Italian actress Silvana Pampanini dies, aged 91

(AGI) Rome, Jan 6 - Silvana Pampanini, the Italian actress and beauty, died in Rome on Wednesday, aged 91. She starred in a great many comedies, but overall was a great actress and a strong character, who spurned Hollywood in favour of French cinema. Along with Lucia Bose and Silvana Mangano, she was one of the icons of Fifties Italian cinema, appearing in films directed by Monicelli Germi, Comencini, De Sentis and Steno. Her acting career was launched after being crowned Miss Italy in 1946 following a tabloid outcry, having been put forward unknowingly by one of her teachers. Her first film was Giuseppe Maria Scotese's Apocalypse, which then led to her starring in five films made in 1949. These included Mario Mattoli's I Pompieri di Viggiu, which really made her name. During her career, she starred alongside Vittorio De Sica, Amedeo Nazzari, Marcello Mastroianni, Rossano Brazzi and Massimo Girotti, as well as the great comic actors such as Toto and Peppino De Filippo, Nino Taranto, Carlo Dapporto, Renato Rascel and Alberto Sordi, who made her final film Il Tassinaro in 1983. In it she plays herself, after 12 years away from the silver screen, with no compunction about her wrinkles, which was also the case when she had to age 30 years in Un Giorno in Pretura. She socialised with the jet set and was linked with many famous men, including the director Orson Welles, actors Tyrone Power, William Holden and Omar Sharif, King Farouk of Egypt and Afghan Prince Ahmed Shah. Despite her international notoriety and romances with high-profile American stars, Silvana Pampanini never worked in Hollywood, preferring to stay in Europe and especially in France, where she acted alongside Jean Gabin, Jean-Pierre Aumong and Henri Vidal. She played in more than films, including the 1956 Oscar best foreign film nomination La Strada Lunga un Anno, by Giuseppe de Santis. The film failed to win an Academy Award but did net a Golden Globe. Silvana Pampanini never won a major award, but always regarded herself as a great artist. Her autobiography Scandalosamente Perbene, which came out in 1966, included imaginary conversations with the poets Garcia Lorca, Pablo Neruda and Jacques Prevert. She also appeared in some of the very first Rai television programmes starting in 1951, including the soap Made in Italy. She also hosted the programme Domenica In, but gave it up after just a few months. (AGI). .