Italian actress and revered beauty Virna Lisi has died aged seventy-eight of cancer. Her film career began in 1953 and she has acted on televison in 2014 and in a film to be released next year. We’ve featured her quite a bit here. You can see a couple of entries here and here. 

 

Below are the covers of some promotional brochures made by Illustrierte Film-Bühne for movies released in West Germany during the 1950s and 1960s. The examples here, some of which have killer designs, feature Elizabeth Taylor, Marisa Mell, Cary Grant, Virna Lisi, Sophia Loren, Doris Day, Tony Curtis, et.al. IFB was founded in 1946 in Munich by Paul Franke, and over the years produced thousands of these pamphlets. We’ll share more later.

We featured Italian actress Virna Lisi as a femme fatale in September, but we’re bringing her back today because this shot really works for us, and she is, after all, Virna Lisi. If you’ve never seen her, we suggest you immediately watch How To Murder Your Wife. It’s about a playboy (Jack Lemmon) who goes on a drunken binge and wakes up married to a stranger (Lisi). He desperately (and inexplicably) wants to be rid of her, and so he concocts a murder plot. He has no intention of actually going through with it, but things get complicated. It’s a comedy, and it stays funny viewing after viewing. Rent it, watch it, love it.

Above is a close-up of Italian actress Virna Lisi, who began acting in 1953 but is well known in the U.S. for 1965’s How To Murder Your Wife, and is considered one of the most beautiful performers ever to grace the silver screen, seen here circa 1960.

Below, five covers of the Mexican humor and celebrity magazine Ja-Ja circa 1960s, and featuring the lovely Virna Lisi (not Lissy), Tongolele, Elke Sommer, Eugenia San Martin, and Senta (not Santa) Berger. 

This nice issue of Ilustrovana Politika, or Illustrated Politic, was published in the former Yugoslavia. During that unpleasantness known as the Cold War the country was communist ruled but non-aligned, a political stance that resulted in an influx of both Soviet and Western European influences. Movie stars such as Sofia Loren, Brigitte Bardot, and Virna Lisi were featured on hundreds of Yugoslav magazines. American stars snuck in too. This particular cover, featuring Jane Fonda, appeared forty-two years ago this month.