Ciao, Bella!

The Italians have a phrase for it.  Colpo di fulmine.  It means “bolt of lightning.” Love at first sight.  I have always been a sucker for a pretty face.  I get crushes on the gorgeous. I just can’t help myself.

For me it started with Garbo.  Thanks to television, I was introduced to Ninotchka at an impressionable age.  She had a face you could drown in.  And the movie was Ernst Lubitsch’s.  Need I say more?

Then there was Hedy Lamarr.  Rechristened by her studio bosses after Barbara La Marr- a tragic beauty of an earlier age- she was considered the goddess of goddesses in her new home town, Hollywood.

Her acting was so-so.  But have you seen her?  Check her out in Algiers.  And she invented something that saved our submarines in World War II and lets us have cell phones, too.

Gott in Himmel.  That was some frau.

Gene Tierney in Laura.  Never has haunting, unforgettable beauty been more perfectly cast.  (And that theme song…)  Did you know she actually was “discovered” on a studio tour with her parents when she was a teenager?  True, but anyone who ever saw her knew she had a fortune written on her face.

Vivien Leigh in Waterloo Bridge.  Even her name was gorgeous.  I’ve seen her baby pictures and she doesn’t look real.  I gave my own daughter the “Leigh” part for her own middle name.  I only wish Miss Leigh’s life had been as beautiful as she was.

Remember Roman Holiday?  That was the movie that made me- and the whole world- fall in love with Audrey Hepburn.  She had several of these “caterpillars into butterfly movies”- Sabrina, Love in the Afternoon, Funny Face, My Fair Lady.  And when the makeover was finished, there emerged, as they said, a bird of paradise.

And here was one star who’s soul- and good works offscreen- were as beautiful as her magnificent face.

Speaking of Rome, I must now salute those eighth and ninth wonders of the world- Sophia Loren and Silvana Mangano.

When La Bella Sophia rose from the sea, dripping wet and dress clinging to those pasta-made curves in Boy on a Dolphin, teenaged boys world over suddenly became men.

You might prefer her in Houseboat, or Marriage Italian Style.  But whenever you see her, she is a hymn to the glory of Napoli.  And she’s still bellissima today.

You might not be as familiar with her paisana, Signorina Mangano, but check her out in Bitter Rice.  Unbelievable looking.

Both Loren and Mangano were starlets together, and both married big-time Italian producers.  And today, Loren is the mother-in-law of Sasha Alexander- Dr. Isles of Rizzoli & Isles, and Mangano was the grandmother of another good-looker, celebrity chef, Giada De Laurentiis.

Back in the States, Grace Kelly was breath-taking in The Swan.  Hitchcock had a famous crush on her and in his Rear Window let us all ogle her up close and personal as she leaned over the sleeping Jimmy Stewart.  Her magnificent face filled the screen- and my heart.

And then came Natalie Wood.  An adorable moppet in Miracle on 34th Street, she had blossomed into a pocket Venus by the time she made Rebel Without a Cause.

She was lovely, too, in that heartbreaking depression era version of Romeo and Juliet, Splendor in the Grass.

But it was in Gypsy that her adorable face and figure just killed me.  As she sang “Let me entertain you” and took it (almost) all off, I became her slave.  And I co-opted her real-life nickname “Natasha” for my own first born. 

Later on, there were only two women for me.

Julie Christie and Catherine Deneuve.

Unconventional-looking, with a mannish jaw and stern features, Julie Christie was living proof that you didn’t have to have a face that could grace a candy box to be considered a beauty.  She walked down the street in Billy Liar in 1963 and I was done for.

Maybe it was her hair. Or her accent. Or her acting.  But check her out as the pitiless, selfish model in Darling.  You can see why she could reduce Dirk Bogarde to tears.

And David Lean must have thought she was a heartbreaker, too.  She played Lara in his Dr. Zhivago- a role strictly reserved for only the most glorious.

McCabe and Mrs. Miller, Shampoo, Heaven Can Wait were all made with her then-boyfriend, Warren Beatty.  And even though he mussed her up with authentic period frontier dirt in M and M, her cruel radiance came shining through.

She had bone structure and it has lasted.  She’s still beautiful enough to play Brad Pitt’s goddess mother in Troy, and Kate Winslet’s domineering mama in Finding Neverland. And she still doesn’t look like anyone’s mother that I know.

And then, with a face that could have only been painted by Watteau or Renoir, was the ethereal Catherine.  When I first saw her in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, all others that went before were eclipsed.

If anyone was the living embodiment of Venus the Goddess of love, surely it was she.

And she followed it up with Belle du Jour.

There are no words to express how she looked.  Not in English anyway.

Magnifique, stupende, elegante, superbe.  The French, who invented those words, were so proud of her looks that they made her their Marianne, the national emblem of  France.

Today she’s alive and well and making movies with the beautiful Chiara Mastroianni, her daughter with Marcello.

I could go on.  Keira Knightly in Love, Actually, Catherine Zeta-Jones in The Mask of Zorro.  Olivia Wilde in anything.  I go nuts for their faces.

And just when I think, I’ll never see anything so beautiful again, I catch sight of Alain Delon in Rocco and His Brothers and The Yellow Rolls Royce.

Coup de foudre.