Truus, Bob & Jan too!has added a photo to the pool:
German postcard by WS-Druck, Wanne-Eickel. Photo: Klaus Collignon.
Swedish film actress, party-girl and sex symbolAnita Ekberg(1931) was nicknamed The Iceberg. Miss Sweden 1950 was contracted by Howard Hughes, had a Hollywood career in the 1950’s, but got her real breakthrough in Italy. She made film history as the sensual, curvaceous film goddess who dances in the Trevi Fountain in Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (1960).
Kerstin Anita Marianne Ekberg was born in1931, in Malmö, Sweden. She grew up with seven brothers and sisters. In her teens, she worked as a fashion model, and that year she was elected Miss Sweden. In 1951 she made her film acting debut in Terras foster No. 5, and went to the USA for the Miss Universe contest. She didn’t win but she got a modeling. Howard Hughes gave her a film contract with RKO that didn’t lead anywhere. (Anita herself later claimed that Hughes wanted to marry her). Instead the voluptuous, husky-voiced blonde started making films with Universal. Her American debut was in Abbott and Costello Go to Mars (1953, Charles Lamont) as an Venusian guard. This was soon followed by The Golden Blade (1953, Nathan Juran) starring Rock Hudson. These were small roles that only required her to look beautiful. She was given the nickname ‘The Iceberg’- a play on her name as well as her cool, quite mysterious demeanor. While at Universal, Anita Ekberg quickly became one of Hollywood’s hot starlets. She caught the hearts of many famous men including Tyrone Power, Errol Flynn, Frank Sinatra and Gary Cooper. Legendary director and photographer Russ Meyercalled her “the most beautiful woman he ever photographed” and that her 40D bustline “the most ample in A list Hollywood history, dwarfing rivals like Jayne Mansfield”. Soon she became a major pin up girl for the new type of men’s magazine that proliferated in the 1950’s. Ekberg also knew how to play the Hollywood tabloids and gossip columnists, creating stunts that she hoped would translate into film roles. Also her two marriages gave her a lot of attention from the press. She married and divorced British actor Anthony Steel (1956-1959) and actor Rik Van Nutter (1963-1975). And she reportedly had a three-year affair with the late Fiat chairman Gianni Agnelli. The press also loved her saucy quotes, like: “I’m very proud of my breasts, as every woman should be. It’s not cellular obesity. It’s womanliness.”
Anita Ekberg got several offers from other studios. Bob Hope joked that her parents had received the Nobel Prize for architecture as she was touring with him and William Holden to entertain U.S. troops in 1954. The tour led her to a contract with John Wayne’s Batjac Productions. Wayne cast her in Blood Alley (1955, William A. Wellman), a small role where Ekberg’s features and appearance were Orientalized to play a Chinese woman. The role earned her a Golden Globe award. Paramount Pictures then cast her in the funny comedies Artists and Models (1955, Frank Tashlin) and Hollywood or Bust (1956, Frank Tashlin), both starring Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. These films showed off her stunning body but also used her as a foil for many of the director’s clever sight gags. In 1956, Ekberg went to Rome to make War and Peace (1956, King Vidor) co-starring Audrey Hepburn. RKO gave Ekberg the female lead in Back from Eternity (1956, John Farrow), co-starring with Robert Ryan and Rod Steiger. Ekberg was perfectly adequate in her cardboard role, and suggested that with a good director and a worthwhile part, she might have something to offer. In the British production Zarak (1956, Terence Young), her sexy harem-girl dance raised many eyebrows and blood pressures. With Bob Hope she made two minor comedies, Paris Holiday (1958, Gerd Oswald) and Call Me Bwana (1963, Gordon Douglas).
In 1960 Anita Ekberg found herself again in Rome for her greatest role. She played the unattainable ‘dream woman’ Sylvia opposite Marcello Mastroianni in Federico Fellini’s La dolce vita (1960). La Dolce Vita was a sensational success, and Ekberg’s uninhibited cavorting in Rome’s Trevi Fountain remains one of the most memorable screen images ever captured. It was followed by another great role for Fellini in the segment La Tentazioni del Dottor Antonio/The Temptation of Doctor Antonio of Boccaccio ‘70 (1962), as a sexy billboard figure coming to life. Fellini would later call her back for two more films: I Pagliacci/I clowns (1972), and Intervista (1987). In 1964 she returned to Sweden to appear in her first Swedish film, Bo Widerberg’s Kärlek 65 (1965), but she cancelled her appearance and called the acclaimed director ‘an amateur’. In 1967 she co-starred with Shirley MacLaine in a segment of Vittorio de Sica’s Woman Times Seven. For much of the 1960’s though, she was trapped in substandard genre fare and lame comedies. During the 1970’s the roles became less frequent. In 1982, at the age of 50 she posed for glamour photos and in 1987, twenty-seven years after La Dolce Vita, she made a marvellous comeback with Fellini’s filmic autobiography, Intervista (1987), where she played herself in a reunion scene with Mastroianni and watched film clips of herself during her heydays. In 1995 Empire magazine chose her as one of the 100 Sexiest Stars in film history (#98). While she has remained active in films into the 1990’s, the roles were hardly memorable. Exceptions came with her portrayal of an elderly restaurant owner who is killed in a gas explosion in Bambola (1996, Bigas Luna) and her role as an aging, flamboyant opera star who succumbs to the charms of the titular character in Le nain rouge/The Red Dwarf (1998, Yvan Lemoine). Still blonde, but a bit heavier, Ekberg was able to project the requisite sensuality and diva-like behavior resulting in a full-bodied performance that ranked among her best. Her last role in a tv series was in Il bello delle donne (2002). Anita Ekberg has not lived in Sweden since the early 1950’s and rarely visits the country. She has welcomed Swedish journalists in her house outside Rome, and in 2005 appeared in the popular radio program Sommar, talking about her life. She stated in an interview that she will never move back to Sweden until she dies, when she will be buried there.
Sources: Hal Erickson (All Movie), AnitaEkberg.net, Wikipedia, Cult Sirens, Yahoo.com, Java’s Bachelor Pad and IMDb.
