Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1963)

SOPHIA LOREN Continued from page 35 by Romano’s side. Sophia wept — tears of joy. Because her little sister, whom she had raised and mothered, now wore the ecstatic face of a bride ... a saint. Mingled with Sophia’s tears of joys were tears of regret, too. For herself. This was what she had always dreamed of, to be married in church like a lady. But the church had maintained that Carlo was still married to his first wife, his civil divorce counted for nothing. And so their wedding day on September 17th, 1957, had been very different from her dream. Carlo in Europe, and she on a Hollywood sound set making a picture, “Desire.” And two lawyers, strangers to her, standing in for her and Carlo in Mexico, at a proxy wedding ceremony. It had been more of a farce than a wedding. Even today, at this beautiful church wedding of her sister, Carlo could not be present. “They” would not let him. “They” would arrest him if he showed. So, alone, she watched Romano slip the wedding ring onto Maria’s finger, and she gently felt for her own ring, touched it. She remembered only too well the moment she put it on her hand — alone then, too. She hadn’t known exactly what time it would be proper to begin wearing it, what time she was married in Mexico — not until Louella Parsons telephoned her on the set and said, “Congratulations, Sophia. You were married an hour ago. You are now Mrs. Ponti.” It was only then, after she’d hung up on the phone, that she had fumbled in her purse, found her wedding band wrapped in one of her tear-stained handkerchiefs, and slipped it on her finger. Then, so soon it seemed, Maria was whispering the news — the baby. Sophia put her arms around her sister — carefully, as if she might break, and said, “Brava, and hurry up so that I may take this baby for myself.” She was so excited! Maria knew what she was trying to say: “Hurry up and have this baby so that I may hold it in my arms and kiss and cuddle it — and sometimes pretend for a few minutes that this soft little thing belongs to me.” That was all she meant! But the columnists, reading the remark in the paper, blew it up into something vicious. She certainly never meant what one of them said — that she planned to adopt the baby herself. Or, as another intimated, that she was going to “kidnap” it. Ah well, anybody but a columnist could see how happy she was. She went on shopping sprees, came home loaded with tiny clothes, with rattles, toys. She bought the baby a bassinet and a bathinette. Because she was bad on dates and in the store couldn’t remember if the baby was due in February or March, she bought a sled and a football both. When she came home and Carlo told her that football is played in the fall, not in the spring, she laughed — and went out to get a baseball and bat. But as she opened the new packages to show her treasures to her husband, she could see that something was bothering him. “A glove?” she asked. “Is it that he’ll need a glove?” Carlo tried to change the subject but she wouldn’t let him, she was determined to wheedle it out of him. She called him by all her endearments: Polpettone (meat loaf) which to her meant “dear,” got her nowhere. Peperone (pepper), her way of saying “dearest,” wouldn’t melt him. At last she threw herself into his lap, flung her arms around his neck and begged, “ Suppli , please!” And suppli, which is Sophia’s favorite dish (balls of fried rice and mozzarrella cheese) and is her kind of shorthand for “I love you very much,” did the trick. He told her. He looked at her gravely and asked, “And what if the bambino is a girl?” Sophia whooped with glee. She ran into the other room, came back carrying dolls — dolls — more dolls. She piled dolls on the 72 sofa around him until Carlo stopped laughing long enough to cry “ Finito ! Enough!” ! The months flew by and then — too soon, it was not time yet— the baby began to f fight its premature way into the world. I Sophia sat in the waiting room of the j •hospital’s maternity wing, but her soul was | upstairs with Maria in the delivery room. She suffered as if she were giving birth. All around her were the fathers-to-be. The first-time fathers paced the floor, grinning shyly as they passed each other and then swiftly resuming their expressions of anxiety, of bewildered helplessness. The veterans, the ones who’d been through the mill before, passed the time playing cards with each other, or reading the papers. And Sophia? She sat thinking dolefully of the five bambini she had always wanted — she who had none at all. “ They won’t let me have a baby,” she said once, tearfully, to a reporter. “They” were the representatives of Church and State who plagued Carlo and herself. Once, just once, she had thought she was pregnant — and had deliberately returned to Rome to face her accusers and straighten out the muddle of her marriage to Carlo. She knew she was risking a five year term in jail but she went. Once and for all they must settle the question of whether she and Carlo were legally married — for the sake of her unborn baby. But no decision was made at the time. Then it no longer mattered. For as fate would have it, she was no longer pregnant. Now the waiting room door opened and everyone tensed expectantly. A nurse entered and Sophia prepared herself for news, but the woman in white walked by her and went to one of the card players, whispered to him. He leaped to his feet, grinning broadly, and held up seven fingers for the other men to see. One of the firsttime fathers turned pale and asked, hoarsely, “Septuplets?” Everyone laughed. “No, no,” said the chosen one, following the nurse from the room. “Now I have seven kids. But this bambino is my first girl!” Sophia crossed herself. May his baby never know poverty, she prayed. May she never know misery. May she never know shame . . . the shame of being ugly . . . long and skinny and brittle like a strand of uncooked spaghetti ... of hearing the boys call after her, “Stecchetto,” and knowing they were right, you were a little stick. The shame of being illegitimate ... of hearing the girls whisper, “Bastardo! Bastar do!” behind your back ... of being rejected by your own father ... of having his wife break in when, aged fourteen, you are trying to get an extra’s job in Cinecitta and have her scream, “No, she is not Sophia Scicolone. Never a Scicolone. She is the daughter of nobody.” And later, in the marriage where there is so much love, the shame of being branded “adulteress” because you tried to obey the letter of the law by dissolving your so-called “bigamous” marriage to your own husband. So now they accuse you of adultery instead! They call you sinner because you love one man — and continue to love him after they term your love evil. And what do they know of love, these people who so easily mouth mere words? Do they know how you died a little when you heard that he was seriously hurt in a plane? The jet on which he was flying from Paris to Rome flew into a vicious down