Cover Stars: Top Actresses for Vado e Torno Magazine
Vado e Torno, a periodical published for the world of road hauliers, first came out in 1962. It was originally the idea of Arrigo Castellani, the Pirelli press and advertising director. As well as topics specifically related to the sector, the magazine also contained articles on current events, society, and entertainment. And the front covers were devoted to the top cinema stars of the moment.
It was the twenty-four-year-old Claudia Cardinale who graced the cover in December 1962. She had just finished Girl with a Suitcase, which once again confirmed her as a star of Italian cinema, after Big Deal on Madonna Street, Il Bell’Antonio, and Rocco and His Brothers. For Vado e Torno, Cardinale dressed up as Angelica, the splendid protagonist of Luchino Visconti’s The Leopard. The cover of April 1963: Monica Vitti was by now the female icon of Michelangelo Antonioni’s movies. After The Adventure, La Notte, and L’Eclisse, the masterpiece Red Desert was just about to come onto cinema screens. In October of the same year, 1963, Stefania Sandrelli was just seventeen but the public had already seen the sensational charm with which the actress from Viareggio had played the part of Angela in Divorce Italian Style. The dress, the gathered-up hair, and the black makeup on her eyes on the cover of Vado and Torno take us instead to Agnese – the woman who is “seduced and abandoned” by the young Peppino Califano – whose part she played in the famous film by Pietro Germi. And then comes Sofia Loren, or rather “Sophia”, as we read on the cover of Vado and Torno of December 1966. Vittorio De Sica’s Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow was coming out just then. Three episodes, with three different Lorens, and three different Mastroiannis.
Hollywood landed on the front cover of the “road hauliers’ magazine” in April 1964, with the inimitable charms of Jane Fonda. The twenty-seven-year-old New Yorker, daughter of the great Henry, was maybe not quite yet a star of the silver screen, but she already knew the director Roger Vadim, whom she would marry the following year. When he turned her into Barbarella in 1968, Jane Fonda became an international celebrity. The front cover in May 1964 went to Brigitte Bardot, the “première dame de France”, but this was an accolade she would soon share with the star of Vado e Torno in July 1964. This was Catherine Deneuve, who just won the Cannes Grand Prix for The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and a few years later, in 1967, she was to become the shameful Séverine in Buñuel’s Belle de Jour. In September 1965 and April 1966, Italian readers marvelled at Ursula Andress, who was already famous for her outfit in Dr No: the scene in which the splendid Swiss actress emerges from the Caribbean waters of Crab Key had already made history. The last star – ending the series of actresses on the front cover of Vado and Torno, in January 1972 – was Pamela Tiffin, from Oklahoma City, known – though not universally – in Italy for her part in Dino Risi’s Torture Me But Kill Me with Kisses with Nino Manfredi.
We end this anthology with an actress whose life is a mystery: her name is Liz Allsop and she appears on the July 1966 cover with a white dress bearing a map of the Autostrada del Sole, from Milan to Naples. She is the blonde at the wheel of the Jaguar in The Tortoise and the Hare, a road movie by the director of Chariots of Fire Hugh Hudson, produced by the British Pirelli to celebrate the Cinturato tyre. Another story, another little masterpiece.
Vado e Torno, a periodical published for the world of road hauliers, first came out in 1962. It was originally the idea of Arrigo Castellani, the Pirelli press and advertising director. As well as topics specifically related to the sector, the magazine also contained articles on current events, society, and entertainment. And the front covers were devoted to the top cinema stars of the moment.
It was the twenty-four-year-old Claudia Cardinale who graced the cover in December 1962. She had just finished Girl with a Suitcase, which once again confirmed her as a star of Italian cinema, after Big Deal on Madonna Street, Il Bell’Antonio, and Rocco and His Brothers. For Vado e Torno, Cardinale dressed up as Angelica, the splendid protagonist of Luchino Visconti’s The Leopard. The cover of April 1963: Monica Vitti was by now the female icon of Michelangelo Antonioni’s movies. After The Adventure, La Notte, and L’Eclisse, the masterpiece Red Desert was just about to come onto cinema screens. In October of the same year, 1963, Stefania Sandrelli was just seventeen but the public had already seen the sensational charm with which the actress from Viareggio had played the part of Angela in Divorce Italian Style. The dress, the gathered-up hair, and the black makeup on her eyes on the cover of Vado and Torno take us instead to Agnese – the woman who is “seduced and abandoned” by the young Peppino Califano – whose part she played in the famous film by Pietro Germi. And then comes Sofia Loren, or rather “Sophia”, as we read on the cover of Vado and Torno of December 1966. Vittorio De Sica’s Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow was coming out just then. Three episodes, with three different Lorens, and three different Mastroiannis.
Hollywood landed on the front cover of the “road hauliers’ magazine” in April 1964, with the inimitable charms of Jane Fonda. The twenty-seven-year-old New Yorker, daughter of the great Henry, was maybe not quite yet a star of the silver screen, but she already knew the director Roger Vadim, whom she would marry the following year. When he turned her into Barbarella in 1968, Jane Fonda became an international celebrity. The front cover in May 1964 went to Brigitte Bardot, the “première dame de France”, but this was an accolade she would soon share with the star of Vado e Torno in July 1964. This was Catherine Deneuve, who just won the Cannes Grand Prix for The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and a few years later, in 1967, she was to become the shameful Séverine in Buñuel’s Belle de Jour. In September 1965 and April 1966, Italian readers marvelled at Ursula Andress, who was already famous for her outfit in Dr No: the scene in which the splendid Swiss actress emerges from the Caribbean waters of Crab Key had already made history. The last star – ending the series of actresses on the front cover of Vado and Torno, in January 1972 – was Pamela Tiffin, from Oklahoma City, known – though not universally – in Italy for her part in Dino Risi’s Torture Me But Kill Me with Kisses with Nino Manfredi.
We end this anthology with an actress whose life is a mystery: her name is Liz Allsop and she appears on the July 1966 cover with a white dress bearing a map of the Autostrada del Sole, from Milan to Naples. She is the blonde at the wheel of the Jaguar in The Tortoise and the Hare, a road movie by the director of Chariots of Fire Hugh Hudson, produced by the British Pirelli to celebrate the Cinturato tyre. Another story, another little masterpiece.
