SOPHIA LOREN : A BIOGRAPHY

Rating:
Summary: fleshy with filmography
Review: If you are looking for an in depth expose of a magnificent film legend - you've come to the wrong place. This book is really spare with the good jive but incredibly detailed in the film jive.

Rating:
Summary: The essentials
Review: There aren't many Sophia Loren biographies out there, and so fans often can't afford to be picky. So Warren G. Harris's "Sophia Loren" is an interesting read, if a somewhat plain vanilla one. Good photos, some amusing anecdotes and a basic summary of Sophia's life are what readers will find.

It traces her life from a scrawny illegitimate baby (whom a wet nurse described as looking like a rat, and who was later nicknamed "Toothpick"), whose mother was abandoned by her father, leaving her alone with two children. But Sophia Scicolone (later Sophia Lazzaro, and then Sophia Loren) rapidly bloomed into a beautiful woman, becoming a beauty contest champ and then an actress. Despite a string of flops and a controversial relationship with a divorced man, Sophia became one of the most beautiful and women in the world, and the first Oscar winner of a performance in a foreign-language film.

The best description of this book is "adequate." It's not amazingly written, researched or presented. Rather it presents the basics of Sophia's life up the 1990s, which seems to have been a fairly straightforward, open one. There isn't really much that is new in this, but what is there is usually presented in an entertaining manner. Between the "battle of the bosoms" and Frank Sinatra teaching Sophia some obscene questions in English, we hear some funny events as well as a few bittersweet ones. And unlike many biographies, this one gives detailed summaries of her various movies.

Sophia herself is presented as a warm and sweet person, who cabled flowers to Clark Gable's widow and befriended nearly every costar (entrancing a few as well). The pictures are not well-chosen, as there aren't as many as there could have been, and quite a few seem to focus on Sophia in various stages of undress (ranging from her see-through prostitute gown to her merry widow to her topless dance number in "It's Him -- Yes Yes!"). Carlos Ponti, her husband, is a nebulous figure -- we don't learn much about him. Sophia's family and friends are better defined, such as her never-say-die mother Romilda, her commitmentphobe father, and the extremely emotional Cary Grant.

It's not outstanding, but it's a big plus for fans of the amazing Sophia Loren. For the basics on her life, this is a good place to start.

Rating:
Summary: A tragedy!
Review: This bio is a tragedy. Poor written, no history, just jive, gossips. An insult to Sophia Loren and to all her fans as well.
This horrible book, maybe the worst biography ever written, is a bad collage of information, a lack of journalistic bearing.
Mr. Harris' personality takes center stage even if the book is about Sophia. Barbed comments abound which instead of shedding light on the book's subject matter, seem to be included to ridicule its subject. Urgh...!!!