Marisa Pavan

[rlg118]

Born Maria Luisa Pierangeli on June 19, 1932, Marisa is the twin sister of Anna Maria Pierangeli (better known as Pier Angeli).

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0667542/

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Combat! - Season 2, Episode 1, "Ambush"

Getting her to guest on Combat! was a real coup. (Many Hollywood stars were practically having fist-fights to be on the show; the list of guest stars featured during its five-year run reads like a Who's Who of Hollywood.)

Here Marisa plays a French woman named Marie Marchand, whose father is suspected of being a Nazi collaborator and murdered. Unknown to the townspeople, he was really an Allied spy; being a collaborator was his cover.

She later discovers a German artillery unit hidden in a forest and has to be persuaded to help the Americans find it, because she feels that they could have prevented the murder.

[zwaik]

[raval]

[johnbear]

found these

[SanteeFats]

Three not here yet.

[SanteeFats]

The last two are her and her twin sister.

[Findcandor]

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1978-1979

I thought that was a great thread opening (see page top) by Member "Rclg118" from over a dozen years ago (and he's still plugging away in VEF, bless 'im); he gave a little taste of what the TV show episode the lady appeared in was about. (TV show being Combat!, which I've never watched; there are other shows from ye olden days that featured excitingly known actors, similarly reading like a "Who's Who of Hollywood.")

Originally Posted by zwaik

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• Anna Maria in 1954 ... 22 years old ....... (Second photo courtesy of Cuzzyman927's Post #38.)

In case other VEF'ers (as myself) were not aware of Marisa Pavan, I'd like to make clearer a valuable piece of information Rclg118 provided, "Marisa is the twin sister of Anna Maria Pierangeli (better known as Pier Angeli)." They were fraternal — and not identical — twins, at least to my eye, as may be seen from the photo directly above, originating in Zwaik's second post of Ms. Pierangeli's VEF thread.



Given how Anna Maria's thread is, to date, six times the length of this thread devoted to Marisa, I'd gather Anna Maria is more the favored one. Marisa's IMDb bio begins with, "Anna Maria was dreamy and innocent; Maria Luisa was independent and studious." Yep, the less controllable / spirited and brainy women often lose out to the precious and delicate ones whom we, as men, have a greater urge to protect and desire.



This post is a "quickie." I was watching "With the French Heel Back, Can the Nehru Jacket Be Far Behind?," an early 1979 episode of The Rockford Files, and thought it would be nice to provide views of the lady from the later phase of her career. Marisa played the manager of an enterprise peddling high fashions, and she was forty-six-years-old. She would go on to appear in only five more titles, the last two in the early nineties being French television programs, although in 1985 she had an extended stay on the daytime soap Ryan's Hope, where the signora appeared in twenty-two episodes.



I didn't conduct research on this actress, but wished to throw out some of the more interesting items from the lady's IMDb biography. It seems Marisa was not really interested in going into acting, but her life was affected when Anna Maria was selected by famed director Vittorio De Sica for a film from 1950, the year when the sisters and family moved to Hollywood. Both girls were eighteen; the five-foot tall Anna Maria (who regarded James Dean as the love of her life) would sadly die of a drug overdose some twenty years later. Marisa is happily still with us, and will be ninety-one next month.



On the other hand, since sis was in the Hollywood swing, Marisa also tagged along, and was very fortunate to get her first break with a hit film from famed director John Ford in 1952. She didn't like the way sis was being pigeon-holed (of Anna Maria, she reportedly stated, "The studios made her be like what they wanted her to be like, but from this moment on, it was not my sister I had in front of me anymore. She had become a studios' product"). Marisa had a notable breakthrough in The Rose Tattoo (1955), for which she was nominated as Best Supporting Actress.



Solomon and Sheba (1959) is said to have left a sour taste in her mouth, leading her to concentrate on television instead. She married a French actor in 1956 (he was over twenty years her senior, and died at age ninety in 2001; they teamed up to appear in plays and musicals, apparently beginning in the 1960s), and this connection must have played a major role in the lady's later choice of France for home.



A quote that has been attributed to her: "I was quite demanding. When I didn't like a role, I refused it. When I didn't like an agent, I refused him too. I was going to live my life as I wanted!" Looks like she had a real "F-you" attitude, which you gotta love.












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