Anna Magnani The Rose Tattoo
Anna Magnani
Nickname La Magnani Nannarella
Anna was born in Rome, 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 regi on of Italy (although she never knew his name). Raised in poverty by her maternal grandmother in Rome after her mother left her, she 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 1920's, she was not known as a film actress until 1941's Teresa Venerdi, directed by Vittorio DiSica. Her breakthrough film was Roberto Rossellini's Open City in 1945, generally regarded as the first commercially successful Italian "neorealist" film of the postwar years. It was the film that gained her an international reputation. From then on, she never stopped working in films and in television, winning an A cademy Award for her performance in the screen version of Tennessee Williams' The Rose Tattoo (she and Williams were close friends), and working all of Italy's leading directors of the 1950's, '60's, and '70's. She was famous for her earthy, passionate, woman-of-the-soil" roles. She and Rossellini were lovers for some years after Open City, until he began his infamous affair with Ingrid Bergman. Anna had one child out of wedlock by Italian actor Massimo Serato, the boy later stricken with polio and Anna dedicating her life to caring for him. Her one marriage, to Italian director Goffredo Alessandrini in the mid 1930's, lasted only a short while and ended in an annulment. Her last film was Fellini's Roma, in 1972. She died in Rome of a pancreatic tumor t he next year.

Rose Tattoo, The (1955)
Directed by Daniel Mann
Writing credits Tennessee Williams (play) Hal Kanter
Anna Magnani .... Serafina Delle Rose Burt Lancaster .... Alvaro Mangiacavallo Marisa Pavan .... Rosa Delle Rose Ben Cooper .... Jack Hunter Virginia Grey .... Estelle Hohengarten Jo Van Fleet .... Bessie Sandro Giglio .... Father De Leo Mimi Aguglia .... Assunta Florence Sundstrom .... Flora

Beryl D. Robinson New York
Date: 14 September 1998 Summary: No one could be more "naked" then Anna
Anna Magnani is the only actress that I have seen that is able to actually put her guts into a role. Unfortunately, and no pun intended, Anna put so much of herself in her acting career that she died of pancreatic cancer.
But you have to say if you ever sa this movie or even the others like Wild Is The Wind, you see an actress that surpasses the script. Anna lives her role as if she is there and there is no separation from Anna and Serafina Della Rose. You can tell that Anna has lived her part and her life by the bags under her eyes, but she holds nothing back, nothing. This kind of actress (not even Streep in Bridges of Madisson County where she played an Italian woman) can explode like Anna. In Rose Tatoo you see a woman who is utterly destroyed by the death of her husband, you see it, you feel it along with her. You also experience the mourning with Anna shamelessly wallowing in self-pity and depression, not wanting to live because her "rose" of a husband has been removed from her life. Her baron. Then we experience the disbelief when Serafina finds out that her Baron, her rose had been unfaithful to her. Anna Magnani expresses her joy, her sadness, her anger, her suspicion and her grief with such authenticity, you cannot help but see this movie over and over and over again, because it is so real. There were great things happening in 1955, first, I was born and then there was The Rose Tattoo.