It is not enough to stand before the camera and take off some clothes

Oh how we love to discover a new, forgotten diva here at Dolores Delargo Towers...

Silvana Pampanini was for a time one of the world's top "sex symbols". Launched into (mainly continental) movies in the late 1940s, before Signorina Loren and Signorina Lollobrigida became household names she was the Italian beauty about whom the Hollywood gossips raved.

A former beauty queen, her name was linked romantically with the likes of Tyrone Power, William Holden, Orson Welles, Omar Sharif, George DeWitt and even Fidel Castro. She never married, however, despite all her romantic entanglements.

Happily still alive and kicking, Signorina Pampanini retired from movie-making in the 60s yet is still a popular television show guest, at almost 90 years of age.

“The cinema requires dedication and study, like any other genre. It is not enough to stand before the camera and take off some clothes."

Here is the young Silvana in 1950 in one of her early breakthrough movies Bellezza in Bicicletta, in which she sings the title song:



Buon compleanno, Sylvana Pampanini (born 25th September 1925)