Sophia Loren

Desert Island Discs

BBC

Society & Culture, Music Commentary, Music, Personal Journals

4.4 • 13.7K Ratings

🗓️ 21 February 2021

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Sophia Loren is the first performer to win the Best Actress Academy Award for a role in a foreign language film. She won in 1962 for her performance in Vittorio De Sica’s film Two Women in which she played a mother trying to protect her 12-year-old daughter in war-torn Italy. In 1991, she picked up a second Oscar when the Academy presented her with an Honorary Award for her contribution to world cinema. Born Sofia Villani Scicolone in a hospital ward for unmarried mothers, she was brought up by a single mother in Pozzuoli near Naples during the war years. After success in her first beauty pageant at the age of 15 and starring in photo romance stories for popular magazines, she first came to wider attention in 1953 when she played the title role in the Italian film Aida. She played a pizza seller in De Sica’s The Gold of Naples which is regarded as her breakthrough performance and led to her working on Hollywood movies with a who’s who of co-stars including Cary Grant, Frank Sinatra, Gregory Peck and Paul Newman. Her most enduring on-screen partnership was with the Italian actor Marcello Mastroianni. In 1966 she married the film producer Carlo Ponti and went on to have two children. In her most recent film The Life Ahead, directed by her son Edoardo Ponti, she plays a holocaust survivor and ex-prostitute who cares for the children of local sex workers. DISC ONE: I’ve Got You Under My Skin by Ella Fitzgerald DISC TWO: Debussy: Suite bergamasque, L.75 - 3. Clair de lune composed by Claude Debussy, performed by Tamás Vásáry DISC THREE: Lara Says Goodbye to Yuri by Maurice Jarre DISC FOUR: Fly Me To The Moon (In Other Words) by Frank Sinatra with The Count Basie Orchestra, directed by Quincy Jones DISC FIVE: Oggi Sono Io by Mina DISC SIX: The Marketplace at Limoges composed by Modest Petrovich Mussorgsky, performed by Russian National Orchestra, conducted by Carlo Ponti DISC SEVEN: Io Sì by Laura Pausini DISC EIGHT: Caruso by Lucio Dalla BOOK CHOICE: Letters from a Young Father by Edoardo Ponti LUXURY ITEM: A pizza oven CASTAWAY'S FAVOURITE: Caruso by Lucio Dalla Presenter Lauren Laverne Producer Paula McGinley

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds Music Radio Podcasts
0:04.7	Hello, I'm Lauren LeVern and this is the Desert Island Disks Podcast.
0:08.4	Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury they'd want to take
0:13.2	with them if they were cast away to a desert island.
0:16.6	And for right reasons, the music is shorter than the original broadcast.
0:21.1	I hope you enjoy listening.
0:43.1	My cast away this week is Sophia Loren.
0:45.8	An icon of the big screen and of Italy itself, she was the first woman to win a best actress
0:51.0	Oscar for a foreign language film, earned another for her outstanding contribution to world
0:55.8	cinema and has won Italy's highest film prize six times more than anyone in history.
1:02.4	Her illustrious career includes some 100 films and a list of collaborators that's a who's
1:07.2	who of cinema itself.
1:09.3	She was directed by Charlie Chaplin.
1:11.1	Her co-stars include Clark Gable, Gregory Peck, Carrie Grant, Frank Sinatra, Paul Newman,
1:16.7	Marlon Brando and Richard Burton and she enjoyed a 40-year working relationship with her
1:21.7	best loved screen partner, Marcello Masterriani.
1:25.9	She is synonymous with the very best of her home country, though growing up she endured
1:30.0	the worst of it, facing fear and hunger during a childhood in the shadow of World War
1:34.4	2.
1:35.4	In the beginning, she fell in love with cinema because it provided an escape from everyday
1:39.2	suffering, then it fell in love with her and changed her life.
1:43.6	Still working up to 70 years in the spotlight, she says, today I can say I am aware of having
	...

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