Above is a photo of Italian actress Gia Scala. We thought her name sounded unusual so we checked it and discovered Gia means “already” and Scala means “ladder.” That clued us in to the fact that maybe her name was a stage creation—duh—and indeed, though she was of Italian descent, she was born in England as Josephine Grace Johanna Scoglio. We definitely like Gia as a name better than Josephine. Scoglio, by the way, means “rock.” Scala is another early Hollywood fatality. She died in 1972 of a barbiturate overdose in her Hollywood Hills home at age thirty-eight, a death that was ruled accidental. This photo is from 1961.
On a Scala of 1 to 10 she's on the top step.