by Sophia Loren
One morning, looking out the window in my room, I caught sight of a baby carriage in the garden, shrouded in the winter fog, being pushed by a nurse who I thought was imprudent, to say the least.
I thought to myself, “How can anyone take a newborn baby out for a walk at this time of day, in such cold weather? Has she gone out of her mind? I wouldn’t dream of placing my child in the care of someone like that.”
The following day Dr. de Watteville came into my room triumphant. He had found someone who could accompany me out into the world and give me the courage to vacate the room. After all, there were other women who had babies about to be born.
Peering in from behind him was Ruth Bapst, a nurse with an experienced, kind air about her, but as soon as I saw her I recognized her as the crazy woman pushing the baby carriage in the fog . . . I was somewhat aloof when I greeted her, because in my mind I had already crossed her name off the list.
Ruth wasn’t discouraged, though, and she held out her hand, competent and professional. I looked at her sincere smile, her simple manner, her direct gaze. In her eyes I could read her love of children, her desire to work. My inner magnet, that mysterious ability I’ve always had to attract and recognize the right people, those most suited to me, started vibrating, contradicting my earlier judgment. “We can give it a try,” I managed to say, a little hesitant.
Ruth came to be known as Ninni in our family, and she is still with us today, after forty-six years. She helped me raise my children, and now she dotes on their children, with the same enthusiasm as ever.
With her by my side, I was able to leave the hospital for our villa in Marino.
THE TWO SIDES OF PARADISE
In 1962, we had bought Villa Sara, a sixteenth-century estate lost amid the olive trees of the Castelli region. Half an hour’s drive south of Rome, it appeared to be an oasis of tranquillity and silence that wiped away all the confusion of the city, the set, public life, and gave back to us peace and quiet. Wherever I laid my eyes I was intoxicated by beauty. Floors covered with Roman mosaics, luxurious gardens with marble fountains, antique furniture, and precious furnishings decorating the many rooms.
The frescoed walls gave me dreams with their depictions of great banquets, hunting scenes, decorative garlands bearing fruit and flowers, and more animals, trees, stars—all set within Italy’s gentle landscape. This was so much better than the movies! Looking at everything around me was always cause for celebration.
After two major refurbishments of the villa, we moved out of our apartment in Piazza d’Aracoeli, where we’d spent the night of my Oscar, and into the Villa Sara. In 1964 we moved to Paris, but went back to the villa for short periods as often as we could. The villa’s magical interweaving of art and nature offered a beautiful environment.
Nothing, of course, compared with the miracle of Carlo Jr., who was growing and starting to smile his first smiles. He lifted his arms whenever he wanted to be picked up and watched the leaves in the trees shaken by the wind with a sense of wonder.
At last I was happy. For the first time in my life I had everything I wanted. If I could have stopped time I would have chosen that very moment, at Villa Sara, sitting around the edge of the swimming pool as my son splashed water everywhere in his duck-shaped life preserver. The pool had been built in an asymmetrical shape so that we wouldn’t have to sacrifice a beautiful apricot tree that Carlo had fallen in love with. At the end of my deck chair lay a script, which reminded me of my duties. Comforted by two artificial waterfalls I’d had installed to keep me company, I could lose myself in thought.
I want to make it perfectly clear that it hadn’t been easy for me to get used to so much magnificence. At first, I’d felt intimidated by the splendor of the villa, and I would often seek refuge in my bedroom, surrounded by my magazines and my movies. Carlo helped me get over it.
“Sophia, houses are like people, you have to approach them nice and slowly, get to know them well . . .”
And he was right. Soon afterward the villa and I began to understand and love each other.
Like every paradise, the villa had its dark side, too. It was isolated, and therefore not without its dangers, a place that attracted petty criminals and even some people who were delusional. One in particular had scared us. After escaping from a psychiatric institution, a man crept into the garden one morning and almost made it to the patio around the swimming pool. He was holding some papers and wanted to set fire to everything. He was shouting at the top of his voice that Cipi was his, and that he’d come to take him away. “I want my son, I want my son!” he ranted. He got as far as the door to the house, which he struck with an ax.
It was fairly easy to calm him down, but he fell prey to his obsession once more and showed up again. He escaped from the psychiatric hospital on several occasions and bombarded me with letters. We kept an eye on his whereabouts, without letting ourselves be overwhelmed, but the fear stuck with me, a profound feeling of uneasiness that was hard to live with. During that period many kidnappings were being committed in Italy. And they often ended in tragedy.
Besides riding out various empty threats, Carlo himself risked being kidnapped on two occasions, and only managed to save himself thanks to his quick reflexes and the timely intervention of the police. One evening he was on his way home from the office, driving down the Appia Antica. Suddenly, a car cut him off, forcing him to stop. Glancing quickly into the rearview mirror, he saw that another car had blocked him from behind. The car door suddenly swung open and a man, whose face was covered, jumped out, running in his direction and pointing a rifle at him.
Carlo was always very sure of himself and had fast reflexes. He was accustomed to making quick decisions in emergency situations. He slammed on the accelerator and took off, burning rubber, almost hitting the car that was blocking his way. From behind, the man started shooting, but Carlo, bending down over the steering wheel, refused to be frightened. When he finally got home, his Alfa Romeo was riddled with bullet holes, looking like something out of the war.
The only thing the police could do was warn him for the future.
“Doc, don’t hesitate to call us when you know you’ll be going home late.”
And that’s how it came to be that the second time, again on Appia Antica, when Carlo saw a strange fire blazing not too far away he started worrying. A few minutes later a car drove up beside him and tried to run him off the road, but a police car came out from nowhere and put the kidnappers to flight. Because that’s exactly what they were. At Villa Sara, hidden among the shrubbery, the investigators found a van without a license plate and the engine running. Inside the trunk were ropes, packing tape, syringes, and chloroform. Everything that was needed for a kidnapping in grand style. It was simply too much for us. So in 1974 we decided to move to Paris with both of our sons, because by that time we had our second, Edoardo.
I had had a terrible scare like Carlo’s, myself, a few years earlier in New York when Cipi was still very small. It was October 1970 and we were staying in a suite on the twenty-second floor of Hampshire House, in the heart of Manhattan, whose large windows overlooked Central Park all dressed in its blaze of fall colors. Carlo’s son Alex from his first marriage lived there, as did Greta Garbo, who, unfortunately, I never ran into. We were in the United States for the launch of Sunflower, which I’d made with Vittorio and Marcello. Carlo had had to rush back to Milan because his father, to whom he was very close, was dying. I had stayed on alone with Ines, Ninni, and Cipi.
The morning after Carlo’s departure I was awakened by some strange noises that sounded like stifled screaming. I couldn’t understand what was happening, and, still drowsy, I thought that maybe I was dreaming. I took out the earplugs I was accustomed to sleeping with and heard the screaming again. This time it was much clearer. As I tried to figure out whether I was really awake or still sleeping, two men barged into my room: one was the hotel concierge, who was holding a huge bunch of keys, looking like someone who’d just come back from the
dead—he’d obviously been forced to open the door to my room against his will; the other man, standing behind him, was holding something that at first sight I thought was a stethoscope. Oh, my God, my son’s not well, was my first thought. But in fact, it was a real gun, not a stethoscope.
“This is a robbery,” the man with the “stethoscope” barked at me, like in some third-rate detective movie.
I pretended I couldn’t understand what he was saying, but this made him even more nervous.
He held the gun to the side of my head and screamed: “Quit fooling around!” The situation was unreal. The thief looked like he was dressed for Mardi Gras, with a wig, a fake moustache, and sunglasses, but the weapon didn’t look like a fake at all. His eyes were even bluer than Paul Newman’s. A few feet away, in the other room, was my fragile, helpless child.
“Move it and start getting the jewelry out,” shouted the thief, as he searched everywhere for the loot. Van Cleef & Arpels had lent me a set of jewelry to wear to the Rockefeller gala that evening. “How could he possibly know?” I wondered, confused, overcome with fear, but the thought of Cipi encouraged me to tell him everything: “They’re in a bag in the bottom dresser drawer.” The blue-eyed thief frantically followed my instructions, found the diamond and ruby bracelet, with the matching necklace and earrings, and stuffed them into his pocket. But it still wasn’t what he was looking for.
“All this is peanuts . . . I want the ring, the ring, the one you wore on TV . . .”
I finally realized what he was talking about and cursed myself for my vanity. During the long interview Marcello and I had done with David Frost a few nights before, I had shown off a gorgeous diamond, also from Van Cleef & Arpels, which I had given right back right to them. Worth more or less 500,000 dollars, it was now putting both my life and the priceless life of my son at risk. I tried to explain, but he grabbed me by the hair and threw me to the ground.
“Where’s the kid?” he shouted, making my blood freeze.
I panicked, but his partner, on the lookout in the next room, was even more frightened and yelled, “Let’s get outta here!” As they ran off with the jewelry from Van Cleef & Arpels, I threw a bag with all my own jewelry at them. I don’t know why I did it, maybe it was a form of catharsis, maybe a provocation. Or maybe it was a kind of plea, hoping that they would take the whole situation far away from us as soon as possible.
I ran to Cipi and hugged him tightly, collapsing in tears. I swore to myself that from now on the only precious jewels I’d wear would be my son’s embrace.
THE (IM)POSSIBLE DREAM
When Edoardo was born, he doubled the happiness that I thought could never be repeated. It is yet another unfathomable mystery of motherhood.
I got pregnant with Edoardo while I was shooting Man of La Mancha with Peter O’Toole. Adapted from Dale Wasserman’s huge Broadway success, it was the first and last musical of my life (except for a small part in Nine). It’s the story of Miguel de Cervantes, the great Spanish novelist and author of Don Quixote, who has been thrown into a dungeon by the Spanish Inquisition, and distracts his cell mates by putting on a play about Don Quixote and his love for the servant Aldonza, whom he imagines to be the noblewoman Dulcinea.
An extraordinary actor, Peter had an uncontainable, nonconformist intelligence. He was as funny as a great comedian and as intense as a character in a tragedy. It was wonderful working beside him. I hung on his every word, filled with admiration. When he acted it sounded like he was singing. And yet, when he really did have to sing, he had trouble. Neither one of us was a professional singer, and we were perfectly aware of this. To be honest, we were scared out of our wits.
Most of the movie was filmed in the studio in Rome, but we had to sing on the set, too, because, as in every self-respecting musical, the songs were part and parcel with the action. One morning, just as the shooting was about to begin, I found myself completely voiceless, unable to utter a single word, worse than Marlon Brando standing before Charlie Chaplin’s icy rage. Peter took me aside and declared: “There’s no point in getting worked up, Sophia. This is clearly a form of psychosomatic laryngitis . . .”
I tried to defend myself but his sly smile wouldn’t let me off the hook. However, when the nurse gave me a thermometer and we saw that I had a temperature of 102 degrees, I found the courage to argue again.
“You see, Peter, there’s nothing psychosomatic about my laryngitis, I have the flu!” I managed to whisper, in some ways reassured about my mental health.
But he wouldn’t back down: “What are you saying, Sophia, it’s fear, the fear of having to sing in front of all these people.”
Peter was right, of course, although two days later, in the familiar atmosphere of the set, I managed to make it to the end of the song smoothly. He, on the other hand, couldn’t shake off his nervousness after playing around with Freud. When the time came to sing “The Impossible Dream,” the recurring theme of the film, a famous standard sung by Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Jacques Brel, and Plácido Domingo, among others, he wanted me by his side. We were companions in glory and misfortune.
During breaks on the set, I would challenge him to a game of Scrabble. Ironically, even though he was the erudite Shakespearean and I just a Neapolitan on the visiting team, I thrashed him. Maybe it all depended on the fact that, although I’d quit school early, I’d had enough time to get a feel for the rudiments of Latin, and this allowed me to invent words that I often got right. We had so much fun! Or maybe I should say, I had so much fun at his expense!
My most vivid memory, however, is focused on a very clear, precise image. One evening, he knocked on the door to my suite, where I was staying with Ninni and Cipi. When we got to the door we found him wearing an outlandish green tunic, his arms outstretched like some Christ figure on the cross. “Can I come and keep you company?” Peter was totally mad, in that creative, affectionate kind of madness that changes your way of seeing the world.
When we finished shooting, I found out I was expecting Edoardo. The news found me much better prepared than the first time. The stage dressmaker gave me the estrogen injections I needed and I didn’t stop working until I was in my fifth month. In September 1972, I took a plane to Geneva to be near the clinic and wait out the remaining months in peace. I read, cooked, and watched TV. And I made room inside my heart for the arrival of another great love. Although the context was much more serene than before, the many emotions I went through were exactly the same as the first time around. De Watteville chose to perform a C-section again, because he didn’t want to take any risks, given my history. I felt the healthy fear that affects every mother before giving birth, a fear composed of excitement and amazement before the greatest miracle of nature. Just like Carlo’s, Edoardo’s birth was the most wonderful gift life could offer me. Until the arrival of my grandchildren.
When Edo came into the world on January 6, 1973, as beautiful as any baby can be, my Don Quixote came to see me with an extraordinary ostrich egg, signed: “With all my love, Peter.” I kept it on my nightstand for a long time, the surreal memory of a dear, eccentric friend.
UNCLE RICHARD
Speaking of dear, somewhat eccentric friends, that same spring of 1973 a special guest arrived at Villa Sara, who brought cheer to our daily routine, and in some ways complicated it. Richard Burton had been chosen by Carlo to act with me in The Voyage, directed by De Sica. It would be Vittorio’s last movie.
One morning in April, I had just finished breast-feeding and was sitting on the balcony enjoying the timid arrival of the spring. Edo, finally satiated, had fallen asleep, while Cipi insistently demanded my attention to make up for the presence of that little brother. It was then that Ines handed me the phone.
“Sophia? Is it you? This is Richard speaking.”
“Richard?”
“Yes, Richard, Richard Burton!”
We had not yet met, and I wasn’t expecting his phone call, but his forthright manner, his openness pleased me. And what a voice. It
made you forget everything else and concentrate on what he had to say.
I couldn’t wait to meet one of the gods of my Olympus, but had expected that it would be when we began to work together. Richard, instead, took one step further.
“If you agree, I could come and stay with you before we start shooting. You know, I have to get back in shape and I don’t really feel like living out of a hotel . . . They wouldn’t leave me be.”
Burton’s tormented relationship with Elizabeth Taylor had been filling the gossip columns, and the reporters and paparazzi weren’t going to leave such a juicy prey alone. Villa Sara, on the other hand, had lovely guest quarters, which allowed us to host friends and relatives so that we wouldn’t get in each other’s way.
“You’re welcome here, Richard,” I answered without hesitating, happy to be of some help.
He arrived with a whole entourage, including a doctor, a nurse, and a secretary. He was trying to quit drinking, as well as to get over his love for his beautiful violet-eyed Cleopatra. He could talk of no one and nothing else, and I listened to him patiently. He often ate with me and the children on the patio around the swimming pool, and we soon became friends. Cipi had absolutely fallen in love with him, and together they were an odd pair.
• • •
In my treasure trove of memories—which is starting to empty out—I find a lovely photograph of Richard dressed for the stage, which he sent to his young friend a few years later.
To my beloved “Cipi,”
This is Uncle Richard when he was a bit younger and you and Edoardo and E’en So were not even born! Que cosa incredibile!