The fifties were her time in Hollywood. In my opinion, she never made a great American film but she made three B's in that decade that still remain movies I very much like. Only in one of those is her appearance memorable.
It's that love of publicity, however, and that statuesque part that shot her to fame. She and the camera were longtime lovers. She seemed Amazonian at nearly 5'8" and a luxurious mane of honey-blonde hair that she was always touching or throwing about and with breasts that were, um, mmm, well, massive. We'll discuss them more as we move along. I can tell you that she loved them, thought they gave her great womanliness, she loved to talk about them in interviews and such and they no doubt contributed to her many love affairs.
We of the devoted movie magazine crowd knew of her very well. After Mama told me about her, I made sure to check out every magazine for her sexy poses. I started cutting them out of the magazines for future, constant glimpses until one day they simply vanished. Either my mother threw them out (not likely) or my father made off with them (very likely). Anita would have liked the attention it caused.
She made the pages of the scandal magazines of the day, as well, especially Confidential. She would explain it all away as just being a fun-loving girl but some of the stories, of course, true or not, were sordid.
She was born in Malmo, Sweden, in 1931, the sixth of eight children of a harbor master. She disliked her home country almost from the moment she realized that was a choice. Once she left it in the 50's, she rarely went back. She was always being told how beautiful she was and from the pictures I have seen of her and her siblings, she was clearly the best looking. Those looks, not unsurprisingly, led to modeling offers which led to her entering the Miss Malmo portion of the Miss Sweden contest, both of which she won.
In 1951 she came to the states for her entry into the Miss Universe contest, which she did not win. However, she and five other contestants won six-month contracts at Universal-International. Ekberg got no screen credit for appearing in Abbott and Costello Go to Mars, The Golden Blade, Take Me to Town or The Mississippi Gambler, all 1953.
The latter was a great childhood favorite of mine... an A- western as I saw it. Its cast dazzled me... Tyrone Power, Piper Laurie and Julie Adams. Power, however, was dazzled by Ekberg who went virtually unnoticed in a wedding scene but not by Power. Despite his being married, the two became embroiled in a love affair that went on for a year or so.
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| A love affair with Rod Taylor |
The pages of one magazine or another told us of that affair and also ones with Errol Flynn, Yul Brynner and Frank Sinatra. In his autobiography, Rod Taylor tells of their romantic two-year relationship in the early 60's where they may have considered themselves engaged.
She would come to work in two or more films with such diverse actors as Bob Hope, Victor Mature, Dean Martin, Jerry Lewis, Sterling Hayden and Jack Palance and she had affairs with most of them and a host of her other costars as well.
As her time at Universal was coming to an end, John Wayne put her under contract with his Batjac Productions. She was cast, of all things, as Wei Ling, a Chinese woman in Blood Alley (1955). I ain't kiddin'. Obviously she donned a black wig but what did she do with all of that 5'8" hunk of body? It took me numerous viewings to spot her but I think I did.
She had a bit role in one of the better Martin & Lewis capers, Artists and Models (1956) but Shirley MacLaine and Dorothy Malone had the female leads. She would work with the soon-to-be busted-up partners again the following year in Hollywood or Bust. If someone had changed that or for an and, it could have been Ekberg's story in Tinseltown.
She was somehow able to secure the part of Henry Fonda's social-climbing wife in director King Vidor's mammoth production of Tolstoy's War and Peace (1956). Despite a cast that included Audrey Hepburn and her husband Mel Ferrer and Vittorio Gassman, the beautifully filmed movie was not a great success, at least when it was first released.
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| Protecting Jon Provost in Back from Eternity |
I positively loved Ekberg in Back from Eternity (1956), a remake of Five Came Back, where a plane crashes in headhunter country in South America. Not only was it a riveting drama where the stranded passengers get picked off one by one but Ekberg was never so plain-looking or acted so well in an ensemble cast that included Robert Ryan, Rod Steiger and Keith Andes. It is the only one of her films that I own.
Around this time, a couple of friends and I were on the pier in Malibu and soon realized there was some commotion below us at the water's edge. We assumed correctly it was a photographer's shoot of some sort. While we intently hung over the side of the pier's railing, I spotted Ekberg barefoot and in pants while a towel was being held up by two people around her upper structure. They then took the towel away and Ekberg cavorted about with her hands over her bare breasts. I think we all immediately noticed what small hands she had. Cameras whirred and she twirled and we drooled. What a great day.
She couldn't turn down her buddy Bob Hope's request for her to join him and his gang of entertainers to visit the troops overseas. She couldn't sing and she wouldn't act so what is it she could do for these lonely men? Oh, someone would come up with something and the result would put a lot of smiles on a sea of faces before her. The experience made her very happy.
In 1956 she married handsome British actor Anthony Steel (virtually unknown to American moviegoers) and she may have gotten him a role in Valerie (1957), a western they made with Sterling Hayden. It almost doesn't matter that it's a western. It is, however, largely a courtroom drama with flashbacks that tells the story of a tragedy that derails a marriage. The fact that the title is what it is, you can assume it's from a woman's point of view.
The marriage to Steel (he seemed like a nice bloke) didn't last too long, mainly because he caved under the pressure of being Mr. Ekberg. It couldn't have been easy being married to her... still, there are perks for heaven's sake.
Screaming Mimi (1958) with tall Phil Carey (what an ideal match he was for the statuesque one) and Gypsy Rose Lee (yes, really!) in the story of an exotic dancer who becomes a suspect in several murders and in it's B sort of way it was fun.
Ekberg came to the conclusion that Hollywood... well, America really... wasn't working out the way she'd hoped... at least as an actress. She'd burned perhaps too many bridges with her incessant badmouthing of showbiz types. She tended to overshare negative stuff and it likely did her in. So she decided to move to Italy, a country that always had a special connection for her. And for the rest of her life, she would consider Italy home.
Her stock went up when Federico Fellini hired her for La Dolce Vita (1960) destined to become her signature film. The image of the voluptuous Ekberg in her long, black, strapless gown cavorting in the Trevi Fountain is burned in memories world-wide. The mere mention of her name and it's what I think about. Marcello Mastroianni gives a glorious performance as a journalist who wants to be a better one while his life all around him seems to be stretched too far. It is right up there as one of my favorite foreign language films.
While she always admired Fellini and would work for him a few more times, when the press or public would mention to her that he certainly did a lot for her career, she would counter that she did a lot for his career, too. She did acknowledge his hefty contribution but purred oh, Darling, people are always discovering me.
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| With Fellini |
Can you imagine her as the first Bond girl? She auditioned for the part of Honey Ryder in Dr. No, but was beaten out by Ursula Andress.
Boccaccio 70 (1962) probably did better in Europe than in America. I barely remember it although I recall not caring for it. It came in three parts with Ekberg, Romy Schneider and Sophia Loren each heading up her own segment. Absolutely the only thing I remember is Ekberg as a giant woman, like as tall as a six-story building, and she stuffs a little man down her cleavage.
Until she retired in 2002, Ekberg worked almost exclusively in Europe and mainly in Italy. I've not seen any of these movies nor have I ever heard of them. I did look them all up and they mainly seemed mediocre or worse.
She was looking more zaftig than ever when in 1963 she returned to California to make the silly Frank Sinatra-Dean Martin western 4 for Texas with Andress along to make the foursome. Why bother? Maybe she needed the coins to marry American actor Rik Van Nutter that same year. I still know nothing about him except he was her husband. Now that does sound a little Mr. Ekbergish but he made it okay for 12 years. It was her longest and final stab at marital bliss.
Her European films of the 70's and 80's got little play in the U.S. and since she was not seeking as much publicity as she had in her wild youth, we didn't hear much of her. In 1987 she and Mastroianni played themselves in Fellini's Intervista that caused a ripple of attention here.
In 1970 her villa was robbed in August and again in December. She officially retired from acting in 2002... after five decades. Nine years later she was no longer living the sweet life. She said she was destitute after spending three months in a hospital with a broken thigh. While she was there, her home caught on fire. She applied for financial assistance from the Fellini Foundation but it was also hurting financially.
Once in her 80's, Ekberg suffered from one illness after another and she was in and out of clinics. She was in one of them in Rocca di Papa when she died in early 2015 at age 83. Her cremated remains were returned to Sweden.
During at interview with an Italian newspaper when she turned 80, Ekberg was asked if she was lonely. Yes, a bit, she said, but I have no regrets. I have loved, cried, been mad with happiness. I have won and I have lost. I always enjoyed her and I admit I never confused her with Ingrid Bergman, a fellow Swede. But for an actress or a personality who rode on the wave of her voluptuousness, she made it a lot further than quite a number I could mention.
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A good 50's film
She replaced Arlene Dahl in War and Peace
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