ANITA ECKBERG

     Boy, talk about 15 minutes of fame! Anita Eckberg's soaking wet appearance in the fountain in Federico Fellini's La Dolce Vita (1960) quickly became the camera shot seen round the world. It turns out that it was freezing cold and that co-star Marcello Mastroiani was drunk, but so what! The film exemplified the sleazier aspects of "The Sweet Life" of a certain class of Italians (and other countries?)
     Ms. Eckberg got her start as Miss Sweden in the 50's. That led to a modeling contract and on to the movies. She didn't really have the body to be a model, but she sure had a body for the movies! She could act a little bit and that was enough.
     Her first American appearance was as eye candy in the Dean Martin-Jerry Lewis comedy Artists And Models (1955), Martin is an artist and Lewis is his zany (of course!) roomate. To me the Martin & Lewis shtick doesn't wear vert well, but you might disagree. Anyway, don't blink or you'll miss Anita.
     Hollywood struggled mightily to bring Tolstoy's titanic War And Peace (1956) to the screen. It was hoped it would make sense at under four hours (it's 208 minutes). A partial success, really not bad. Ms. Eckberg as Helene actually has a few lines in this one and certainly moves things along. They brought in Henry Fonda and Audrey Hepburn for the heavy lifting. Big chunks of he novel never make it to the screen- but the whole thing would probably run seven or eight hours.
    Then in 1960 Anita Eckberg's place in cinematic history became assured from her role in La Dolce Vita (1960). Though a little heavy-handed by today's standards, this is still a pretty good movie with a good story and some very interesting camera shots.
    Boccaccio 70 (1962) is a film of four unrelated segments about Italian life, supposedly in the stille of the painter Boccaccio. Anita Eckbeg's part is the best one. She appears as herself, beginning with a billboard picture of her with the slogan "drink more milk". For fairly obvious reasons, this invokes the outrage of a prudish citizen. He begins to hallucinate about the whole thing and she appears to him in one of his dreams.
    Think of Four For Texas (1963) as a pre-Rat-Pack western comedy. Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra and Charles Bronson lead rival gangs all after the same big shipment of gold. Anita Eckberg and Ursula Andress are along to give you something to look at, though their names are prominently featured in ads, no doubt to draw in the male segment of fandom.
     That's about it for Ms. Eckberg's American films. She went on to have a career in Italian B-movies and made her home there until her death at 83. All of the films in this blog are available on DVD and for streaming. All are for grown-ups.