Gia Scala

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At Federico Fellini's cocktail party in Los Angeles
on June 6, 1957. (Photo by Earl Leaf.)

I noticed the large version of the photo below from 2013's Post #4 by Member "Cuzzyman927" has bought the farm, and although a black and white version of the same from the first post in 2009 by Thread-Starter "Mrcheese" still survives (this member is currently inactive, and claims to hail from Kyev, Ukraine; hopefully he is okay), I wished to replace it... since the actress looked especially enchanting:

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After post was finished, ran into second shot from same shoot and tacked it on.
See also Johnbear's photo from 2017's Post #12, by scrolling up.

This is a detour from a post (which should be at the top of the second page of her thread) that I'm working on for Joanna Moore, and research for her images led to this:


Behind-the-scenes shot with the director of the
film mentioned directly below; Joanna is at right.

I suddenly stopped thinking about the actress I was involved with, and my thoughts turned to Gia Scala. Can you blame me? After all, ten out of ten surveyed hummingbirds have agreed she was one humdinger of a honey.



Gia was the bigger cheesecake (between her and Joanna) of Ride a Crooked Trail (1958), a western about a crook (Audie Murphy, pictured) who is given a marshal's job (mistaken for the lawman who got killed on Murphy's trail), and the scam deepens once old acquaintance Gia is forced to pose as his wife. The screencaps above and below were taken from the trailer featured on the film's IMDb page.


Since the two are not married, the awfully civilized outlaw sleeps in the tub.


A quick look revealed Gia had played the beautiful resistance fighter (and tragic mute, after torture by Nazis) from THE GUNS OF NAVARONE (1961); for those who have seen this classic movie, you may remember the scene where David Niven and Gregory Peck get into a heated discussion as to who gets to terminate the lady, since they can't take the chance for her to spill the beans and spoil their mission. None of the commandos wants to shoot Gia Scala, when these killers wouldn't have given a second thought about mowing down just about anyone else. Why was that?


Second photo, with actors James Darren and lucky Anthony Quinn.

Gia, born in England of Irish and Italian stock, moved to New York City as a young teenager (by herself apparently, in order to shack up with her aunt), and upon appearing on a TV game show (Stop the Music), was spotted by a scout and placed under contract at Universal Studios. In no time she began amassing some pretty good roles (beginning in 1955; she was reportedly dating Steve McQueen in the two years prior), including the leading lady one from Don't Go Near the Water (1957), opposite Glenn Ford; take a glance at this vision:


Don't Go Near the Water

She was also in what sounds like a very interesting film (in that its real purpose appears to have been to serve as a sort of springboard for some of the performers), Four Girls in Town (1957); a quartet of beauties compete for the big time when selected as possible replacements for a major film's temperamental star. One of the four is the ultra-lovely Julie Adams, and another is the German-born Marianne Koch, whom I am unfamiliar with, but she is absolutely gorgeous. (Has a VEF thread.)




Gia Scala evidently had emotional problems, and sudden stardom likely served as a factor in making her "all mixed up," as she described after an attempted suicide (which the loss of her mother seems to have exacerbated). As described in the article below (placed around 1959 given the name of her last film with Robert Mitchum), she tried to jump in London's Thames River twice; her cabbie prevented her. (Gia's biographer at the IMDb seems to have been in error, describing the event as her having landed in the water, and the rescuer was not her driver but a hack in a passing taxi.)

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I found the second article after finishing the post, and tacked it on.

Things began to go downhill after the smash hit that was NAVARONE. Her marriage to an actor she met in 1957 (they were wed in 1959) went officially bust by 1969-70 (the on-and-off relationship probably ended years prior), and according to the cover tagline of a 2015 book, Gia Scala: The First Gia ("The man she loved left her for another," the other being hot blond actress Barbara Anderson; here she is, from a 2020 VEF post, and mentioned three more times in the "Classic American Lesser Known Celebrities" thread, beginning in 2008). The book was "narrated" by younger sister Tina Scala, who has a short IMDb page, and here are more photos of her from Facebook. (The most glamorous view is below.)

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..................................Tina Scala

Looks like poor Gia stalked her husband (whose last film was in 1962, which Gia was slated to co-star in; he became a stockbroker), and apparently behaved violently at times, forcing him to get a restraining order. This took place in 1971, where things started falling apart on other fronts. She was arrested for drunk driving, following another arrest for quarreling over a fifty cent parking lot fee. Then she lost part of a finger from a traffic accident.



Gia from the 1969-aired episode of IT TAKES A THIEF, "The Artist Is For Framing."
She was a few months shy of age thirty-five.


In 1972 she died from what was ruled as an accidental overdose, at the age of thirty-eight. This article (which offers nice biographical notes, although the main intent was to focus on what happened to her Hollywood home; it was bought by actress Sally Kellerman, where she lived for the next forty years, until foreclosure hit her and her husband) suggests foul play, since Gia's nude body was reported to have had bruises and blood was on the pillow. The tall beauty (at 5'8") had an argument with four workers whom she fired, and it was one of them who returned and reported her dead.

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The article above reporting her death (last image, from Los Angeles Times, May 1, 1972) had the following description for the lady: She "looks a little like Ingrid Bergman, a little like Grace Kelly, like Nancy Olson around the eyes and like four or five of those sexy Italian actresses below the neck."



Page featuring nice photos of Gia.

A quote attributed to the actress: "I'd rather act from the neck up. I feel very sorry for those who try to get by on beauty alone because when the beauty is gone, what will they have left to build a career upon?"














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