Sophia Loren 1966 - Photo PHOTOGRAPH Lady L Movie still

A superb and rare photo, made from what we believe is the original negative, of Sophia Loren.  This wonderful photograph was taken in 1966 during the filming of Lady L!  Sophia Loren is an Academy Award winning Italian film actress, born Sofia Villani Scicolone. She is widely considered to be the most popular Italian actress of her time and is also famous for being a major international sex symbol.

The negative comes from one of Europe’s oldest, exquisite and most historic cinema collections that we recently took over from its famous private collector.  The collection, partly, consists of a vast collection of mostly very exclusive and very old photographic negatives, both on celluloid as glass plates.  We consider this material very historic, exclusive and valuable.

The photograph is made from what we believe is the original and very special glass plate negative which dates from 1966.  The glass plate negative was made from a large retouched photograph of the same year.  Like many movie and press studios, original photos were retouched to make the star, or the background of the photo, look as smart as possible.  It was normal to retouch or delete a cluttered background in order to present a nice pristine image.  A great, precise, yet difficult job that was performed by a true artist.  The result is a photograph that looks as historic as it does gorgeous!  The end result is a negative that is now over 40 years old.

Please note that this is not a digital print (!), but a traditional photograph, which is processed through the traditional photographic process by a professional photo studio.  Every image is fully processed by hand, obtaining the best result possible. As most negatives are very old, several traditional photographic prints of each negative are made.  Each has different settings (like varying brightness and contrast). Out of these, the best of the photographic prints is then selected by a professional, and safely expedited to the winner of this auction.  This way the best result possible is obtained, as each photograph is absolutely unique and collectable!

Sofia Villani Scicolone  aka  Sophia Loren

Loren first met Carlo Ponti in 1950 during a beauty contest in which he was a judge. Having helped launch Gina Lollobrigida's career, he had Loren do many small parts. Later, while in Hollywood in 1957, he had lawyers obtain a Mexican divorce from his wife Giuliana and a marriage by proxy to Loren.

By the late 1950s, Loren's star had begun to rise in Hollywood, with films such as 1957's Boy on a Dolphin and The Pride and the Passion in which she co-starred with Cary Grant and Frank Sinatra. Grant, reportedly, fell so deeply in love with Loren that he ardently proposed marriage, despite her obvious loyalty to Carlo Ponti and Grant's own union with actress and writer Betsy Drake. Loren refused.

Loren became an international film star with a five-picture contract with Paramount Pictures. Among her films at this time: Desire Under the Elms with Anthony Perkins, based upon the Eugene O'Neill play; Houseboat, a romantic comedy co-starring Cary Grant; and George Cukor's Heller in Pink Tights in which she appeared with blonde hair (a wig) for the first time. Loren demonstrated considerable dramatic skills and attracted respect as a dramatic and comedic actress, especially in Italian projects where she could express herself more freely, although she acquired great proficiency in English.

In 1960, Loren's acclaimed performance in Vittorio De Sica's Two Women earned many awards, including the Cannes, Venice and Berlin Film Festivals' best performance prizes. Her performance was also awarded an Academy Award for Best Actress, the first major Academy Award for a non-English-language performance. Initially, the stark, gritty story of a mother and daughter surviving in war-torn Italy was to cast Anna Magnani as Sophia's mother. Negotiations, perhaps due to billing, broke down and the screenplay was rewritten to make Loren the mother; Eleonora Brown portrayed the daughter.

Among Loren's best-known films of this period are Samuel Bronston's epic production of El Cid (1961) with Charlton Heston, The Millionairess (1960) with Peter Sellers, It Started in Naples with Clark Gable (1960), Vittorio De Sica’s triptych Ieri, oggi, domani (1963) with Marcello Mastroianni, Peter Ustinov's Lady L (1965) with Paul Newman, the 1966 classic Arabesque with Gregory Peck, and Charlie Chaplin's final film, A Countess from Hong Kong (1967) with Marlon Brando.

In 1991, Loren received the Academy Honorary Award for her contributions to world cinema and was declared "one of the world cinema's treasures." In 1995, she received the Golden Globe Cecil B. DeMille Award.