starred in four films that year: the Western Cowboy (Delmer Daves, 1958), the Western The Sheepman (George Marshall, 1958), the comedy Imitation General (George Marshall, 1958), and the war film Torpedo Run (Joseph Pevney, 1958). After being nominated in 1957, 1958 and in 1962, Ford won a Golden Globe Award as Best Actor for his performance in Pocketful of Miracles (Frank Capra, 1961), a film he helped produce that was a remake of Capra's Lady for a Day (Frank Capra, 1933).

In 1971, Glenn Ford signed with CBS to star in his first television series, a half-hour comedy/drama titled The Glenn Ford Show. However, CBS head Fred Silverman noticed that many of the featured films being shown at a Glenn Ford film festival were Westerns. He suggested doing a Western series, instead, which resulted in the "modern-day Western" series, Cade's County (1971–1972). Ford played southwestern Sheriff Cade for one season in a mix of police mystery and Western drama. In The Family Holvak (1975–1976), Ford portrayed a Depression-era preacher in a family drama, reprising the same character he had played in the TV film, The Greatest Gift. In 1978, Ford had a supporting role in Superman (Richard Donner, 1978) as Clark Kent's adoptive father Jonathan Kent. In Ford's final scene in the film, "Rock Around the Clock" is heard on a car radio. In 1981, Ford co-starred with Melissa Sue Anderson in the slasher film Happy Birthday to Me (J. Lee Thompson, 1981). In 1991, Ford agreed to star in a cable network series, African Skies. However, prior to the start of the series, he developed blood clots in his legs which required a lengthy stay in Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. Eventually, he recovered, but at one time his situation was so severe that he was listed in critical condition. Ford was forced to drop out of the series and was replaced by Robert Mitchum. The film Superman Returns (Bryan Singer, 2006) includes a scene where Ma Kent (played by Eva Marie Saint) stands next to the living room mantel after Superman returns from his quest to find remnants of Krypton. On that mantel is a picture of Glenn Ford as Pa Kent. Ford was married four times. His first wife was actress and dancer Eleanor Powell (1943–1959), with whom he had his only child, actor Peter Ford (1945). The couple appeared together on screen once in the short film Have Faith in Our Children (1955). When they married, Powell was more famous than Ford. She divorced him in 1959 on the grounds of adultery and mental cruelty. He subsequently married actress Kathryn Hays (1966–1969); Cynthia Hayward (1977–1984), and Jeanne Baus (1993–1994). All marriages ended in divorces, and Ford did not remain on good terms with any of his ex-wives. Ford was a notorious womaniser who had affairs with many of his leading ladies, including Rita Hayworth, Maria Schell, Geraldine Brooks, Stella Stevens, Gloria Grahame, Gene Tierney, Eva Gabor, and Barbara Stanwyck. He had a one-night stand with Marilyn Monroe in 1962 and a fling with Joan Crawford in the early 1940s. He also had a long-term relationship with actress Hope Lange in the early 1960s. According to his son Peter Ford's book 'Glenn Ford: A Life' (2011), Ford had affairs with 146 actresses, all of which were documented in his personal diaries, including a 40-year, on-and-off-again affair with Rita Hayworth that began during the filming of Gilda in 1946. Their affair resumed during the making of their film The Loves of Carmen (Charles Vidor, 1948). Ford impregnated Hayworth, and she later traveled to France to get an abortion. In 1960, Ford would move next door to Hayworth in Beverly Hills, and they continued their relationship for many years until the early 1980s. Ford also documented his many relationships by taping every phone conversation he ever had with all of his celebrity lovers and friends for 40 years. Ford installed the recording system to listen in on his first wife, Eleanor Powell's conversations, fearing that she would find out about his serial cheating and leave him. Ford retired from acting in 1991, at age 75, following heart and circulatory problems. Ford suffered a series of minor strokes which left him in frail health in the years leading up to his death. He died in his Beverly Hills home in 2006, at the age of 90.

Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.

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Italian postcard by Nannina, Milano.

Lea Padovani (1923-1991) was an Italian stage and film actress. She appeared in 60 films between 1945 and 1990. She starred in the French crime film Le Dossier noir/Black Dossier (André Cayatte, 1955) which was entered into the 1955 Cannes Film Festival.

Lea Padovani was born in Montalto di Castro, in 1923. Against her father's advice, Lea enrolled at L'Accademia d'Arte Drammatica, the National Academy of Dramatic Art in Rome, which she left in 1944. She made her debut as a soubrette in Garinei and Giovannini's revue 'Cantachiaro'. The following year, she was part of Erminio Macario's company in 'Febbre azzurra'. She demonstrated excellent acting skills and enjoyed great success. Her meeting with Macario led to work in the film industry. She made her film debut with the female leading role in the comedy L'innocente Casimiro/The Innocent Casimiro (Carlo Campogalliani, 1946) starring Erminio Macario. In 1946 she began her long and successful career as a theatre actress with Armand Salacrou's 'Un uomo come gli altri' and with Jean Cocteau's 'I parenti terribili' in Luchino Visconti's Milanese revival. In 1953, she was alongside Ruggero Ruggeri on a tour to London and Paris with 'Enrico IV' and 'Tutto per bene'. In 1954 she was awarded a special Nastro d'Argento (Silver Ribbon award) for her theatrical performances.

From 1947 Lea Padovani appeared in international films, such as Una lettera al Alba/Letter at Dawn (Giorgio Bianchi, 1948) and the British social drama Give Us This Day (Edward Dmytryk, 1949) with Sam Wanamaker. Orson Welles originally cast Lea as Desdemona in his 1952 film production of Othello back in 1948. After Welles began the filming in Venice, producer Montatori Scalera informed Welles that he wanted to make Verdi's opera, not the Shakespearean play, so the money ran out and the film was shelved. By the time the film was made years later, Lea had been replaced by Suzanne Cloutier. She starred in the French crime film Le Dossier noir/Black Dossier (André Cayatte, 1955) which was entered into the 1955 Cannes Film Festival. A big hit was the comedy Pane, amore e...../Scandal in Sorrento (Dino Risi, 1955) in which she co-starred with Sophia Loren and Vittorio De Sica. In the 1950s, Padovani also took part in several TV dramas, including Piccole done (Anton Giulio Majano, 1955), Il romanzo di un giovane povero (Silverio Blasi, 1957) and Ottocento (Anton Giulio Majano, 1959-1960). During the 1960s, the stage and television became more important than her film career. In 1990, she made her last film, La putain du roi/The King's Whore (Axel Corti, 1990) with Timothy Dalton and Valeria Golino. Shortly before her death, the actress told writer Renzo Allegri about her encounters with Padre Pio in the late 1950s, asking for help for one of her lovers, who was terminally ill with cancer. She died in 1991 of a heart attack. In 2006, director Oliver Parker directed the film Fade to Black, based on the novel Fade to Black by Davide Ferrario, inspired by a fictional story involving the actress, played in the film by Paz Vega, and the director Orson Welles, played by Danny Huston. In 2012, a theatre named after Lea Padovani was inaugurated in Montalto di Castro by Mayor Sergio Caci and Culture Councillor Eleonora Sacconi.

Sources: Wikipedia (Italian and English) and IMDb.

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