Benito Mussolini, known as ‘Il Duce’,
the Prime Minister of Italy 1922–1943
One
Cinecittà studios, Rome
September 1941
‘Signorina Bellucci, they’re ready for you now.’
It was Mario, the assistant floor manager, poking his head around the make-up room door.
Isabella took one last look at herself in the mirror. Her dark hair was waved to perfection, her rosebud mouth rouged. False eyelashes had been painstakingly applied one at a time to her top lids, giving her the wide-eyed girlish look her fans adored.
The make-up artist brushed away the excess powder from Isabella’s flawless pan-caked complexion, put a smudge of Vaseline on her lips to add a little shine, and removed the cape from the star’s shoulders with a flourish.
‘Perfetto, signorina,’ she said, ‘you are ready for your close-up.’
A star’s close-up was a constant source of friction between actor and director. The actors demanded it for the simple and straightforward reason that the more close-ups you had, the more the public loved you and the more important you became to the studio. Directors, however, found them irritating: they got in the way of the story, they took time to set up and they pandered to the worst excesses of an actor’s ego. All the female stars at Cinecittà had a certain number of close-ups written into their contract for every film. Isabella – by nature, shy and lacking in confidence – had realised early on in her career that if she was not to be pushed around by the studio, she would have to play the part of the ‘Diva’. Her performance over the years had been so effective that she had earned the unfortunate moniker of ‘The Tyrant’ among some members of the crew. Isabella was rather hurt by the nickname, because she knew it was both inaccurate and unjustified. But she played along with it, and in her latest film had demanded no fewer than eight close-ups. In order to be ready she had to spend two hours in make-up to ensure that her complexion, her hair, her eyes were as perfect on camera as possible. Inevitably this meant an early start – rising at five o’clock. So, when the time came to negotiate the contract for this film, she had decided to put her foot down.
‘No more early mornings,’ she had said firmly to the director when they were planning the filming schedule. ‘To be on set at eight, as you demand, is simply unreasonable. I’m exhausted before the day even begins. How can I be ready for my close-up if I have dark rings beneath my eyes?’
‘Now, Isabella,’ Lorenzo purred, ‘you know how these things work. If we don’t start filming at eight o’clock, we’ll never get the film completed in time.’
‘That’s your problem, not mine,’ retorted Isabella. ‘You can shoot other scenes that don’t include me first thing in the morning. I’ll be on set at nine o’clock and not before.’
He flushed – with fury, she supposed – and bit his lip.
‘Do you have something to say?’ she asked imperiously, inwardly nervous of his reaction.
‘I was merely wondering…’ he hesitated, ‘… if perhaps it would be better not to do a close-up, as they present such a problem for you. The story doesn’t really demand it.’
She smiled like a cat, her blue-grey eyes flashing. ‘No, perhaps not, but our public demand to see as much of their stars as possible, and the authorities agree with them; so I think that’s the end of the matter, don’t you?’
Relieved to have won that particular argument, she stood up and pulled her cream coat around her shoulders, put on her sunglasses and swept out of the room, leaving a haze of Arpège perfume behind her – complex, sexy and feminine.
Isabella arrived on set amidst a flurry of attendants. She stood in the shadows being primped and prodded; the make-up artist’s assistant dabbed powder on her already perfect complexion and the dresser tweaked her Edwardian gown, tilting her hat just so. Isabella turned to her personal assistant Maria, and handed her a letter.
‘Get this delivered for me, will you?’
‘Of course, signorina,’ the girl said, glancing down at the envelope. It was addressed to a young army officer, Baron Ludovico Albani, a member of Rome’s aristocracy. The pair had enjoyed a whirlwind romance that summer – dining à deux in Rome, walking arm in arm down Via Veneto, and spending their Sundays bathing at the beach at Fregene. The relationship had been captured for Isabella’s fans by photographers and printed in the press beneath ecstatic headlines:
MOVIE STAR FINDS LOVE WITH ARISTOCRATIC WAR HERO
Ludovico had been elusive for the previous couple of weeks and Isabella was worried. She had begun to believe that she had found love at last. Now she feared that, as far as he was concerned, it had merely been a summer fling. In her darker moments she worried that he had already forgotten her. But as usual, she did her best to bury these concerns, and concentrate on her work.
The film she was shooting that hot day in September was set in rural Tuscany. Isabella played the part of a kindly schoolteacher who had been unlucky in love. When she arrives in the countryside to take up a new post, the local mayor is determined to win her heart. Location scenes for the film had already been shot on the shores of Lake Orta. Now the village school had been recreated in the vast sound stage at Cinecittà. A painted backdrop featuring rolling olive groves set the scene. In the foreground stood the schoolhouse – a wooden building, artfully disguised by scene painters to resemble Tuscan stone. Mature trees stood on the edge of the set, their vast pots hidden from the camera by flowers and plants.
That morning’s scene featured Isabella hugging a small child playing the part of one of her pupils. The moment the director called ‘Action’, Isabella – professional as always – smiled beatifically at the child, as the camera tracked onto her exquisite face. Under the hot lights, her flawless smooth skin glowed, her cat-like eyes sparkled, and her dark hair gleamed. Irritated though the director was by his star’s demands, Lorenzo had to admit she was ‘the image of perfection’.
At six o’clock, the day’s shooting over, Isabella emerged from the dark studio building into the blinding summer sunlight. She felt in her Hermès crocodile handbag for her sunglasses.
‘Buonasera, signorina.’ The uniformed doorman tipped his hat to her. She nodded her head discreetly in acknowledgement, and looked around the parking lot for her black open-topped Mercedes.
‘Do you remember where I parked my car?’ she asked him.
‘Yes, signorina… it’s just over there, by the gate.’
‘Oh yes, thank you. I was thinking about something else this morning, and I’d quite forgotten.’
‘Have a good evening, signorina,’ he said, delighted to have been singled out for this ‘chat’.
‘And you,’ she called back over her shoulder.
She threw her handbag onto the passenger seat and turned the key in the ignition. It always gave her a thrill to hear the roar of the engine. She remembered the first time she had ever driven a car – it was just after she had been signed to the studio, aged sixteen. Isabella had been ‘discovered’ while walking with her mother in the parkland surrounding Villa Borghese, Rome’s famous art gallery. Until that moment she had never considered acting, nor any kind of performing as a potential career; on the contrary, she was a serious, academic child with a knack for mathematics and languages. Born in Argentina to an Italian mother and an Argentinian father, she and her mother Giovanna had returned to Italy after her parents’ marriage collapsed. Her father had had a nervous breakdown, and her mother was determined to provide a better life for herself and her child. Back in Rome, they had moved into the small, shabby apartment of Giovanna’s mother and widowed sister, and there the four women had lived for the rest of Isabella’s childhood.