Portrait of Anna Magnani, Photograph, 1960s

Portrait of Anna Magnani is a vintage b/w photographic print on single-coated paper, realized in 1960s. Rare and intense portrait of the actress. Good conditions. Anna Magnani was born in Rome, Italy (not in Egypt, as some biographies claim), on March 7, 1908. She was the illegitimate child of Marina Magnani and an unknown father, often said to be from Alexandria, Egypt, but whom Anna herself claimed was from the Calabria region of Italy although she never knew his name. Raised in poverty by her maternal grandmother in Rome after her mother left her, Anna worked her way through Rome's Academy of Dramatic Art by singing in cabarets and nightclubs, then began touring the countryside with small repertory companies. Although she had a small role in a silent film in the late 1920s, Her breakthrough film was Rome, Open City (1945), generally regarded as the first commercially successful Italian neorealist film of the postwar years and the one that won her an international reputation. From then on, she didn't stop working in films and television, winning an Academy Award for her performance in the screen version of The Rose Tattoo(1955), a part that was written for her by her close friend Williams. She worked with all of Italy's leading directors of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s