Throughout the years I managed to rebuild a small personal archive of vintage Italian magazine from the ‘50s and ‘60s.
I bought some of them for the features they contained, while I got others because I was interested in the people (mainly actors, actresses and models) featured on the cover.
One of my favourite mags among the latter is an old issue of weekly Tempo (15th October 1953) with actress Dorian Gray on the cover.
I remember picking it because I simply loved the way she looked in that picture, with that glamorous yet bizarre green headdress and her perfect red lips, almost looking like one of those stylish Dior models.
Maria Luisa Mangini – better known in Italy as Dorian Gray – started her career working for popular variety theatre shows (the Italian “rivista”) alongside Erminio Macario and Wanda Osiris.
She played as Amedeo Nazzari’s lover Jessy in Federico Fellini’s Le notti di cabiria (Nights of Cabiria, 1957), and tough gas station owner Virginia in Michelangelo Antonioni’s Il grido (The Cry, 1957). Between the ‘50s and the ‘60s she began working for the cinema, appearing in quite a few comedies and spy movies.
Gianni Franciolini’s Racconti d'estate (Love on the Riviera, 1958) and Frank Wysbar’s Commando (1962) followed and she was also Veronique in the “Sadik” episode of Gian Luigi Polidoro’s Thrilling (1965), the story of a bored wife who asks her husband to dress himself like a comic book character, a satire about the obsessive passion of many Italians for popular noir comics à la Diabolik.
Success and fame are often fleeting though and, when she turned 30, Dorian Gray retired from the stage and the big screen and moved to Torcegno, in Trentino. Sadly she took her life yesterday, at 75.
I've been doing some researches on '50s and '60s films in the last few weeks and ended up re-watching some early movies featuring Dorian Gray. Her story made me sad, but I also think it can still teach us something about the loneliness that often hides behind glittering worlds such as the film or fashion industries.
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