"What is the use of being beautiful, if you have to buy your own emeralds?"
So said actress Gina Lollobrigida (born 1927), after being complimented by Moroccan diplomat Taibi Benhima at a dinner party in New York City in 1965.
SOURCE: Gladys Wilson, The Duchess Pini di San Miniato, Memoirs of a Canadian Duchess (Montréal: P.D.S.M. Editor, 1986), page 110.
14 comments:
i had forgotten that la lollobrigida was elegant and beautiful as well as sexy!
I couldn't have put it better myself!
Of course; she is correct! I am sure she is still beautiful; and I hope someone is buying her emeralds and diamonds and sapphires....and anything else her heart desires!
She is exquisite and has worked very hard all her life!
I forgot to ask......and what did HE say??? When she said that?
That is the real question???
or diamonds, or rubies, or (enormous) aquamarines, etc.
brilliant. what legs, what wit!
I would venture to guess that "Memoirs of a Canadian Duchess" is not a title that had 'em rushing to the bookstore but obviously there was plenty of interest inside the book itself.
You can say that again!
Ha ha...love that!!
Agreed, the memoirs of Gladys Pini de Miniato are not especially riveting. Her cavalierness and sense of entitlement are astounding. It's really a Grade D or F book, along the lines of Princess Marie Louise's "My Memories of Six Reigns" or Mrs Hwfa Williams's "It Was Such Fun!" Which, I hasten to add, I strangely enjoy, firsthand historical memoirs by entirely forgotten society figures who, at least, paid a bit of attention to what was going on around them.
And I really appreciate that about you, Aesthete, that we can find things here that are sure to be entertaining, edifying and unique.
I am in complete agreement with La Lollobrigida!
AL --
I know this is all a joke, and it's a good joke, but isn't it ferociously anti-female?
Obviously, I'm in no position to answer, but in diligently searching through fifty years of pictures, I could only find one picture of Gina in emeralds that were plausibly her own, and even then they seemed palpably fake.
(And in that picture, I'm sorry to say, she looked like a somewhat younger, more attractive version of a certain old bat who attends "society functions" in Manhattan -- but in famously real emeralds, which make her look -- perversely -- even more ridiculous.)
Your faithful fan,
A
P.S. That said, I'm a big fan of GL, who bagged out of the movie business at just the right time, reinvented herself as a photographer, and is still a much beloved icon in Italy.
The story, as recounted, has Lollobrigida making the comment (which surely was meant to be funny), after a Moroccan diplomat praised her beauty. She was wearing a turban at the time, with an emerald brooch attached to it, and apparently rolled her eyes in its direction, then uttered those words.
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