The Black Orchid 1959

Sophia Loren was born as Sofia Scicolone at the Clinica Regina Margherita in Rome on September 20, 1934. Her father Riccardo was married to another woman and refused to marry her mother Romilda Villani, despite the fact that she was the mother of his two children (Sophia and her younger sister Maria Scicolone). Growing up in the slums of Pozzuoli during the second World War without any support from her father, she experienced great sadness in her childhood. Her life took an unexpected turn for the best when, at age 14, she entered into a beauty contest and placed as one of the finalists. It was here that Sophia caught the attention of film producer Carlo Ponti, some 22 years her senior, whom she later married. Perhaps he was the father figure she never experienced as a child. Under his guidance, Sophia was put under contract and appeared as an extra in ten films beginning with Le sei mogli di Barbablù (1950), before working her way up to supporting roles. In these early films, she was credited as "Sofia Lazzaro" because people joked her beauty could raise Lazzarus from the dead.

By her late teens, Sophia was playing lead roles in many Italian features such as La favorita (1952) and Aida (1953). In 1957, she embarked on a successful acting career in the United States, starring in Boy on a Dolphin (1957), Legend of the Lost (1957), and The Pride and the Passion (1957) that year. She had a short-lived but much-publicized fling with co-star Cary Grant, who was nearly 31 years her senior. She was only 22 while he was 53, and she rejected a marriage proposal from him. They were paired together a second time in the family-friendly romantic comedy Houseboat (1958). While under contract to Paramount, Sophia starred in Desire Under the Elms (1958), The Key (1958), The Black Orchid (1958), It Started in Naples (1960), Heller in Pink Tights (1960), A Breath of Scandal (1960), and The Millionairess (1960) before returning to Italy to star in Two Women (1960). The film was a period piece about a woman living in war-torn Italy who is raped while trying to protect her young daughter. Originally cast as the more glamorous child, Sophia fought against type and was re-cast as the mother, displaying a lack of vanity and proving herself as a genuine actress. This performance received international acclaim and was honored with an Academy Award for Best Actress.

Sophia remained a bona fide international movie star throughout the sixties and seventies, making films on both sides of the Atlantic, and starring opposite such leading men as Paul Newman, Marlon Brando, Gregory Peck, and Charlton Heston. Her English-language films included El Cid (1961), The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964), Arabesque (1966), Man of La Mancha (1972), and The Cassandra Crossing (1976). She gained wider respect with her Italian films, especially Marriage Italian Style (1964) and A Special Day (1977), both of which co-starred Marcello Mastroianni. During these years she received a second Oscar nomination and won five Golden Globe Awards.

From the eighties onward, Sophia's appearances on the big screen came few and far between. She preferred to spend the majority of her time raising sons Carlo Ponti Jr. (b. 1968) and Edoardo Ponti (b. 1973). Her only acting credits during the decade were five television films, beginning with Sophia Loren: Her Own Story (1980), a biopic in which she portrayed herself and her mother. She ventured into other areas of business and became the first actress to launch her own fragrance and design of eyewear. In 1982 she voluntarily spent nineteen days in jail for tax evasion.

In 1991 Sophia received an Honorary Academy Award for her body of work, and was declared "one of world cinema's greatest treasures." That same year, she experienced a terrible loss when her mother died of cancer. Her return to mainstream films in Prêt-à-Porter (1994) was well-received, although the film as a whole was not. She followed this up with her biggest U.S. hit in years, the comedy Grumpier Old Men (1995), in which she played a sexy divorcée who seduces Walter Matthau. Over the next decade Sophia had plum roles in a few independent films like Soleil (1997), Between Strangers (2002) (directed by Edoardo), and Lives of the Saints (2004). Still beautiful at 72, she posed scantily-clad for the 2007 Pirelli Calendar. Sadly, that same year she mourned the death of her 94-year-old spouse, Carlo Ponti. In 2009, after far too much time away from film, she appeared in the musical Nine (2009) opposite Daniel Day-Lewis. These days Sophia is based in Switzerland but frequently travels to the states to spend time with her sons and their families (Eduardo is married to actress Sasha Alexander). Sophia Loren remains one of the most beloved and recognizable figures in the international film world.

Sophia Loren

The Package. The Pandemonium. The Proud Pony Numero Two. The Paragon. The Paradox-o-logico Pissed Prospect. The Poker Prefaced Pinocchio Pair. The Paper-Pumpin' Philanthropy-Purgin' Psychic. The Pied Piping Pagan. The Blundering-Plundering Partly-Resented Resettlement. The Patriotic Perished Anti-Pacifist. The Persistent Pingu-Postin' Propaganda Seized Cureall.
The 'Past is the Past' Presenting Purple-Turnin' Possessed Pastor Priest. The Peanut Pastry Feast's Pirate President.
The Pathetic, wretched, principled page-portioned population-aimed partition. The powerful enough to probably level a whole prefecture prevailing phenomena.
Just one more prize-plucked public proximity probe mastered by me. A little elbow grease & pound for pound paradigm pushed all-the-boys-wanna-pounce pregnant princess.....reincarnated by me.
Studied...by me. Fused...by me.
The newest project, by me. Miracled, you could say, by me.
And you best hope.

Not picked by you.

:movie_camera: List of films featured in the now closed Disneyland Paris CinéMagique show. :movie_camera:

#Early years
- La Sortie des usines Lumière à Lyon (1895)
- The Kiss (1896)
- The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat (1897)
- The Great Train Robbery (1903)
- A Trip to the Moon (1902)
- The Birth of a Nation (1915)
- Cops (1922)
- Plane Crazy (1928)
- Napoléon (1927)
- Battleship Potemkin (1925)
- Nosferatu (1922)
- The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1919)
- Metropolis (1927)

#George's escape
- The Sheik (1921)
- Safety Last! (1923)

#The pie fight & aftermath
- The Battle of the Century (1927)
- A Film Johnnie (1916)
- Angels with Dirty Faces (1938)
- Some Like It Hot (1959)

#In the wild west
- Once Upon a Time in the West (1967)
- The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1968)
- Tombstone (1993)
- The Wild Bunch (1969)
- The Magnificent Seven (1960)

#Propelled into a fantasy
- Mary Poppins (1964) [feat. the song Step in Time]

#Romance on a Parisian street
- Les parapluies de Cherbourg (1964)

#Underwater adventure
- The Hunt for Red October (1990)
- Le Grand bleu (1988)
- Pinocchio (1940)

#To safety - or not (first attempt)
- Titanic (1997)
- A Fish Called Wanda (1988) cut in 2012
- Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003) added in 2012
- Trois hommes et un couffin (1985) cut in 2012
- The Incredibles (2004) added in 2012
- The Pink Panther (1963)
- The Silence of the Lambs (1991)
- Monsters, Inc. (2001) cut in 2012
- The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001 - 2003) added in 2012
- The Exorcist (1973)

#To safety - or not (second attempt)
- Star Wars - Episode IV: New Hope (1977)

#Medieval times
- The Three Musketeers (1993)
- Highlander (1986)
- Ran (1985)
- El Cid (1961)
- The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (2005) added in 2012
- The Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001-2003) added in 2012
- Henry V (1989)
- Braveheart (1995)
- Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1974)
- Robin Hood - Prince of Thieves (1991)

#Time to say goodbye
- Summertime (1955)
- Toy Story 3 (2010) added in 2012
- Doctor Zhivago (1965)
- Casablanca (1942)

#The kiss
- Gone with the Wind (1939)
- Un homme et une femme (1966)
- Wuthering Heights (1939) cut in 2012
- Black Swan (2010) added in 2012
- Ridicule (1996) removed in 2012
- The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003) added in 2012
- Le hussard sur le toit (1995) removed in 2012
- Ratatouille (2007) added in 2012
- La Règle du jeu (1939) removed in 2012
- The Black Orchid (1958)
- A Place in the Sun (1951)
- Carmen Jones (1954)
- Cyrano de Bergerac (1990) removed in 2012
- Cinema Paradiso (1988) removed in 2012
- Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (2006) added in 2012
- Cet obscur objet du désir (1977) removed 2012
- Slumdog Millionaire (2008) added in 2012
- Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988) cut in 2012
- La Vie en Rose (2007) added in 2012
- Some Like It Hot (1959) cut in 2002
- Brave Little Tailor (1938) cut in 2012
- Avatar (2009) added in 2012
- To Catch a Thief (1955)
- The Messenger: The Story of Joan of Arc (1999)
- The Wizard of Oz (1939)

Vintage Movies

The Fabulous Fifties: An era of identical pink pressboard suburban houses filled with smiling, apron-clad housewives. All the men wear slippers and fedoras and smoke pipes, all the girls are teenaged and wear poodle skirts, and all the boys are cute, freckle faced scamps with slingshots in their pockets. Parents sleep in separate beds and only kiss each other on the cheek.

Anyone who isn't any of these characters are either greasers, Beatniks, gas station attendants, or Elvis (who, in this era, wouldn't be caught dead in a rhinestone jumpsuit). With the possible exception of the gas station attendants, everyone on that list is a direct threat to the upright morals and values of the era and will not be afforded a spot in the basement bomb shelter