Popular High Culture in Italian Media, 1950–1970

S T U D I E S A N D

Mona Lisa Covergirl

I T A L I A N

A M E R I C A N I T A L I A N

POPULAR HIGH CULTURE IN ITALIAN MEDIA, 19501970 Emma Barron

Italian and Italian American Studies Series Editor Stanislao G. Pugliese Hofstra University Hempstead, NY, USA

This series brings the latest scholarship in Italian and Italian American history, literature, cinema, and cultural studies to a large audience of specialists, general readers, and students. Featuring works on modern Italy (Renaissance to the present) and Italian American culture and society by established scholars as well as new voices, it has been a longstanding force in shaping the evolving fields of Italian and Italian American Studies by re-emphasizing their connection to one another. Editorial Board Rebecca West, University of Chicago Josephine Gattuso Hendin, New York University Fred Gardaphé, Queens College, CUNY Phillip V. Cannistraro†, Queens College and the Graduate School, CUNY Alessandro Portelli, Università di Roma “La Sapienza” William J. Connell, Seton Hall University More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14835

Emma Barron

Popular High Culture in Italian Media, 1950–1970 Mona Lisa Covergirl

Emma Barron Department of History University of Sydney Sydney, NSW, Australia

Italian and Italian American Studies ISBN 978-3-319-90962-2 ISBN 978-3-319-90963-9  (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90963-9 Library of Congress Control Number: 2018942216 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover credit: Cover image courtesy of Arnoldo Mondadori Editore This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

For John and Ann Barron.

Acknowledgements

This book started out as a back of an envelope plan to study and live in Bologna. It is based on my history Ph.D. thesis, completed in co-­tutelle at the University of Sydney, Australia and the University of Bologna, Italy between 2012 and 2016. I offer heartfelt thanks to my Ph.D. supervisors Professor Iain McCalman and Professor Paolo Capuzzo for their guidance and expertise. It was a privilege to work with them both, and also a great pleasure. The book benefitted significantly from the suggestions and insights of my Ph.D. examiners Professor John Foot, Dr. Gino Moliterno and Dr. Ilaria Vanni, and I am grateful for their advice and other practical post-Ph.D. assistance. I have been fortunate to receive advice and support from colleagues at the Department of History at the University of Sydney, particularly from Professor Chris Hilliard, a generous mentor who has provided guidance on papers, articles and the gentle art of navigating early career academia. Thanks also to Dr. Francesco Borghesi and Dr. Giorgia Alù of the Italian Studies Department for their continued support and to my Italianist cohort Georgia Kate Lawrence-Doyle and Adrienne Tuart. The book’s research was completed with funding from the Australia Government’s Australian Postgraduate Award Scheme and travel support from the University of Sydney’s Postgraduate Research Support Scheme, Doctoral Research Travel Grant Scheme and History Grants-in-Aid Scheme. The broader academic community of Italian cultural historians has been welcoming and generous with their time, and there are many lines of inquiry and archival sources in the book that arose from conversations vii

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with Professor David Forgacs, Professor Stephen Gundle, Professor John Foot and Dr. Penelope Morris. I am especially grateful for Professor John Foot’s encouragement, insistence even, to find and challenge myths about the reception of popular Italian television programs. Thanks to Dr. Penelope Morris for her advice and suggestions on Chapters 2 and 3. Parts of Chapter 4 were published in the article ‘Television audience enjoyment and the Lascia o raddoppia? phenomenon’, Modern Italy 21 no. 3, 2016, and it is reprinted with the permission of Cambridge University Press and the editors of the Modern Italy journal. I thank the anonymous reviewers for their worthwhile suggestions and responses to the article. The biennial conferences of the Australasian Centre for Italian Studies (ACIS) in 2013, 2015 and 2017; the annual conferences of the Association Study of Modern Italy (ASMI); the 2016 Italian Cinema Audiences project conference, ‘Italy and its audiences: 1945 to the present’ at Oxford Brookes University; and the 2017 Journal of Italian Cinema and Media Studies Conference provided important opportunities to test, share and develop ideas and meet experts in the field. I very gratefully acknowledge the support of the ACIS through their Honorary Research Associate program, with particular thanks to Gino Moliterno, David Moss and Sally Hill for their guidance. Gathering materials for any book requires a lot of coordination, and it becomes more difficult when the organising happens on the other side of the world and in another language. Thanks to Altheia Casey for the cover image and to Luca Ros, Ilaria Vanni, Mauro Bottegal and Federico Caruso for advice on Italian sfumatura, translations and correspondence. My thanks also go to Christine Pardue and Megan Laddusaw at Palgrave Macmillan for their support through the publishing process. This book is built on archival research. Archivists and librarians across Italy provided generous assistance through suggestions, advice and permission to use the images reproduced here. I very much appreciate the assistance of the Director of the RAI Archive, Stefano Nespolesi, the advice of Susanna Gianandrea and Manuela Zulian in the RAI Bibliomediateca ‘Dino Villani’ and SIPRA archive in Turin, the support of Giovanna Lipari in the Via Teluda RAI archive in Rome and Chiara Antonelli in the RAI’s Milan fototeca. I am grateful for the guidance and support of Tiziano Chiesa and Marco Magagnin at the Mondadori Archive in Milan and the assistance and enthusiasm of Anna Scudelari at the Historical Archive of Martini & Rossi. Thanks to the librarians at the Istituto Storico Parri, Emilia-Romagna, the Advertising Archive at

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Castello Rivolli and the Archiginnasio of Bologna. An enormous thank you to Maurizio Avanzolini and Franca Caneve for your friendship and help to a straniera navigating the logic of Italian libraries. Many other people have supported me in this international endeavour in Sydney, Bologna, Turin, Milan, Rome and London; more people than there is room to properly thank here. None of it would have occurred without my Italian teachers. In Australia, Luca Ros taught me the language and introduced me to Dylan Dog and Italian mass culture. Most importantly, he suggested I might enjoy Bologna. My life would have been very different and far less interesting without this fine advice. In Italy, Mauro Bottegal and Giovanni Galavotti taught me, not only the language, but also a deep love for Bologna and Italian culture. To my Via Sant’Isaia flatmates Federico Caruso, Daniella Marquito, Riccardo Morandini and Sam Osman, thanks for the friendship, music and soup, for Fantozzi and the lesser known works of Pasolini. I am especially grateful to Annemarie Lopez and Don Macpherson for advice, writing space and accommodation in London. Thanks also to Diego Carpentiero and Elena Astori, Catia and Tomaso, David and Josephine Skellern, Paul Schutes and Nerida O’Loughlin for accommodation and many other kindnesses. Thank you to Sasha Jessop, Carrol Evans, Michael Brealey and John Barron for advice and proofreading. Edward Wightman, Evana Wright, Costanza Bertolotti, Drew Crawford, Keith Johnstone, Paul Nicolarakis, John Graham and Jenny McAllister thanks for your valued friendships and frequent practical support. Finally, the biggest thank you to my family, for your love, support and humour.

Contents

1

Introduction: The Mona Lisa Covergirl 1

2

Italia domanda: A Question of Culture 21

3

Dear Intellectual: The Cultural Advice Columns 55

4

Lascia o raddoppia?: Contestants and the Classics 93

5

Lip-Syncing Rossini: The Highs and Lows of Italian Television Opera 139

6

Puccini, Botticelli and Celebrity Endorsements: The Art of Magazine Advertising 177

7

Reciting Shakespeare for Amaretto di Saronno: The Art of Carosello 215

8

The Classics and the Everyday: From I Promessi Sposi to I Promessi Paperi 245

9

Patrolling the Border: I Promessi Sposi on RAI Television 277

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Contents

10 Conclusion: The Smile of Bergman, the Body of Rita and the Face of Mona Lisa 309 Further Reading 317 Index 329

List of Figures

Fig. 1.1 Fig. 2.1 Fig. 2.2 Fig. 4.1

Fig. 4.2

Fig. 4.3 Fig. 4.4 Fig. 4.5

The Mona Lisa covergirl, Epoca magazine, 28 July 1957 (Image used with permission of Arnoldo Mondadori Editore) Liliana an ordinary Italian covergirl, Epoca, 14 October 1950 (Image used with permission of Arnoldo Mondadori Editore) The first Italia domanda (Italy asks) column, editor Cesare Zavattini pictured, Epoca, 14 October 1950 (Image used with permission of Arnoldo Mondadori Editore) Photographers waiting to capture the drama of Lascia o raddoppia? with host Mike Bongiorno and a contestant, 11 October 1956 (Per gentile concessione di Rai Teche/Courtesy of RAI Teche) Maria Callas performs Verdi for her television singing debut on the educational spin–off Enciclopedia di Lascia o raddoppia?, 13 August 1956 (Per gentile concessione di Rai Teche/Courtesy of RAI Teche) Host Mike Bongiorno congratulates Paola Bolognani for the cameras, Lascia o raddoppia?, 22 March 1956 (Per gentile concessione di Rai Teche/Courtesy of RAI Teche) Host Mike Bongiorno and Maria Luisa Garoppo’s lucky charm on Lascia o raddoppia?, August 1956 (Per gentile concessione di Rai Teche/Courtesy of RAI Teche) Giorgio De Chirico explains modern art to contestant Maria Moritti and host Mike Bongiorno on Lascia o­raddoppia?, 11 December 1958 (Per gentile concessione di Rai Teche/Courtesy of RAI Teche)

2 27 30

101

106 118 120

124

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List of Figures

Fig. 4.6 Fig. 5.1

Fig. 5.2 Fig. 5.3 Fig. 6.1 Fig. 6.2

Fig. 6.3 Fig. 6.4

Fig. 6.5

Fig. 6.6 Fig. 8.1

Fig. 8.2

American composer John Cage performs Water Walk on Lascia o raddoppia?, 19 February 1959 (Per gentile concessione di Rai Teche/Courtesy of RAI Teche) Tenor Franco Corelli lip-syncing Puccini the year after his La Scala debut, performing with Renata Heredia Capnist as Tosca, Tosca (1955) in the RAI studio (Per gentile concessione di Rai Teche/Courtesy of RAI Teche) Mario Del Monaco as Manrico in Il trovatore finds popularity with television audiences (Per gentile concessione di Rai Teche/Courtesy of RAI Teche) Con onore muore … (With honour I die) Anna Moffo as Cio–Cio San in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly (Per gentile concessione di Rai Teche/Courtesy of RAI Teche) Giacomo Puccini endorses Odol mouthwash in L’Illustrazione Italiana, 13 July 1902 ‘You do not discuss it! You drink it’, Giorgio De Chirico about to drink his Punt e Mes in Tempo, 12 February 1956, 8 (Image used with permission of Arnoldo Mondadori Editore) Would you like a light? The ‘Irresistible’ Laurens filtered cigarettes advertisement in Tempo, 26 August 1958, 4 (Image used with permission of Arnoldo Mondadori Editore) ‘Art and Good Taste’ Martini & Rossi Campaign, Martini Vermouth. Designer: Ravinale, featuring Cupid and Psyche (Amore e Psiche), Antonio Canova (Image courtesy of the Martini & Rossi Archive) ‘Art and Good Taste’ Martini & Rossi Campaign, Martini Vermouth. Designer: Ravinale, featuring Pierre-Auguste Renior’s Luncheon of the Boating Party (Image courtesy of the Martini & Rossi Archive) Refined personality at the opera. ‘Her toothpaste is Squibb’ advertisement in Tempo, 13 May 1958, 41 (Image used with permission of Arnoldo Mondadori Editore) Don Rodrigo’s henchmen encourage the priest Don Abbondio not to perform the marriage of Renzo and Lucia. First episode of I Promessi Sposi in the fotoromanzo magazine Le Grandi Firme, 23 September 1952 (Cover image used with permission of Arnoldo Mondadori Editore) The Nun of Monza leads Lucia to kidnappers, I Promessi Sposi: Grande fotoromanzo dal capolavoro di Alessandro Manzoni. Albi di Bolero Film, n. 200, (1966), 95 (Image used with permission of Arnoldo Mondadori Editore)

126

149 153 156 177

190 194

196

197 201

257

259

List of Figures   

The modern woman reads I Promessi Sposi, an advertisement for Tempo subscribers promoting a special binder for their serialised Manzoni novel. Tempo, 11 April 1964, 3 (Image used with permission of Arnoldo Mondadori Editore) Fig. 8.4 BASTA! (Enough!), Lucilla Paperella (Daisy Duck) communicates her disappointment to Paperenzo Strafalcino (Donald Duck). Walt Disney, I Promessi Paperi: e altri capolavori della letteratura universale (Milano: Mondadori, 1998), 42 (Image used with permission of Arnoldo Mondadori Editore) Fig. 9.1 ‘HEY!’, Alice and Ellen Kessler, Le Gemelle Kessler (The Kessler Twins) as sirens in Odyssey, Biblioteca di Studio Uno, 2 October 1964 (Per gentile concessione di Rai Teche/Courtesy of RAI Teche) Fig. 9.2 On the set of I Promessi Sposi (1964), Director Sandro Bolchi with Nino Castelnuovo (Renzo) and Paola Pitagora (Lucia) (Per gentile concessione di Rai Teche/Courtesy of RAI Teche) Fig. 9.3 Lea Massari as the Nun of Monza in the most popular episode of I Promessi Sposi (1964) (Per gentile concessione di Rai Teche/Courtesy of RAI Teche)

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Fig. 8.3

261

266

283

291 293

CHAPTER 1

Introduction: The Mona Lisa Covergirl

When Mona Lisa smiled her mysterious smile from the cover of the Italian magazine Epoca, she gazed out at more than three million ­readers.1 In the top corner, Epoca’s white-on-red block letter logo appeared, tucked in behind the Mona Lisa’s head, partially obscuring Leonardo’s artful rendering of sky and mountains. These two powerful icons exemplified modern Italy: one a mass culture symbol of Italy’s booming American-style magazine market, and the other, a high culture symbol of Italy’s cultural prestige and heritage. While one was mass-produced, disposable and all but worthless a week later, the other was unique, centuries old and priceless. Perhaps in acknowledgement of this, Mona Lisa’s cover respectfully omitted the usual headlines promoting exciting articles inside the edition. Advances in inexpensive full-colour print technology and Italy’s magazine boom allowed millions of readers to experience Mona Lisa’s mysterious face, the exquisitely rendered folds in the fabric of her clothes and the beauty of her soft hands (See Fig. 1.1).2 Epoca’s editor Enzo Biagi described the cover and explained the significance of the masterpiece to the magazine’s readers: The Mona Lisa is the most popular and yet at the same time, the most controversial work of the great genius Leonardo da Vinci. Created during Leonardo’s prime, the work seems to reflect more than any other, the character, the restlessness, the personality of its author. Perhaps it is for this reason that the interpretation of the famous painting has always been © The Author(s) 2018 E. Barron, Popular High Culture in Italian Media, 1950–1970, Italian and Italian American Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90963-9_1

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Fig. 1.1  The Mona Lisa covergirl, Epoca magazine, 28 July 1957 (Image used with permission of Arnoldo Mondadori Editore)

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exceedingly difficult and for a long time the critics have searched in vain for a precise definition of her smile, behind which is hidden, elusive symbols and allusions.3

Epoca’s logo and cover layout perfectly emulated the American i­ llustrated news magazine Life. Like many of Italy’s popular illustrated news magazines, Epoca presented a modern mix of news, ­ ­photojournalism, advertising and entertainment influenced by American culture, and yet, executed in a distinctive Italian style. Because of this, the Italian illustrated news magazines differed from Life in substantial ways, particularly in the emphasis its editors placed on Italian high art and cultural knowledge. In contrast, Life magazine rarely featured art on the cover, except perhaps for an occasional Christmas special, such as the 1957 cover of Michelangelo’s white sculpture of Madonna and Child.4 Mona Lisa herself never made the cover of Life magazine, even when she toured to America in 1963, although she did secure a breathless five-page article, ‘The star had trouble getting here, but oh boy, what a smile! LISA OPENS IN D.C.’ largely an account of security arrangements and logistics.5 Over the page, film star Susan Strasberg winks as she models celebrity hairdresser Michel Kazan’s Mona Lisa hairdo ‘the biggest thing since Cleopatra’.6 Italian magazines, though, were proud to display and celebrate Italy’s cultural heritage, believing that it possessed both an educative appeal and entertainment for their readers. In Italy, high culture icon Mona Lisa took her glittering place alongside popular Hollywood and Cinecittà stars. Unlike the other femme fatale covergirls—Sophia Loren, Grace Kelly and Brigitte Bardot, Mona Lisa’s private life and loves remained an enticing mystery, as she calmly returned the viewer’s gaze. Instead, readers were urged to buy the magazine and learn more about ‘LEONARDO’ in an article by art historian Professor Lionello Venturi, part of a multipaged, full-colour educational series on Italian masterpieces that could be pulled out and saved in a hardcover, also available for purchase from newsstands.7 Mona Lisa’s value lay not in entertainment news or salacious rumour, but in her capacity to advance the cultural knowledge and aspirations of each reader. This star appearance of the Mona Lisa on the cover of Epoca encapsulates and symbolises the core contention of this book: that high culture was integrated in distinctive ways into the new modern Italian identity and into Italy’s associated mass culture boom. I examine the presence and purpose of high culture in Italian mass culture between

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1950 and 1970, arguing that high culture formed an important part of everyday life and mass culture, creating in the process meaningful and valued cultural content. The words used to describe culture and cultural hierarchies are laden with both historical and contextual meaning. They are almost always linked to class divisions or taste, highlighting a need to distinguish individual social positions.8 In this book, I will use a range of terms to describe cultural hierarchies, terms that are in equal parts useful and limited. Useful because their meanings are familiar, limited because they come from a hierarchical judgement of ‘high culture’, and ‘low culture’ or ‘elite culture’ and ‘mass culture’, where high culture and art are venerated and worthy, and mass produced or popular content has no artistic value. I will use the terms high and mass culture because they are broadly understood and not in order to make judgements on aesthetic or c­ ultural value. High culture in this book refers to the art, music, theatre and l­iterature that Italian, and indeed many international ­commercial and state cultural institutions—the galleries, theatres and publishing houses—deemed to be historically and artistically significant. There are ambiguities using the terms popular culture and middlebrow in an Italian context, neither of which are used in Italy in the same way as in the Anglo-American cultural context. The term ‘popular culture’ is used in Italy to describe folk culture rather than industrial culture, whereas in the Anglo-American culture it is used instead of, or interchangeably with ‘mass culture’. The description of a cultural consumer or a category of culture as highbrow, lowbrow and middlebrow is not often used in the Italian context. Middlebrow first emerged in Britain during the 1920s as a pejorative term for culture that is perceived to be a middle class, bland and suburban appropriation or more commonly, abbreviation, of elite culture. Although Umberto Eco adopted Dwight MacDonald’s term midcult in a discussion of the ‘levels’ of culture, the main focus in the Italian context remains on mass culture, which generally incorporates midcult.9 I will use the term mass culture to describe the material ­produced by the cultural industry intended for mass audiences. When I use the words ‘popular’ and ‘popularised’ it will be to indicate culture that is well liked, in turn, ‘elite’ will indicate culture accessible to the educated few. The massive transformation of class cultural practices is central to the book’s argument. Ways of describing socio-economic status and putting people into class categories are even more fraught than categorising

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types of culture into high and mass. The book examines shifts in cultural practice in the 1950s and 1960s through magazine reader and television audience surveys. These surveys use the terms Superiore, Media superiore, Media, Media inferiore and Inferiore. In the book, I will refer to class categories using these terms translated into English as upper, upper-middle, middle, lower-middle and lower class, with the knowledge that there are limitations to this hierarchy. I will use these terms as they reflect the language of the time and classifications of the surveys. Data including education, region and occupation will serve to complement these categories in useful ways. Additionally, I use the term working class to refer to those in industrial and unskilled services sectors (forming a subset of people with of the lower-middle and lower class). During the 1950s and 1960s, Italy experienced a range of economic, political and social changes that transformed the lives and prospects of the bulk of its citizens. Over a twenty-year period, the economy industrialised frenetically. Formerly rural Italians engaged in wholly new and modern types of work. For many millions, this meant work in large cities far from home. Here, an increasing percentage received regular and higher levels of pay and began to adapt to the fact that employers sought skilled employees with higher levels of training and education. True, this prosperity was not evenly distributed: the early years of the 1950s saw millions of people unemployed and low wages for the unskilled. Indeed, low wages served as an important driver of the ‘economic miracle’. However, with waged rather than seasonal employment, Italians in both the working and middle classes found greater opportunities for leisure and new ways to spend their free time and income. They adopted and constructed a modern life that differed in substantial ways from the pre-industrial or semi-industrial past in its values, aspirations and scope. Mass culture both drove and reflected this social transition. Magazine reading became a dominant cultural practice in Italy during the 1950s, an intrinsic part of daily life for tens of millions of people. Magazines provided much of the information through which readers mediated and experienced the modernisation and industrialisation of Italy. Magazine news articles, colour graphs showing economic growth and increasing number of advertisements became a staple of Italian mass culture. As Stephen Gundle’s study of Italian glamour in the 1950s observes, the illustrated news weeklies and the film newsreels played an important role in creating the image of modern Italy. Gundle suggests illustrated news magazines eschewed politics in favour of glamour and:

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learned to purvey a dreamworld that keyed in with other images of the West as Italy’s destiny, America as a model society, new consumer products, Christian Democratic government, and scientific and technical progress. The magazines showed centers of old Italian elitism being taken over or invested once more with allure by a cosmopolitan elite that would shortly become the jet–set.10

Following the introduction of television to Italy in 1954, the state-controlled broadcaster mediated programs, adopting a wary and paternalistic approach to viewer access to Americanised entertainment and advertising. Regardless, American culture, as in so many parts of the Western world, could not be stopped from infiltrating the new modern Italian identity, with its film stars and musicians, its electric razors and toothpaste. For many Italians, Victoria De Grazia suggests, American culture offered something excitingly new, attractive and democratic.11 For others, however, such as the intellectuals of the left and the conservative adherents of the Catholic Church, mass-produced culture, in general, and American culture, in particular, appeared to be a debased and dangerous ideology.12 Highly educated people dismissed popular magazines and c­omics as paraletturatura, a semi-literature that was not culture. Both the Catholic Church and the left-wing parties were confounded and dismayed by the popular appeal of Hollywood stars or the ‘escapist’ antics of popular home-grown entertainers like Italian actor Totò and his rapidly produced film comedies. They all searched for different ways to guide and protect their flocks. The public taste and cultural preferences of the masses were clearly pernicious. While this had always been a concern, it became far more urgent now that the public’s market influence was growing with their income. Novelist Alberto Moravia was not the only intellectual to believe that ‘The Italians are an infantile people and easily infatuated’.13 High culture coexisted and mingled with the emerging symbols of American consumerism in popular Italian magazines and television programs. Through words or pictures, readers could experience the greatness of French, English and Russian literature. Above all, they could enjoy Italy’s national culture in the weekly magazines, such as Epoca and Tempo, and also in the fotoromanzo magazines, such as Bolero Film and Le Grandi Firme. Magazines of this kind gave readers advice on cultural behaviour, such as what to read, and provided information on artists and poets as well as a forum for dialogue with them. There was therefore a

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significant operational connection between magazines and high culture, a connection compounded by the fact that popular Italian magazines were owned in large part by publishing houses Mondadori and Rizzoli, which also dominated the Italian book market. This provided a strong business motive for the promotion of high culture and serialisation of literature. The state-run broadcaster Radiotelevisione Italiana (RAI) developed an educational strategy for disseminating high culture, not solely with televised adaptations of literary works and opera music, but also through popular quiz and variety shows based on high culture content that surreptitiously introduced art, music, theatre and literature into the daily lives of its citizens. Magazines and television adopted a mix of American and Italian approaches, blending high and mass culture content. Even television advertising brought together modern dental hygiene with the ­timeless symbols of Italian humanist tradition, as finally, the comedian Carlo Dapporto and Durban’s toothpaste ‘found’ Mona Lisa’s smile.14 This book focuses on three dominant forces in Italian mass culture: the magazine industry, the state-run television broadcaster and the advertising industry. I investigate the way each used high culture for cultural, educational and commercial objectives and how readers and audiences responded. The use of high culture in cinema, largely through literary adaptations, has been extensively covered elsewhere so it will not be covered here.15 Yet, cinema held an important role in Italy’s mass culture ecosystem, interacting with the development of the publishing and television industries, so the book will highlight relevant intersections and individuals. I argue that the role of Italy’s high culture tradition in popular magazines and on television formed an important aspect of the mass culture boom and Italian modern identity. My research builds in particular on the pioneering histories of modern Italy and industrialised Italian culture by David Forgacs, Stephen Gundle, John Foot and Victoria De Grazia who have made key contributions to understanding the social, cultural and political impact of Italian mass culture.16 David Forgacs’s historical analysis of the industrialisation of Italian culture, including magazine and book publishing, as well as television broadcasting, provides a strong foundation and starting point for my first two chapters. Studies by Milly Buonanno, Anna Bravo and David Forgacs on the social and cultural impact of magazine reading have given serious and thoughtful attention to photograph-based fotoromanzi magazines, which

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are generally overlooked in accounts of Italian culture, despite their huge popularity and influence.17 No doubt the middle-class readers of the illustrated news magazines such as Epoca and Tempo sought the cultural and class distinction offered by familiarity with artistic masterpieces, literature or opera. Yet, magazines exerted an educational appeal to the increasing number of lower-middle-class readers. Typically, such readers possessed a primary school level of education and desired further knowledge of high culture. Significant within this context is the work of Penelope Morris, which examines the ways advice columns in women’s magazines and illustrated news magazines such as Epoca proved popular and an important guide to new aspects of modern life.18 To a lesser extent, the magazines targeting working-class and lower-middle-class women, such as the fotoromanzi magazines Le Grandi Firme, Sogno and Bolero Film, also featured high culture content mixed in with Hollywood gossip and daring modern romances. The work of Fausto Colombo provides important comparative analysis, as one of the few historians of Italian mass culture to systematically examine the crossover between mass culture and high culture, such as in the quixotic example of the 1948 Disney comic book released in Italy—Topolino’s Inferno where Mickey Mouse encounters Dante and muses on this surprising meeting of Italian literature and American mass culture.19 David Forgacs and Stephen Gundle’s analysis of cultural production and audience reception has strongly influenced my work and approach.20 The oral history project that underpins their research has greatly expanded our understanding of both the consumption of culture and its value for readers and viewers. Importantly, David Forgacs’s account of the Epoca experiment for a democratic dialogue between readers and experts in the column Italia domanda (Italy asks) has opened up a rich source of reader views about the value of high culture. My interrogation of published letters from this column on high culture topics gleans rare insights of magazine reader perspectives and complements Penelope Morris’s work on reader letters to magazine advice columns. Principally, my book focuses on mass cultural content and its ­reception. I explore the symbolic, entertainment and educational ­ importance to readers and viewers of popularised high culture through case s­tudies from popular magazines, television programs and advertising. Both magazines and television employed high culture as an antidote to Americanisation. Stephen Gundle’s seminal article on Americanisation and everyday Italian life examines the impact of television, weekly

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magazines and advertising, and his later work on culture as a political strategy maps the challenge of mass culture for the Italian Communist Party. These and others of his works have defined much of the current understanding of the American influence on Italian mass culture. He contests a straightforward cultural imperialist version of Americanisation being imposed on Italy and suggests, rather, that ‘the desire for American culture and consumer goods reflected broader social and economic changes that generated new aspirations and expectations’.21 Similarly, Victoria De Grazia’s idea of an ‘irresistible empire’ highlights the powerful appeal of American culture to modern Italians. Importantly for my argument, her work acknowledges the strategic classlessness of American mass culture and the use in Italy of both high culture and mass culture within commercial contexts. My examination of high culture symbols in advertising also builds on the work of social scientist, Adam Arvidsson, who demonstrates the symbolic significance of American modernity in Italian advertising and mass consumption.22 Studies of Italian television have been dominated by the works of former RAI directors and senior management, most notably Franco Monteleone, Aldo Grasso and more recently, Carlo Freccero.23 These histories provide valuable insights into the institutional objectives and formative years of RAI television, particularly the Christian Democrat strategy of pedagogical and educational television and controlled consumerism. The RAI managers who stewarded early television included the conservatives Filiberto Guala and Marcello Rodino overseeing the rapid growth of television and the introduction of advertising in 1957, as well as Ettore Bernabei, who adapted American approaches for Italian programs and developed the second channel. All of these senior managers had strong connections to the Christian Democrat government, and as Franco Monteleone observes, ‘television was governed, in the monopoly, by a group of managers that represented a political class that had decided to bring the country, slowly and without shocks, to transition into capitalism of consumer goods’.24 However, these institutional histories of the RAI tend to represent the television viewer of the 1950s and 1960s as a passive, malleable receptacle. They provide a top-down history of the introduction of television, not its reception by viewers. In contrast, the work of John Foot on Milan’s working-class communities and television, the recent work of Giovanni Gozzini on the impact of television on Italians and Milly Buonanno’s analysis of television

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drama, consider audience responses through viewer interviews or surveys.25 In particular, John Foot’s challenge to the received wisdom about the apocalyptic and negative effects of television and its alleged erosion of culture and community suggests the impact of television was in fact nuanced, complex and full of contradictions. Giovanni Gozzini’s use of high-level data from the RAI’s viewer opinion research also challenges the common representation of television viewer passivity. Scholars in culture, media and communications studies, including Francesca Anania, Luca Barra and Cecilia Penati, explore the social impact of television through memory and the response of the audience in exciting ways.26 In cinema and Italian studies, groundbreaking work on audience oral histories through the collaborative research project on cinema-going in 1950s Italy by Catherine O’Rawe, Daniela Treveri–Gennari and Danielle Hipkins demonstrate the importance of gender and the role of the Church and politics in cultural practice. Their work highlights the value of individual experiences and memories to reflect broader social transformations.27 My research builds on these evidence-based approaches by examining previously uninterrogated RAI archival sources that reveal detailed data of audience reactions to the high culture content of television. During the 1950s and 1960s, many intellectuals believed Italy’s humanist tradition to be under threat from the rapid social and cultural changes brought on by the boom in Italian cinema, the introduction of television, the success of both home-grown and imported pop music, and the pervasive influence of American film, music and consumer culture. The rifts between mass-produced cultural products and the humanist elite seemed extreme. Popular interest in the high cultural traditions was not always welcome as the familiar faces of Giuseppe Verdi, Dante Alighieri, William Shakespeare and Ulysses were rendered into unfamiliar forms by television and magazines. Many were appalled to see the great Renaissance and modern works reinvented as hybrids, or merged with mass culture to entertain, to promote vermouth, or to sell chocolate. The role of intellectuals as custodians of culture shifted during this period, when mass culture challenged past cultural hierarchies. As Umberto Eco famously observed at the time, many intellectuals regarded mass culture as the apocalypse of all culture, while others tried to ‘convert’ or recruit people to high culture through mass means.28 Eco’s Apocalittici e integrati (literally, apocalyptics and integrateds) mapped out the battleground between intellectuals and mass culture.29 Eco’s was

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one of the first books in Italy to treat mass culture as a serious subject of study, and significantly his famous explorations of the semiotic meanings of culture included a chapter, ‘Does the audience have a bad effect on television?’30 Indeed, his terms ‘apocalyptic’ and ‘integrated’ still largely define the understanding of attitudes to mass culture in Italy. I do not propose in this book, therefore, to re-traverse the question of what intellectuals thought about mass culture in great detail. Rather, I concentrate on assessing how magazine readers and television viewers valued high culture and appreciated intellectuals as its custodians. My research explores occasions when intellectuals and artists formed part of mass culture, their advice columns, quiz show appearances and product endorsements to educate or appeal to mass audiences. My contribution to this field of Italian mass culture history is twofold. First, I demonstrate the vigorous presence and appeal of high culture content within Italian magazines and television programs—media forms that reached millions of readers or viewers through columns, articles, adaptations, serialisations, advertisements and programs that were appreciated by a broad cross-section of society. My case studies build on the historical knowledge of magazine content, both the weekly news magazines and the much neglected fotoromanzi magazines, using articles, letters and literary adaptations combined with extensive readership data from the SIPRA advertising archives. I also investigate the RAI’s Servizio Opinioni audience research on popular television programs such as Lascia o raddoppia? and Carosello that, although frequently acknowledged in Italian television histories, are rarely examined in any depth. Secondly, I believe that my systematic interrogations of Italian television, publishing and advertising archives add significantly to our knowledge of reader and viewer cultural reception through audience data, interviews on cultural practice and unpublished reader demographic information. Such data emphatically challenge orthodox views of Italian television audiences and magazine readers as passive and undiscerning. The archival sources, such as the DOXA market research in the 1950s and 1960s, are themselves a product of the expanding Italian economy and increased consumerism. It demonstrates the impact of American research methodology on both the local and foreign offices of the advertising industry. As magazines priced advertising costs on the basis of demonstrating a large readership, there is a reasonable question about the veracity of the data in the light of this incentive to inflate the figures. This issue was contentious at the time and resolved by introducing an

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independent audit process as an assurance to advertisers and competing publishers. The Mondadori circulation data, in particular, had a reputation for its rigour. The book is divided into four sections, each comprising two chapters: high culture in magazine advice columns; high culture and opera on early television; high culture images in both magazine and television advertising; and adaptations of literary classics into magazine and television formats. The first section examines the magazine boom and the dialogue established between readers and intellectuals where readers inquired about a range of subjects, including high culture, education and cultural hierarchies. Chapter 2 examines the content and significance of letters written by readers to high profile experts, artists and intellectuals in Epoca’s popular weekly multipage segment Italia domanda (Italy asks). Chapter 3 reviews letters to the cultural advice columns of Salvatore Quasimodo and Pier Paolo Pasolini in weekly magazines Le Ore, Vie Nuove and Tempo. Readers wrote to these intellectual celebrities with questions about art and literature, modern life and the social and political changes that were felt to be underway. The second section of the book analyses the early years of television and the high culture-based programs on television that achieved huge popularity. Chapter 4 explores the national phenomenon that was the 1955–1959 quiz show Lascia o raddoppia? (literally, leave or redouble). The chapter examines the prevalence of high culture subjects such as opera music, or the life and works of Dante, and most significantly, the audience reactions to the program. Chapter 5 describes the early opera television studio broadcasts, their connection with the popular film— opera genre and their close relationship with the opera in theatres. This chapter argues that opera was simultaneously a popular and elite cultural practice, enjoyed in different ways by two different audience segments. The third section of the book explores the presence of high culture icons in magazine and television advertising. Popular advertising symbols included the opera composers Giacomo Puccini and Giuseppe Verdi, as well as the theatre of Shakespeare and the poetry of Dante. These and other high culture greats transferred symbolic meanings of excellence and quality to a product and, importantly, also reflected on the quality of a consumer. While much of the art is represented with reverence, there is also a clear presence of irony and parody of social and cultural hierarchies and intellectual snobbery. Chapter 6 assesses the role and history of high culture symbols, particularly Italian ones, in mass magazines in

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advertising. Chapter 7 looks at the use of high culture symbols and content on Italian television through the short evening program of advertisements, called Carosello. The final section examines the mass culture representation of literary culture for a population without a strong book-reading tradition. The two chapters examine popular adaptations of Alessandro Manzoni’s literary classic I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed) in magazine and television format. In Chapter 8, I explore the popular and inexpensive magazines, including a comic book adaptation of the classic, I Promessi Paperi (The Betrothed Ducks), a parody by Donald Duck, Uncle Scrooge and others. The visual adaptations of literary classics were significant in the context of the changes to Italy’s education system, literacy rates and book reading as a cultural practice, particularly for women and working-class men. The chapter looks at the rendering of I Promessi Sposi in f­otoromanzo format for Le Grandi Firme and Bolero Film. Chapter 9 examines the impact of adaptations of literary classics by the state broadcaster RAI. The audience for the 1967 broadcast of the RAI’s adaptation of Manzoni’s classic peaked at 19 million and viewer research showed that the people who most enjoyed the program were those least likely to read any book. All in all, I tell of an unexpected and lively tradition of high culture appeal and assimilation of which Da Vinci and Mona Lisa would not have been ashamed.

Notes





1.  Istituto per le Ricerche Statistiche e l’Analisi dell’Opinione Pubblica (Institute for Statistical Research and Public Opinion Analysis) and SIRM Società Italiana Ricerche di Mercato (Italian Society for Market Research), ‘Tav 0.0: TOTALE, secondo sesso’, Indagine nazionale sui lettori dei quotidiani e dei periodici sui telespettatori, radioascoltatori e cinespettatori (National investigation on reader of daily newspapers and periodicals and on television viewers, radio listeners and cinemagoers) market research undertaken for the advertising association Utenti Pubblicità Associati (Unpublished, 1958), 267. Epoca 3.2 million readers. 2. Epoca, 28 luglio 1957, cover. 3. Enzo Biagi, ‘La copertina’, Epoca, 28 luglio 1957, 21. 4. Survey of Life magazine covers 1950–1970, see, for example, ‘Madonna and Child in Great Sculpture: Mary and Jesus by Michelangelo’ Life, 16 December 1957, cover.

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5. Dorothy Sieberling, ‘Mona Smiles on D.C.’, Life, 4 January 1963, 15. 6. ‘Mona in D.C. Vault Inspires Grin, Wink and a New Hairdo’, Life, 4 January 1963, 18. 7. Lionello Venturi, ‘I maestri della pittura italiana: Leonardo’, Epoca, 28 luglio 1957, 39–51. 8. Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, Richard Nice (trans.) (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984). 9. Umberto Eco, ‘Cultura di massa e “Livelli” di cultura’, Apocalittici e integrati: Comunicazioni di massa e teorie della cultura di massa (Milano: Bompiani, 1997), 32–34; Dwight Macdonald, ‘Masscult and Midcult’, Partisan Review 27 (Spring 1960): 203–233. 10.  Stephen Gundle, ‘Hollywood Glamour and Mass Consumption in Postwar Italy’, Journal of Cold War Studies 4, no. 2 (2002): 95–118, 103. 11. Victoria de Grazia, Irresistible Empire: America’s Advance Through Twentieth Century Europe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005). 12.  For examples of intellectual commentary in newspapers: Pier Paolo Pasolini, Scritti corsari (Milano: Garzanti, 2011); Aldo Grasso and Massimo Scaglioni, Schermi d’autore: intellettuali e televisione: 1954–1974 (Roma: Rai ERI, 2002). For comprehensive accounts of the intellectual reaction to mass culture, see: David Forgacs and Stephen Gundle, Mass Culture and Italian Society: From Fascism to the Cold War (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007); David Ward, ‘Intellectuals, Culture and Power in Modern Italy’ in The Cambridge Companion to Modern Italian Culture, Zygmunt G. Barański and Rebecca West (eds.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 81–96; Stephen Gundle, Between Hollywood and Moscow: The Italian Communists and the Challenge of Mass Culture (Durham: Duke University Press, 2000); Franco Ferrarotti, La Televisione: I cinquant’anni che hanno cambiato gli usi e i costumi degli italiani (Roma: Newtown and Compton Editori, 2005), 75–79; Giacomo Manzoli, Da Ercole a Fantozzi: Cinema popolare e società italiana dal boom economico alla neotelevisione (1958–1976) (Roma: Carocci editore, 2012). 13. Libero Bigiaretti ‘L’editoria e la TV’, Televisione e vita italiana (a cura di), Segretari Centrale della RAI (Torino: ERI—Edizioni Radiotelevisione Italiana, 1968), 692. 14. ‘Dapporto televisivo’, Tempo, 29 aprile 1958, 29. 15. Cinema-going provided an important mass culture practice where literary adaptations had popular success, for example, War and Peace (1955) earned more than two billion lire in Italy at the box office, Alessandro Ferraù, ‘Il «borderò», questo sconosciuto’, SIPRAUNO 2 (1966): 92–109, 102. Cinema is included in context of films inspired by advice columns opera on television, the cineopera films and their influence on

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15

opera on television as well as film comedy versions of I Promessi Sposi. However, the connection between high culture and literature in film is not covered in the book as a specific theme as it has been extensively researched by scholars including: Giocomo Manzoli in Cinema e ­letteratura (Roma: Carocci editore, 2003), and also Da Ercole a Fantozzi: cinema populare e società italiana dal boom economico alla neotelevisione; Gian Piero Brunetta (a cura di), Letterature e cinema (Bologna: Zanichelli, 1976); Amilcare A. Iannucci, Dante, Cinema and Television (Toronto, University of Toronto, 2004); Marcia Landy, Italian Film (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Peter Bondanella, Italian cinema: From Neorealism to the Present (New York: F. Ungar Publishing Co, 1983); Carlo Testa, Italian Cinema and Modern European Literatures, 1945–2000 (Westport: Praeger, 2002); and Millicent Marcus, Filmmaking by the Book: Italian Cinema and Literary Adaptation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1993). In terms of other media or mass culture formats, while radio was very popular during this period, news and light music programs received large audiences and strong enjoyment ratings; the high culture programs of classical music, opera music and the literature readings were not very popular with audiences. Newspapers provide useful context, yet favoured an elite rather than mass audiences. 16. David Forgacs, Italian Culture in the Industrial Era, 1880–1980: Cultural Industries, Politics, and the Public (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1990); Forgacs and Gundle Mass Culture and Italian Society; Gundle, Between Hollywood and Moscow; John Foot, Milan Since the Miracle: City, Culture and Identity (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2001); Victoria De Grazia, Irresistible Empire. 17. Anna Bravo, Il fotoromanzo (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2003); Forgacs, Italian Culture in the Industrial Era; Milly Buonanno, Naturale come sei: Indagine sulla stampa femminile in Italia (Rimini; Firenze: Guaraldi, 1975); Milly Buonanno, La donna nella stampa: Giornaliste, lettrici e modelli di femminilità (Roma: Editore Riuniti, 1978). 18.  Penelope Morris, ‘The Harem Exposed: Gabriella Parca’s Le italiane si confessano’ in Women in Italy, 1945–1960: An Interdisciplinary Study, Penelope Morris (ed.) (New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 109–131; Penelope Morris, ‘From Private to Public: Alba de Céspedes’ Agony Column in 1950s Italy’, Modern Italy 9, no. 1 (2004): 11–20; Penelope Morris, ‘A Window on the Private Sphere: Advice Columns, Marriage, and the Evolving Family in 1950s Italy’, The Italianist 27 (2007), 304–332. 19. Fausto Colombo, La cultura sottile: Media e industria culturale in Italia dall’Ottocento agli anni novanta (Milano: Bompiani, 1999), 218. 20. Forgacs and Gundle, Mass Culture and Italian Society.

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21. Stephen Gundle, ‘L’americanizzazione del quotidiano’, Quaderni Storici 62, no. 2 (1986): 561–593, 591. 22. Adam Arvidsson, Marketing Modernity Italian Advertising from Fascism to Postmodernity (London and New York: Routledge, 2003); Adam Arvidsson, ‘Consumi, media e identità nel lungo dopoguerra. Spunti per una prospettiva d’analisi’, Genere, generazione e consumi: L’Italia degli anni sessanta, Paolo Capuzzo (a cura di) (Roma: Carroci editore, 2003), 29–51. 23. Franco Monteleone, Storia della radio e della televisione in Italia: Costume, società e politica (Venezia: Marsilio Editori, 2009); Aldo Grasso, Cristina Buondonno, and Patrizia Gobbi, Storia della televisione italiana (Milano: Garzanti, 2012); Aldo Grasso, Enciclopedia della televisione (Milano: Garzanti, 2002); and Carlo Freccero, Televisione (Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 2013). 24. Monteleone, Storia della radio e della televisione in Italia, 322. 25. Foot, Milan Since the Miracle; John Foot, ‘Television and the City: The Impact of Television in Milan, 1954–1960’, Contemporary European History 8 (1999): 379–394; John M. Foot, ‘Mass Cultures, Popular Cultures and the Working Class in Milan, 1950–1970’, Social History 24, no. 2 (1999): 134–157; Giovanni Gozzini, La mutazione individualista: Gli italiani e la televisione, 1954–2011 (Roma: Laterza, 2011); Milly Buonanno, Italian TV Drama and Beyond: Stories from the Soil, Stories from the Sea, Jennifer Radice (trans.) (Bristol and Chicago: Intellect, 2012). 26. Francesca Anania, Davanti allo schermo: Storia del pubblico televisivo (Roma: Carocci editore, 2002); Francesca Anania, Breve storia della radio e della televisione italiana (Roma: Carocci editore, 2015); Luca Barra, Palinsesto: La storia e tecnica della programmazione televisiva (Roma: Editori Laterza, 2015); Cecilia Penati, Il focolare elettronico: Televisione italiana delle origini e culture di visione (Milano: Vita e Pensiero, 2013); see also Damiano Garofalo e Vanessa Roghi (a cura di), Televisione: Storia, Immaginario, Memoria (Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2015). 27. See, for example, Daniela Treveri–Gennari, ‘“If You Have Seen It, You Cannot Forget!”: Film Consumption and Memories of Cinema-going in 1950s Rome’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 35, no. 1 (2015): 53–74; Daniela Treveri–Gennari and J. Sedgwick, ‘Memories in Context: The Social and Economic Function of Cinema in 1950s Rome’, Film History 27, no. 2 (2015): 76–104; Daniela Treveri–Gennari, Catherine O’Rawe, and Danielle Hipkins, ‘In Search of Italian Cinema Audiences in the 1940s and 1950s: Gender, Genre and National identity’, Participations, Journal of Audiences and Reception Studies 8, no. 2 (2011): 539–553; Mariagrazia Fanchi, Spettatore (Milano: Il Castoro, 2005); and, in the European context, Daniël Biltereyst, Richard

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Maltby, and Philippe Meers (eds.), Cinema Audiences and Modernity: New Perspectives on European Cinema History (London and New York: Routledge, 2012). 28. Umberto Eco, Apocalypse Postponed, Robert Lumley (ed.) (London: Flamingo, 1995). 29. Eco, Apocalittici e integrati was published in Italy in 1964 and translated to English as Apocalypse Postponed in 1995. 30. Eco, Apocalypse Postponed, 119–140.

References Primary Sources Magazines Bolero Film Epoca Grandi Firme, Le Life Tempo Archival Sources DOXA Istituto per le Ricerche Statistiche e l’Analisi dell’Opinione Pubblica (Institute for Statistical Research and Public Opinion Analysis) and SIRM Società Italiana Ricerche di Mercato (Italian Society for Market Research), Indagine nazionale sui lettori dei quotidiani e dei periodici sui telespettatori, radioascoltatori e cinespettatori Utenti Pubblicità Associati (Unpublished, 1958). SIPRA Archive.

Secondary Sources Anania, Francesca. Davanti allo schermo: Storia del pubblico televisivo. Roma: Carocci editore, 2002. Anania, Francesca. Breve storia della radio e della televisione italiana. Roma: Carocci editore, 2015. Arvidsson, Adam. Marketing Modernity Italian Advertising from Fascism to Postmodernity. London and New York: Routledge, 2003. Barra, Luca. Palinsesto: La storia e tecnica della programmazione televisiva. Roma: Editori Laterza, 2015. Biltereyst, Daniël, Richard Maltby, and Philippe Meers (eds.). Cinema Audiences and Modernity: New Perspectives on European Cinema History, London and New York: Routledge, 2012. Bondanella, Peter. Italian Cinema: From Neorealism to the Present. New York: F. Ungar Publishing Co, 1983.

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Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Translated by Richard Nice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984. Bravo, Anna. Il fotoromanzo. Bologna: Il Mulino, 2003. Brunetta, Gian Piero (a cura di). Letteratura e cinema. Bologna: Zanichelli, 1976. Buonanno, Milly. Naturale come sei: Indagine sulla stampa femminile in Italia. Rimini and Firenze: Guaraldi, 1975. Buonanno, Milly. La donna nella stampa: Giornaliste, lettrici e modelli di femminilità. Roma: Editore Riuniti, 1978. Buonanno, Milly. Italian TV Drama and Beyond: Stories from the Soil, Stories from the Sea. Translated by Jennifer Radice. Bristol and Chicago: Intellect, 2012. Capuzzo, Paolo (a cura di). Genere, generazione e consumi: L’Italia degli anni sessanta. Roma: Carroci editore, 2003. Colombo, Fausto. La cultura sottile: Media e industria culturale in Italia dall’Ottocento agli anni novanta. Milano: Bompiani, 1999. De Grazia, Victoria. Irresistible Empire: America’s Advance Through Twentieth Century Europe. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005. Eco, Umberto. Apocalypse Postponed. Edited by Robert Lumley. London: Flamingo, 1995. Eco, Umberto. Apocalittici e integrati: Comunicazioni di massa e teorie della cultura di massa. Milano: Bompiani, 1997. Fanchi, Mariagrazia. Spettatore. Milano: Il Castoro, 2005. Ferrarotti, Franco. La Televisione: I cinquant’anni che hanno cambiato gli usi e i costumi degli italiani. Roma: Newtown and Compton Editori, 2005. Ferraù, Alessandro. ‘Il «borderò», questo sconosciuto’, SIPRAUNO 2 (1966): 92–109. Foot, John M. ‘Mass Cultures, Popular Cultures and the Working Class in Milan, 1950–1970’, Social History 24, no. 2 (1999): 134–157. Foot, John. ‘Television and the City: The Impact of Television in Milan, 1954– 1960’, Contemporary European History 8, no. 3 (1999): 379–394. Foot, John. Milan Since the Miracle: City, Culture and Identity. Oxford and New York: Berg, 2001. Forgacs, David, Italian Culture in the Industrial Era, 1880–1980: Cultural Industries, Politics, and the Public. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1990. Forgacs, David and Stephen Gundle. Mass Culture and Italian Society: From Fascism to the Cold War. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007. Freccero, Carlo. Televisione. Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 2013. Garofalo, Damiano e Vanessa Roghi (a cura di). Televisione: Storia, Immaginario, Memoria. Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2015. Gozzini, Giovanni. La mutazione individualista: Gli italiani e la televisione 1954–2011. Roma: Laterza, 2011.

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Grasso, Aldo. Enciclopedia della televisione. Milano: Garzanti, 2002. Grasso, Aldo and Massimo Scaglioni. Schermi d’autore: Intellettuali e televisione: 1954–1974. Roma: Rai ERI, 2002. Grasso, Aldo, Cristina Buondonno, and Patrizia Gobbi. Storia della televisione italiana. Milano: Garzanti, 2012. Gundle, Stephen. ‘L’americanizzazione del quotidiano’, Quaderni Storici 62, no. 2 (1986): 561–593. Gundle, Stephen. ‘The Legacy of the Prison Notebooks’. In Italy in the Cold War: Politics, Culture and Society 1948–58. Edited by Christopher Duggan and Christopher Wagstaff. Oxford and Washington: Berg, 1995. Gundle, Stephen. Between Hollywood and Moscow: The Italian Communists and the Challenge of Mass Culture. Durham: Duke University Press, 2000. Gundle, Stephen. ‘Hollywood Glamour and Mass Consumption in Postwar Italy’, Journal of Cold War Studies 4, no. 3 (2002): 95–118. Iannucci, Amilcare A. Dante, Cinema and Television. Toronto: University of Toronto, 2004. Landy, Marcia. Italian Film. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Lumley, Robert. States of Emergency: Cultures of Revolt in Italy from 1968 to 1978. London: Verso, 1990. Macdonald, Dwight. ‘Masscult and Midcult,’ Partisan Review 27, no. 4 (1960), 203–233. Manzoli, Giocomo. Cinema e letteratura. Roma: Carocci editore, 2003. Manzoli, Giocomo. Da Ercole a Fantozzi: Cinema popolare e società italiana dal boom economico alla neotelevisione. Roma: Carocci editore, 2012. Marcus, Milicent. Filmmaking by the Book: Italian Cinema and Literary Adaptation. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1993. Monteleone, Franco. Storia della radio e della televisione in Italia: Costume, società e politica. Venezia: Marsilo Editori, 2009. Morris, Penelope. ‘From Private to Public: Alba de Céspedes’ Agony Column in 1950s Italy’, Modern Italy 9, no. 1 (2004): 11–20. Morris, Penelope (ed.). Women in Italy, 1945–1960: An Interdisciplinary Study. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. Morris, Penelope, ‘A Window on the Private Sphere: Advice Columns, Marriage, and the Evolving Family in 1950s Italy’, The Italianist 27 (2007): 304–332. Pasolini, Pier Paolo. Scritti corsari. Milano: Garzanti, 2011. Penati, Cecilia. Il focolare elettronico: Televisione italiana delle origini e culture di visione. Milano: Vita e Pensiero, 2013. Segretari Centrale della RAI (a cura di). Televisione e vita italiana. Torino: ERI— Edizioni Radiotelevisione Italiana, 1968. Testa, Carlo. Italian Cinema and Modern European Literatures 1945–2000. Westport: Praeger, 2002.

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Treveri–Gennari, Daniela. ‘“If You Have Seen It, You Cannot Forget!”: Film Consumption and Memories of Cinema–Going in 1950s Rome’, Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 35, no. 1 (2015): 53–74. Treveri–Gennari, Daniela and John Sedgwick. ‘Memories in Context: The Social and Economic Function of Cinema in 1950s Rome’, Film History 27, no. 2 (2015): 76–104. Treveri–Gennari, Daniela, Catherine O’Rawe, and Danielle Hipkins. ‘In Search of Italian Cinema Audiences in the 1940s and 1950s: Gender, Genre and National Identity’, Participations, Journal of Audiences and Reception Studies 8, no. 2 (2011): 539–553. Ward, David. ‘Intellectuals, Culture and Power in Modern Italy’. In The Cambridge Companion to Modern Italian Culture, edited by Zygmunt G. Barański and Rebecca West, 81–96. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008.

CHAPTER 2

Italia domanda: A Question of Culture

The Woman of Rome and the fiancées I read Alberto Moravia’s novel The Woman of Rome. Result? My fiancé broke up with me. Now I ask Mr Moravia if he would leave his fiancée for this reason, reading a book that a ‘respectable young woman must not – for heaven’s sake – even know about’. I am an only child without a mother, I have a very strict father, when I was ten years old I went to boarding school. When I finished school I asked my father what reading he would permit me to do and I was astounded when he said, that I could read any book since a person with a healthy mind could not be influenced by something they read. Do you approve, Mr Moravia, that a twenty year old girl read your novels? Can a book be immoral, or cause harm? The woman of Rome, Epoca, 31 January 1953.1

In early 1953, Epoca magazine published an anonymous letter in its popular advice column Italia domanda (Italy asks) asking about the suitability of reading Moravia’s 1947 neorealist novel La Romana (published in English as The Woman of Rome).2 Moravia wrote his novel from the point of view of Adriana, a young prostitute in Rome who recounts her path to prostitution, describing how she feels about her work and her sexual experiences. The novel represents a bleakly pragmatic and morally flexible world. It created a scandal due to its sexually explicit content and the accounts of premarital sex, including a female protagonist who enjoyed sex and enjoyed being paid for sex. Adriana dreams of having a family © The Author(s) 2018 E. Barron, Popular High Culture in Italian Media, 1950–1970, Italian and Italian American Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90963-9_2

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and home, while simultaneously accepting her fate and narrowing her options through a string of bad and brutal relationship choices.3 At the time that Epoca published this question asking whether a book could be immoral or cause harm, La Romana remained controversial; the Catholic Church had recently added it, and all of Moravia’s works, to its list of banned books the Index librorum prohibitorum.4 The letter and Moravia’s response are part of a little explored aspect of Italy’s mass culture boom—the use of magazines and their letters pages for cultural advice. This chapter examines the popular column Italia domanda, a multi-paged collection of reader’s questions, answered by one or more experts. Italia domanda covered a wide range of subjects and readers were invited to ask questions on any topic including science, politics and culture. I will focus on the regular letters from readers asking questions on high culture including art, music, theatre and literature.5 The questions show readers seeking to improve their cultural knowledge, often as a result of changing social status. Letters reveal personal experiences within the emerging new opportunities for schooling, employment and leisure across the lower and middle classes.6 Significantly, La Romana’s letter, and others like it, shows an eagerness by magazine editors to connect readers and intellectuals through a popular format, in a way that would prove both educational and entertaining. Italia domanda was edited by a succession of intellectuals, who drew in poets, writers, philosophers, artists and other luminaries willing to carve out a role in modern mass culture. The Italia domanda letters offer an important example of the ways that mass culture and high culture interacted—ways that were complex and even contradictory. Italia domanda provided a forum for readers to seek advice on a range of topics and supplied intellectuals and writers to respond to reader’s questions. It became the most popular section of a magazine read by millions of people across Italy.7 One of the challenges with using letters published in magazines is that they may have been invented for their entertainment value; however, there is strong evidence that writing letters to magazines was a popular practice and the archival collections of columnists support this claim.8 Advice columns formed an important part of Italian magazine culture in the 1950s. Although many magazines included letters pages and advice columns, the piccola posta relationship advice columns are most commonly associated with women’s magazines. Journalist Gabriella Parca estimated that in Italy during the 1950s, ‘Five million

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women, from thirteen to sixty years of age, felt the need to confide their anxieties to strangers in order to receive some advice or simply a word of comfort’.9 Not only was the scale of letter writing in the 1950s substantial, the printed letters and the replies in advice columns proved popular with readers. Milly Buonanno, a pioneer in research on women’s periodicals in Italy, maintains that women’s magazines owed a large part of their success to advice columns.10 Similarly, in their investigation of reading habits in Rome in the early 1960s, Simonetta Piccone Stella and Annabella Rossi recorded clear evidence of the social and cultural significance of letters pages from magazine readers. One interviewee, Z. A. a 45-year-old woman, said that she liked advice on how to dress or act appropriately, and that she would definitely write to a magazine for advice.11 The research of historian Penelope Morris offers important observations about the ways in which women’s advice columns display shifting social expectations, including attitudes to sexual behaviour and relationship norms in Italy.12 This chapter will explore a similarly important and revealing aspect of the letters in magazine advice columns—readers seeking cultural guidance.13 These letters, written throughout the 1950s, offer valuable insights into the purpose of culture in people’s lives and highlight the vital role played by Italian magazines in self-education and gaining cultural knowledge.

Magazine Reading in Italy in the 1950s In the early 1950s, Italy’s magazine circulation was the highest in Europe with locally produced magazines offering a visually appealing and inexpensive way to be informed and entertained.14 Throughout the decade, magazine reading formed an important part of daily life for millions of Italians. Individual readers subscribed to magazines or bought them from the local newsstand. Magazine reading offered a strong social element as readers shared copies within the family, swapped them with friends and read copies found in public places including bars or the hairdresser. By the late 1950s, 21 million Italians (around 60% of the adult population) read at least one magazine a week. More than 13 million Italians (just over one-third of the adult population) read between two and four magazines a week.15 Magazine reading was popular throughout the Italian peninsula, and while more prevalent in the north, its low costs meant that by the late 1950s, the distribution of the 21 million regular

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magazine readers across Italy generally reflected the distribution of the Italian population across the larger cities and towns.16 Inexpensive weekly magazines offered news, entertainment, advice and importantly, information on the increasing range of affordable mass consumer products. As we shall see in Chapter 6, magazine income and profits for the publishers came from the placement of advertisements, rather than magazine sales. Some titles pursued broad audiences, while most segmented into male and female readers, and further targeted their readerships by age, class and education levels. Men were slightly more likely to read magazines than women; however, there was not a large difference between the two groups. Sex did make a difference in the type of magazine a reader read. A greater number of men read illustrated news magazines, sports and motoring magazines. Women, while also reading the illustrated news magazines, dominated the women’s weekly magazine readership and monthly magazine market.17 One demographic group above all read voraciously. Magazine reading provided an important pastime for young people. In 1958, almost half of the total market comprised magazine readers aged between 16 and 34 years.18 Young people who did not read magazines were in the minority, five million young people aged 16–24 years read magazines, or three-quarters of people in the age group.19 Not only did young people read magazines, they read quite a lot of them. Around half of all people aged between 16 and 34 read at least two, and as many as four, magazines a week.20 This rapid growth in magazine reading by young people forms part of a broader generational change in mass cultural consumption, reading magazines, listening to radios and records, going to the ­cinema and watching television. In the 1950s and 1960s, as Paolo Capuzzo suggests, young people across social classes appreciated mass culture and it increasingly became an important part of leisure time and identity.21 For the first half of the twentieth century, magazine reading formed part of upper and middle-class pastimes. As magazine markets expanded in the 1950s and 1960s to include lower-middle class and lower class readers, people in upper and middle-class groups remained committed readers. Eighty-five percent of upper and upper-middle class people regularly read magazines, which represented 12% of the overall market (2.6 million readers).22 Magazine reading provided a regular pastime for 75% of middle-class Italians, which represented about 40% of the overall magazine market (8.6 million readers).23

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Magazine reading was still gaining in popularity for lower-middle class people; more than half of all lower-middle class Italians regularly read magazines (56%).24 In 1951, the industrial working class made up almost 23% of Italy’s workforce, by 1961; it had grown to 29%.25 While magazine reading was still viewed as a middle-class pastime, its reach was far greater and expanding. The number of lower-middle-class readers was substantial and translated into one-third of the magazine reading public, or seven million regular readers.26 Changes in education and literacy levels in the lower socio-economic groups helped grow magazine markets. Italy’s ‘economic miracle’ transformed the occupations and wages available to men and women. In 1954, agriculture represented 40% of employment, industry 32% and services 28%.27 A decade later, industry represented 40% of employment, services 35% and agriculture 25%. Yet, as Tullio di Mauro argues, the early 1950s still represented a time when a minority of Italians acquired a primary school qualification, gaining a middle school qualification remained a privilege and receiving a high school qualification, or a degree, was pure luxury.28 Affordable magazines with strong visual formats and clearly written articles attracted millions of readers, both those with and without formal education.

Settimanale di Attualità: The Illustrated News Magazine Boom Italy’s weekly magazine readers chose from a broad range of titles. Local edicola stands displayed popular women’s magazines such as Grazia and Annabella in rows on the counter, or pegged up on the shutters. Alongside these titles lay the music weeklies, such as Sorrisi e Canzoni (Smiles and Songs), and for the sports fans, Calcio e ciclismo (Football and cycling) or Sport Illustrato (Sport Illustrated). The rising popularity of the settimanale di attualità (weekly illustrated news magazines) and their millions of readers boosted the magazine circulation rates of the 1950s. Their visual presentation and current affairs format drew on the style of American magazines such as Life and Look, while providing an Italian approach, photojournalism and content. By 1958, 13.5 million Italians read at least one of the illustrated news magazines.29

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Tempo, Oggi and Epoca became the most popular Italian illustrated news magazines, attracting a broad readership of men and women, although men formed the greater audience. People across different regions, classes and age groups sought their news and information from these engaging magazines. Within the general Italian population, 7.7 million men and almost 5.8 million women regularly read the illustrated news magazines.30 The magazines offered more than news and information; they incorporated an enthusiastic hyperbole on Italy’s future in the modern world. A smooth integration of international and national news, alongside entertaining articles and celebrity photographs, told the story of the modern world in words and pictures.

Italy Asks: Epoca’s ‘Italia domanda’ Column Mondadori launched Epoca in 1950. The magazine, as its name suggests, sought to symbolise the culture of the times. Epoca reached more than three million readers each week with its modern blend of Italian current affairs, American entertainment and consumer products.31 From its inception, Epoca opened the magazine with Italia domanda, a column for questions from readers or people interviewed in the street. As David Forgacs observes in his analysis of magazine reading in Italy in the 1950s, the significant innovation of Epoca and the Italia domanda column in particular was its focus on working people and ‘ideology of ordinary life’.32 This ideology included expanding the horizons of its readers. Italia domanda set an egalitarian tone. The magazine’s editorial approach emphasised people and democracy, and in the early years, Italia domanda took the place of the traditional letters to the editor page. The first edition of the magazine clearly communicated Epoca’s democratic message with the face of Liliana, a young woman from Milan as their first covergirl (Fig. 2.1). Liliana was the Everywoman of modern Italy and the new republic, ‘She is Italian, an ordinary Italian girl. She is not a star and could not be one. She lives a modest life, of work’.33 The magazine included a fotoromanzo style photostory of a Liliana, at work on Saturday selling gelato for nine hours a day at a Motta cart, and then a typical Sunday, a day out with her boyfriend for a boatride on Lake Como, followed by a picnic and a dance. After the photostory, a fullpage Motta advertisement showed that even democracy could present an editor with commercial opportunities.34

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Fig. 2.1  Liliana an ordinary Italian covergirl, Epoca, 14 October 1950 (Image used with permission of Arnoldo Mondadori Editore)

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‘Any one can ask a question to ‘Italia domanda’ on any subject’ All the Lilianas of Italy could learn about the world and gain information from the new Epoca. The magazine created a dialogue between readers and experts declaring, ‘Anyone can ask a question to Italia domanda on any subject, ask any Italian and foreign personalities in the field of literature, science, technology, customs, politics, sports, etc. on a chosen topic, or contribute to the open discussion within the column’.35 Epoca’s editor Giuseppe Ravegnani gave Italia domanda prominence, positioned at the beginning of the magazine before the articles and even before the index page.36 At first, around seven pages long, it quickly grew to ten, and later, fifteen pages, as its popularity with readers and advertisers increased.37 Ravegnani proclaimed a new type of journalism, one that focused on the reader and put intellectuals and experts at their service: It is a seed that cannot fail to bear fruit, encompassing the concerns, the uncertainties, the problems, and the thirst for knowledge and for truth in our time. … Italia domanda, which does not want to be, and is not, the usual approximate column of ‘question and response’ and of ‘letters to the Director’, but instead, both through the questions sent from readers spontaneously and our busy and passionate ‘collectors’ of questions, a true and genuinely new type of journalism, that indeed represents an authentic transfer of ‘living culture’, because all, Italians and foreigners, distinguished scientists or people gifted only with good sense and experience in life and work, should consider themselves to be at the service of all our readers.38

This democracy-themed column was the creation of Cesare Zavattini, a neorealist screenwriter who worked in both the film and magazine industries. For Zavattini, modern media offered opportunities to engage the public and foster popular social participation. An important member of the neorealist film movement in Italy, Zavattini is best known for writing screenplays for the successful Italian director Vittorio De Sica. His screenplays included the neorealist classics Ladri di biciclette (1948, The Bicycle Thief) and Sciuscià (1946, Shoeshine) both of which received international acclaim and Academy Award nominations. For Italian film historian, Gino Moliterno, Zavattini’s role in Italy’s cultural ecosystem was as ‘a genial and polymorphic figure who overflowed with creative talent and took an active and enthusiastic role in all aspects of Italian

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culture for over six decades’.39 While Zavattini’s film work is better known than his work in publishing, he made a significant contribution to Italian magazine culture. The idea behind Italia domanda and his work in Italian magazines exhibited many of the egalitarian values expressed in his work in neorealist cinema and cinéma vérité. Cesare Zavattini had a democratic and social justice agenda, yet at the same time, he was well aware of commercial realities and developed ways to capture emerging magazine markets. His film and magazine experience gave him a foundation in visual storytelling and cultural accessibility. In the 1930s, Zavattini wrote text for fumetti (comics) including Zorro and was the Italy-based ‘Hollywood correspondent’ for film news magazine Cinema Illustrazione. He also edited Le Grandi Firme magazine of stories for women, which included a letters column for readers to ‘Write to Pitigrilli’, a popular novelist whose works had been banned by the Catholic Church.40 By the late 1940s, Zavattini helped to develop the fotoromanzo format, a comic book style magazine that used photographs rather than drawings, a hybrid similar to a film storyboard. Like all success stories, the fotoromanzo paternity is disputed, yet his influence seems probable.41 The format was used by Mondadori to create the popular magazine Bolero Film edited by Luciano Pedrocchi including serialised stories created by cinema screenwriter Damiano Damiani. The Mondadori publishing house employed Zavattini as an ideas man to help the company to innovate and later on to ensure that magazines remained relevant and competitive in the age of television.42 Italia domanda was one of these ideas. David Forgacs suggests, Italia domanda reflected both a democratic shift to giving ordinary people a voice in post-Fascist Italy and the growing significance of public opinion and commercial market research.43 In 1950s Italy, companies increasingly took an interest in what the population was thinking and tracked consumer demographics and behaviour. In 1958, the Italian advertising association, Utenti Pubblicità Associati (UPI), commissioned Italy’s first ‘readership survey’ studying the sex, age, class, occupation and family size of magazine readers. The survey recorded information on the size of the town and the region of different magazine readers compiling details on the ownership of cars, motor scooters or white goods. Data offered insights to advertisers on ­readers’ socio-economic position and potential markets for other goods. For example, readers of the popular magazines Oggi and Epoca had made the greatest inroads into car ownership, while readers of left-wing women’s

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magazine, Noi Donne or monthly women’s fashion magazine Novità, were the least likely to own a car.44 This information shaped advertising placement decisions and advertisement price. In the early months, Zavattini edited Italia domanda and selected the letters. He took an active approach to find out what was on the minds of the Italian people and Epoca had local correspondents out interviewing people on the street. The vox pop approach was not always patiently received. A clearly annoyed, and somewhat self-important, ‘Signor S. Igrino’ (aged fifty-eight of Naples, an official at the municipal archive) asked if Cesare Zavattini could tell him ‘why he needs to rack his brains for questions when he is so busy and there are so many people with nothing to do who could do it instead’. Cesare Zavattini answered that the reason was to encourage people to question their world. Pointedly, Zavattini added that Signor Igrino and millions of others could have interrupted Benito Mussolini’s speech of 10 June 1940 in Piazza Venezia to yell, ‘It is not true’, but did not (Fig. 2.2).45

Fig. 2.2  The first Italia domanda (Italy asks) column, editor Cesare Zavattini pictured, Epoca, 14 October 1950 (Image used with permission of Arnoldo Mondadori Editore)

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Intellectuals in the Service of Readers Early Italia domanda columns staked out its high-minded cultural objectives by securing intellectual luminaries for readers. The first column featured German novelist and Nobel Laureate Thomas Mann.46 ‘Dr Aldo Parri, Genoa’, an aficionado of Mann’s work, asked about illness in The Magic Mountain and Doctor Faustus. Three of the five questions for Mann were about his work, and the other two questions reflect the escalating Cold War; ‘F. S., Baveno’ asked what Mann thought about the division of Germany. A reader, presumably a member of the Italian Communist Party, as he identified himself as ‘Operaio (worker) Giovanni Lavesi, Brisighella’, wanted to know Mann’s reasons for signing the Stockholm Petition against nuclear armament. In the second edition, Italia domanda offered readers the chance to question the Italian poet Giuseppe Ungaretti; ‘Aldo Pinza of Bolzano’ asked Ungaretti if he considered his one line verse Ending to be a poem, and either way, could he explain what it means? ‘Alfonso Monsurro of Torre Annunziata’, on the other hand, sought Ungaretti’s ideas on ‘Why the Moon today is not romantic for lovers, like it seems it was in the nineteenth century’.47 By the third column, ‘Marisa Arcelli, Via Costa 10, Milan’ wrote to say that she had heard talk about Georg Lukács’s theories of realism and wanted to know which of his books to read. Philosopher Remo Cantoni recommended Lukács’s book of essays Goethe e il suo tempo (Goethe in his time), published by Mondadori, and his recent Saggi sul realismo (Essays on Realism) examining French and Russian realist novelists, published by Einaudi for 1500 lire.48 The next month, ‘Benedetto Cencia of Naples’ wrote to ask for the views of the ‘greats’ on the new magazine Epoca, particularly requesting the opinions of legendary intellectual Benedetto Croce; the first President of the Republic, Enrico De Nicola; and Senator Giovanni Porzio, all of the Italian Liberal Party. The elderly Benedetto Croce responded that while he did not read the magazine he would be more than happy to answer readers’ questions. The President of the Republic Enrico De Nicola said that ‘he admired the effort to give Italy a great, illustrated magazine’. Senator Giovanni Porzio said that he ‘Definitely approved of Italia domanda: as a tool for effective collaboration among its readers, whether humble or distinguished’.49 In following weeks, the column engaged robustly with cultural and intellectual ideas such as: ‘what is existentialism?’, ‘why does the theatre receive funding?’, ‘what is the best Italian book this year?’, ‘is it

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easier to understand the works of Raffaello or the works of Picasso?’, ‘is it possible to reconcile Hegelian historicism with the existentialism of Kierkegaard?’, and ‘what is conformism?’50 The magazine industry of the 1950s provided a favourable environment for intellectuals, particularly those with journalism experience. Milan’s role as the headquarters to many book publishers and most magazines publishers created a ‘commercial interdependency and mutual reinforcement’, as Peppino Ortoleva terms it, between books and magazines.51 Traditional links between book publishers, the universities and the intelligentsia flowed through to their magazines. The largest book publishers, Mondadori and Rizzoli, published the major writers and poets and promoted their work. Mondadori and Rizzoli also owned the main illustrated news magazines. They had an available intellectual resource and a vested interest in turning their authors into cultural authorities and household names. The publishers used their magazines to seek out new markets of readers for their work and promote recent releases to middle-class readers. At the same time, larger political and philosophical influences shaped the involvement of intellectuals and writers in magazine content. Political change and enthusiasm for Italy’s new Republic prompted intellectuals like Zavattini and Moravia to seek a popular dialogue and engage with the people who had previously been excluded from democracy, public life and national conversations. Antonio Gramsci’s recently published writings influenced many left-wing intellectuals with the challenge to meaningfully engage with the people and to create a national popular culture.52 As the historians of Italian cultural history David Ward and Stephen Gundle observe, the left’s ambivalence towards mass culture and fears of Americanisation directed their focus towards an egalitarian sharing of the elite cultural canon.53 The responses by intellectuals to reader letters demonstrate this attention to elite culture and conviction that access to culture formed part of the democratic right of Italian citizens. The very nature of the letter column, or ‘conversation’, as it was often represented, was mediated, selected and positioned by the column writers and letter page editors. Editors gave balance to the mix of subjects across the overall column and portrayed particular values, tone and approach. To illustrate, even after he was no longer the column editor, Zavattini wrote long, long letters to Arnoldo Mondadori with commentary on getting the right balance of subjects in Italia domanda, ‘this time there are two literary themes. Both are excellent, at least in the subjects but one is enough and it would be very good to put another on a scientific theme’.54

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The letters pages brought together an array of topics, always guided by the preferences and ideas of the editors. Even with this mediation, letters pages offer useful insights into intellectuals’ and readers’ beliefs about the role of culture, and growing access to experiences of art, music and literature. Mediation cut both ways. Some attempts by intellectuals to engage with mass culture and the broader public appeared out of step. Benedetto Croce and intellectuals like him did not read Epoca or the other magazines that formed an important part of everyday life for growing numbers of Italians. Alberto Moravia, while capable of generosity in his response to the real or fictional twenty-year-old woman who read his books, also made dismissive and even derogatory comments about the cultural tastes of Italians.55 Many intellectuals found the social and cultural changes of the boom period confusing, and they did not easily fit in with an increasingly Americanised and mass culture.56 Magazines and their editors played an important role connecting the intellectuals into mass culture and new readers, presumably with a keen awareness of the potential entertainment value of this culture clash. By Christmas 1950, Italia domanda had received more than 20,000 letters from readers in just over two months. Men wrote almost 90% of the letters. The public response was broadly national and not limited to the north and the large cities. While just over half (10,845) of the letters come from people who lived in the north of Italy, and one-fifth from the centre of Italy (4320); there were also many letter writers in the south of Italy (4525), about half of whom came from Sicily. Readers living in large cities wrote many of the letters—2585 from Milan, 1505 from Rome, 1002 from Genova, 910 from Naples and 780 from Turin.57 Yet, letters also arrived from people in the smaller cities and towns. Italia domanda was particularly popular with young people and students; students wrote 4428 letters or around 20% of letters. In contrast, 1053 factory workers sent five percent of the letters, while contributing fewer than other groups, this still represents over 130 letters a week.58 The figures suggest that the column’s intended role as a voice for ‘the people’ started off more as a voice for northern middle-class men, even though a far broader group of people read the magazine. Still, the great volume of letters from readers, around 2000 a week, demonstrates a strong and genuine interest in the opportunity to ask questions, discuss or debate with experts.59 Young people comprised an important market for all the illustrated news magazines including Epoca. By 1958, almost half of Epoca’s readers were aged between 16 and 34 years.60 While the

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magazines like Bolero Film and Sorrisi e canzoni targeted young readers and found great popularity in the 1960s with the 16–24 age group, in the 1950s more 16- to 24-year-olds read Epoca.61 Letters, like the one from the twenty year old, ‘La Romana’, reflect changes in education and show a new generation consuming mass media and also gaining increased access to art, music, theatre and literature.62 Questions about culture formed a major aspect of the multi-paged segment. Italia domanda corralled artists, writers and intellectuals to respond to letters with advice, opinions and information. At times, the responses seemed like cultural ‘agony aunts’ providing advice on both the cultural and the personal. Exchanges highlight shifts in cultural and social behaviour for women, the young and people in the middle class and lower-middle class. The questions readers asked, and the answers they received, provide a unique insight into the economic, cultural and social changes underway during the 1950s. The letters demonstrate the importance of previously elite high culture, particularly Italian high culture, to readers and its central role in the emerging modern Italian identity.

‘I am often in contact

with people more refined than me’

Italy’s increasing social mobility and class permeability meant that some people with a high professional status, yet without education or a middle-class cultural context, reported that they felt socially embarrassed when they mixed with people who were formally educated, and who seemed ‘more refined’ and articulate about culture. ‘A. R. of Vercelli’ wrote seeking advice about bridging this social divide: I would like to give myself a general cultural knowledge. I only have a technical certificate, but with my work I have been able to obtain an excellent position, and today I am vested in public office, so I am often in contact with people more refined than me, and it makes me feel inadequate. How can I address this deficiency? What are the books to read? Are there Italian books, treatises or pamphlets that permit you to get a general cultural knowledge, even if a little superficial, yet enough to not look bad in front of educated people? I am a regular reader and await your illuminated advice.63

A. R.’s question, as well as his discomfort, reflects the changes underway in Italian society and the deeply ingrained nature of social barriers including segmented education, cultural knowledge and class.64

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The response to the letter by the new column editor, philosopher Remo Cantoni, demonstrates the column’s ambition to advise on culture and guide self-education. Significantly, Cantoni emphasises the right and wrong way to follow the road to culture, discouraging an ambition for a cursory or ‘superficial’ cultural knowledge. Expecting to gain a ‘general culture’ either from pamphlets or treatises is quite absurd. It is the duty of every single culture, of every level of ability, I would say above all, of all types of freedom, to establish an on–going relationship of learning. Also in culture, one thing leads to another, an idea to another idea: a book to another book. The important thing is to start and pick up any one, even The King of Cooks. There will always be a word to look up in the dictionary (a good dictionary, a big and complete dictionary: this is essential). In the dictionary we will find for this word a complete historical account of the fortune and vicissitudes of its meanings, made by the writers across the ages. Consulting these writers, you are already on the road to learning about culture.65

Cantoni supported A. R.’s desire to learn more about culture, yet challenged his wish to take a fast look at ‘general culture’ and recommended instead, developing an ‘ongoing relationship’. A. R. was advised to take a slow road and warned not to move through his reading too quickly, with the warning that someone who travels at 100 kilometres an hour ‘excludes the possibility of looking and contemplating’.66 The philosopher rounded out this encouragement towards depth and cultural serendipity, by emphasising the importance the right tool for self-education, owning a good dictionary. New printing techniques had made books and magazines widely affordable and increasing social mobility offered greater access to culture. Yet, old rules on how to engage with culture still carried weight and served to sustain the intellectuals’ position of authority.

‘Your question seems to me a sign of sad times’ When ‘Tullio Formosa of Naples’ asked for the best Italian critics to select the three finest European short stories of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and also the three greatest Italian contemporary ones, he set off a heated debate. Goffredo Bellonci a newspaper literary critic recommended the European works: Prosper Mérimée’s Carmen, Guy de Maupassant’s Boule de suif and Nikalai Gogol’s The Overcoat, before adding in references to other short stories by Heinrich

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Hoffmann, Leo Tolstoy, Joseph Conrad, Anton Chekhov and Giovanni Verga. As for the Italian authors, after he confidently suggested Luigi Pirandello, Bellonci proved unable to narrow down his long list comprising Massimo Bontempelli and dozens of others. Writer and critic Aldo Bizzarri kept to his brief and recommended The Queen of Spades by Alexander Pushkin, the novella Benito Cereno by Herman Melville and Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis. For the contemporary Italian short stories, he named Night by Luigi Pirandello, The Sea by Corrado Alvaro and Among Women Only by Cesare Pavese. Critic Mario Bonfantini declared the task impossible, but managed it anyway. For the literary critic Bocelli, the question represented everything that was wrong with modern society: your question seems to me a sign of sad times, so dominated by a practical mindset, indeed, pragmatic, and so indifferent to artistic things, that when they do pay attention, it is to consider them as commercial or competitive, like a game, sport or competition for a title of a ‘Miss’ or ‘pageant queen’. In these cases it is not beauty as such which is considered as important, as aesthetic enjoyment, as nourishment for the spirit: but to set up a race, establish a rank, a score, maybe even to bet. What are the best books of the decade, the half–century, the century: how many of these would they want to save in case of a flood or an atomic bomb: which book is capable of ‘knocking–out’ all the others?67

Bocelli is railing against the attempts by magazines such as Epoca to make art relatable. Magazine editors regularly employed a ‘best of’ article style, imported from America, to popularise reading and raise awareness of classics in an entertaining and light way. Articles on the ‘top ten’ or ‘top twenty’ artworks or books were often framed as a hypothetical, such as asking which twenty books to save from a flood.68 Italia domanda asked both film stars and famous writers, ‘what book they would take to the Moon if they knew they would never return?’.69 The question reflects an interest in celebrities and books, as well as a fascination for the Moon and space travel in the early years of the space race. The celebrity responses ran for weeks in early 1958 and appear to be syndicated from an American magazine and then augmented with local writers. Cary Grant, William Holden and T. S. Eliot all said they would take the Bible, although the British poet Eliot added that works by William Shakespeare and Dante Alighieri would help him pass the time.70 Italian

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novelist Ignazio Silone answered that his first impulse was to take the Bible. Silone then changed his position to say that he would take Plato’s Dialogues in the original Classical Greek text even though he was no longer able to read the ancient language, as for him it was without doubt the best representation of the human mind.71 Bringing together of cinema and literary stars in this context illustrates not only the entertainment value of celebrity opinion, but also the shared cultural prestige of the Bible, Shakespeare, Dante and the classics in America and Europe. Bocelli’s dismissal of ‘Formosa’s’ request for the best short stories would have resonated with some of Italia domanda’s educated readers. The reply appears purposely provocative and intended as a rebuke to less diligent readers, a prompt to amend their ways. The exchange reflects the different aims of readers and intellectuals. On the one hand, many readers wanted a shortlist of recommendations to start with and concise advice. On the other hand, passionate educated literature experts, more experienced in intricacies than brevity, found the approach of art as a pleasant pastime quite hard to fathom. The advice turns out to be more than ‘what books to read’, it becomes ‘how to appreciate books’. Self-improvement was not solely for readers from lower socio-economic groups or without formal education. Letter writers sought advice on developing a fine book collection at home and help with identifying the ‘best’ writers of the Western canon. ‘Aronne Zago of Padua’ wanted advice on collecting the ‘most authoritative works (novels, poems, theatre) of the best authors of every place in the world’. The high cost of books suggests that Zago is part of the middle or upper-middle class. Almost half of Epoca readers had a middle-class background, and around one-third of Epoca’s readers were middle-class men.72 Renowned writer and poet Carlo Emilio Gadda replied that the average home library would have three shelves of novels. Gadda’s shopping list included about eighty authors whose work he judged as the best. His list included European and American writers: Leo Tolstoy, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Maxim Gorky, Boris Pasternak, André Gide, Marcel Proust, Thomas Mann, Franz Kafka, Herman Melville, Henry James, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Charles Dickens, Joseph Conrad, Rudyard Kipling, Robert Louis Stevenson. Gadda’s suggestions for the Italian novelists included Gabriele D’Annunzio, Luigi Pirandello, Alberto Moravia and Cesare Pavese.73

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‘He, Chopin, was not alone’ Entertainment and celebrity news featured strongly within the letters about art, literature, theatre and music in Italia domanda. Many letters reflect a colloquial, non-scholastic tone and a light-hearted way of thinking about art and artists. People asked about entertaining facts, gossip or rumours, and clarification of things that people had ‘heard said’ about the lives of the artists, such as ‘if Dante ever worked as an apothecary?’, ‘was he a heretic?’ (and if so, can you see it in his work?), and ‘did the church ever ban Dante’s work?’74 ‘Did Shakespeare act in any of his plays?’ and ‘did he come to Italy as a spy?’75 One reader wanted to know, ‘What was the relationship between Homer, Dante and Shakespeare?’76 Another wrote in, interested to find out, ‘Did Liszt conduct the premiere of one of Wagner’s works’.77 While ‘Ennio Romani, Florence’ asked, curious to discover ‘Is it possible to know the exact number of George Sand’s lovers?’ Reno Cantoni’s reply titled, ‘He, Chopin, was not alone’, estimated a dozen confirmed lovers, with perhaps another dozen unverified.78 This blurring of mass culture and high culture continued as readers quizzed contemporary artists and celebrities about their views on art and literature. Some questions contained more whimsy than self-improvement, such as asking artists which houses featured in paintings they would like to holiday in. Painter Virgilio Guzzi wanted to live in the house seen in Concerto campestre by Giorgione and film director Vittorio De Sica said he would like a holiday in contemporary artist Giorgio Morandi’s apartment in Bologna.79 ‘O. Terzi, Turin’ wrote to say he had read that the American actress Katharine Hepburn was also a painter, and asked ‘is it true or is it one of the usual publicity ruses?’80 The response confirmed that Hepburn liked to draw and paint, and included examples of her self-portrait sketches. One of Italia domanda’s strengths was collecting celebrity opinions from a ‘Who’s who’ of Italian contemporary writing. Artists’ personal accounts of their successes and failures were particularly engaging and entertaining. The ‘Pedantic friends, La Spezia’ asked Epoca to find out from, ‘the most renowned poets and authors of today’ what their first piece of creative writing had been, and how they would judge it now. Giuseppe Ungaretti replied that as a teenager he had published a short story with a writing style strongly influenced by Edgar Allen Poe in the Messaggero egiziano (Egyptian Messenger), a local newspaper in

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Alexandria, Egypt. He added that he would gladly re-read it, and that while he probably would not enjoy the style, it would remind him of what he was like at that age. Novelist Ercole Patti recalled his ‘uncontainable joy’, when at fourteen, he was paid thirty lire for a story published in the popular cartoon-filled children’s weekly Corriere dei Piccoli with illustrations by the renowned Carlo Bisi. The novelist Alberto Moravia said that up until the age of fourteen he only wrote poems. He added that he did not remember anything about them, except that they were bad. Poet and novelist Carlo Emilio Gadda recounted that he had made many attempts to write from the age of thirteen but that his first ‘formally acceptable’ piece was a sonnet written in 1910, when he was seventeen. He noted the sonnet was not very good, and included it at the end of his response.81 These entertaining exchanges serve to reaffirm the fame of the authors and solidify their place in the modern canon, and yet at the same time humanise them and make the writers and their works seem accessible.

‘Is it right that a salumiere earns more than Massimo Bontempelli?’ Readers expressed curiosity about the incomes of artists or intellectuals and whether they made a living from their work in a modern economy. ‘Piero Stella, a student from Novara’ asked if it was right that a person of the calibre of the Italian author Massimo Bontempelli earned less than a salumiere (someone who works in a delicatessen). Massimo Bontempelli replied, with self-deprecation, that it was indeed right as, ‘infinitely more people are in need of salami, than of ideas and stories’.82 Similarly, ‘Gianni Grandori of Urbino’ asked ‘Is it true that the moral, social and economic climate of today is not the most suited to poets? And, if it is true, how do they survive?’83 Eugenio Montale answered that poets survive by ‘doing other work’. For Giuseppe Ungaretti, the struggle to make a living as a poet, was nothing new, ‘In society today to be a poet is hard work; but it was always so’. In a similar vein, Salvatore Quasimodo observed that, ‘the biographies of poets speak of misery and bitterness. The poets have never had an easy life; and the reasons are always economic, social and above all political’.84 These exchanges project the purity of artists and writers working outside the supply and demand model of the marketplace, poverty being the price of their art

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and independence. The ideas of Wenche Ommundsen, writing on contemporary literary celebrities such as Salman Rushdie, are useful in this context.85 Ommundsen suggests that the representation of the author as, ‘a cultural hero unsullied by the manipulations of commercial or popular culture, though seemingly in stark opposition to common ideas of celebrity, in fact works in conjunction with them to produce a distinct brand of fame’.86 The names of poets and writers like Ungaretti and Quasimodo work in a similar manner; they carry weight and recognition, even with those who have not read their work. The poet-celebrity incorporates the eliteness of a limited market for their work with celebrity generated by reports in magazines like Epoca of their cultural achievements. Questions about income show not only a fascination with the low earnings of artists, but also for the high earnings of artists and the price of masterpieces. ‘Luigi Maglione of Naples’ wrote to ask how much opera singers earned in a performance and who was paid the most. Tenor Giancinto Prandelli replied that performers of the calibre of Mario Del Monaco and Renata Tebaldi received 250,000 to 300,000 lire a performance including rehearsals, which was at a time when the average annual income was 250,000 lire.87 Prandelli added that the less famous singers earned 50,000 to 100,000 lire.88 However, ‘A. Ferrari of Bari’ wanted to know how the value of Michelangelo and Leonardo paintings was determined. In particular, the epitome of Italian culture achievement, asking ‘What is the Mona Lisa worth today?’ The indirect response noted the difficulty in establishing a price and value for the masterpiece, however, informed ‘Ferrari’ that the French King Francis I had paid 4000 scudi for the Mona Lisa in 1516.89 While art offered a life of poverty to most, a few performers, artists and art dealers could command inconceivable rewards. Readers of Italia domanda sought information on the daily routines and creative process of individual writers. Magazine reader ‘Ada Goffi of Venice’ wanted to know the ‘system’ behind the way writers went about their work. Writer and journalist Alberto Cavallari replied that there was no system—that Alberto Moravia sometimes wrote in bed, the poet Alfonso Gatto wrote his early poems in a café, and while the poet Raffaele Carrieri used a typewriter, novelist Elio Vittorini wrote with a wiry handwriting that looked like ‘ink spider webs’.90 The response serves to demystify aspects of the creative process and yet confirms the otherness of the life of a writer or poet.

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In December 1958, Italian artist Giorgio De Chirico made a guest appearance on the television quiz show Lascia o raddoppia?. He offered disparaging comments on modern art in general and then singled out the work of Italian expressionist artist Amedeo Modigliani for criticism.91 ‘G. Ventura, Milan’ wrote to say that he had seen De Chirico on television and would like to hear the opinions of distinguished art critics on this harsh judgement of modern art and Modigliani. Guido Ballo poet, journalist and art critic for the socialist daily Avanti!, advised G. Ventura not to take De Chirico seriously, as he was just seeking publicity for himself. For art critic Armando Miele, there was no surprise in these judgements as De Chirico had a tendency to be negative about almost every artist not called De Chirico. Artist Carlo Carrà responded that he held both modern art and Modigliani in high regard; however, he did not wish to comment on De Chirico. While Corrado Corazza replied, with greater candour, ‘For De Chirico painting finished with De Chirico’ adding De Chirico’s focus on himself took him on a dangerous path.92 Art critic Mario de Micheli went in even harder, suggesting that anyone wanting an example of bad art should go and see De Chirico’s exhibition. The celebrity roast continued as Ubaldo Mirabelli, art critic for the Sicilian newspaper Il giornale di Sicilia dismissed De Chrico’s comments as typical exhibitionism and called him ‘old’.93 The experts offered strong support for the talent of Modigliani and the value of modern art. Many added entertaining jibes at De Chirico’s ego that might amuse readers, those with and without knowledge of art.

‘Do the youth of the Atomic Era not know how to study Dante’ Classically educated readers shared the concerns of intellectuals with letters lamenting the dim prospects for art and literature in the modern age, offering a high culture variation on the generational ‘kids today’ complaints. In 1956, ‘F. R. of Pavia’ wrote to observe, ‘certain disinterest by young people today for Dante’ and asked if an expert could tell him if The Divine Comedy was still taught ‘as it must be’ in schools.94 Professor Mario Praz of the University of Rome responded that not only was Dante not studied, he observed regretfully that very few of the great poets were studied, ‘I fear not even Petrach or Leopardi are in the hearts of the young’. Professor Praz concluded, ‘The youth of today, I would

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say, read the recent poets like Garcia Lorca or T. S. Eliot or Eugenio Montale’, as if discussing a lost generation.95 This clearly exaggerated claim and dismay is amusing in the context of widespread social concern for youth behaviour and even moral panic, epitomised by the reaction to the recently released and hugely popular American film Rebel Without a Cause (1955, released in Italy in early 1956 as Gioventù bruciata).96 The almost delinquent (and highly unlikely) preference for recent poets over Dante represented, for this Professor, a great loss of culture and tradition by the elite literature students at his university.

‘Should the audience applaud during  a scene at the theatre?’ Frequently, letters reflect an apprehensiveness about the negative impact of mass audiences, revealing fears of the loss or decline of cultural standards. Letters described new trends or railed against changing social and cultural behaviour, above all lamenting the public’s inability to respond appropriately to the arts. Readers ask about the shifting position of art in society, such as falling theatre attendance, wondering ‘Why the public stays away from the theatre’ and examining ‘Difficult times for opera’.97 ‘Ugo De Felice of Genoa’, a regular theatregoer, ‘notes with disappointment that the public will applaud in the middle of a scene’, upset about changes to theatre audience behaviours.98 Stage actors, radio actors, comic actors and directors responded to this letter in different ways. For stage actor Sergio Tòfano, audience members who applauded during a scene were a distraction, he referred to the sign in trams that advised passengers not to talk to the driver or distract him when working, clearly wishing that theatres might use the same sign. For actor Orio Vergani, theatre ‘gives the public the possibility to participate in the action with applause, and give their opinion on the vitality or other of the characters’ and that the ‘abolition of applause mid-scene is a step forward towards the sterilisation and the death of theatre’.99

‘the two noses of Picasso’ The confusing world of modern art and contemporary poetry elicited a range of questions from readers. ‘Enzo Bietti of Ancona’ wrote to say he had heard people talk about modern art and wanted to learn more about

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it; in particular, he wanted to understand the difference between abstract and concrete art. Not all letter writers liked recent cultural developments and some readers wrote to ask why modern art was so terrible.100 As with theatre audiences not knowing when to applaud, the lack of the public’s lack of appreciation for modern art attracted comment from an anonymous artist who signed his letter ‘G. P., Painter in crisis of conscience, Padua’. ‘G. P.’ asked, ‘Why is the public astounded if a Picasso figure has two noses and calmly accepts Sphinxes, unicorns, and angels, and demons with wings, tail and horns?’ The poet Alfonso Gatto who had succeed Remo Cantoni as editor of Italia domanda responded that, ‘The figures of Picasso offend the so-called people because they remain real’ and that, ‘If they were monsters from another world they would be fully accepted’.101

‘Can a twenty-year-old woman read Alberto Moravia’s novels?’ The chapter opened with an anonymous letter of a twenty-yearold woman, writing to successful author Alberto Moravia about the moral impact of reading the novel La Romana a story of a beautiful young Roman woman who becomes a prostitute. Italia domanda’s letter writer ‘La Romana’ reported that her fiancé had left her for reading Moravia’s book. For the fiancé, the novel was something that a ‘decent young lady—for Heaven’s sake—should not even know about’.102 In her letter published under the heading ‘The Woman of Rome and the fiancées’, the young woman explained that after she finished school her father allowed her to read whatever she liked. She said she had two questions for Moravia: the first, if he approved that a young woman aged twenty read his novels; and the second, whether a book could be immoral and cause harm. Moravia replied that there was in fact an inferred third question, about her relationship and if her fiancé was right to breakup with her. Moravia offered the advice that she was better off without someone who would use her choice of books as a weak pretext to end the relationship. It was, wrote Moravia, a lucky escape! In answer to the other questions, Moravia said that at twenty years of age a young woman has fully developed judgement and can read his novels.103 On the issue of whether books could be harmful, Moravia replied:

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Books cannot cause harm except to those who are minors, therefore incapable of judgment or those who are searching for a justification, a stimulus or a suggestion to do things that they would in any case end up doing. In both cases it is not so much the books that do harm as much as the people that cause harm as a result of their immaturity or natural inclination. In my view the only books that are harmful, are bad books. Alberto Moravia, Writer.104

There are many remarkable aspects in this exchange between an anonymous young woman and a famous author. The letter writer, ‘La Romana’, represents part of an emerging generation of young women in the post-war period who finished middle school and even high school, and one of a small, but growing, number of women who read books as a pastime. She presents herself as atypical, in that the death of her mother has left her more freedom in general, and in particular, more freedom to read what she likes. She faces the challenge of ‘appropriately’ engaging with the modern world and the moral judgement of others. The letter reflects the complexities of living in a society still strongly influenced by traditional values and the Catholic Church, while also providing women and young people with access to a broader range of educational and cultural materials and books. It identifies the letter writer’s difficulty in gauging the appropriate cultural behaviour for young women given the different responses of her father and fiancé. The young woman does not ask Moravia a specific question on his novel’s characters, or for suggestions on good books to read, rather she is confused by the end of her relationship and asks Moravia about the appropriateness of her reading his work and the larger issue of the impact of books on the individual. Letters like this and the responses of intellectual ‘agony aunts’ provided entertainment for readers. Yet, the letters also offer valuable evidence of the perceived social importance of cultural knowledge and the role of magazines in promoting it. If ‘La Romana’s’ letter was an authentic request for advice, it reflects the changing cultural, social and moral boundaries for women. On the other hand, if ‘La Romana’s’ letter was a fictional creation of Moravia or the Epoca staff, it is still a valuable source to signal the magazine and column editor’s support for access to cultural knowledge for its readers, addressing the broader issue of morality and literature.

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Conclusion In mid-1959, Epoca reduced Italia domanda down to five pages, and by early 1960, it was one page, and only one question. The column continued in the 1960s in this shortened form with an occasional cultural question. The Letters to the Editor pages gained prominence and Epoca’s democratic ‘new style of journalism’ was superseded. As we will see over the next chapters, Italian state television with its educational remit increasingly assumed the mantle of cultural mediator, instructor and advisor. Italia domanda had aimed to create a democratic dialogue between readers and intellectuals, where intellectuals served the people and encouraged their ‘thirst for knowledge’. The national excitement of a return to democracy as well as changes to education, social mobility and leisure time is reflected in the questions that readers asked and the answers the letters received from poets, artists, film directors, professors and other cultural experts. Certainly, the editors constrained, mediated and shaped the exchanges between readers and artists or intellectuals. Yet, magazine and column editors who were themselves poets, writers and philosophers supported the exchanges between the magazine readers and cultural experts. The popularity of the 1950s columns, such as Epoca’s Italia domanda, shows magazine readers had a strong interest in both cultural questions and answers. Magazine readers were aware of the potentially fictitious nature of the letters and the columnists, and read the columns with a mix of enjoyment and scepticism. Nevertheless, reading advice columns, and writing letters to ask advice, formed a meaningful and useful activity for millions of people. The forum that Epoca established, and its objective to create a democratic ‘living culture’, was progressive and innovative at a time when intellectuals and the people rarely interacted and had limited opportunities to do so. While some replies from intellectuals demonstrate a condescending need to impart the ‘right’ way to experience art, these replies possessed a double purpose, also offering the readers entertainment. In general, the letters are enjoyable and the answers sympathetic. The novelty of access to cultural knowledge shown in readers’ questions on literature, great masterpieces and classical, or opera music reveals changing attitudes to culture. Readers see culture as something that has relevance or importance to them, albeit in differing ways. Autodidacts

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are applauded and assisted. Experts give advice to people trying to teach themselves about literature, art and poetry for their own interest and enlightenment. People looking to improve themselves for social advancement or out of a perceived need to fit in with the more refined are gently corrected and steered towards the intrinsic rewards of knowledge and art. The letters offer evidence of the function of culture as a social discriminator of class and show that lack of education and cultural ‘refinement’, not only created a social barrier, it could even cause shame. At the same time, the thousands of letters asking about art, music, theatre and literature reflect the high value placed on culture in modern Italy and its role within mass culture.

Notes











1. ‘La Romana e i fidanzati’, Epoca, 31 gennaio 1953, 6. 2. Alberto Moravia, La Romana (Milano: Bompiani, 1947); Alberto Moravia, The Woman of Rome (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1958). Alberto Moravia was the pen name of writer Alberto Pincherle. 3. While Moravia creates a sexually confident and at times emancipated character, the only account of her sexual satisfaction occurs after she has been beaten by a violent and possibly psychopathic admirer Sonzongo. Elsewhere in the novel the character recounts a sexualised thrill when she receives payment for prostitution. For a discussion on the problematic elements of Alberto Moravia’s representation of the character Adrianna, prostitution and other reactions to his work, see Michael Hanne ‘Alberto Moravia’s La Romana: The Appropriation of Female Experience’, Italica 60, no. 4 (1983): 351–359. 4. David Forgacs and Stephen Gundle, Mass Culture and Italian Society: From Fascism to the Cold War (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2007), 222. Note: Other writers with works on the banned list included Honoré de Balzac, Jeremy Bentham, René Descartes, Alexandre Dumas, Gustav Flaubert, Benedetto Croce, Giovanni Gentile and Gabriele D’Annuzio. 5. See Chapter 1 for discussion about terms describing culture. 6. See Chapter 1 for discussion about terms describing class. 7. Forgacs and Gundle, Mass Culture and Italian Society, 111. 8. Penelope Morris, ‘A Window on the Private Sphere: Advice Columns, Marriage, and the Evolving Family in 1950s Italy’, The Italianist 27, (2007): 304–332, 311. 9. Gabriella Parca, (ed.), Italian Women Confess, Carolyn Gaiser (trans.) (London: Pan Books Ltd, 1963), 8.

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10. Milly Buonanno, Naturale come sei: Indagine sulla stampa feminile in Italia (Rimini–Firenze: Guaraldi Editore, 1975), 79. 11.  Simonetta Piccone Stella and Annabella Rossi, La fatica di leggere (Roma: Editori Riuniti, 1964), 230. 12. Penelope Morris, ‘From Private to Public: Alba de Céspedes’ Agony Column in 1950s Italy’, Modern Italy 9, no. 1 (2004): 11–20; Penelope Morris (ed.), Women in Italy, 1945–1960: An Interdisciplinary Study (Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006); Morris, ‘A Window on the Private Sphere’, 304–332. 13. Thank you to Professor David Forgacs for suggesting Italia domanda as a rich source of reader letters. 14. Forgacs and Gundle, Mass Culture and Italian Society, 74. 15.  DOXA Istituto per le Ricerche Statistiche e l’Analisi dell’Opinione Pubblica and SIRM Società Italiana Ricerche di Mercato, ‘Tav 0.0.R. Secondo sesso’, Indagine nazionale sui lettori dei quotidiani e dei periodici sui telespettatori, radioascoltatori e cinespettatori, Market ­ Research for the Advertising Association Utenti Pubblicità Associati, (Unpublished, 1958), 231. 16.  DOXA and SIRM, ‘Tav. 0.3.R. Secondo grandi ripartizione geografiche’, Indagine nazionale sui lettori, 1958, 234. Fifty-one percent of regular magazine readers lived in the north, compared to 46% of the population; 18% of regular magazine readers and 18% of the population live in the centre regions; 18% of regular magazine readers lived in the south, compared to 24% of the population; and 12% of regular magazine readers and 12% of the population lived in the islands. 17. DOXA and SIRM, ‘Tav. 0.0.R. Secondo sesso’ Indagine nazionale sui lettori, 1958, 231. 18. DOXA and SIRM, ‘Tav. 0.1.R. Secondo età’, Indagine nazionale sui lettori, 1958, 232. Five million young people aged 16–24 years read magazines, as did 4.5 million people aged 25–34 years. One-quarter of the total magazine market (five of 20 million readers) was aged between 16 and 24 years: represented, three-quarters of all people in that age group. The one-fifth of the total magazine market (4.5 million readers) of the 25- to 34-year-olds represented around two-thirds of people in that age group. 19. DOXA and SIRM, ‘Tav. 0.1.R.Secondo età’, Indagine nazionale sui lettori, 1958, 232. 20. DOXA and SIRM, ‘Tav. 0.1.R.Secondo età’, Indagine nazionale sui lettori, 1958, 232. 21. Paolo Capuzzo, ‘Youth and Consumption’, in The Oxford Handbook on the History of Consumption, Frank Trentmann (ed.) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 612.

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22. DOXA and SIRM, ‘Tav 0.2.R. Secondo condizione economico–sociale’, Indagine nazionale sui lettori, 1958, 233. 23. DOXA and SIRM, ‘Tav 0.2.R. Secondo condizione economico–sociale’, Indagine nazionale sui lettori, 1958, 233. 24. DOXA and SIRM, ‘Tav 0.2.R. Secondo condizione economico–sociale’, Indagine nazionale sui lettori, 1958, 233. 25.  Paul Ginsborg, ‘A History of Contemporary Italy Society and Politics 1943–1980’ (London: Penguin Books, 1990), 238. 26. DOXA and SIRM, ‘Tav 0.2.R. Secondo condizione economico–sociale’, Indagine nazionale sui lettori, 1958, 233. 27. Guido Crainz, Storia del miracolo italiano: Culture, identità, transformazioni fra anni cinquanti e sessanta (Roma: Donzelli Editore, 2005), 87. 28. Tullio de Mauro, Idee per il governo – la scuola (Roma: Laterza, 1995), 25. 29. DOXA and SIRM, ‘Tav. 0.0 Totale – Secondo sesso’, Indagine nazionale sui lettori, 1958, 231. Weekly illustrated news magazines included in this research: Candido, Epoca, Gente, La Domenica del Corriere, Le Settimana Incom Illustrata, La Tribuna Illustrata, Le Ore, L’Espresso, Oggi, Orizzonti, Rottosei, Settimo Giorno, Tempo, Vie Nuove, Visto. 30. DOXA and SIRM, ‘Tav. 0.0 Totale – Secondo sesso’, Indagine nazionale sui lettori, 1958, 231. 31. DOXA and SIRM, ‘Tav. 0.0 Totale – Secondo sesso’, Indagine nazionale sui lettori, 1958, 231. 32. Forgacs and Gundle, Mass Culture and Italian Society, 111. 33. ‘La copertina’, Epoca, 14 ottobre 1950, 11. 34.  ‘Liliana Ragazza Italiana’, Epoca, 14 ottobre 1950, 13–17; ‘Mottino ogni giorno, a tutte le ore’ Motta advertisement, Epoca, 14 ottobre 1950, 18. 35.  Epoca, 14 ottobre 1950, 3. 36.  Giuseppe Ravegnani was a journalist, poet, intellectual and literary expert. 37.  Italia domanda comprised 10–15% of the magazine. 38.  Giuseppe Ravegnani, ‘Giornale, Italia domanda’, Epoca, 14 ottobre 1950, 3. 39.  Gino Moliterno (ed.), Encyclopedia of Contemporary Italian Culture (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), 646–647. 40. Giovanni Ragone, ‘La lettere e la voce’, in Letturatura italiana. Storia e geografia Volume terzo: L’età contemporanea, Alberto Asor Rosa (ed.) (Torino: Giulio Einaudi editore, 1989), 1084.n; Gino Frezza, ‘Il fumetto’ Letteratura italiana, 1250. Raffaele de Berti, Dallo schermo alla carta: Romanzi, fotoromanzi, rotocalchi cinematorgrafici: Il film e i

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suoi paratesti (Milano: Vita e Pensiero, 2000), 46; Le Grandi Firme, 4 gennaio 1938. 41. Anna Bravo, Il fotoromanzo (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2003), 24; de Berti, Dallo schermo alla carta, 115. Bravo notes that some credit Luciano Pedrocchi, Damiano Damiani and Franco Cancellari and others credit Zavattini; she concludes that it is difficult to say but suggests Zavattini’s neorealist influence is discernible in the first edition. Raffaele de Berti also observes that many credit Zavattini for the fotoromanzi idea, but that we do not know for sure. 42.  Mondadori Archive: Busta Zavattini (1939  a  1961/1965/1969). Internal review: Mondadori request for review of arrangement, 1959. Other less successful suggestions included interviews with politicians on their favourite music ‘Il Musichiere in Parlamento’, letter 17 February 1959 to Panucucci from Zavattini. 43. Forgacs and Gundle, Mass Culture and Italian Society, 111. 44. DOXA and SIRM, ‘Tav. 0.8 Totale – Secondo possesso di auto o di moto’, Indagine nazionale sui lettori, 1958, 306–308. 45. ‘Italia domanda’, Epoca, 14 ottobre 1950, 3. 46. ‘Cinque domande a Thomas Mann’, Epoca, 14 ottobre 1950, 5. 47. ‘3 Domande a Ungaretti’, Epoca, 21 ottobre 1950, 8. 48. ‘Il Realism di Lukács’, Epoca, 28 ottobre 1950, 7. 49. ‘Croce, De Nico, Porzio e Mattei’, Epoca, 4 novembre 1950, 8. 50. ‘Che cos’è l’esistenzialismo?’, Epoca, 2 dicembre 1950, 5; ‘Anton Giulio Bragaglia’, Epoca, 4 novembre 1950, 7–8; ‘Raffaello o Picasso?’, Epoca 30 dicembre 1950, 8; ‘Borgese Giudica’, Epoca, 14 ottobre 1950, 5; ‘Che cos’è conformismo’, Epoca, 16 dicembre 1950, 5. 51.  Peppino Ortoleva, ‘Geography of the Media Since 1945’ in Italian Cultural Studies: An Introduction, David Forgacs and Robert Lumley (eds.) (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 189. 52. Antonio Gramsci, Selections from Cultural Writings, David Forgacs and Geoffrey Nowell–Smith (eds.) William Boelhower (trans.) (London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1985). 53. Stephen Gundle, Between Hollywood and Moscow: The Italian Communists and the Challenge of Mass Culture 1943–1991 (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2000), 92; David Ward, ‘Intellectuals, Culture and Power in Modern Italy’, in The Cambridge Companion to Modern Italian Culture, Zygmunt G. Barański and Rebecca West (eds.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 90–91. 54. Mondadori Archive: Busta Cesare Zavattini (1939 a 1961/1965/1969), Letter from Cesare Zavattini to Arnoldo Mondadori, Roma 4 gennaio 1951, 3.

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55.  Libero Bigiaretti ‘L’editoria e la TV’, Televisione e vita italiana, (a cura di) Segreteria Centrale della Rai (Torino: ERI – Edizioni Radiotelevisione Italiana, 1968), 692; and Gundle, Between Hollywood and Moscow, 81. 56. Gundle, Between Hollywood and Moscow, 82. 57. ‘Giornale’, Epoca, 6 gennaio 1951, 3. 58. ‘Giornale’, Epoca, 6 gennaio 1951, 3. 59. ‘Giornale’, Epoca, 6 gennaio 1951, 3. 60. DOXA and SIRM, ‘0–Totale, Tav. 0.1 Secondo gruppi di età’, Indagine nazionale sui lettori, 1958, 270. Epoca Readers aged 16–24: 780,000; Readers aged 25–34: 700,000. 61. DOXA and SIRM, ‘0–Totale, Tav. 0.1 Secondo gruppi di età’, Indagine nazionale sui lettori, 1958, 270–272. Readers aged 16–24: Bolero Film 730,000; Sorrisi e canzoni 660,000; and Grazia 660,000. Fotoromanzo magazine Grand Hôtel formed a notable exception, attracting 960,000 readers aged 16–24 years. The number of 16- to 24-year-olds reading illustrated weekly news magazines Oggi and Tempo was even higher: Oggi 1.1 million and Tempo 850,000. 62. ‘La Romana e i fidanzati’, Epoca, 31 gennaio 1953, 6. 63. ‘Abbicì’, Epoca, 8 marzo 1952, 3. 64. Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste, Robert Nice (trans.) (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984). 65. ‘Abbicì’, Epoca, 8 marzo 1952, 3. 66. ‘Abbicì’, Epoca, 8 marzo 1952, 3 67.  ‘I tre migliori racconti del ‘800–‘900 e nostri tre più belli racconti d’oggi’, Epoca, 9 febbraio 1952, 4–5. 68. ‘Venti libri da salvare dal diluvio’, Tempo, 19 maggio 1955, 16–18. 69. ‘Destinazione LUNA: In Astronave con Walter Scott’, Epoca, 26 gennaio 1958, 11 70. ‘Destinazione LUNA’, Epoca 26 gennaio 1958, 11. (T. S. Eliot); ‘Destinazione LUNA’, Epoca, 2 febbraio 1958, 11. (William Holden and Cary Grant); ‘Destinazione LUNA’, Epoca 9 marzo 1958, 15. (Luigi Barzini Jnr.) 71. ‘Destinazione LUNA’, Epoca 9 febbraio 1958, 11. 72. DOXA and SIRM, ‘0–Totale, Tav. 0.2 Secondo condizione economico– sociale’, Indagine nazionale sui lettori, 1958, 273; ‘1–Maschi, Tav. 1.2 Secondo Condizione Economico–Sociale’ Indagine nazionale sui lettori, 1958, 312. 73. ‘I tre scaffali della biblioteca ideale’, Epoca, 1 marzo 1959, 13. 74. ‘Dante Farmacista’, Epoca, 17 febbraio 1951, 9; ‘É vero che Dante fu eretico?’, Epoca, 28 giugno 1953, 8.

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75.  ‘Che cosa recitava Shakespeare?’, Epoca, 25 novembre 1950, 5; ‘Shakespeare 5a colonna’, Epoca, 10 gennaio 1953, 3. 76. ‘Omero, Dante, Shakespeare’, Epoca, 11 novembre 1950, 8. 77. ‘Liszt diresse una prima di Wagner?’, Epoca, 19 luglio 1952, 5 78. ‘Lui, Chopin, non fu solo’, Epoca, 31 maggio 1953, 9. 79. ‘Per le prossime vancanze cercasi casetta in un paesaggio di Tiziano or di Monet’, Epoca, 17 maggio 1953, 8–9. 80.  ‘I DISEGNI DI “KATE” Piacerebbero forse a Chagall’, Epoca, 10 marzo 1957, 12. 81. ‘Parlano del loro primo scritto alcuni fra i più noti autori di oggi’, Epoca, 12 settembre 1954, 6–7. Emilio Gadda’s first sonnet: Poi che sfuggendo ai tempi tramonti—Vanì declive in nebbie la pianura—Per i boschi ed i pascoli de’ monti—Senza grido né suono il dì s’oscura/– Mute guardano l’erme in su le fronti—De le ville il fornir de l’aratura—E lunghi fuochi accender gli orizzonti—Donde ogni volo ai mesti dì si fura/– Nel pomario che al colle il pendio tardo—Sparse già tutto di sue fronde molli—Poi che il greve suo dono ebbe diviso/– Del vespro dolce ne le luci io guardo—I pomari deserti i tristi colli—Salutare il vostro ultimo sorriso. 82. ‘Bontempelli e il salumiere’, Epoca, 14 ottobre 1950, 7. 83.  ‘Chi sono? Sono poeti. Che cosa fanno? Scrivono. E come vivono? Vivono (facendo tutti più o meno un mestiere)’, Epoca 23 agosto 1952, 4–7. 84. ‘Chi sono? Sono poeti’, Epoca, 23 agosto 1951, 5. 85. Wenche Ommundsen, ‘From the Altar to the Market–Place and Back Again: Understanding Literary Celebrity’ 244–255, in Stardom and Celebrity: A Reader, Sean Redmond and Su Holmes (eds.) (London: Sage, 2007), 247. 86. Ommundsen, ‘From the Altar to the Market–Place and Back Again’, 247. 87. ‘300.000 lire per recita’, Epoca, 9 giugno 1951, 7; Francesco Alberoni, ‘Presenza della TV in Italia’, Televisione e vita italiana, (a cura di) Segretaria Centrale della Rai (Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1968), 25. 88. ‘300.000 lire per recita’, Epoca, 9 giugno 1951, 7. 89. ‘4000 scudi per Monna Lisa’, Epoca, 27 gennaio 1956, 18. 90. ‘Come scrivono?’, Epoca, 6 gennaio 1951, 8. 91. See Chapter 4 for a discussion of the impact of the Lascia o raddoppia? quiz programme, this episode and a photograph of Giorgio De Chirico’s appearance. 92. ‘Processo a De Chirico’, Epoca, 21 dicembre 1958, 19–20. 93. ‘Processo a De Chirico’, Epoca, 21 dicembre 1958, 19–20. 94. ‘Non sanno studiare Dante i giovani dell’era atomica’, Epoca, 26 agosto 1956, 6–7.

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95. ‘Non sanno studiare Dante i giovani dell’era atomica’, Epoca, 26 agosto 1956, 6–7. 96. Crainz, Storia del miracolo italiano 75–85; Daniël, Biltereyst. ‘Youth, Moral Panics and the End of Cinema. On the Reception of ‘Rebel Without a Cause’ in Europe’. 171–189 in J. David Slocum (ed.), Rebel Without a Cause: Approaches to a Maverick Masterwork (New York: SUNY/State University of New York Press, 2005), 177. 97. ‘Perché il pubblico si allontana dal teatro di prosa’, Epoca, 2 febbraio 1952, 3; ‘Tempi molto duri per la lirica’, Epoca, 19 aprile 1959, 15–17. 98. ‘Applaudire o no a scena aperta? Pareri favorevoli e contrary, ma gli applausi fanno sempre bene’, Epoca, 18 ottobre 1952, 3–4. 99. ‘Applaudire o no a scena aperta? Pareri favorevoli e contrary, ma gli applausi fanno sempre bene’, Epoca, 18 ottobre 1952, 3–4. 100. ‘Astratto e concreto’, Epoca, 22 novembre 1952, 7; ‘Sartre non é Pascal’, Epoca, 30 giugno 1951, 5. 101. ‘I due nasi di Picasso’, Epoca, 9 giugno, 1951, 5. 102. ‘La Romana e i fidanzati’, Epoca, 31 gennaio 1953, 6. 103. ‘La Romana e i fidanzati’, Epoca, 31 gennaio 1953, 6. 104. ‘La Romana e i fidanzati’, Epoca, 31 gennaio 1953, 6.

References Primary Sources Magazines Epoca Grandi Firme, Le Tempo Archival Mondadori Archive: Busta Zavattini (1939 a 1961/1965/1969). DOXA Istituto per le Ricerche Statistiche e l’Analisi dell’Opinione Pubblica and SIRM Società Italiana Ricerche di Mercato, Indagine nazionale sui lettori dei quotidiani e dei periodici sui telespettatori, radioascoltatori e cinespettatori, Market Research for the Advertising Association Utenti Pubblicità Associati, (Unpublished, 1958). SIPRA Archive.

Secondary Sources Alberoni, Francesco. ‘Presenza della TV in Italia’, RAI radiotelevisione italiana, Televisione e vita italiana. Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1968. Asor Rosa, Alberto (ed.). Letteratura italiana. Storia e geografia Volume terzo: L’età contemporanea. Torino: Giulio Einaudi editore, 1989. Barański, Zygmunt G. and Rebecca West (eds.). The Cambridge Companion to Modern Italian Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.

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Biltereyst, Daniël. ‘Youth, Moral Panics and the End of Cinema. On the Reception of ‘Rebel Without a Cause’ in Europe’ in Rebel Without a Cause: Approaches to a Maverick Masterwork. Edited by J. David Slocum, 171–189. New York: SUNY/State University of New York Press, 2005. Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Translated by Robert Nice. Boston: Harvard University Press, 1984. Bravo, Anna. Il fotoromanzo. Bologna: Il Mulino, 2003. Buonanno, Milly. Naturale come sei: Indagine sulla stampa femminile in Italia. Rimini & Firenze: Guaraldi, 1975. Capuzzo, Paolo. ‘Youth and Consumption’, in The Oxford Handbook on the History of Consumption. Edited by Frank Trentmann. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Crainz, Guido. Storia del miracolo italiano: Culture, identità, transformazioni fra anni cinquant e sessanta. Roma: Donzelli Editore, 1996. de Berti, Raffaele. Dallo schermo alla carta: Romanzi, fotoromanzi, rotocalchi cinematografici: Il film e i suoi paratesti. Milano: Vita e Pensiero, 2000. de Mauro, Tullio. Idee per il governo—la scuola. Roma: Laterza, 1995. Eco, Umberto. Apocalypse Postponed. London: Flamingo, 1995. Eco, Umberto. Apocalittici e integrati: Comunicazioni di massa e teorie della cultura di massa. Milano: Bompiani, 1997. Forgacs, David and Robert Lumley (eds.). Italian Cultural Studies: An introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Forgacs, David and Stephen Gundle. Mass Culture and Italian Society: From Fascism to the Cold War. Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2007. Ginsborg, Paul. A History of Contemporary Italy: Society and Politics 1943–1980. London: Penguin Books, 1990. Gramsci, Antonio. Selections from Cultural Writings. Edited by David Forgacs, Geoffrey Nowell–Smith, translated by William Boelhower. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1985. Gundle, Stephen. Between Hollywood and Moscow: The Italian Communists and the Challenge of Mass Culture 1943–1991. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2000. Hanne, Michael. ‘Alberto Moravia’s La Romana: The Appropriation of Female Experience’. Italica 60, no. 4 (1983): 351–359. Moliterno, Gino (ed.). Encyclopedia of Contemporary Italian Culture. London and New York: Routledge, 2000. Moravia, Alberto. La Romana. Milano: Bompiani, 1947. Moravia, Alberto. The Woman of Rome. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1958. Morris, Penelope. ‘From Private to Public: Alba de Céspedes’ Agony Column in 1950s Italy’, Modern Italy 9, no. 1 (2004): 11–20. Morris, Penelope (ed.). Women in Italy, 1945–1960: An Interdisciplinary Study. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.

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Morris, Penelope. ‘A Window on the Private Sphere: Advice Columns, Marriage, and the Evolving Family in 1950s Italy’, The Italianist, 27 (2007): 304–332. Ommundsen, Wenche. ‘From the Altar to the Market–Place and Back Again: Understanding Literary Celebrity’ in Stardom and Celebrity: A Reader. Edited by Sean Redmond and Su Holmes, 244–255. London: Sage, 2007. Parca, Gabriella. Italian Women Confess. Translated by Carolyn Gaiser. London: Pan Books, 1963. Parca, Gabriella. Le italiane si confessano. Milano: Feltrinelli, 1964. Passerini, Luisa. ‘The Ambivalent Image of Woman in Mass Culture’, in A History of Women in the West: V. Toward a Cultural Identity in the Twentieth Century. Edited by Françoise Thébaud, Chapter translated by Joan Bond Sax, 324–342. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1994. Piccone Stella, Simonetta and Annabella Rossi. La fatica di leggere. Roma: Editori Riuniti, 1964. Ragusa, Olga. ‘Alberto Moravia: Voyeurism and Storytelling’, The Southern Review, 4 (1968); 127–146.

CHAPTER 3

Dear Intellectual: The Cultural Advice Columns

In 1968, Pier Paolo Pasolini offered a candid reflection on the readers’ letters to his advice column Il caos (Chaos) in the illustrated news magazine Tempo. He wrote: Sure enough I have begun to receive letters from Tempo readers. I would like not to, because every letter constitutes a sin of omission, my lack of a response. Generally, I have to say, the letters are enjoyable: some of them even give me a profound joy (even if as brief as a flash). The people who write are almost always ingénue people: the type of person that I love the most. And sometimes this naivety has the awkwardness and the clarity of grace.1

Pasolini’s love of receiving letters from the young and ingénue would come as no surprise to readers of Tempo as he was known as much for championing outsiders and innocents, as for his rants against the hypocrisy of the bourgeoisie and authority. Pier Paolo Pasolini, an intellectual, poet, author, filmmaker and journalist, was one of the loudest voices speaking out against the modernisation and industrialisation of Italy. No historical account of the social and cultural changes of Italy in the 1960s is complete without referencing Pasolini’s views on television, advertising and longhaired beatniks.2 Pasolini warned of the destructive impact of mass culture on Italy, particularly of the devastation of folk culture and loss of Italy’s linguistic diversity of dialects.3 His advice column title © The Author(s) 2018 E. Barron, Popular High Culture in Italian Media, 1950–1970, Italian and Italian American Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90963-9_3

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intentionally highlights the social upheaval of the time. Il caos and other similar intellectual advice columns of the 1960s reflect shifting cultural practices during and after Italy’s ‘economic miracle’ in the correspondence between magazine readers and literary celebrities. Significantly, these columns place magazine readers within the broader public discussion of modernity, society and culture. This chapter examines the intellectual advice columns of Pier Paolo Pasolini in the left-wing magazine Vie Nuove and mainstream Tempo, as well as the columns of Nobel Laureate poet Salvatore Quasimodo in illustrated news magazines Le Ore and Tempo. These columns had a lot in common with the ‘poor cousin’ relationship advice pages in women’s magazines. They offered knowledgeable guidance in unfamiliar situations and helped readers navigate society’s changing rules and expectations.4 Indeed, even in the much-disparaged fotoromanzo (photonovel) magazine Bolero Film, readers sent their cultural questions and sought advice on what to read. Certainly, the fotoromanzo columnists differed in status in comparison with the illustrious poets of the illustrated news magazines, and yet, they still had cultural authority with their readers. Fotoromanzi readers sent letters about books and art to the advice column of popular short story writer and novelist ‘Enrico Dellarno’ and to the column of Lea Laudi, a stern bespectacled woman with a theatre background who flatly refused to answer relationship questions. The columns written by Quasimodo, Pasolini, Dellarno and Laudi occurred in different types of magazines and occupied different positions in the literary hierarchy. And yet, all four columns demonstrate the growing cultural aspirations of magazine readers and the social importance of cultural literacy and knowledge.

Magazine Reading in Italy in the 1960s The Italian magazine market boomed during the 1950s. By the 1960s, this growth continued apace as magazine reading became part of even more people’s lives. Italy’s ‘economic miracle’ between 1958 and 1963 brought increased industrialisation, new types of employment, migration to cities and an extra two million lower-middle-class Italians regularly reading magazines.5 For the first time, the number of lower-middle-class readers almost equalled the number of middle-class readers. The Italian middle class constituted less than one-third of the overall population and made up 41% of magazine readership. Within Italy, the

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lower-middle-class group was the largest of all the class groups, making up 42% of the population and now, an almost representative 40% of the magazine market.6 By the end of the ‘economic miracle’, 23 million people, or more than 60% of Italy’s adult population, read weekly magazines. Most read one of the illustrated news magazines, such as Epoca or Tempo (16.5 million readers read one of the illustrated news magazines, an additional three million readers since 1958).7 Approximately 13.8 million people read women’s magazines, such as Grazia or the picture-stories in fotoromanzi magazines Bolero Film and Grand Hôtel.8 Magazine reading was a pervasive cultural practice for both men and women and a source of information, advice and entertainment across the transforming society. Young people remained the most avid magazine readers, with almost 80% of 16- to 24-year-olds reading at least one magazine each week.9 These young readers represented almost one-quarter of the entire magazine market.10 Young people formed an important readership for the illustrated news magazines even though the number magazines specialising in youth culture such as film, music or fashion increased dramatically as the 1960s progressed. People read magazines in various ways, some looked at the pictures, whereas others read them cover-to-cover. Some read only one magazine, while others read several in a week. Readers remained loyal to the same publication, others frequently changed magazines. In the early 1960s, interviews by researchers Simonetta Piccone Stella and Annabella Rossi reflect the different readers and ways of reading magazines. The photographs and photojournalism proved a popular feature, one interviewee (S. L., 50 years old, Teaching diploma, wife of a lawyer), explained that she read magazines like Epoca or Tempo, ‘my husband buys them and I look only at the pictures. At least if there are no articles that I find that interest me’.11 Similarly, another reader (S. T., 35 years old, doctor, married with two children) said that he read Le Ore and that his favourite part was the photographs, ‘The first things that I look at in an illustrated magazine are the photographs, next, the various gossip of the magazine’.12 A young salesman (A. C., 30 years old, textile sales, accounting diploma), said that his choice of magazine was usually influenced by the photograph of the woman on the cover adding that he read, ‘All, I read all from the first to the last page, including the advertising. Normally Epoca, but I repeat, if you understand, I read Le Ore, I read ABC, Il tempo, whatever weekly magazine’.13 A young female teacher (C. G.,

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28 years old, literature degree, single) explained how she read her favourite magazine Gente: The first thing I read are the letters to the editor, then I look at the photographs, above all the news photographs, there are always two pages packed full of photographs, then I read the letters to the director again, then I read usually, the articles on history. Then news, on princes, actors, actresses, Hollywood, things like that, but they bore me very much…14

Typically, intellectuals and others with high levels of formal education looked down on magazines as conformist and lightweight. Magazine reader, ‘Vincenzo Guarducci, Lecce’, wrote to Epoca’s editor, ‘in the newspapers I always see the word rotocalchi (rotogravure, or illustrated magazines produced on rotary printers) used with a disparaging tone’.15 He found the newspaper comments often disapproved of magazine content as being in bad taste, the ‘gusto da rotocalchi’, asking, ‘what is the periodical press guilty of, that it is always held up for disapproval for the (newspaper) readers?’16 Epoca’s director, Enzo Biagi, responded to the letter, listing the contribution rotocalchi made to readers and dismissing the prejudices against magazines as groundless. Biagi wryly observed that the only thing magazines are ‘guilty’ of is selling millions of copies each week. Disagreeing with the caricature of magazines as tedious, conformist and reproducing the same content since 1940, Biagi proposes, ‘there are modern periodicals, which take into account the changing needs of the public’. He takes care to differentiate between the magazines that, ‘present girls in bikinis on the cover’, from quality magazines like Epoca, which provide educational and cultural articles, giving access to the firme or ‘big names’ in literature, cinema and art.17 Italy’s proud humanist tradition set the stage for much of the prejudice against mass consumerism and mass media in Italy during the 1950s and 1960s. Intellectuals and elites feared that readers and audiences with lower levels of education or lower economic and social positions diminished the quality of culture. For the Italian intelligentsia, middle-class and lower-class taste too often celebrated the mediocre. Mass-produced content, coupled with the growing cultural consumption of the middle class and now the lower-middle class formed a negative force in culture and society.18 The warnings of the Frankfurt School resonated, in particular, the views of Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno who perceived mass culture as a standardised nightmare of sameness and manipulation.19 Herbert Marcuse, also of the Frankfurt School, cautioned that

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technology destroys high culture and turns it into a commodity, leading to an acquiescent society and ‘one–dimensional man’.20 The growing popularity of American mass culture fuelled these concerns. The leftwing intellectuals of the Italian Communist Party, fearing the impact of American cultural imperialism on Italians, pursued a policy of broadening access to literature and high culture that owed as much to Benedetto Croce as to Antonio Gramsci.21 Umberto Eco’s 1964 book Apocalittici e integrati describes the relationship between Italy’s intellectuals and their mass culture environment at the time.22 For Eco, the cultural landscape was populated with moralistic ‘apocalyptics’ who believed mass culture would destroy society, as well as optimistic ‘integrators’ who believed mass culture could bring art, music, theatre and literature to the broader population. Eco appositely observed that generally the ‘apocalyptics’ worked within mass culture to protest against mass culture, ‘contro i mezzi e pur dentro i mezzi’.23 This included the cultural advice columns.

Dear Mr Pasolini From the 1950s through to his death in the mid-1970s, Pasolini assumed an important social and cultural role as a writer, public intellectual and social commentator. He did so, in part, through his advice columns in Vie Nuove and Tempo magazines. Pasolini railed against what he saw as the dystopian influences of the ‘economic miracle’ and modern Italy. He scorned bourgeois and consumer values as conformist, advocated the ‘saving’ of dialect language and created enduring ideas around the destruction of peasant and worker culture in the face of modernisation, television and Americanisation.24 Fellow novelist Alberto Moravia deftly summarised Pasolini’s position and role in the intellectual environment: Pasolini found himself living in a disastrous period for Italy, i.e., at the moment of a catastrophe without parallel, after military defeat, with two foreign armies fighting each other on its soil. At the same time, the industrial revolution drew into the cities millions of men from the rural civilisation which Pasolini loved and of which he was a part. These are the two leading themes in Pasolini’s poetry: a lament for the devastated, disheartened, prostrated homeland, and nostalgia for the rural culture.25

This lament and nostalgia shaped Pasolini’s novels, films and magazine columns. Pasolini’s novels were controversial for their representation of poverty, prostitution and violence and, ‘thrust Pasolini even more

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directly into the news, making of him a central if polemical figure of Italian culture’.26 Pasolini’s work scrutinised the conditions of makeshift communities stemming from Italy’s massive internal migration, in particular, the estimated four million poorer Italians living on the periphery of cities by the end of the decade, in the borgate of Rome, the Coree of Milan and shanty towns on the outskirts of Turin, Palermo and Naples.27 Readers surveyed about Pasolini’s novels expressed mixed views on his work, but agreed that he had accurately depicted the borgate slums of Rome’s outer-suburban fringe.28 One interviewee (L.U., 26 years old of San Lorenzo) said, ‘I like the books of Pasolini, however I think they are very crude, although the language is true, as is the description of the misery that there is in Rome. In the centre everything is beautiful, in the periphery everything is ugly’.29 Between 1960 and 1965, readers of the left-wing weekly news magazine Vie Nuove could write to ask Pasolini questions in his column Dialogo (Dialogue). The column and letters covered a broad range of political, social and cultural subjects. Spanning, as Gian Carlo Ferretti describes: De Gaulle and Tambroni, neo–capitalism and the centre–left, censorship and neo–fascism, Testori’s L’Arialda and the films of Antonioni, sex and ‘alienation’, communists and Catholics, unemployment and ‘well–being’, The Gospel According to Matthew (1964) and the new avant–garde, the Cuban crisis, Europe and the Third World, and so on.30

Vie Nuove had close links to the Italian Communist Party, although it was not an official publication. It sought to offer readers a politically and socially progressive magazine in the popular rotocalco style. The magazine blended ideology and left-wing cultural content with light articles on film, television and sport. This led to some unlikely and striking combinations of politics and mass culture. A Vie Nuove magazine cover in late 1958 shows an elegant Sophia Loren in diamonds and a gown, juxtaposed with a title banner promoting an article on a Soviet writer ‘The poet of the Revolution: new documentary on the life of Vladimir Mayakovsky’.31 Another, in the 1960s, featured Brigitte Bardot with tousled locks and red pout above a headline regarding the Turkish military coup.32 Although Vie Nuove sought to attract female readers and even held a ‘Miss Vie Nuove’ beauty pageant, the majority of the readership was male. In both the late 1950s and early 1960s, almost 70%

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of the readers were men.33 Despite attempts by one of the few female magazine editors Maria-Antonietta Macciocchi to broaden the audience with clearer communication and additional photographs, the weekly readership levels remained more or less around half a million readers.34 Vie Nuove, Stephen Gundle observes, ‘failed to attract a real following beyond the ranks of the party faithful’, and it, ‘never shook off its predominantly male image, nor did it attract more than a very modest amount of advertising’.35 Vie Nuove failed to secure a substantial slice of the 16.5 million readers of weekly illustrated news magazine market. Tellingly, the magazines Epoca, Oggi and Tempo attracted many more readers from a low socio-economic background than Vie Nuove.36

‘I was fifteen, and up until then I had read only adventure books’ Young people, particularly students, sought advice from Pasolini on culture and help with self-education. ‘Angelo Maffini, Cremona’ (a twentyyear-old student, son of factory workers) wrote to say he was living in a health sanatorium and would like some guidance with his reading, ‘I have dedicated myself to the study of Italian literature, but now I would like to deepen my knowledge a little more and study the poets’. Angelo asks Pasolini for his advice ‘what are the books that I must study? who are the poets that I must study further? what is the best system for this study?’ Pasolini’s response to Angelo was passionate, personal and thoughtful. It reflects Pasolini’s evangelism and enthusiasm for literature and self-education. Pasolini replied: If your desire to learn is authentic and lasting, you have found perhaps the most beautiful moment of life. I remember when it happened to me. What days! I spent hours and hours in the Portico della Morte in Bologna, where they sell used books, to choose, to read the titles, spying on pages and indexes. I was fifteen, and up until then I had read only adventure books (in Cremona, where I lived for three years); then unexpectedly I came across The Idiot by Dostoevsky, and it was a revelation. I read all Dostoevsky, and then Tolstoy: and then the tragedies of Shakespeare. Only a year or two later I discovered contemporary poetry, thanks to my young high school teacher, himself a poet, Mario Rinaldi. And then I read The Occasions by Montale and The Feeling of Time by Ungaretti: which was the second revelation.37

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Here, Pasolini describes his youthful reading with almost religious overtones, recounting his transformation through the works of the nineteenth Russian novelists Fyodor Dostoevsky and Leo Tolstoy, and then William Shakespeare. Pasolini portrays his self-education as a serendipitous and delightful journey. It is a compelling response. Not only is his discovery of poetry ‘a revelation’, but also he becomes ‘a desperado’ in his obsession. Like a desperado, I began to read contemporary poets, who then were the Hermetic poets: and from them I went back to the Symbolists, above all to Rimbaud. And, naturally, I continued to read with voracity the novelists of the nineteenth century: the Russians, the English, the French. As you can see, it was not a ‘plan’ of reading: things were born from themselves. You have lots of time, I imagine, in the sanatorium where you find yourself: therefore, patiently, start to put your trust in chance. Maybe take as a guide the history of Italian literature by De Sanctis, that is very evocative, and together, with the more modern one of Sapegno. I would advise you however to start with the contemporary writers: they are much easier to understand as their values are closer to our, they share our own historical context. For the classics it is always necessary to have a difficult philological and historical preparation, and as always happens – reading them so, instinctively – to misunderstand. After you have learned to ‘read’ on your contemporaries you can come to the classics with more experience and with more sensitivity.38

Pasolini provides this young ingénue Angelo with advice to trust chance and serendipity and to delight in literature and reading, rather than following a strict plan. Pasolini shows a path to classic literature via the contemporary writers. In addition to seeking advice on how to navigate Italian poetry, readers wrote to ask for Pasolini’s judgement on the work of key writers and famous works, such as James Joyce’s Ulysses.39 Other readers sought Pasolini’s views on contemporary cultural issues such as film censorship.40 Presumably one of the party faithful, ‘Dino Guelfi of Arezzo’ questioned Pasolini on Italian cultural tradition and the Gramscian idea of a popular national literature. Guelfi observed that Italy lacked a modern Chekhov and that he believed film and television created obstacles to the Gramscian objective. Pasolini replied, ‘Film and television are simply competitors; they are welcome! The struggle will have mixed fortunes, but I do not doubt the final victory of the book (non-industrialised, of

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course) not reduced to books for “pastimes”’.41 The fight against industrial culture consumed as a pastime or leisure is a recurring theme, in contrast to the innocent serendipity of reading described to the 20-yearold student, Angelo. The column forms part of Pasolini’s public celebrity, his ‘spectacular authorship’, created by his mass media presence of interviews, films and documentaries.42 Pasolini retains control over his image, and yet the letter columns also provide a way to interact with, guide and acknowledge the readers’ experience of modern Italy. A reader’s authority is not equal to Pasolini, it is mediated and is selective, and yet, the ‘dialogue’ is made possible through an adaptation of the mass culture piccola posta format. Gabriella Parca’s 1959 book Le italiane si confessano (published in English in 1963 as Italian Women Confess) reproduced a selection of unpublished letters sent to two small circulation fotoromanzi called Luna Park and Polvere di Stelle (Stardust).43 This collection provides a valuable source of eight thousand reader letters saved by Parca from her time working at the fotoromanzi magazines, which she classified into themes including ‘The Famous Proof’ letters from young women asking about sex before marriage and relationships. As we will also see in the columns of another fotoromanzo magazine Bolero Film, in addition to advice on relationships and sex, one of the recurrent themes is the ‘Dreams of Art’. Young people, mostly women, wrote letters about becoming an artist, writer or actor. For Parca, ‘These dreams, generally, have nothing in common with authentic artistic aspirations; they are, instead, the fantastic projection of the desire that opposes itself to reality’.44 Parca’s collection produced an important link between advice columns and the neorealist films and cinéma vérité. In the early 1960s, both Cesare Zavattini (neorealist screenwriter and creator of the Italia domanda (Italy asks) column in Chapter 1) and Pier Paolo Pasolini found inspiration in Parca’s letters to represent true stories from everyday Italians. For Cesare Zavattini, the letters of Le italiane si confessano provide an important resource, comparable to his vision for Italia domanda and the aims of the neorealist film movement: I hope that a true and real body of letters by Italians is brought together, letters from domestics, from immigrants, from soldiers, from office workers, from pensioners and so on, to go in libraries and above all in homes where the interest in these documents today seems impossible, like it once seemed impossible to have poor people as protagonists on the screen.45

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Zavattini worked on a film of short stories inspired by Parca’s book— Le italiane e l’amore (1961, Italian women and love).46 The film credits the project as ‘based on a concept by Cesare Zavattini’ and Gabriella Parca collaborated on the film, which included eleven different directors for each of the eleven ‘letters’.47 Le italiane e l’amore formed part of Italy’s early cinema verité, presented in the style of a documentary, although it is crafted using writers and actors to recount the stories of the women behind the magazine letters collected by: the single mothers, the girlfriends dumped after premarital sex, the catastrophe of non-virginal wedding nights and married people having affairs.

‘A type of travelling salesman who tours Italy to interview the Italians’ Pasolini, instead, attempts his conversation with the Italian public through the documentary film Comizi d’amore (1964), released in English as Love Meetings and also inspired by Gabriella Parca’s collection of letters.48 Pasolini used the film and also vox pop interviews to establish a dialogue with people from different regions and classes in Italy, particularly focusing on popular attitudes to sex. Pasolini presented the documentary with a degree of lightness and humour, describing himself as ‘a type of travelling salesman who tours Italy to interview the Italians on their sexual tastes: not to launch a product, but in the most sincere intention to understand and report faithfully’.49 Pasolini conducted interviews with Italians living both in towns and the country. He talked with peasants in the field that he suggested were, ‘brutalized by the industrial world’, and interrogated the bespectacled and bourgeois university students of Bologna. Pasolini conversed with groups of friends at the seaside in Tuscany, Lazio, Campagna and the Lido, and interrogated self-conscious work colleagues outside Milan factories, and in Florentine artisanal workshops. The interviews highlighted the sharp contrasts between the values of traditional and modern Italy— young women of Sicily who could not go to the cinema or bar alone ‘as these girls do in the North’, seeking to capture Italy’s imbalanced transition and uneven social changes.50 Pasolini provided a commentary on the vox pop interviews, suggesting the modern north is confused about sex with the recent appearance of liberal ideas and changing rules, while the traditional south had no

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confusion due to their rigid conservative attitudes. Milanese interviewees claimed to be comfortable with the idea of divorce, as Calabrese interviewees joked (to cheers and applause) that it was better to kill your wife than to divorce and remain a cuckold. The public interviews were punctuated with the reflections of eminent Italian psychoanalyst, Cesare Musatti, and the novelist Alberto Moravia. As Anna Bravo observes, no women deliberate on the results of this inquest on Italian attitudes to sex, only intellectual men.51 The three intellectuals took tea together in a garden, as Pasolini explained his aims for the film and the responses he received in the interviews. For Musatti, the source of the interviewee behaviours and restrictions was their Freudian sexual denial, for Moravia the interviewees were shaped by their social context and background. The well-known journalists, Camilla Cederna, Adele Cambria and Oriana Fallaci, hold a privileged position above those of standard interviewees and yet, not at the illustrious level of intellectuals Moravia and Mussatti.52 Pasolini asked perky young women at a dance and smart-suited businessmen on a train about their emotional response to homosexuality and if they could love a son who was gay. He interviewed poet Giuseppe Ungaretti about homosexuality, as he reclined awkwardly in a seaside deckchair. Film historian Maurizio Sanzio Viano describes the ambiguities of the scene: To the questions, “Does sexual normality or abnormality exist?,” the old poet replies that “every man is made in a different way,” so that “all men are in their own way abnormal. All men are in contrast with nature, and the act of civilization is an act against nature.” Faced with more personal questions, Ungaretti extricates himself with a coy answer: “I am a poet, I transgress all laws just by writing poetry.” Pasolini does not succeed in legitimizing “the pressing reality” of homosexuality through an open confession by Ungaretti. Only those among the viewers who know of Ungaretti’s homoerotic tendencies are able to understand what Pasolini is trying to do.53

The combination of interviews with ‘the people’ to document their experiences of life and ‘the intellectuals’ trying to make sense of the world over a pot of tea is an apposite illustration of the lack of connection between the two groups. Another jarring aspect of the documentary is the interviewees’ keen awareness of Pasolini’s celebrity; indeed, the sunbathers on the Lido seem to be almost angling for a film role.

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Interviewees aim to please, and Pasolini openly applauds non-conforming responses. Anna Bravo suggests that the willingness of interviewees to discuss their private lives with Pasolini or Zavattini is a legacy of the piccola posta women’s advice columns that normalised public discussions about relationships.54 Letters to advice columns and vox pop interviews provided for Pasolini, as it did for Zavattini before him, the perception of unique access to hidden social truths and a gateway into the overlooked lives of ordinary people. Both the documentary and the magazine columns established a role for intellectuals in film and magazines as social commentators and interpreters of meaning in people’s lives.

Fotoromanzi—Cultural Advice from a Friend Enrico Dellarno was the pen-name of an anonymous writer of women’s novellas and popular short stories for weekly magazines Le Grandi Firme, Bolero Film and the monthly Romanzi Giallorosa (crime novels for female readers) magazine. This anonymity was reflected in the title of his advice column in Bolero Film, ‘Chi sono?’ (Who am I?). Readers knew the pen-name Dellarno and his writing well. The column had a personal focus: readers were invited to write in, ‘If you have doubts or are perplexed about questions regarding yourself or others, send your questions to the column’. When the column debuted in 1963, Enrico Dellarno explained, ‘Chi sono? will be for you the living room of a friend a little wiser and experienced, where you can come for advice or clarification’.55 Like many other fotoromanzi magazines, Bolero Film published stories in pictures very much like a film storyboard. The magazine often featured Italian and American film stars on its cover and would contain three or four serialised stories, historical bodice-rippers and modern romances. Interspersed with the stories, the magazine reported Hollywood news and gossip, with an increasing amount of entertainment news coverage on Italian television celebrities. Bolero Film attracted 2.2 million readers in the early 1960s, dropping marginally to 2.1 million in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Throughout the 1960s, around half (just over one million) of Bolero Film’s readers had a lower-middle-class background and more than one-third had a middle-class background.56 While traditionally classified as a women’s magazine by 1963, 40% of Bolero Film’s readers were men.57 Its highly visual format produced easy-to-read captioned stories—an appealing

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approach for readers with limited literacy. Eighty percent of Bolero Film readers had either no formal schooling or a primary school level of education.58 Most questions to Enrico Dellarno came from young women asking about relationships, family arguments and sex. Dellarno received two or three hundred letters a week, and he said that about 70% came from women. The majority of letters focused on personal problems and relationships.59 However, among these letters, a small but consistent number asked questions about culture, seeking advice on books to read, or interesting facts about opera music and the theatre. The questions reflected the low level of formal education of many readers. ‘Rosaria from Benvenuto in Campania’ had seen the film Doctor Zhivago and wrote to ask the title of the original book and the name of its author.60 Unlike some columnists, Dellarno’s response was kind, explaining that Boris Pasternak was the author of the novel, also called Doctor Zhivago and he had been awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

‘I would like to read more, only I do not know where to start’ An important change underpinned these cultural questions—the number of young women who read magazines and books increased in the 1960s, so that by 1965, for the first time, young women aged between 15 and 25 read more than men.61 This shift in cultural practice played out in the letters pages of Bolero Film, which included questions about new forays into reading and culture. In his column, Dellarno assured readers that familiarity with the works of Daphne du Maurier, Pearl Buck, Louis Bromfield and Vera Caspary would benefit them and, ‘will make you more secure in yourselves, from your culture to your conversations’. Dellarno observed that many Bolero Film readers, ‘lament that they have insufficient culture’ and seek advice from him on what to read.62 Dellarno’s advice commonly referred readers to Mondadori’s Oscar series of popular and inexpensive paperback books. Like its Mondadori siblings Epoca and Tempo, Bolero Film ran book advertisements alongside the text including, ‘The Modern Man reads Mondadori’.63 As Penelope Morris observes in her work on 1950s advice columns, letters pages and their advisor’s responses achieved huge popularity due to their practical support in a society of new opportunities and changing rules.64

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For women in the 1960s, this assistance began to include advice for reading literature. The cultural advice in Bolero Film, however, differs from Epoca and Tempo in important ways. The pleasures of reading are firmly positioned within achieving social competence, where reading helps women feel ‘more secure’ and offers an attainable goal to compensate for a lack of education. The advice is a world away from Pasolini’s serendipitous literary pilgrimage for young male invalids. The most significant difference was that Bolero Film advocated condensed book versions, something that the intellectuals of the advice columns would never do. Dellarno claimed to have ‘two drawers full’, of letters that asked him ‘why not give us more things to read? Something beautiful, that could help us culturally?’ Dellarno replied that he would select novels from hundreds of masterpieces, to choose the ones ‘that everyone must know’ and moreover promised to ‘reduce the heavier pages and leave the best parts, those destined to last forever’.65 ‘Liana S of Taranto’ wrote, ‘I would like to read more, beautiful and important books, only that I do not know where to start’. Dellarno reassured ‘Liana’ that soon new serialised condensed novels would be published weekly in Bolero Film, each part a length of about eight pages. Condensed adaptations, ‘celebrated books by authors that none of us can ignore, but a little streamlined and with the less necessary parts cut out’ and added that, ‘you too can know the best of world fiction, learn while having fun and becoming a fan’.66 Bolero Film’s ‘Great Novels of Today and Yesterday’ included popular classics such as W. Somerset Maugham’s The Razor’s Edge, as well as Daphne du Maurier’s My Cousin Rachel and Margaret Millar’s mystery Wall of Eyes.67 These books had international reputations and were selected as popular and accessible novels. The condensed novels included brief background information about the author noting their cultural significance. These introductions provided both personal and professional biographical information. For example, the introduction to W. Somerset Maugham observed, he was born in Paris in 1874, where his father worked in the British Embassy. Following a list of his successful novels, the reader is informed that the author died last year at his ‘fabulous villa in Cap Ferrat’.68 The approach blends instruction with a touch of French Riviera glamour. Dellarno wrote in his column that he and magazine director Luciano Pedrocchi had faith in the intelligence of the readers, which had been generously repaid. For Dellarno, the letters from readers

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recounting their enjoyment of condensed novels demonstrated their willingness to be ‘open, keen to learn and ready to have the best’.69 ‘Antonio R., from Venice’ wrote that he very much enjoyed the condensed books, but he wanted to know why Bolero Film had not adapted ‘the important work of Ernest Hemingway?’70 It was possible that the editor wrote this letter in order to promote future magazine sales, as the reply noted that A Farewell to Arms would be appearing in condensed form soon, adding, that the book had also been made into a celebrated film starring Rock Hudson.71 The cultural hierarchy of original books versus condensed or serialised books and film adaptations were for Dellarno, uncontroversial. No one mentions Walter Benjamin or authenticity in Bolero Film.

‘I have to tell you your poems seem mediocre’ Readers of Bolero Film sent poetry and short stories to the magazine columnists, asking for expert opinion and advice on how to get their work published, or seeking suggestions on how to become a novelist or professional writer. In this form of cultural participation, columnists were far less encouraging, with harsh feedback that raised grammar and originality as issues. Fifteen-year-old ‘Letizia of Tursi’ asked Enrico Dellarno if she could send him her novel. Dellarno responded in an affable and yet thoroughly belittling manner, ‘Save the effort and the expense, my friend. From your little letter, I see that before you attempt narrative you have much work to do on grammar and syntax’.72 The writer’s reply to Letizia was far kinder than his critique of the poems sent by ‘S. Dino of Turin’, which for Dellarno were too full of archaic nineteenth-century words and lacking in originality.73 When ‘S. Antonio of Rome’ sent six poems to Dellarno and asked which he thought was the best one, he responded without pause, ‘In all sincerity I have to tell you that your poems seem mediocre’.74 Dellarno found the work of ‘Future poet’ (Futura poetessa) to be ‘half way between prosaic language and certain Leopardian reminiscences’ and thanked another reader, fifteen-year-old Erma, for her card, photograph and poems noting that they ‘confirmed her elevated sensibilities and notable intelligence’.75 Perhaps, the photograph helped. Another Bolero Film advice column, Lea Laudi’s Date retta a me (Take my advice) also answered reader letters and questions. ‘Lea Laudi’

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appears to have been a fictional columnist with the persona of a stern aunt and a comprehensive knowledge of theatre. Laudi made it very clear that she would not answer letters on ‘sentimental’ issues. The readers’ questions asked for information and general advice on cultural subjects, theatre and the great works or writers of literature. Readers asked questions about writers Dante Alighieri and Voltaire, the different versions of Faust (Christopher Marlow or Johann Wolfgang von Goethe), information on various Renaissance painters, and modern artist Pablo Picasso, the violinist Niccolò Paganini, the music of Ludwig von Beethoven and the general quality of opera after the death of Giuseppe Verdi.76 ‘Anna of Livorno’ asked for advice on a book that would help her ‘to start’ to understand Italian literature. Laudi gave her the same advice that Pasolini had offered to the young student Angelo—to read Francesco De Santis’s History of Italian Literature. Laudi advised Anna that the history was easy to understand, and as a guide, it ‘manages to be instructive without losing depth. Read it, I am sure that you will be glad you did’.77

Dear Quasimodo Salvatore Quasimodo remains one of Italy’s most well regarded contemporary poets. The Swedish Academy awarded Quasimodo the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1959. The prize provided a source of national pride, and yet it attracted controversy, as Italian literary critics did not regard Quasimodo as highly as the poet Giuseppe Ungaretti, who had been repeatedly overlooked for the coveted honour. Italian literature and art critic, James Gardner suggests it was Quasimodo’s connection to the Resistance that had meant, unlike Ungaretti, he was cleared of ‘the taint of fascism’.78 In the air hung the memory of Italy’s last Nobel Laureate, playwright Luigi Pirandello, sending his gold Nobel medal to Benito Mussolini in 1934, to melt down in support of the Fascist Giornata della Fede (Day of the Faithful). Pirandello’s medal had gone into the flames alongside the gold wedding rings of thousands of Italian wives in public ceremonies to support the war effort in Abyssinia and in response to sanctions by the League of Nations against Italy.79 Before the war, Quasimodo wrote poetry in the hermetic style, influenced by French symbolism. After the war, his poetry exposed social issues and memories of the Nazi occupation.80 While neorealism did not shape post-war Italian poetry in the same way it had influenced film and literature, literary scholars suggest the ‘neorealist climate is

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unmistakeably present’ in the later poetry of Salvatore Quasimodo.81 Quasimodo had worked for magazines and newspapers as a writer and an editor. This gave him valuable experience communicating to audiences outside the literary cliques. In the 1930s, Quasimodo worked with Cesare Zavattini on magazines for the Mondadori publishing house and was as an editor of Tempo from 1938, although, as historian Carlangelo Mauro observes, Quasimodo’s duties at Tempo were ‘marginal, limited to writing captions for the photos published in the weekly’ and he was fired for antifascist activities in 1940.82 After the war, Quasimodo wrote for the newspapers Gazzetta del Popolo and Milano Sera.83 Between 1960 and 1964, Quasimodo penned the column Il falso e vero verde (The false and true green) for the magazine Le Ore. The column had the same title as a collection of his poems, published in 1956. Le Ore was one of the lighter illustrated news magazines, with a high proportion of photojournalism, particularly the kind of photojournalism that involved photographing film stars and young women in bikinis. Quasimodo’s column filled a whole page and included the byline ‘Salvatore Quasimodo Nobel Prize winner’. Each week, Quasimodo wrote two or three short observations about current events, expressing his thoughts on culture and literature. In one edition, he mused on the jealousy of Iago in William Shakespeare’s play Othello with a detailed account of the main characters and reference to a good book on Shakespeare by English writer John Middleton Murry.84 Another week, he wrote about his admiration for Leo Tolstoy and the classics War and Peace and Anna Karenina and critiqued a new book about the poet Lorenzo Calogero.85 He wrapped up the column with three verses of a poem in Trieste dialect by the poet Biagio Marin to wish him a happy seventieth birthday and to lament the lack of recognition Marin’s work had received from literary journals and the public.86 From 1964 and until his death in 1968, Quasimodo moved from Le Ore’s column of general cultural reflections, to answer readers’ letters in the column Colloqui con Quasimodo (conversation with Quasimodo) at Tempo. When Quasimodo switched from the smaller circulation magazine Le Ore to the highest circulation weekly news magazine, Tempo, he more than quadrupled his potential readership from 670,000 to a mass circulation of over 2.8 million readers.87 Tempo magazine covered a range of topical events: Italy’s rapid industrialisation and the economic boom, the thrills of technology, the space race and other modern

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wonders. Like Epoca, the general format and content were based on the American Life magazine. In addition, an agreement with the magazine Look provided regular photographs and copy from America. In a notable divergence from Life magazine, both Epoca and Tempo prominently positioned culture within the magazine and promoted it as a part of modern Italian life. As we saw in Chapter 2, this relationship was built on a historical link between magazines and intellectuals, as well as strong business reasons for this approach. Publishing houses Mondadori and Rizzoli produced most of Italy’s popular magazines, and they also published most book titles in Italy. The equivalent scenario in the USA would have been if Random House had owned Life magazine and controlled the editorial content. As the Italian economy strengthened, magazines reflected and influenced modern aspirations with advertisements for FIAT cars, Candy washing machines and Phonola television sets.88 Magazines similarly reflected and influenced cultural aspirations, expected cultural behaviour and knowledge through regular columns on art exhibitions, book and theatre reviews and full-colour multi-page spreads on the work of contemporary and historical artists. The Italian masters received special attention and were presented in a reverent and educational manner, positioned as a key part of a general cultural literacy. In the early 1960s, many Tempo readers had a middle-class background and yet there were almost as many readers from a lower-middle class and lower class background. Of the 2.8 million Tempo readers, 1.3 million came from the middle class and 1.1 million from the lower-middle and lower classes.89 The prevalence of high culture content in magazines goes beyond the promulgation of middle-class values; it became integral to the new identity of modern Italy. Colloqui con Quasimodo established a forum for Tempo readers to ‘talk’ with the great poet and to ask his advice or opinion. The reader questions sought cultural information or requested Quasimodo’s views about modern Italian society. The column filled a full-page with four or five letters from readers. Some letters asked the types of information-seeking questions common in Italia domanda in the 1950s, such as questions about art or artists or books, and the names or ideas that people had seen in print or had heard discussed by colleagues and friends. For example, ‘Signor A. Battista of Aosta’ wrote to Quasimodo to ask ‘What is the Gruppo ’63 (Group 63) that I have read about in the newspaper?’90 Quasimodo, never a fan of the group of avant-garde intellectuals and poets that included Umberto Eco and Alberto Arbasino,

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responded that the group was already old and had ‘retired from battle’, replaced by the beat generation.91

‘Has the time of hunting celebrities finished?’ New, confusing or threatening elements of modern life inspired many readers’ questions resulting in a broad range of topics that encompassed cultural, social and historical subjects. To illustrate, a column published in 1965 included questions on modern violence, the survival of dinosaurs, B-list celebrities and the new concept of ‘free time’.92 The topics reflected the different reactions to new aspects of modern life: media reporting of violence and fear of urban crime, education, celebrity culture and the changing work patterns and employment schedules. ‘Pierluigi Cardone from Mantova’ wrote: ‘The news is full of bloody events, strangulations, knifings, poisonings, shootings. I believe that the world has never before been like this, full of hate or of madness. Or am I mistaken?’93 Quasimodo reminded ‘Pierluigi Cardone’ of the long history of violence, as well as the ways that frequent media coverage can shape the perception of violence. On a different theme, ‘Lia Pozzobon of Padua’ wanted to know if, ‘the prehistoric monsters are all gone from the earth or if some remain alive and continue their species’.94 Quasimodo responded that dinosaurs only existed in museums, although there are occasional sightings of the Loch Ness monster. He added that a tourist had recently claimed to see something similar to the Loch Ness monster in Lake Garda, yet the lakes were more likely ‘to be polluted with plastic bottles, rotten fruit and dead animals’ than to be hiding monsters or dinosaurs.95 ‘Loredana V. of Trapani’ was disappointed with the absence of big stars and the high number of photographs of nonentity starlets at the film festivals of Venice, Cannes and Taormina. She asked ‘Has the time of hunting celebrities finished?’96 Quasimodo responded that it had not, and reassured the reader that a suspected divorce or scandal will force even antichi traguardi or ancient targets to run from photographers. ‘Beniamino M. of Bari’ wrote ‘For a while I have heard talk about worker’s free time. There are newspapers that advise taking up a hobby, similar to work. I saw also on television, a program that interviewed company employees about how they spend their free time. Why?’97 For Quasimodo, ‘The usual fear was behind it: to leave very little time free to man to think or act outside of the merry–go–round of brutal work’.98

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‘Why do we give such great importance to Humanism?’ The Colloqui con Quasimodo column sought to establish a conversation with young people about their society. Indeed, Tempo editor Arturo Tofanelli introduced the column as aiming ‘to develop an open and sincere dialogue with the young, with the kids of today, discuss with them the problems, the ideas, the feelings of our time’.99 Quasimodo’s ‘conversation’ intended to share the values of freedom and culture with the next generation. At this time, readers under the age of 25 accounted for one-quarter of Tempo’s circulation of 2.8 million.100 This new generation found itself at the forefront of the social, cultural and economic changes of Italy, particularly in the education system. In 1962, reforms to the Italian education laws made school compulsory up to the age of fourteen. This requirement, and the increasing importance of education in society and the skilled jobs-market, almost doubled the number of school students. The speed and scale of this growth stretched the capacity of already under-resourced local schools.101 The inherent bias and inadequacies of the school system were described in a book jointly written by students at the remote village school of Barbiana. The book, Lettera a una professoressa (Letter to a Teacher), recounted shocking education statistics and completion rates with students’ personal experience to reveal the institutionalised disadvantage experienced by working-class students, students from small towns and students from families working in agriculture.102 The book angrily challenged the high failure rates of these students, as opposed to the ‘Pierino’ or ‘Little Peters’ students from upper-class or middle-class families. The students questioned the effectiveness of recent parliamentary reforms and accused politicians of lacking any understanding of the students’ experiences: Parliament is split in two factions. The right wing pushed Latin in the school system. The left pushed science. None of them remembered us, not one had seen the problem from the inside, not one knew the struggle that your school put us through.103

‘Gianni B. a student from Mortara’ wrote to Quasimodo about these changes and educational priorities, asking ‘At what point are the schools in Italy at after the various reforms? Why do we give such great importance to Humanism, that is, to classicism?’104 Quasimodo’s response lamented the role of schools in undermining the value of the classics, particularly in the scientific and technical schools.105

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The problem is the snobbish mania for abstraction in schools, their fear of facing reality, whether the reality of the present or of two thousand years ago. Humanism is shown therefore as a vice, a rhetorical and peripheral perspective: the kids who experience this vacuum end up by learning things that they have forgotten as soon as they have finished school.106

Quasimodo entreated ‘Gianni B.’ to read, urging him and the readers of Tempo, ‘Read then the classics, because only from their effective presence come life lessons’.107 While Quasimodo largely emphasised continuity with previous generations, the letters and his responses capture the sense of crisis of youth, culture and the pressure leading to the student protests of 1967 and 1968. In addition to increased number of students in the school system, the number of students in the university system had tripled during the 1960s to more than half a million students and the university resources had not increased in line with this rapid growth.108

‘Is there incompatibility betwen spouses of mixed marriages’ Quasimodo received letters from both men and women about personal relationships. These were just like the letters to the advice columns of women’s magazines. ‘Signora Rosa C. of Cerignola in Foggia’ wrote, ‘I would like to know if it is true that there exists a complete incompatibility between spouses of “mixed–marriages” between people from the north and south’.109 Both Quasimodo’s marriages had been ‘mixed’ in as much as he had married women from the north of Italy. The Sicilian Quasimodo’s first wife Bice Donetti, who died in 1947, was from Emilia in the centre of Italy, and his second wife Maria Cumani was from Lombardy in the north. We can speculate that the reader was aware that Quasimodo had separated from Cumani in 1960. Quasimodo replied that, ‘Perhaps the encounter is more favourable between a southern woman and a northern man in any case the united culture of the two is very important. Only the discipline of the mind destroys taboo and prejudices’.110 ‘Giorgio Z. of Rovigo’ wrote to Quasimodo to say that his girlfriend had left him, and although he had previously believed himself to be modern and ‘an enemy of sentimentalism’, as well as part of ‘the generation that laughed at suicide and vendetta for love’, he had been forced to re-evaluate his stance in the light of his acute feelings of jealousy.

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Giorgio Z. added that despite his understanding of existential problems learnt from ‘contemporary literature, from Sartre to the drug–taking American writers’, he now understands that ‘the feelings of man are immutable and that jealousy is the same immemorial green eyed monster of Shakespeare’.111 Quasimodo replied that young people are not that different to everyone else and these times are not that different from the past, ‘The youth of today, even when costumes change their external appearance their underlying spiritual inexperience is always like Dante’s, tormented in search of Paradise’.112

‘Few are able to pay the high cost of buying good books’ Quasimodo encouraged his column readers to read books, poetry and literature of quality. He expressed his dismay at the limited reading habits of most Italians and their apparent preference for mass culture and less worthy entertainment. Letters from readers that questioned the affordability of books, or suggested good books were hard to find and understand, were given short shrift. For Quasimodo, it was a travesty that Italians were reading poor-quality books or no books when good ones were now affordable. This poor-quality reading material included, the prevalence of gialli the cheap mystery books with yellow covers, rosa the romance novels for women with pink covers and fumetti comic books. ‘Paolo Attaresi of Ascoli Piceno’ wrote to Quasimodo for advice on cheaper serialised books bought in instalments that were variable in quality, but not as expensive as good books: They say that Italians are an uncivilised people because, above all, they read little. But even if the Italians liked reading they would limit themselves to the simple dailies or, at the most, to the gialli and rosa novels that for some time have filled the newsstands. Few are able to pay the high cost of buying good books, books of high moral and literary value, capable of broadening the horizon of the reader. There are, it is true, also publications in instalments (art, history, literature etc.) but many are wary of them, me included, so I ask for your judgement of the value of these publications.113

Quasimodo disagreed that the cost of good books put them out of the reach of all but a few and responded strongly:

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Would the reader from Ascoli Piceno permit me to doubt that a middle class Italian cannot find the money to buy at least one book a month? From the statistical results we see instead that here there are millions of people who do not buy even one a year. The graphs of the percentage of expenditure on entertainment assigns to Italy one of the first places in Europe. The billions thrown away on Sunday activities, in the box offices of the cinema, the football pitches, the nightclubs, they are expenses with ironclad rights. The reality is that literature is considered almost a genre beyond the people’s interests, foreign to life in a society organized as if it was a cheap local newsletter.114

Wading into the debate in the following weeks, ‘Giovanni Lojacono of Palermo’ wrote questioning the motives of intellectuals like Quasimodo and the book industry. Lojacono wanted to know from Quasimodo what these great books were, and suggested that his advice was just another advertisement. Apropos Italians who do not read, I would like to know what are the books of high moral and literary value? Aside from the great French and Italian authors of the nineteenth century, one does not truly know how to choose in all the mass of modern novels bound like dictionaries and by exotic authors. You always say read, read. It is only commercial propaganda. Have you seen what they publish in the weekly magazines? Some classics and then novellas that they want to pass off as great modern books. It is better to read non–fiction than novels, but also here what non–fiction? Books must have literary value but be legible, do you not think? Why did you recommend Alain Fournier? I rushed to buy Le Grand Meaulnes but what value does it have? Adolescence ends, but it did not make me feel anything.115

Quasimodo started his reply by somewhat pedantically correcting Giovanni Lojacono that, in fact, Italian nineteenth-century writers were not very well known. Quasimodo went on to say that if the reader from Palermo was not going to be moved by Alain Fournier he probably would not enjoy Marcel Proust either, ‘then it would be better for him to not “waste his time” … there are murder mysteries, there are comics. Perhaps Satanik (adult comic book) will have the most “moral” reflection for many’.116 While Quasimodo was dedicated to sharing his love of culture, he was nevertheless one of the cultural apocalyptics who believed that

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mass culture was destroying culture and society.117 One of the compelling aspects of the letters from ‘Paolo Attaresi of Ascoli Piceno’ and ‘Giovanni Lojacono of Palermo’ is that the readers are questioning the cost of books and, more significantly, challenging the advice of intellectuals. After the death of Quasimodo in 1968, Tempo editor Arturo Tofanelli wrote about the values he believed that Quasimodo hoped to instil in the new generation. For Tofanelli, Quasimodo had worked: … with great passion in a conversation with the young, searching with amazing patience in a spirit not immune to hardships like his own, with an understanding of essential values, selecting those values to be defended at all costs: freedom and culture, essential pillars in his idea of a truer world.118

When Salvatore Quasimodo died of a brain haemorrhage in 1968, Pasolini assumed his role as celebrity columnist in Tempo. The column, Il caos (Chaos), included questions from readers alongside Pasolini’s opinion pieces, as well as various written exchanges with other intellectuals. Soon after he took on this new role, Pasolini received an angry letter signed ‘a communist’ rebuking him for writing for a bourgeois magazine, predicting—correctly, as it turned out—that Pasolini would end up writing for Corriere della Sera, ‘like all the other careerist writers’.119 Pasolini maintained his column would continue challenging Italy’s bourgeoisie: I will always speak violently against the bourgeoisie: in fact, it will be the central theme of my weekly discourse. And I know well that the reader will remain ‘baffled’… by my fury: well, it will be clear when I have specified that for the bourgeoisie I do not so much mean a social class as much as a true and real disease.120

Italy’s cultural landscape was changing. By the early 1960s, 23.7 million people watched television in an average week and more than one-third of the adult population (14 million) watched television daily.121 Italy’s television broadcaster RAI launched one state-run channel in 1954, with a second channel added in 1961. Television reached mass-uptake by the mid-to-late 1960s, transforming both everyday cultural practice and the mass media ecosystem.122 As we saw in Chapter 2, the editorial policies of illustrated news magazines featured educational

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and instructive articles and photograph-essays, alongside their current affairs and entertainment content. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the state-controlled RAI television expanded into this information, entertainment and instructive role. Despite this shock to the media landscape, restrictions on content and advertising on television provided magazines with huge opportunities for information on fashion, beauty and new consumer goods. Magazines found large gaps in the market to occupy. During this period of television audience growth, the magazine market also continued to expand, attracting new readers from the lower-middle class as well as greater numbers of readers with lower levels of education. Magazine coverage of television programs and celebrities contributed to rising magazine sales. Between 1958 and 1963, Radiocorriere, RAI’s own television and radio guide increased its weekly readership from 3.6 to 4.4 million; Settimana Radio TV more than doubled from 0.5 to 1.2 million; and Sorrisi e Canzoni jumped from 1.5 to 4 million readers each week.123 Very few intellectuals successfully crossed over to the television medium; they remained an established part of magazine content. In an early column, Pasolini recounted a story to his readers about a conversation with a journalist who had questioned him regarding the small number of intellectuals on television. The journalist found this absence significant, as intellectuals were ever-present in magazines. Pasolini observed that intellectuals avoided television due to the authoritarian and parliamentary control that prevented dialogue and debate. For Pasolini, television was: Typically authoritarian: indeed between screen and spectator there is no possibility of dialogue. The screen is a cathedra [the bishop’s throne in the cathedral], and the words spoken from the television, are necessarily ex cathedra [infallible]. There is nothing to do about it, the screen consecrates, gives authority, and makes it official. Even the comic and humble characters are there with an appearance of having received a benevolent slap on the back from those who are more powerful than them: rather, from who is Powerful par excellence. In short, the screen represents the opinion and the will of a single source of information, which is in fact, generally, of Power. And holds the viewer in awe in this way.124

Although still subject to editorial control, magazines could publish the work of intellectuals without interference and were, as we have seen, able to establish a dialogue between intellectuals and readers in a way

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that television did not. In addition to his conversation with the readers of Tempo, Pasolini wrote his own letters to prominent individuals. His first, an open letter to Prime Minister Giovanni Leone, asked for an explanation for of the violent repression of student demonstrations at the Venice Film Festival. Leone publically replied to Pasolini via the Tempo ‘Letters to the Editor’ page that there had been no violence. Pasolini continued the exchange responding that he had witnessed police violence and asked Leone, ‘How many things of this kind will happen in the next year? How many students and democratic men will be struck because they are not disposed to accept ‘reform’ but finally claim the application of their rights?’125 Pasolini created this dialogue with the Prime Minister to hold the Italian state to account. However, it was an important difference that increasingly the role of the intellectual was to correspond on behalf of his readers, not with them. Il caos featured exchanges between Pasolini and intellectuals such as Alberto Arbasino, or well-known film people such as Anna Magnani and Luchino Visconti and of course his old friend and intellectual sparring partner Alberto Moravia. The letters were similar to the conversations around the garden table between Pasolini, Moravia and Musatti in the documentary Comizi d’amore. In September and October 1969, Moravia and Pasolini exchanged letters through the column debating an article by Moravia in the Corriere della Sera regarding a private viewing of a non-dubbed version of Federico Fellini’s film Satyricon, one of the many European co-productions filmed as actors spoke their native languages and then subsequently dubbed over for each linguistic market. Pasolini argued that a film’s aesthetics are insufficient and understanding the language of the actors is vital. The exchange continued with amicable intellectual banter about information and expression, sound and image and references to semiotics and structuralism. The reader is an audience for the intellectual exchange by Moravia and Pasolini and their spirited point scoring.126 Well before the celebrity of Pier Paolo Pasolini and Salvatore Quasimodo, fame formed an important part of Italy’s established tradition of public intellectuals. Both the eminent humanist philosopher Benedetto Croce and the notorious Gabriele D’Annunzio lived as important public figures. Indeed, Gian Maria Annovi suggests that ‘D’Annunzio was the Italian inventor of celebrity branding’, harnessing the media to build his fame and supplementing his income with advertising campaigns for Saiwa biscuits.127 Posthumously, the intellectual

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and political image of Antonio Gramsci, crafted by Palmiro Togliatti and the Italian Communist Party, achieved prominence and broad recognition.128 Certainly, the magazines use of firme ‘big names’ taps into this celebrity legacy. However, the scale of the magazine market gave intellectuals like Pasolini and Quasimodo unprecedented access to millions of readers through their columns, a medium that allowed an imperfect, but partial dialogue on culture and society.

Conclusion Cultural advice columns and general advice pages reflected a population experiencing improved economic and social conditions now taking greater interest in self-education, cultural literacy and increasingly consuming accessible and affordable culture. Advice columns and letters pages opened up the possibility of a dialogue between intellectuals or writers— both elite and popular—and magazine readers. While this dialogue was unequal and the letters were selected not only for instruction but also for entertainment, the columns provide a valuable picture of the relationship that some intellectuals and authors had with magazine readers. Questions about culture were less frequent in Bolero Film than in Tempo, and yet these questions were a feature of both publications, despite their different audiences. At the same time, there were important differences between the letters from readers in the columns of Tempo and Bolero Film. The intellectual columns of Quasimodo and Pasolini in Tempo during the years of social protest in 1967–1968 engaged in debates about education, culture and the state, whereas the letter columns of Bolero Film in these years did not reflect social upheaval or crisis. Another major difference was in the type of cultural material recommended, for Quasimodo and Pasolini the original books and artworks were the only materials to be studied and enjoyed. Columnists writing for Bolero Film recommended film adaptations, or serialised and condensed novels as an inexpensive and accessible first step towards reading the classics. Italian magazines pushed the popularisation of high culture, evangelising on behalf of the literary greats (and Mondadori market development), describing contemporary art and artists, promulgating the views of intellectuals, poets and authors. For intellectuals, the advice columns offer a cherished connection with ‘real’ Italians, the ingénue and the masses to be guided and saved from modernity. The responses in the columns of Pasolini and Quasimodo communicate a sense of urgency to

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share literature as a spiritual gift with ‘real’ Italy, rather than see culture packaged as leisure time. During the 1960s, the cultural advice columns of the revered Salvatore Quasimodo and the controversial Pier Paolo Pasolini operated in many ways as cultural advice columns, and in other ways as social commentary. Readers of illustrated news magazines Vie Nuove and later Tempo asked questions about culture, queried the world around them and even sought personal advice. The columns by celebrity intellectuals critiquing the changing times targeted the young in an attempt to use literature to balance negative influences from consumerist mass culture, bourgeois conformism and state-controlled television. The dialogue between magazine readers and intellectuals in cultural advice columns provided an important forum for the two groups to examine the dramatic shifts in modern Italian society and assess the value of culture in individual’s lives. Paradoxically, they owed much to mass culture and the piccola posta format to achieve it.

Notes









1. Pier Paolo Pasolini, ‘Il caos’, Tempo, 3 settembre 1968, reprinted in: Pier Paolo Pasolini, Il caos (Roma: l’Unità Editori Riuniti, 1991), 37. 2. Pier Paolo Pasolini, Scritti corsari (Milano: Garzanti, 2011). 3. See Chapter 1 for discussion about terms describing culture. 4. Penelope Morris, ‘A Window on the Private Sphere: Advice Columns, Marriage, and the Evolving Family in 1950s Italy’, The Italianist 27 (2007): 304–332, 308. 5. See Chapter 1 for discussion about terms describing class. 6.  DOXA, ‘Tav. 3. Lettura di settimanali 3.1.4: Secondo sesso e classe sociale’, Indagine nazionale (1963): 52. Note: While 5% of the population was categorised as upper class, this group made up 7% of the magazine market. Proportionally, far fewer lower-class people read weekly magazines, although 21% of the population were lower class 12% of people in this group read weekly magazines. 7.  DOXA Istituto per le Ricerche Statistiche e l’Analisi dell’Opinione Pubblica and SIRM Società Italiana Ricerche di Mercato, ‘Tav 0.0: R. Secondo sesso’, Indagine nazionale sui lettori dei quotidiani e dei periodici sui telespettatori, radioascoltatori e cinespettatori Confidential Market Research for Utenti Pubblicità Associati (Unpublished, 1958), 231; DOXA Istituto per le Ricerche Statistiche e l’Analisi dell’Opinione Pubblica, ‘Tav. 3. Lettura di settimanali 3.1.1: Secondo zone

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geografiche’, Indagine nazionale OTIPI sui mezzi pubblicitari (Milano: Stab. Pol. G. Colombi, 1963), 48. 8.  DOXA, ‘Tav. 3. Lettura di settimanali 3.1.1: Geografiche’, Indagine nazionale (1963): 48. 9. DOXA, ‘Tav. 3. Lettura di settimanali 3.1.1: Secondo età’, Indagine nazionale (1963): 53. In 1963, 5.5 million 16- to 24-year-olds read magazines of 6.9 million people in that age group. 10.  DOXA Istituto per le Ricerche Statistiche e l’Analisi dell’Opinione Pubblica, ‘3. Lettura di settimanali. 3a composizione del lettori di settimanale’, Indagine nazionale 46. The 16–24 age group comprised 18.9% of the adult population. 11. Simonetta Piccone Stella e Annabella Rossi (cura di), La fatica di leggere (Roma: Editori Riuniti, 1964): 217. 12. Piccone Stella e Rossi, La fatica di leggere, 401. 13. Piccone Stella e Rossi, La fatica di leggere, 237. 14. Piccone Stella e Rossi, La fatica di leggere, 310. 15. See Chapter 2 for a discussion of Epoca’s ‘Italy asks’ column. 16. Vincenzo Guarducci, ‘Lettere al Direttore’, Epoca, 31 marzo 1957, 3. 17. Vincenzo Guarducci, ‘Lettere al Direttore’, Epoca, 31 marzo 1957, 3. 18. Silvio Lanaro, Storia dell’Italia repubblicana (Venezia: Marsilio Editori, 2011), 269; For a detailed description, see Giacomo Manzoli, Da Ercole a Fantozzi: Cinema popolare e società italiana dal boom economico alla neotelevisione (1958–1976) (Roma: Carocci editore, 2012), 31–41. 19. Max Horkheimer and Theodore Adorno, Gunzelin Schmid Noerr (ed.), Edmund Jephcott (trans.), Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002), particularly ‘The Culture Industry: Enlightenment as Mass Deception’, 94–136. First printed in 1944. 20. Herbert Marcuse, One Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society (London and New York: Routledge, 2007), 60, first printed 1964. 21. David Forgacs, Italian Culture in the Industrial Era 1880–1980: Cultural Industries, Politics and the Public (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1990), 158; Stephen Gundle, ‘The Legacy of the Prison Notebooks’ in Italy in the Cold War: Politics, Culture and Society 1948–58, Christopher Duggan and Christopher Wagstaff (eds.) (Oxford and Washington: Berg, 1995), 137–138. 22. Umberto Eco, Apocalittici e integrati: Comunicazioni di massa e teorie della cultura di massa (Milano: Tascabili Bompiani, 1977), 361–365. First published in 1964. 23. Eco, Apocalittici e integrati, viii.

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24. For an evidence-based analysis to challenge common Pasolini myths, see John Foot, ‘Milan and the City: The Impact of Television in Milan’, Contemporary European History 9, no. 3 (1999): 379–394. 25.  Pier Paolo Pasolini, ‘Preface by Alberto Moravia’, Roman Poems, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Francesca Valente (trans.) (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1986), 3. 26.  John Picchione and Lawrence R. Smith (eds.), Twentieth-Century Italian Poetry: An Anthology (Toronto, Buffalo, and London: University of Toronto Press, 1993), 294. See also Victoria G. Tillson, ‘Rome’s Modern Margins: The Borgate in Pasolini’s Una vita violenta’, Romance Notes 48, no. 3 (2008): 313–325. 27. John Foot, Milan Since the Miracle (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2001), 35 and 43–46; Paul Ginsborg, A History of Contemporary Italy: Society and Politics 1943–1988 (London: Penguin, 1990), 239. 28.  Pasolini’s two novels Ragazzi di vita (1955) and Una vita violenta (1959) depicted the precarious existence on the fringes of society—the ostracised poor and criminal underclass of Rome’s outer-suburban slums or borgate. The two novels shaped Pasolini’s first film Accattone (1961). 29. Piccone Stella e Rossi, La fatica di leggere, 121–122. 30. Pier Paolo Pasolini, ed. Gian Carlo Ferretti, Le belle bandiere: Dialoghi 1960–1965 (Roma: Editori Riuniti, 1996), 7. Notes: Fernando Tambroni was Prime Minister of Italy for four months in 1960; censors prevented Luchino Visconti from staging Giovanni Testori’s play L’Arialda in 1960 see Gaetana Marrone, Paolo Puppa (eds.), Giovanni Testori, Encyclopedia of Italian Literature Studies (New York: Routledge, 2006), 1870. 31.  Vie Nuove, 13 dicembre 1958, cover. 32. Vie Nuove, 11 giugno 1960, cover. 33. DOXA, ‘0. Totale, Tav. 0.0: Secondo sesso’, Indagine nazionale (1958): 269; DOXA, ‘0. Totale, Tav. 0.0: Secondo sesso’, Indagine nazionale (1963): 269. In 1958, Vie Nuove’s weekly readership was 450,000: comprising 310,000 male readers and 140,000 female readers. In 1963, Vie Nuove’s weekly readership was 580,000: comprising 400,000 male readers and 180,000 female readers. 34. Stephen Gundle, Between Hollywood and Moscow: The Italian Communists and the Challenge of Mass Culture (Duke University Press, 2000), 95–96. 35. Gundle, Between Hollywood and Moscow, 96. 36. DOXA, ‘4. Letture dei singoli settimanale Attualità e per famiglia, 4.1.4: Secondo sesso e secondo classe sociale’; ‘6. Letture dei singoli settimanali Fotoromanzi, programmi radio–TV e diversi: adulti, Tav. 6.1.4:

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Secondo sesso e secondo classe sociale’, Indagine nazionale (1963): 74; 119. Epoca: Superiore 500,000; Media 1.36 milioni; Medio–inferiore 700,000; Inferiore 120,000. Tempo: Superiore 420,000; Media 1.32 milioni; Medio–inferiore 920,000; Inferiore 180,000. Oggi: Superiore 650,000; Media 2.67 milioni; Medio–inferiore 1.64 milioni; Inferiore 430,000. Vie Nuove: Superiore 40,000; Media 260,000; Media–Inferiore 240,000; Inferiore 40,000. 37. Pasolini, Le belle bandiere, 57–58. 38. Pasolini, Le belle bandiere, 57–58. 39. ‘Dialogo’, Vie Nuove, 3 dicembre 1960, in Pasolini, Le Belle Bandiere, 85–88. 40. ‘Dialogo’, Vie Nuove, 3 dicembre 1960, in Pasolini, Le Belle Bandiere, 92–96. 41. Pasolini, Le belle bandiere, 112 and 115. 42.  Simona Bondavalli, ‘Charming the Cobra with a Ballpoint Pen: Liminality and Spectacular Authorship in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Interviews’, MLN 122, no. 1, Italian Issue (2007): 24–45. 43. Penelope Morris, ‘The Harem Exposed: Gabriella Parca’s Le italiane si confessano’, Penelope Morris ed., Women in Italy, 1945–1960: An Interdisciplinary Study (E-book: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 111. 44. Parca, Italian Women Confess, 81. Interestingly, in these letters, correspondents ask the columnist for advice, or an introduction so that they can become actors or writers, wanting to make a living from a creative profession. Gabriella Parca estimated that about 2% of her advice column letters were on this theme, which included letters regarding both high and mass cultural forms: how to be an artist, or how to be a film star. While this theme was not as common as the 6% of letters regarding virginity ‘the famous proof’, it was as prevalent as questions about ‘adultery or almost’. 45. Gabriella Parca, Le italiane si confessano (Milano: Feltrinelli, 1964), 10. 46. Translated as ‘Italian women and love’, film released in Italy as Italiane e l’amore (1961) and internationally as Latin Lovers (1961). 47. Directors included Francesco Maselli ‘Le adolescenti’, Carlo Musso ‘Un matrimonio’. 48. Comizi d’amore (1964), dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini (New York: Water Bearer Films, 2003); Penelope Morris, ‘The Harem Exposed: Gabriella Parca’s Le italiane si confessano’, in Women in Italy, 1945–1960: An Interdisciplinary Study, Penelope Morris (ed.) (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 109–130, 110. 49.  Comizi d’amore, dir. Pasolini.

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50.  Comizi d’amore, dir. Pasolini. 51. Anna Bravo, Il fotoromanzo (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2003), 97. 52. Maurizio Sanzio Viano, A Certain Realism: Making Use of Pasolini’s Film Theory and Practice (Oakland: University of California Press, 1993), 126. 53. Anna Bravo, Il fotoromanzo (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2003), 97. Note: Adele Cambria also worked as an actress, appearing in two of Pasolini’s films Accattone (1961) and Teorema (1968). 54. Anna Bravo, Il fotoromanzo (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2003), 96. 55. Enrico Dellarno, ‘Chi sono?’, Bolero Film, 6 gennaio, 1963 56.  DOXA, ‘6. Letture a singoli settimanali: Fotoromanzo, programmi radio–TV e diversi 6.2.2: Uomini secondo classe sociale’; ‘6.3.2— Donne secondo classe sociale’, Indagine nazionale (1963): 129. 57.  DOXA, ‘6. Fotoromanzo, 1.4 Secondo sesso’, Indagine nazionale (1963): 119; 74. 58. DOXA, ‘6. Fotoromanzo, 6.1.7 Secondo grado di istruzione’, Indagine nazionale (1963): 123. 59. Dellarno ‘Chi sono?’, Bolero Film, 29 settembre 1963, 56. 60. Dellarno, ‘Chi sono?’, Bolero Film, 2 aprile 1967, 5. 61.  Istituto Centrale di Statistica, ‘Indagine sulle letture (a) Tav. 106: Persone di oltre 6 anni che leggono o non leggono’, Annuario delle statistiche culturali Vol. VIII—1966 (Roma: Istituto Centrale di Statistica, 1966), 119–120. 62.  Dellarno, ‘La Cultura è raggiungibile’ ‘Chi sono?’, Bolero Film, 20 giugno 1965, 3. 63. ‘L’uomo moderno legge Mondadori’, Bolero Film, 23 ottobre 1966, 70. 64. Morris, ‘A Window on the Private Sphere’, 308. 65. Dellarno, ‘Chi sono?’, Bolero Film, 24 luglio 1966, 2. 66. Dellarno, ‘Chi sono?’, Bolero Film, 7 agosto 1966, 3. 67. Somerset W. Maugham, ‘Il filo del rasoio’, Bolero Film, 16 aprile 1967, 60–65; Daphe du Maurier, ‘Mia Cugina Rachele’, Bolero Film, 26 febbraio 1967, 54–59; Margaret Millar ‘Occhi nel buio’, Bolero Film, 26 marzo 1967, 62–68. 68. ‘Chi é Maugham’, Bolero Film, 16 aprile 1967, 60. 69. ‘I lettori di Bolero Film sono grandi!’, Bolero Film, 4 settembre 1966, 72. 70. Dellarno, ‘Chi sono?’, Bolero Film, 5 febbraio 1967, 4–5. 71. The Rock Hudson version of A Farewell to Arms was released in the US in 1957 and Europe in 1958. 72. Dellarno, ‘Chi sono?’, Bolero Teletutto, 17 marzo 1968, 61. 73. Dellarno, ‘Chi sono?’, Bolero Teletutto, 16 agosto 1968, 4. 74. Dellarno ‘Chi sono?’, Bolero Teletutto, 22 settembre 1968, 2.

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75. Dellarno, ‘Chi sono?’, Bolero Teletutto, 26 gennaio 1969, 18; Dellarno, ‘Chi sono?’, Bolero Teletutto, 8 settembre 1968, 4. 76.  Laudi, ‘Date retta a me’, Bolero Film, 16 agosto 1964, 45 (Dante); Laudi, ‘Date retta a me’, Bolero Film, 23 maggio 1965, 3 (Voltaire); Laudi, ‘Date retta a me’, Bolero Film, 13 marzo 1966, 15 (Faust); Laudi, ‘Date retta a me’, Bolero Film, 14 febbraio 1965, 5 (Renaissance painters, Picasso); Laudi, ‘Date retta a me’, Bolero Film, 26 aprile 1964, 19 (Paganini); Laudi, ‘Date retta a me’, Bolero Film, 3 novembre 1963, 5 (Beethoven); Laudi, ‘Date retta a me’, Bolero Film, 16 giugno 1966, 3 (Verdi). 77. Laudi, ‘Date retta a me’, Bolero Film, 16 gennaio 1966, 11. 78. James Gardner, ‘The Eternal Note of Salvatore Quasimodo’, The New Criterion, 3 (June 1985), 85. 79. Christopher Duggan, Fascist Voices: An Intimate History of Mussolini’s Italy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 258–260. 80.  Salvatore Quasimodo, ‘On the Willow Boughs’, Selected Poems (Harmondsworth and Ringwood: Penguin Books, 1965), translated from Tutte le poesie (Milano: Mondadori, 1962), 68. 81. Éanna Ó Ceallacháin (ed.), Twentieth Century Italian Poetry: A Critical Anthology (Leicester: Troubador Publishing Ltd, 2007), 188. 82. Carlangelo Mauro, Rifare un mondo: sui Colloqui di Quasimodo (Avellino; ebook, version PDF: Edizioni Sinestesie, 2013), 10. 83.  Gino Moliterno (ed.), Encyclopedia of Contemporary Italian Culture (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), 487; Mauro, Rifare un mondo, 11. 84. Salvatore Quasimodo, ‘Il falso e vero verde’, Le Ore, 20 settembre 1962, 18. 85. Quasimodo, ‘Il falso e il vero verde’, Le Ore, 23 agosto 1962, 18. 86. Quasimodo, ‘Il falso e il vero verde’, Le Ore, 23 agosto 1961, 18. 87. DOXA, ‘4. Letture dei singoli settimanali attualità e per famiglia. Tav. 4.1.2 Secondo classe di popolazione del comune’, Indagine nazionale (1963), 71. 88. Ginsborg, A History of Contemporary Italy, 212–215. 89. DOXA, ‘4. Letture dei singoli settimanali Attualità e per famiglia Tav. 4.1.4—Secondo sesso e secondo classe sociale’, Indagine nazionale (1963): 74. The Tempo readership socio-economic demographics: 400,000 readers upper and upper-middle class; 1.3 million middle class; 920,000 lower-middle class and 180,000 lower class. 90. Quasimodo, ‘Colloqui con Quasimodo’, Tempo, 6 luglio 1966, 19. 91. Quasimodo, ‘Colloqui con Quasimodo’, Tempo, 6 luglio 1966, 19. 92. Quasimodo, ‘Colloqui con Quasimodo’, Tempo, 15 settembre 1965, 18. 93. Quasimodo, ‘Colloqui con Quasimodo’, Tempo, 15 settembre 1965, 18.

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94. Quasimodo, ‘Colloqui con Quasimodo’, Tempo, 15 settembre 1965, 18. 95. Quasimodo, ‘Colloqui con Quasimodo’, Tempo, 15 settembre 1965, 18. 96. Quasimodo, ‘Colloqui con Quasimodo’, Tempo, 15 settembre 1965, 18. 97. Quasimodo, ‘Colloqui con Quasimodo’, Tempo, 15 settembre 1965, 18. 98. Quasimodo, ‘Colloqui con Quasimodo’, Tempo, 15 settembre 1965, 18. 99. Arturo Tofanelli, ‘In questa pagina di Tempo’, Tempo, 25 gennaio 1964, 19, quoted in Mauro Carlangelo, Rifare un mondo, 64. 100. DOXA, ‘4. Letture dei singoli settimanali Attualità e per famiglia Tav. 4.1.4—Secondo età’, Indagine nazionale (1963): 75. Almost half of Tempo’s readers were under the age of 35. Tempo readership by age group: 16–24  years: 720,000; 25–34  years: 590,000; 35–44  years: 590,000; 45–54 years: 470,000; 55–64 years: 300,000; 65 years and over: 170,000. 101. Robert Lumley, States of Emergency: Cultures of Revolt in Italy from 1968 to 1978 (London: Verso, 1990), 52–53. Note: The number of secondary students in Italy increased from 1.15 million in 1959 to 1.92 million in 1969, 53. 102. The School of Barbiana, Letter to a Teacher, Nora Rossi and Tom Cole (trans.) (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1973), 80. 103. School of Barbiana, Letter to a Teacher, 80. 104. Quasimodo, ‘Colloqui con Quasimodo’, Tempo, 21 febbraio 1967, 19. 105. Schools in Italy are divided into technical and classical streams, the classical stream preparing students for university or teaching. 106. Quasimodo, ‘Colloqui con Quasimodo’, Tempo, 21 febbraio 1967, 19. 107. Quasimodo, ‘Colloqui con Quasimodo’, Tempo, 21 febbraio 1967, 19. 108. Christopher Duggan, ‘Table 10: Students Attending University 1861– 1987’, A Concise History of Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 231. In 1960 there were 191,790 students at university in Italy and by 1970 there were 560,605. 109. Quasimodo, ‘Colloqui con Quasimodo’, Tempo, 6 luglio 1966, 19. 110. Quasimodo, ‘Colloqui con Quasimodo’, Tempo, 6 luglio 1966, 19. 111. Quasimodo, ‘Colloqui con Quasimodo’, Tempo, 16 giugno 1965, 18. 112. Quasimodo, ‘Colloqui con Quasimodo’, Tempo, 16 giugno 1965, 18. 113. Quasimodo, ‘Colloqui con Quasimodo’, Tempo, 22 settembre 1965, 18. 114. Quasimodo, ‘Colloqui con Quasimodo’, Tempo, 22 settembre 1965, 18. 115. Quasimodo, ‘Colloqui con Quasimodo’, Tempo, 17 novembre 1965, 18. 116. Quasimodo, ‘Colloqui con Quasimodo’, Tempo, 17 novembre 1965, 18. Note: Satanik was a popular comic book that was first published the year before in 1964 with a female protagonist, a ‘criminal with neither morals nor sexual inhibitions’. See Satanik, in Gino Moliterno (ed.), Encyclopedia of Contemporary Italian Culture (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), 528.

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117. Eco, Apocalittici e integrati. 118. Arturo Tofanelli, ‘Poesia e verità in uno spirito indomabile’, Tempo, 2 luglio 1968, 60–64. 119.  In the 1970s, Pasolini wrote columns about modern society for the newspaper Corriere della Sera that were later published in 1975 as collected works Scritti corsari (Milano: Garzanti, 2011). 120. Pasolini, Il caos, 20–21. 121. DOXA, ‘Frequenza di ascolto della TV 10. Composizione degli ascoltatori della televisione’, Indagine nazionale (1963): 235 122. The early years of television are discussed in Chapters 4 and 5. The 1960s are discussed in Chapters 7 and 9. 123.  DOXA, ‘Tav 0.0: R. Secondo sesso’, Indagine nazionale 268–269; DOXA ‘6. Lettura dei singoli settimanali, fotoromanzi, programmi radio–TV e diversi. 6b composizione del lettori dei settimanale, programmi, Radio–TV e canzoni’, Indagine nazionale OTIPI sui mezzi pubblicitari, 112. 124. Pasolini, ‘Giornalisti, opinioni e TV’ in ‘Il caos’, Tempo, 28 dicembre 1968. Reprinted in: Pasolini, Il caos, 87–88. 125. Pasolini, Il caos, 39–43 and 48–54. 126. Pasolini, ‘Il caos’, Tempo, 13 settembre 1969; Pasolini, ‘Il caos’, Tempo, 27 settembre 1969; ‘Il caos’, Tempo, 11 ottobre 1969, cited in: Pasolini, Il caos, 183–196. 127. Gian Maria Annovi, Pier Paolo Pasolini: Performing Authorship (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017), 73. 128. Stephen Gundle, ‘The Legacy of the Prison Notebooks’, 131–148, in Christopher Duggan and Christopher Wagstaff (eds.), Italy in the Cold War: Politics, Culture and Society 1948–58 (Oxford and Washington: Berg, 1995), 136.

References Primary Sources Magazines Bolero Film Bolero Teletutto Epoca Le Ore Tempo Vie Nuove

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Film Le italiane e l’amore (1961), dir. Nelo Risi, Lorenza Mazzetti, Francesco Maselli (et al.). Comizi d’amore (1964), dir. Pier Paolo Pasolini, (New York: Water Bearer Films, 2003). Archival DOXA Istituto per le Ricerche Statistiche e l’Analisi dell’Opinione Pubblica and SIRM Società Italiana Ricerche di Mercato, Indagine nazionale sui lettori dei quotidiani e dei periodici sui telespettatori, radioascoltatori e cinespettatori Confidential Market Research for Utenti Pubblicità Associati (Unpublished, 1958), SIPRA archive.

Secondary Sources Annovi, Gian Maria. Pier Paolo Pasolini: Performing Authorship. New York: Columbia University Press, 2017. Bravo, Anna. Il fotoromanzo. Bologna: Il Mulino, 2003. Bondavalli, Simona. ‘Charming the Cobra with a Ballpoint Pen: Liminality and Spectacular Authorship in Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Interviews.’ MLN 122, no. 1, Italian Issue (2007): 24–45. Cavazza, Stefano. ‘Twisted Roots: Intellectuals, Mass Culture and Political Culture in Italy.’ Journal of Modern European History 10, no. 2 (May 2012): 207–230. Eco, Umberto. Apocalittici e integrati: Comunicazioni di massa e teorie della cultura di massa. Milano: Tascabili Bompiani, 1977. DOXA Istituto per le Ricerche Statistiche e l’Analisi dell’Opinione Pubblica. Indagine nazionale OTIPI sui mezzi pubblicitari. Milano: Stab. Pol. G. Colombi, 1963. Duggan, Christopher. A Concise History of Italy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Duggan, Christopher. Fascist Voices: An Intimate History of Mussolini’s Italy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Foot, John. ‘Milan and the City: The Impact of Television in Milan.’ Contemporary European History 9, no. 3 (1999): 379–394. Foot, John. Milan Since the Miracle. Oxford and New York: Berg, 2001. Forgacs, David. Italian Culture in the Industrial Era 1880–1980: Cultural Industries, Politics and the Public. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1990. Gardner, James. ‘The Eternal Note of Salvatore Quasimodo.’ The New Criterion 3 (June 1985): 85. Ginsborg, Paul. A History of Contemporary Italy: Society and Politics 1943–1988. London: Penguin, 1990.

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Gundle, Stephen. ‘The Legacy of the Prison Notebooks.’ In Italy in the Cold War: Politics, Culture and Society 1948–58. Edited by Christopher Duggan and Christopher Wagstaff, 131–148. Oxford and Washington: Berg, 1995. Gundle, Stephen. Between Hollywood and Moscow: The Italian Communists and the Challenge of Mass Culture. Duke University Press, 2000. Horkheimer, Max, Theodore Adorno, and Gunzelin Schmid Norre (ed.). Dialectic of Enlightenment: Philosophical Fragments. Translated by Edmund Jephcott. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002. Istituto Centrale di Statistica. Annuario delle statistiche culturali Vol. VIII— 1966. Roma: Istituto Centrale di Statistica, 1966. Lanaro, Silvio. Storia dell’Italia repubblicana. Venezia: Marsilio Editori, 2011. Lumley, Robert. States of Emergency: Cultures of Revolt in Italy from 1968 to 1978. London: Verso, 1990. Manzoli, Giacomo. Da Ercole a Fantozzi: Cinema popolare e società italiana dal boom economico alla neotelevisione (1958–1976). Roma: Carocci editore, 2012. Marcuse, Herbert. One Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society. London and New York: Routledge, 2007. Marrone, Gaetana, Paolo Puppa, and Giovanni Testori (eds.). Encyclopedia of Italian Literature Studies. New York: Routledge, 2006. Martinelli, Alberto, Antonio M. Chiesi, and Sonia Stefanizzi. Recent Social Trends in Italy 1960–1995. Montreal: McGill–Queen’s University Press, 1999. Mauro, Carlangelo. Rifare un mondo sui Colloqui di Quasimodo. Avellino: Edizioni Sinestesie. Ebook, version PDF, 2013. Moliterno, Gino (ed.). Encyclopedia of Contemporary Italian Culture. London and New York: Routledge, 2000. Morris, Penelope (ed.). Women in Italy, 1945–1960: An Interdisciplinary Study. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. Morris, Penelope. ‘A Window on the Private Sphere: Advice Columns, Marriage, and the Evolving Family in 1950s Italy.’ The Italianist 27 (2007): 304–332. Ó Ceallacháin, Éanna (ed.). Twentieth Century Italian Poetry: A Critical Anthology. Leicester: Troubador Publishing Ltd, 2007. Pasolini, Pier Paolo. Roman Poems. Translated by Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Francesca Valente. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1986. Pasolini, Pier Paolo. Il caos. Roma: l’Unità Editori Riuniti, 1991. Pasolini, Pier Paolo. Scritti corsari. Milano: Garzanti, 2011. Pasolini, Pier Paolo, and Gian Carlo Ferretti (ed.). Le belle bandiere: Dialoghi 1960–1965. Roma: Editori Riuniti, 1996. Picchione John, and Lawrence R. Smith (eds.). Twentieth-Century Italian Poetry: An Anthology. Toronto, Buffalo, and London: University of Toronto Press, 1993. Piccone, Stella, Simonetta e Annabella Rossi (a cura di). La fatica di leggere. Roma: Editori Riuniti, 1964.

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Quasimodo, Salvatore. Selected Poems. Harmondsworth and Ringwood: Penguin Books, 1965. RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana. Rai Annuario 1954–1956. Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1958. RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana. Dieci anni di televisione in Italia. Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1964. Sanzio Viano, Maurizio. A Certain Realism: Making Use of Pasolini’s Film Theory and Practice. Oakland: University of California Press, 1993. School of Barbiana. Letter to a Teacher. Translated by Nora Rossi and Tom Cole. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1973. Tillson, Victoria G. ‘Rome’s Modern Margins: The Borgate in Pasolini’s Una vita violenta.’ Romance Notes 48, no. 3 (2008): 313–325.

CHAPTER 4

Lascia o raddoppia?: Contestants and the Classics

Lascia o raddoppia? was much more than a successful television show; it was a cultural and social phenomenon. As Carlo Levi observed at the time, Italians enjoyed Lascia o raddoppia?, and watching the show was a shared and often exciting experience. In 1956, the first year of the program, he described the experience of watching the quiz: It was Thursday, the evening of Lascia o raddoppia?. Faces were intent, mouths closed, foreheads were furrowed in the effort of thought, and then smoothed, happy with the answer, and lips parted in knowing smiles. These people knew everything and answered along with the contestants on the stage the strange questions on unknown topics; participating, you identified with them, acquiring a good greater than strength and beauty: the divine, free, total, absolute omniscience. Everywhere, in the evening now sacred to Minerva, Italians interrupt their business, entertainments, passions, work, and even law making, and gather to improve themselves, to acquire the gift of knowledge.1

For Levi, viewers participated in the quiz, like fans at a football match—emotionally, communally and almost religiously. By mid-1956, Thursday nights in Italy were indeed sacred to Minerva the goddess of wisdom, as over ten million adult viewers watched the 9:00 p.m. quiz.2 The program was so popular that the transcripts were printed in newspapers for those who had missed the show, or who lived in areas © The Author(s) 2018 E. Barron, Popular High Culture in Italian Media, 1950–1970, Italian and Italian American Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90963-9_4

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that were yet to receive television. Unusually for a television program, people did not need to watch in order to participate in the phenomenon. Indeed, during a Papal audience held with the show’s host Mike Bongiorno and Lascia o raddoppia? contestants in late 1956, the Pope observed that he would very much like to join in with the 15 million of Italians who watched the show weekly, except that his commitments meant that he only had time to read the transcripts in the newspapers or magazines.3

Television in Italy 1954–1959 When television broadcasting began on 3 January 1954, the single staterun channel offered a program schedule of thirty hours a week. Initially, the programs were broadcast only in the evening, and later both in the evening and at lunchtime. The evening news at 8:30 p.m. was generally popular, while the prime viewing time and largest audiences were for the programs after dinner between 9:00 and 10:00 p.m. Most shows were broadcast live, and the only pre-recorded programs were news segments and films.4 Before the quiz show Lascia o raddoppia? was introduced in late 1955, the most popular of the evening programs attracted two or three million viewers and on occasion, more than four million.5 Rather than risk leaving television to market forces, the government controlled Italian television and no commercial broadcasters were permitted. Television would become the most influential of the mass culture media in Italy.6 It was in anticipation of this potential social and cultural impact that the government had taken control of broadcasting, committing the medium to national and social objectives. The state broadcasting monopoly aimed to deliver public benefit in two ways: first, by providing the public with access to programs and ideas that were mediated and developed by the state. Many educational and ‘civilising’ programs were developed for the population, offering an introduction to high culture through the works of Italian and Western literature, and, as we will see in the next chapter, Italian opera. Secondly, the RAI restricted content and access to perceived immoral ideas and advertising. Programs were monitored and controlled. Legislation excluded the option of commercial broadcasting for twenty years and placed restrictions on advertising. Towards the end of 1961, program choices were expanded with the introduction of a second channel. It was not until commercial television and local television broadcasts were introduced in 1974 and a third

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government channel was introduced in 1979 that a greater selection of programs was available. The three government channels were divided on political lines through a process known as lottizzazione (allocation or division) where each political party influenced one of the three channels, reflecting their proportion of government.7 Although this allocation occurs after the case studies in this book, it is important to understand the intrinsically political foundation of Italian television. Television advertising, introduced in 1957, was initially restricted to only ten minutes a day, and additional restrictions within the advertisement format saw that the product name could only be mentioned at the beginning and end of the advertisement. The distinct, and often splendid, manifestations of Italian audiences advertising under a state monopoly are explored in greater detail in Chapter 7. In the years after 1954, Italian television audiences increased and diversified at a rapid rate. The dispersed nature of Italy’s population living throughout the peninsula created technical difficulties for a nationwide transmission, so much so that the RAI described their successful network roll out as ‘quasi miracoloso’ (almost miraculous).8 Television’s first audiences were largely in the north and centre as the early transmission coverage only reached areas including Turin, Milan and Rome, around 25% of the population.9 Florence was added to the broadcast network by the end of the first month of broadcasting. By the middle of 1954, television reached 37% of the population and included all of central Italy.10 By the end of 1955, the national network expanded to Campania and Naples. During 1956, the network extended from just over 60% of the population to reach 90% of the population including Calabria, Sicily and Sardinia.11 For the RAI, television had the potential to be a positive and unifying force in Italy, where, ‘All the Italian public, from the islands to the alpine valleys, every evening receive the same television show’.12 For Italian audiences throughout the peninsula, although they watched or experienced the program in different ways, Lascia o raddoppia? was the first nationally shared television experience, for many it was the only television program they watched.13 In this period, televisions in the home were uncommon and people generally watched television in public places such as bars, clubs or at other people’s houses. In early 1955, just over a year after the introduction of television, while 400,000 people regularly watched television at home, another 800,000 watched television in the houses of friends or family, and around three million people watched television in public

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places such as local café bars.14 The number of people watching television in public during 1955 grew rapidly. By the end of the 1955, as 660,000 viewers regularly watched television at home, another 2.5 million people watched television at the homes of family or friends, while 1.2 million viewers mixed it up a little and watched television both in public places and in other people’s homes. Most remarkable of all, the number of people watching television in public places had tripled to 9 million viewers.15 Around one-sixth of the 366,000 televisions in Italy by the end of 1956 were in public places: 3000 in cinemas; 42,000 in café bars; 10,000 in local recreation organisations.16 Television viewing, although a new activity, built on existing social behaviours and reflected the ways men and women and people of different ages occupied public and private spaces. People who watched television in public places were predominantly male and were likely to be young: 65% of men and 38% of women who watched television did so in public.17 People who watched television in the home of family and friends tended to be female and older. Additionally, the women and older people who watched television outside the home generally did so earlier in the evening.18 The genre programming—variety shows on Saturday night, quiz shows on Thursday night and drama on Sunday night—attracted different audiences and significantly, opened public spaces to women. For example, Saturday night programs had general appeal with viewers, whereas Sunday night dramas increased the previously low numbers of women out in café bars in the evening. Gender and generational barriers shifted as women and children joined communal television viewing in public places.19 Watching television was a popular pastime in the large urban centres, and yet—possibly as a result of fewer social alternatives—people in small and medium sized towns regularly watched television more often than the people in the big cities.20 To illustrate, almost three-quarters of young men (aged between 18 and 34) who lived in a small town watched television every day or at least once or twice a week, whereas in large cities fewer than half of the young men watched television as often. Just under half of all young women living in small towns watched television in public every day, or at least once or twice a week. In contrast, far fewer younger women in large cities—about one in six—would watch television in public. Young women in cities had a greater choice from a range of public activities, including going to cinemas and dance halls, as well as more options for watching television in private spaces.21

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People watched television outside the home as the cost of owning a television and a licence in the mid-1950s to the late 1950s was beyond the reach of most Italian families. The annual cost of a home television licence was 15,000 lire, and the cost of a television set in 1954 was around 200,000 lire.22 To compare these amounts to other modern items of the period, a Vespa cost 128,000 lire and a FIAT 500 cost 490,000 lire.23 Television ownership slowly started to increase mainly, but not exclusively, in upper-class and middle-class homes. From 1950 to 1954, the average annual income was approximately 250,000 lire, with the onset of Italy’s economic miracle the average annual income more than doubled to 538,000 lire by 1965.24 In April 1955, superiore or upper-class viewers owned almost twothirds of private television sets. Media or middle-class people owned just over one-third of private television sets. RAI research found that no inferiore or lower-class people owned their own television set.25 Yet, by the following year, this had changed so that middle-class people bought more televisions than any other social group, and slightly more middle-class people than upper-class people owned televisions.26 Notably, eight percent of people who owned their own television came from the so-called lower classes.27 It was the popularity of Lascia o raddoppia? that had propelled a large part of this audience growth and increased television ownership. The local venues and bars whose owners bought a television set for up to 200,000 lire were making a significant financial investment and taking a large business risk. In addition to the cost of the television set, the bar owners would then pay an annual public licence of between 15,060 lire and 29,300 lire.28 It was a large investment for a family business with patrons who came just to watch the television and may order one drink for a few lire. When a bar offered the only television in town, their business was good. If another bar bought a television set, their takings were immediately halved. For historian Silvio Lanaro, the television programs of the late 1950s offered a self-tranquillising modernity for ‘Everyman’ viewers, where Lascia o raddoppia? provided a memorised and shallow version of culture with ‘moderately bizarre’ contestants.29 Other histories refer to the emblematic image of peasants carrying their chairs down from the mountains to momentarily connect with modern Italy through the quiz show, perhaps peering behind the television set to see if there were people behind it.30 While these accounts reflect some of the early

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television-viewing experiences, our understanding of the way that audiences responded to the program is at best incomplete, and at worst, a caricature that tells us more about the Americanisation fears of Italy’s elites than about the actual viewers. A particularly significant aspect of the program is that it drew its contestants from the general public, the quiz viewers. This provides a unique perspective on the audience as the program’s successful and unsuccessful applicants reveal the influence of regional, educational and gender in engaging with the quiz.

Lascia o raddoppia?, Verdi and the ‘Scandal of the Contrabassoon’ The first Lascia o raddoppia? quiz was screened on Saturday, 26 November 1955, in the RAI’s 9:00 p.m. slot for light entertainment. The show lasted thirty minutes and featured two contestants. Enrico Vecchi, an accountant from Milan, answered questions on cycling; and Lando Degoli, a mathematics teacher from Carpi in Emilia-Romagna, competed on the history of opera. Both contestants made it through the first show. Vecchi left the following week, defeated by a question on the 1907 Giro di Lombardia, an important cycling race in Lombardy. Degoli would continue through to the next show and, the week after, go on to compete for the second highest level of prize money offered: 2,560,000 lire. The quiz question that Degoli would be asked that week resulted in a colossal public debate, national and international news coverage and discussion in parliament over the fairness of the question. In these initial weeks of the program, Lando Dandoli’s hometown of Carpi, near Modena, had the first and worst signs of Lascia o r­ addoppia? fever. For the program’s third show on Saturday, 17 December, so many people in Carpi wanted to watch Dandoli that the local theatre had arranged for two ‘giganteschi’ television screens to be placed on the opera stage and postponed the start of the scheduled performance of Madama Butterfly until after the quiz had finished. Rather than postponing the film, the local cinema arranged for the screening of the film Nana to be interrupted at 9:00 p.m. and placed televisions next to the screen for a television ‘interval’. Fortunately, for these and the other social activities of Carpi, Italian television’s first industrial action was called for 8:00 p.m., and by negotiation between ‘management and the workers’, the quiz was brought forward to 7:00 p.m., so that in the end, both the opera performance and film proceeded as normal.31

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Degoli knew a lot about opera. He had been able to name the singers who had performed the roles of Figaro and Rosina in the 1816 premiere of the opera The Barber of Seville in Rome—Luigi Zamboni and Geltrude Righetti Giorgi. He had been able to identify the year, the theatre and the first opera of Gioachino Rossini—in 1810, at San Moisé, Venice with La cambial di matrimonio (The Marriage Contract). Degoli had even been able to name the first singer to perform the lead in Giuseppe Verdi’s Otello—Francesco Tamagno. Then, on Saturday, 17 December, the host Mike Bongiorno asked Degoli: ‘Did Verdi ever use the contrabassoon in any of his operas, and if so, in which opera?’. Degoli did not know, and when pressed, guessed ‘Faust’. Mike Bongiorno replied sadly that the answer was Don Carlos.32 And so, a great public debate about Degoli’s defeat and the legitimacy of the question began. It was referred to in general conversation and in the media as the ‘scandal of the contrabassoon’. At first, the media and public discussion concentrated on the unfairness of such a specific and technical question that many music experts said they did not know. Wellknown opera maestro Vittorio Gui said it was a ‘shocking’ question and that it would be difficult even for a conductor to give an exact answer. Maestro Antonio Votto, conductor at La Scala, said that it was not a question for an amateur and the program should ask Degoli another question.33 The Communist newspaper L’Unità observed that many people found the question to be unnecessarily difficult and even intentionally so in a ‘cattiva’ or malicious way.34 The works of Giuseppe Verdi and the instruments he had, or had not used, entered the public debate, hotly contended in bars and updated daily in the newspapers. By Tuesday, the news story graduated from the newspapers’ television sections to the front pages when an expert identified Macbeth as another Verdi opera that featured a contrabassoon. For outraged Lascia o raddoppia? viewers, there was now a problem not only with the question, but also with the legitimacy of the official answer. Other experts were consulted beyond the maestri of the opera world. Gino Prato, the Italian immigrant who had won $32,000 on the American quiz show The $64,000 Question, also on the history of opera, suggested that Verdi had used the contrabassoon in Nabucco as well as Macbeth.35 In the Italian parliament, the Honourable Dante Graziosi, a Christian Democrat, asked the Prime Minister Segni and the Minister responsible for television to intervene and readmit Degoli to the program.36 On Christmas Eve, Degoli and his wife were in Milan, and they had become

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celebrities. During the day, they met with internationally renowned Italian artist Giorgio De Chirico, at his exhibition at the Palazzo Reale. De Chirico’s work influenced the Surrealists and formed an important part of the Symbolist movement. Degoli, an amateur painter, had just happened to bring his paintings to show to De Chirico, and they were swiftly added to the exhibition alongside the works of the celebrated artist. In the evening, the Degolis were the guests of La Scala at a performance of Domenico Cimarosa’s opera The Secret Marriage.37 As the public debate escalated, the story was picked up by American newspapers and reported in the Chicago Daily Tribune with the headline ‘$4,000 TV Opera Quiz Jars Italy’.38 Finally, the RAI formed a special internal commission of experts to review the matter. The following week, the commission reported that it found no evidence that Verdi had used the contrabassoon in Macbeth or Nabucco, however they ruled the question to be too technical. Degoli was invited to return to the program. So, on Saturday, 7 January 1956, Degoli returned to the quiz show, but to the dismay of viewers, he did not raddoppiare, or double. Instead, he opted to take the 1,280,000 lire that he had already won and lasciare—leave. Degoli announced that he would prefer to remain forever associated with the contrabassoon than to continue with the game. The media response was not sympathetic— they felt cheated. Writer and journalist Achille Campanile addressed an open letter to Degoli in the Corriere d’Informazione. Campanile found that Degoli had lacked humility and had ‘spoken too much, and badly’, particularly in the way Degoli had likened his comeback to the return of Napoleon. Campanile wrote sarcastically, that clearly, Degoli was ‘very much greater than Napoleon’.39 Despite the local disappointment, the uncontested departure gave an unknown sub-editor at the Chicago Daily Tribune the opportunity to excel themselves with the headline ‘Bassoon’s Burp more to Lando than many lire’.40 In contrast, the journalist Arnaldo Cortese apparently Italian or of Italian descent wrote in the New York Times that the dispute over the quiz was the result of innately argumentative and childlike characteristics of Italians: Unfortunately the Government not only failed to consider the show’s emotional impact, it also overlooked the fact that there is apparently some fundamental trait in the Italian that makes him incapable of accepting defeat in a quiz program. Families brawl among themselves about the

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fairness of the questions, losing contestants threaten lawsuits, and the program is even discussed in Parliament.41

This was a lot of stereotyping for a program only a few weeks old. However, the ‘scandal’ had demonstrated that Lascia o raddoppia? was something more than a popular game show. For millions of viewers, it was a new part of life and their weekly routine, a program that people from right across society discussed. It was a subject where everyone could hold and voice an opinion. As historian John Foot observes in his work on the impact of television in Milan: …many of the popular debates over Lascia concerned the subject matter of the questions (for example, in one famous case, the use of specific musical instruments in Verdi’s operas) as well as the more consumerist aspects of the program. Lascia was clearly a mix of the old and the new, of the paternalistic ethos of the DC towards the Italian people and certain consumerist ideologies linked above all to the American dream.42

Fig. 4.1  Photographers waiting to capture the drama of Lascia o raddoppia? with host Mike Bongiorno and a contestant, 11 October 1956 (Per gentile concessione di Rai Teche/Courtesy of RAI Teche)

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The program continued to attract attention and viewers. The new technology of television with the quiz prizes and cars and the increasing numbers of celebrities who made guest appearances on the show reflected the growing American influences. At the same time, the RAI controlled the selection and presentation of contestants and included many questions on Italian culture and history. The controversial results or fascinating contestants were news, and journalists came to watch the show and report on the developments (see Fig. 4.1). Throughout 1956, the number of people watching the program continued to grow.

Americanisation, Hosts and Prizes Lascia o raddoppia? reflected the growing American influence on Italian culture. The host Mike Bongiorno was the perfect cultural hybrid. Born in America and raised in Italy, Bongiorno was a clear communicator with a pleasant manner and an Americanised first name and clothes. He was good television. His approach was conspicuously different from the formal style of early television presenters with theatre backgrounds or the RAI professors with their didactic educational mission. This home-grown adaptation of an American quiz show highlights the powerful appeal of American culture, particularly, as Victoria De Grazia has observed, the classlessness of American mass culture and the use in Italy of both high and mass culture within commercial contexts.43 The success of the program arose from the new ways it engaged with viewers, essentially in the way it reflected changing aspirations and opportunities for Italians. Bongiorno’s first co-host was Maria Giovannini, Miss Rome 1955. After three months, Giovannini left the show for a short career of small roles in B movies at Cinecittà, replaced by the blonde model and former opera singer Edy Campagnoli in February 1956. The pairing of Bongiorno and Campagnoli was an important part of the show’s success and the media speculated on the nature of their relationship. Epoca magazine suggested that Bongiorno was the highest paid television presenter and received 100,000 lire a show and that Campagnoli received 25,000 lire a show, one of the highest salaries paid to a woman on television. Later, La Stampa newspaper speculated that Bongiorno earned closer to 300,000.44 Both Bongiorno and Campagnoli significantly supplemented their incomes with appearance fees (around 250,000 lire), film roles (15 million lire) and character roles in the photostories in fotoromanzo

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magazines (a few million lire for a multi-part series).45 Mike Bongiorno appeared in Bolero Film photostories as himself, generally as a friend associated with a star-crossed couple not as a romantic lead. Whereas Edy Campagnoli acted in different roles, she played romantic leads in modern stories and in historical dramas. Throughout 1959 and 1960, either or both quiz co-hosts appeared in Bolero Film in different serialised fotoromanzo stories most weeks.46 They had star power, and when Campagnoli married Milan football player Lorenzo Buffon in 1958, two thousand people waited outside the church in the rain to see her in her wedding dress.47 Lascia o raddoppia? was the first Italian quiz show to offer prize money to contestants. The top prize was 5,120,000 lire although contestants could depart with lesser amounts. The show was filmed in a theatre in Milan and broadcast live. The format built on Italy’s strong tradition of radio quizzes and drew on international examples of popular television quiz shows in America and Europe, particularly The $64,000 Question. The program had ritual and drama, the contestants appeared sequentially, and the program commenced with the new arrivals who were given thirty seconds to answer questions that had been sealed in an envelope. With each successful stage, the contestant had the opportunity to ‘lascia’ leave with the money, or to ‘raddoppia’ and answer another question for double the amount. The show started with questions for new contestants competing for smaller amounts and moved on to the returning contestants. Contestants competing for larger amounts of money were sent to a cabinet with a window, asked to wear headphones and speak into the microphone. The contestants had one minute to answer. Topics included popular and elite subjects, from horse racing to the work of Shakespeare. A typical example of the range of subjects covered in one program can be seen in a show aired in late 1956: French literature; History of Philosophy; Life and work of Mazzini; Roman history; Football; Life and work of Dante; Greek Tragedy; and the Life of Garibaldi.48 The premise of the program was the knowledgeable amateur. Even when professors, celebrities or experts appeared on the program, it could only be to answer questions on subjects other than their professional area of expertise. Lascia o raddoppia? liked strange juxtapositions. An ideal show, a 1956 La Stampa article speculated, would include a sailor from Genova on Egyptian art; a Venetian gondolier on botany; a ballerina from La Scala on gastronomy; a law professor on cycling; and a retired General on dancehall music.49

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The Phenomenon of Lascia o raddoppia? and High Culture The show questioned contestants on popular and accessible quiz subjects. These categories included popular sports, such as football and cycling, as well as questions about modern everyday culture including cinema, light music or fashion. However, the high culture subjects ruled the show—opera music, Italian literature, art history, modern and ancient theatre. Italian arts and culture dominated, although cultural categories also included contestants answering questions on international literary greats from French, American, English and Russian literature. In the first two years of the show, there was only one program that did not feature a contestant answering questions on a high culture subject. There was a general bias in favour of humanities subjects, almost two-thirds of contestants in the first two years competed in a category that was classified as ‘materie umanistiche’ or humanistic material.50 History, especially Italian history, became a popular subject for contestants. In this period, mass culture (such as film, fashion or popular music) and sporting subjects featured regularly on the program, yet not as much as high culture. In the first two years, there were thirty programs that did not feature any mass culture subjects and thirty-two programs that did not include a contestant answering questions about sport.51 Over onethird of all the quizzes broadcast in the program’s first year featured a contestant answering questions on opera music.52 This may have been a result of the high-profile Degoli contrabassoon scandal and undoubtedly helped along by the RAI’s cultural evangelism. With Lascia o raddoppia?, high culture became entertainment and was now in the hands of an Americanised former radio host and self-taught citizens. It was not in the hands of the elites. The huge popularity of the quiz surprised everyone, perhaps the RAI management most of all. The program, its hosts and its contestants were newsworthy, and print journalists came to the live broadcasts to capture the evening’s victories and defeats. By late 1956, media estimates of viewer numbers reached around 15 million, although the exact figure is difficult to calculate, as so many viewers were watching television in public places.53 Newspaper and weekly magazine columns analysed possible reasons for the success of the quiz, fascinated by the popularity of its host Mike Bongiorno. The media commonly cited the quiz as evidence of the cultural apocalypse and saw it as the focal point

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of the intellectual debate on the invasion of mass and American culture. Many commentators perceived television audiences as passive receptors, dazzled by American influences, or seeking banal and escapist distraction, rather than being selective or participating viewers.54 For writer Alberto Moravia, Lascia o raddoppia? was just a game of chance based on memory, observing that for viewers, ‘From the point of view of culture, both in America and in Italy, it is an incitement to stupidity’.55 In a letter to the magazine Epoca, one quiz viewer asked a well-known psychiatrist if Lascia o raddoppia? could help students learn. The psychiatrist replied that audience engagement and learning were limited, and that viewers were not even able to remember the questions or answers to the program half an hour after the program had finished, adding that they identified only with the ‘miraculous’ hope of winning the prize money.56 The main problem expressed by intellectuals writing in the newspapers of the day was that the prize money represented the commodification of knowledge. Another consistent complaint made against Lascia o raddoppia? was the lack of cultural achievement in rote learning; critics argued that contestants were merely ‘memorising football champions or soup ingredients’.57 To illustrate, even though intellectual and academic Diego de Castro suggested that Lascia o raddoppia? had evolved from gladiatorial contests in the Coliseum, he questioned the cultural achievement. De Castro argued that leading lights such as Renaissance philosopher and father of Humanism Pico della Mirandola featured in history for his culture, not for his memory.58 The comparison is remarkable that public intellectuals and journalists thought to measure popular quiz contestants against the capability of a Renaissance philosopher. Still, other writers suggested that the program had not damaged culture, and it even had the potential to inspire people to gain a taste for culture or read more to emulate their heroes. Within weeks of its debut, the quiz was credited with increasing book sales and decreasing demand for playing cards in Milan.59 Newspapers and magazines often asked public figures and celebrities to comment on Lascia o raddoppia? and speculate on the reasons for its success. As we have already seen, for Carlo Levi, the program succeeded because it entailed a process of identification and participation. For Federico Fellini, the program’s success promoted participation, but one of a more sinister kind. He suggested viewers could trust and get to know contestants as ‘strangers who become friends’ and then had the satisfying opportunity to ‘watch

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from an armchair and participate in their lynching without ramifications’.60 When asked what they would re-name Lascia o raddoppia?, the writer and journalist Giovanni Ansaldo suggested ‘Tripe and escallop’ and Benito Mussolini’s daughter, Edda Ciano, suggested ‘Sadism at 9:00 p.m.’61 RAI responded to criticism from intellectuals that the show was shallow and insufficiently educational. Months after the quiz debuted, RAI added a new program broadcast on Monday nights called Enciclopedia di Lascia o raddoppia? (Encyclopaedia of Lascia o raddoppia?). The spin-off program presented topics based on questions from the previous week’s quiz show and explained them in-depth. The first program featured a discussion on Roman Baroque art between the Lascia o raddoppia? champion Luciano Zeppegno and an art history professor.62 A later episode featured the production of music in the modern music industry with musicians composing modern songs in a studio in Milan and then followed the process through to the pressing of the album.63

Fig. 4.2  Maria Callas performs Verdi for her television singing debut on the educational spin–off Enciclopedia di Lascia o raddoppia?, 13 August 1956 (Per gentile concessione di Rai Teche/Courtesy of RAI Teche)

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In August 1956, Enciclopedia followed up a question on the premiere of an opera by Giuseppe Verdi from the previous Thursday’s Lascia o raddoppia? quiz show. The question was ‘The Force of Destiny by Verdi had two versions and even two premieres; can you tell us in what city, and in what year, did the second version have its debut?’ Contestant Pier Luigi Pellegrini from Livorno had answered correctly that the second debut was at La Scala in Milan in 1809. The Enciclopedia program explained the history behind the two premieres, and Maria Callas performed a short piece from The Force of Destiny. Prior to this, Callas had appeared in interviews, but she had never sung on television. Remarkably, her brief performance on the educational spin-off of a quiz show was her Italian television opera debut (see Fig. 4.2).64 Despite this combination of star power, educational rigour and even occasional modern subjects, the Enciclopedia di Lascia o raddoppia? show was not popular. Fundamentally, it lacked the suspense and competition of the quiz show. Hosted by journalist Vittorio Notarnicola with model Elda Bortolotti, the program offered none of the elements that made Lascia o raddoppia? popular with viewers. The spin-off program, however, demonstrated that the RAI actively experimented with new formats to educate viewers in a palatable and entertaining way, searching for instructive subjects with popular appeal. Criticism of the quiz program went beyond the intellectuals and commentators in the print media. There were more questions in parliament. Christian Democrat politician Arnaldo Armani asked in a tone of despair, if there could be a way to develop programs of a higher quality and more authentically Italian than Lascia o raddoppia? Is it not possible that in this our fervent Italian land to find men capable of inventing new shows, genuinely Italian, that could be as interesting as those that continually arrive imported from abroad, particularly from America? We could have a competition for new ideas, adapt the transmissions with the demands of public opinion. I think that in this way, ideas will come and even many that you could actually offer on the radio and the television, to provide something new for the Italian people.65

The question highlights the dismay that many politicians, intellectuals and writers felt over the growing number of foreign cultural influences, especially American. Of all the attacks against the program, Umberto Eco’s 1961 critique of Lascia o raddoppia? and its ‘mediocre–everyman’

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host Mike Bongiorno originally published in the Il Verri journal stands above them all. The essay was reprinted in 1963, in a collection of works that helped to establish Eco as a public intellectual. In Italy, the book was called Dario minimo, and it was published in English as Misreadings.66 Dario minimo was like a cheeky version of Roland Barthes’s 1957 Mythologies; it focused on the symbols of modern society with something of an eye to life’s rich comic potential and with less French seriousness. Many of the jokes in the book were literary in-jokes: what happens when James Joyce meets Alessandro Manzoni (nineteenth-century Italian novelist whose novel we will examine in Chapters 8 and 9), or mock editor’s book reports on the Bible—‘…come up with a better title. How about The Red Sea Desperadoes?’. Eco wrote reviews of Dante’s The Divine Comedy—‘Alighieri is your typical Sunday writer’, and Franz Kafka’s The Trial—‘Nice little book. A thriller with some Hitchcock touches’.67 Eco wittily inverts ‘known’ truths about culture and society in a clever and engaging way. His audience is the highly educated and well-read minority who will ‘get’ the references. The title of the essay ‘The phenomenology of Mike Bongiorno’ was a play on words and reference to the way the media, in both enthusiastic and damning terms, described the popularity of the quiz show as a ‘phenomenon’. To turn this into a ‘phenomenology’ played with this mass culture reference, and combined it with an elite reference to the philosophical discipline of phenomenology, the study of direct experience. Eco’s ‘phenomenological’ description of Bongiorno started unforgivingly: ‘Mike Bongiorno is not particularly good–looking, not athletic, courageous or intelligent’. This was followed by the assessment of Bongiorno’s intellectual powers, which Eco believed were not strong—‘Mike Bongiorno is not ashamed of being ignorant and feels no need to educate himself’, adding, ‘he drives clichés to their extreme’. Eco assessed Bongiorno’s communication skills as rudimentary: ‘Mike Bongiorno speaks a basic Italian… No effort is required in order to understand him’.68 While Eco claimed to analyse not the person, but rather the ‘public figure’ of Mike Bongiorno, this account of Bongiorno shows the negative, even distaining views of intellectuals towards television personalities and the viewers who admired them.69 For Eco, Bongiorno is the Everyman, the triumph of an average and unexceptional person celebrated by ignorant masses for legitimating their own limits and mediocrity.

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Idolised by millions of people, the man owes his success to the fact that from every act, from every word of the persona that he presents to the television cameras there emanates an absolute mediocrity along with (the only virtue he possesses to a high degree) an immediate and spontaneous allure, which is explicable by the fact that he betrays no sign of theatrical artifice or pretence. He seems to be selling himself as precisely what he is, and what he is cannot create in a spectator, even the most ignorant, any sense of inferiority. Indeed, the spectator sees his own limitations glorified and supported by national authority.70

Eco’s piece aimed to analyse the reasons for Bongiorno’s popularity with viewers. Instead, it reveals far more about the attitudes of intellectuals to viewers and the role of television in the 1950s. Eco mocks viewers for their admiration of Bongiorno, like misguided and backward children indulging in something that was clearly bad for them. For Eco, the mass viewer revels in the success of other mediocre people, finding their own mediocrity not only excused, but also celebrated. Like a latter day, albeit more amusing Gustav Le Bon, the modern ‘crowd’ or masses for Eco, lack discernment, culture or aspirations. Even worse, the viewers were thoroughly reassured by, even complicit in, the victory of mediocrity. Mike Bongiorno therefore convinces the public by his living and triumphant example, of the value of mediocrity. He provokes no inferiority complexes, though presents himself as an idol; and the public repays him, gratefully, with its love. He is an ideal that nobody has to strive for, because everyone is already at its level. No religion has ever been so indulgent to its faithful. In him the tension between what is and what should be is annulled. He says to his worshippers, “You are God, stay exactly as you are.” The appeal of Bongiorno’s banality and mediocrity is that it gives the banal and mediocre viewer permission to feel happy with their lack of knowledge or culture.71

Here, the television viewer is the true culprit. For Eco, Bongiorno presents a role model of cultural ignorance, who will excuse people from educating themselves and instead reinforce their lack of discernment or knowledge. Eco’s assessment and other contemporary views of the audience’s response to the program emphasise the stupidity of the entertainment, the ‘banal and mediocre’ audience and a popular celebration of ignorance. Eco derided social aspiration and linked it with the commercialisation of culture whereby ‘true admiration of culture is found only

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when, through culture, money is earned. Then culture proves to be of some use. The mediocre man refuses to learn, but he decides to make his son study’.72

The Educated and Self-Educated Citizen While intellectuals in the media attacked the host and program for their stupidity, in fact, the education level of contestants who appeared on Lascia o raddoppia? was above average. The contestants were more educated than the Italian national average, and also the average television viewer. More than one-quarter of the contestants had graduated from university; almost 30% had completed high school; 28% middle school; and 13% had a primary school level education.73 The education level of the overall television audience was also higher than the national average: 7% had university degrees; 14% had completed secondary school; 21% completed middle school; and 58% had an elementary school education.74 In contrast, the general population had lower education levels— one percent of the population had a university degree; 3% had completed secondary school; almost 6% had completed middle school; and 77% had completed elementary school or were literate without qualifications. Almost 13% of the population were illiterate.75 The show increased the visibility of educated citizens and presented knowledge and education as admirable traits. Television historians Martina Corgnati and Giuliana Caterina Galvagno suggest that, ‘In the eyes of the viewers, education became something that could bear fruit not only in an academic environment, but also in the everyday images that everyone saw, ensuring money and fame for the best’.76 Indeed, the weekly reinforcement that education could bring reward and fame was a powerful message to audiences. In addition to this, the show broadly reflected the opportunities that modern Italy offered to those who invested the time in their own education and cultural development. Although contacts and recommendations remained vital in securing employment, education meant that opportunities were gradually becoming more democratic and were opening up to the general population rather than be limited to a restricted few. Viewers found the attractive or eccentric personalities of the contestants most appealing, ordinary people with nerves, strong regional dialects, quirks and jokes. The successful contestants competed not only for the prize money but also for other dazzling rewards. Contestants

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could go home with a Fiat 600 or an Alfa Romeo Giulietta, prizes which also provided a way for car manufacturers to sidestep rules against television advertising pre-1957. The biggest prize was fame. Contestants with charisma, humour or beauty could be transformed from ordinary people into celebrities, and like stars, they received fan mail, gifts, wedding proposals and appeared in popular magazines and advertisements. In the first two years, RAI received more than 300,000 applications to be a Lascia o raddoppia? contestant, some even from people outside the transmission zone who had never seen the show and had only read the newspaper or magazine transcripts.77 In the beginning, applicants chose from a set list of subject areas although this was later relaxed to include a broader range of subjects.78 The RAI rejected a high number of applications to appear on the show. Well over 200,000 of the contestant applications were refused for being incomplete, on too narrow subjects, or applications from experts. This meant only one in six, or around 41,000 of the contestant applications were even considered. Most of the ineligible applications came from applicants in southern regions such as Sicily and Basilicata and above all from people with limited or no formal education.79 While these data highlighted the problem that some people with limited education had successfully navigating the application process, more significantly, it suggests that the quiz program—and the opportunity it presented to win prize money—had captured imaginations right across society. People from different regions, educational levels and socio-economic backgrounds related to the weekly program broadcast from a theatre in Milan. Applicants felt that it had relevance and potential to them, not only as a viewer (or a reader of transcripts), but also as something that they could envisage joining as a contestant.

Audience Enjoyment and Lascia o raddoppia? RAI closely monitored the impact of the introduction of television on the Italian population with television audience surveys that examined an extensive range of demographic factors. Analysis of television audiences researched different viewing patterns and program preferences by sex, age, education level, class, occupation, region and size of city or town. The research tracked the uptake of television and analysed the audience responses to specific genres of programs as well as individual shows.

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The RAI conducted a range of survey approaches including face-toface interviews and telephone interviews. The scale and scope of the audience survey project was substantial. For example, between 1956 and 1959, the RAI conducted approximately 90,000 surveys about viewer opinion of specific television programs or about their general viewing behaviour.80 The RAI established a survey group with socio-demographic factors reflecting the broad make up of Italian society. The results and data are valuable historical source materials, although the methodology and analysis at times demonstrated the particular social and economic assumptions and prejudice of the television audience researchers. For example, in the mid 1950s, the methodology to identify class was the assessment of the researcher without reference to the person being surveyed. The research analysis often assumed a somewhat patronising tone and reflected more about the values of the researchers than the motivations of the viewers. These attitudes are in themselves interesting source materials. One of the most valuable aspects of the RAI research into Italy’s early television audiences is that, in addition to measuring the viewer numbers and their various social and economic characteristics, it attempted to measure the response of the individual, whether or not audience members said they enjoyed the program. Audience satisfaction research presents a unique source of information on viewer opinions that provide both statistical and qualitative data on the little explored question of what the viewers thought about specific RAI programs and how they responded to television. The data challenge many of the assumptions about the judgement and preferences of viewers in this period, particularly around the passive reception of American film stars and entertainment. Significantly, the information gives an indication of the programs that appealed to the whole society in addition to the programs that resonated with, or were less relevant to, specific groups. The data allow a drill down into viewer segments and smaller groups within society rather than lumping all viewers into a homogenous group. RAI’s Servizio Opinioni used a straightforward evaluation system throughout the 1950s and 1960s. Viewers rated their enjoyment of genres, programs or episodes: per niente = 0 (did not like it at all); poco = 25 (liked it very little); discretamente = 50 (fair); molto = 75 (liked it a lot); moltissimo = 100 (liked it very much). The RAI aggregated and analysed enjoyment ratings to inform their future programming.81 The RAI audience research shows that people across sex, age, education and class categories enjoyed the quiz.82 Women, however, recorded

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a greater level of enjoyment and older people a lower level. The research showed that viewers of the highest economic status enjoyed the program, while lower-class viewers loved it even more. This broad appeal across class categories was not common in other television programs and, as the television historian Franco Monteleone suggests, the lack of class distinction in the show’s content was key to the program’s success.83 There was something in the program for everyone. In a similar way, the program appealed to people with different levels of education. Primary, middle school and high school educated viewers all reported a high level of enjoyment of the quiz. The only viewers to show levels of enjoyment lower than the other groups were those with a university degree. Nevertheless, in 1956, more than half of the university-educated viewers reported that they enjoyed the program.84 The quiz was the most popular with young women with less education, and the least popular with older university educated men.85 The appeal of the program was not universal, yet it came close. Television audiences in general, and audiences of this early period of Italian state television in particular, are usually represented as the passive and naïve recipients of American or Christian Democrat RAI mediated and sanitised culture.86 Viewer responses to Lascia o raddoppia? challenge the enduring myth of the passive audience, as the enjoyment varied, depending on the nature of the contestants and the interest of the program. Even when the show’s popularity was at its highest, audiences expressed a range of responses to different programs. In the first year of the show, the enjoyment ratings (published from April 1956) were very high. The audience satisfaction (for the months April to November 1956) averaged at around 84 and ranged between 75 and 95, meaning that most viewers enjoyed the program molto (a lot), and many enjoyed it very much moltissimo (very much).87 The audience’s engagement with Lascia o raddoppia? included aspiring to become part of the show, to be a contestant and even a quiz champion. The RAI noted the importance of the thousands of viewers writing to be contestants as an indication of the popularity of the program, comparing the process to the way cinema goers would write to Hollywood to ask to become actors, directors and writers. By mid1958, after two and a half years of Lascia o raddoppia?, 400,000 people had applied to be a contestant, approximately one in every 90 adult Italians.88 Would-be contestants from all over Italy sent their applications to the program. Over the first two years, Umbria had the highest

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per capita number of applications, 9009 applications for a region with a population of 814,000 although the number of applications that met the quiz subject requirements or that had been completed correctly was only 744. This suggests that a region with low incomes (160,000 lire a year) and an illiteracy rate of 14% identified with the program and could imagine participating in it. The centre regions of Italy including Tuscany (25,111 applications), Umbria, Marche (8960 applications) and Lazio (28,993 applications) had the highest per capita number of applications—eight applications for every 1000 inhabitants. Over 46,000 residents of Lombardy, where the program was filmed in the capital Milan, applied as did residents of Piedmont who sent 36,736 applications. In the south and islands, the proportion of applications were lower, yet regions like Campania with 23% illiteracy and average annual income of 115,443 lire showed strong interest with 29,002 applications.89 Fewer than 8% of all applications were correctly completed, and this proportion varied greatly across Italy. Smaller towns, particularly in regions with illiteracy levels between 20 and 30%, had the highest number of incorrectly completed applications. Almost all the rejected applications from larger cities came from women ‘presumably waitresses’.90 The volume of applications from across Italy, even from people who lacked the expertise to be a contestant or lacked the experience or literacy to complete forms, still reflects a strong identification and engagement with the show and a desire to become part of it. Other reasons to be excluded were that the applicant had professional expertise in the subject or covered controversial subjects, such as the death of Hitler. Of these hundreds of thousands of applicants, only 11,000 would-be contestants attended the exam.91 The host Mike Bongiorno worked with program management selecting contestants who ‘could become celebrities’ and appeal to viewers.92 Contestants needed knowledge and an ability to answer questions yet their life story and personality also formed an important selection criteria.

Humble Origins and Hard Work The RAI observed that Lascia o raddoppia? had ‘reached a very large popularity and had put some characters in the spotlight who aroused considerable sympathy in the public’.93 The viewer enjoyment of the program was based on the appeal of the contestants and a sense of participating in their attempt—viewers were moved by the victory of people

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they had grown attached to, and this engagement and identification transcended a passive spectatorship. Contestants of limited means, who had not finished primary school, yet possessed a great passion for culture, were particularly popular with viewers. One such contestant, Attilio Zago, from Bassano in the Dolomite Mountains in Italy’s north, competed in January and February 1956 on the subject of Italian theatre. He was in his fifties and had left school at the age of twelve, and he was applauded as the first contestant with a primary school level education to compete on culture rather than on sport. While Zago successfully answered questions on the works of Giovanni Verga, Luigi Pirandello and Gabriele D’Annunzio, he failed to correctly answer the 2,560,000 lire question. Zago became even more popular as a result of the humility and good grace he showed in defeat, in addition to the substantial respect he had already gained from self-education and love of Italian culture.94 Later in the year, Egidio Cristini became a crowd favourite answering questions on the poems of Homer. Cristini was from Santa Marinella (a small seaside village in Lazio); he worked as bricklayer and was semi-literate. As a result of his lack of education and low literacy, reading the poems of Homer was more difficult and time-consuming for him than for most people; Cristini reported that it took him more than a day to slowly read a canto. The additional difficulty of his achievement was represented in the media as an even greater accomplishment.95 On his final question, he was asked ‘In the fifteenth canto of the Iliad, who broke the bow string of Teucro when he was about to shoot Ettore’. Cristini correctly answered ‘Giove, Giove, Giove!’ winning the 5,120,000 lire prize. When asked what he would do with the money, he said that he would finish building his house, give his daughter some money to get married and, ‘then I will rest… I have always worked in my life; I want to see what it is like to take a holiday’.96 Both Zago and Cristini represented Italians who had very little and yet craved culture and knowledge within their limited means and education. Most primary school-level educated contestants competed on humanities subjects. However, despite the popularity of the contestants with lower levels of education, they proved an exception, not the norm. In the first two years of the program, only 43 out of the 261 contestants had a primary school level of education.97 While it is probable that the RAI management was actively selecting people with humble origins and an interest in culture, the

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overwhelmingly positive audience response suggests that the success of poor and hard-working contestants strongly appealed to the values of the public. Journalist and writer G. B. Angioletti admired contestants with limited formal education, who had taught themselves works of art and literature: One of the unexpected and comforting results of Lascia o raddoppia?, starting from the early programs, was the revelation of the general love of the Italian people for art and literature. One can in fact see that the selection of literary subjects was almost always people of modest social condition and even more modest education: peasants, shepherds, farm workers, small artisans and very young factory workers.98

The prevalence of cultural subjects reflected back a satisfying national image of the ‘general love of the Italian people for art and literature’. In a period of political, social and economic change, including post-war reconstruction and high unemployment levels, these hard working and self-educated citizens studying Italy’s cultural and historic greatness, exerted a powerful symbolic force. The national myth-making of these comments was a source of pride and linked Italy’s artistic past with both the present and future. Central to the phenomenon of Lascia o raddoppia? was the celebration of the self-taught and self-starters. The media disseminated and magnified this image, particularly the RAI. Contestants who had invested time in their own education were held up as examples of what could be possible in modern Italy with hard work. In a magazine interview published weeks before the final show, Bongiorno was asked ‘what moment for him had the most pathos in the history of Lascia o raddoppia?’ and he replied it was, ‘Certainly Mannarelli’. Felice Mannarelli was a successful Lascia o raddoppia? contestant who competed on the subject of world history in order to win enough money to be able to afford to go to university. Bongiorno described him as ‘the very poor boy who studied at night, at times under a blanket, under the only electric light in his village: as in his house he did not have electricity’. Bongiorno added that he was worried when Mannarelli attempted the major prize and then, ‘when he won I could not hold back the tears’.99 A 1960 RAI documentary examining the young people of Italy, Giovani oggi contrasted the apathy of a group of truant students in Rome against the self-discipline and ambition of Felice Mannarelli. The

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documentary juxtaposed images from Mannarelli’s small rural village, the ‘old ways’ of the shepherd and his animals contrasted against the ‘new ways’ of passing cars, an aeroplane overhead and fade to modern apartments and the future. A voiceover offers this description of Mannarelli, and the ambition required in modern times: A poor, young Everyman, but with a uncommon drive and an understanding of the times in which we live that have allowed him to work out by himself one of the main problems in the world of today which is to have knowledge, to achieve your capability, to realise your true qualities.100

The narrator goes on to cite Italy’s millions of citizens with a third grade or fifth grade level of education, adding that, ‘society helps those who can or want to help advance’ and with, ‘technological, scientific and modern progress, not having an education is like not having an arm’.101

The ‘Modern Girls’ of Lascia o raddoppia? Of the many transformations to Italian society in the 1950s, changes in the everyday lives of women were the most marked, particularly in the rising education levels of women and the reduction of the high female illiteracy rates. At the start of the decade, 3.3 million female Italians over the age of six were illiterate, and a further 10.5 million were literate, but lacked a primary school qualification. Together, these 13.8 million women with low-literacy levels or illiteracy and no school qualification comprised almost two-thirds of the female population of 21.8 million. By 1961, this had dropped to 10.9 million, or 47% of the female population and the number of women completing primary school had grown from 6.2 million to 9.6 million women, or 41% of the female population.102 Including the women who had completed middle school, this meant that for the first time in Italy’s history, more women had a school qualification than not. Lascia o raddoppia? showcased these emerging opportunities for women. Overall, the number of female contestants was far lower than the number of male contestants, indeed half as many women as men appeared on the show.103 The first female contestant, Miriam Salom from Milan province, had appeared on the second program to answer questions on popular music and left after five questions when she failed to name the singer of the song Lili Marlene.104 For La Stampa, Salom’s failure on a ‘not very difficult’ question and the

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Fig. 4.3  Host Mike Bongiorno congratulates Paola Bolognani for the cameras, Lascia o raddoppia?, 22 March 1956 (Per gentile concessione di Rai Teche/ Courtesy of RAI Teche)

similarly unsuccessful attempt by another two female contestants the following month was front-page news.105 Then, in March 1956, Paola Bolognani—a young blonde from Pordenone in Fruili Venezia Giulia—tried her luck on the program: she would go on to become the first female quiz champion and the first female celebrity contestant (see Fig. 4.3). Bolognani was in her final year of high school. She was competing to earn money for her family; her father had died in the war and her mother’s income as a teacher was very low. She had good looks and a sad story. She provided an example of the high price Italians had paid in the past, as well as the new opportunities opening up to young women in education and employment. More importantly, she had selected one of the topics of more than passing interest to many millions of Italian men—football. Bolognani could successfully name players from the 1932–1933 Juventus team that had won three consecutive championships before she was born. What wasn’t there to love? And love there was. Bolognani received letters,

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gifts and marriage proposals from besotted male viewers and required a police escort for public appearances.106 Two thousand letters arrived from viewers for Bolognani in the five days after her first appearance on the show, and this grew to 20,000 letters a week by her last show.107 Her victory became international news, with one American headline announcing ‘Italy’s TV Blonde Collects’.108 Bolognani demonstrated an astute handling of the media and boosted her popularity by claiming to be single, saying she was not engaged and introducing her fiancé as a family friend or relative.109 The media praised her good looks, and she was dubbed ‘the beauty’ or ‘the lioness’ of Pordenone. Her ‘vivacious’ nature and ‘exuberance’ were appealing characteristics, as was her capacity for self-discipline and hard work at school. In one of many magazine interviews, Paola said she looked forward to becoming a wife because ‘a woman is only truly complete in marriage’.110 So, the prototype of the ideal female contestant was formed—young, single, educated, attractive and seeking to win money to help her family. The tens of thousands of marriage proposals made to Bolognani suggest that male viewers found her to be a feminine ideal and model wife. In May, Marisa Zocchi, the 20-year-old Miss Tuscany, selected Italy’s other favourite sport: cycling. She appeared as a contestant on the show to raise money for treatment for her sick mother. Zocchi moved the nation as she tearfully left with 2,520,000 lire rather than risk re-doubling and having nothing to help her mother. In response to this pathos, the exiled Egyptian King Faruk living in Rome gave Zocchi another 2,520,000 lire—the amount she might have won had she stayed.111 While female contestants, such as Bolognani and Zocchi, who answered questions about sport subjects, were very well received, they were atypical. Female applicants were most likely to compete in the areas of history, popular music and literature.112 RAI almost flew too close to the sun with their selection of the 27-year-old tobacconist Maria Luisa Garoppo from Casale, competing on the subject of Ancient Greek theatre (see Fig. 4.4). Garoppo’s first appearance had been much anticipated and the print media published full-length photographs that highlighted her splendid figure: press reports of her bust measurements varied between 103 and 108 centimetres. The media ransacked science, film and high culture for the right metaphors, calling her the ‘atomic of television’, ‘Lollobrigida of Casale’, ‘Carmen from Casale’, she was ‘Marilyn Monroe–esque’ and most frequently, ‘Miss Red Blood’.113 In the scores of magazine and newspaper

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Fig. 4.4  Host Mike Bongiorno and Maria Luisa Garoppo’s lucky charm on Lascia o raddoppia?, August 1956 (Per gentile concessione di Rai Teche/Courtesy of RAI Teche)

reports, her name was almost always preceded by various adjectives for buxom, as Garoppo’s body became public property and the subject of popular debate. Garoppo, like Italian cinema’s maggiorate fisiche Gina Lollobrigida and Sophia Loren, symbolised the new prosperity of ­modern Italy—dark-haired, full-mouthed, large bosomed women with cinched waists. These prosperous dimensions signalled pleasure, sex and fecundity and offered an image of an ideal woman that was simultaneously traditional and modern, and as Stephen Gundle suggests, provided an ‘assertive and physically striking appearance’ that merged Italian and American feminine ideals.114 Like the cinema maggiorata fisiche the Lascia o raddoppia? modern women were from humble backgrounds and displayed a confidence in their ability to find opportunities for themselves. Garoppo caused a scandal for two reasons. The first, because of her fitted clothing and impressive figure. The second, and I suggest more significant reason for the strong reaction from the Catholic Church,

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was the reply she gave to Bongiorno’s question about her personal life. Commencing with light pleasantries, Bongiorno had commented on the high level of media interest in Garoppo and asked about her job as a tobacconist. Finally, he asked about her relationship status. Garoppo responded, ‘I do not have a fiancé. I believe you can quickly go from being a Miss to a Mrs but from Mrs you can not become a Miss again’. Bongiorno asked, ‘Do you prefer being single?’ to which she responded, ‘Yes, I am an independent type’.115 Garoppo appeared to the Italian television public as far more than an ‘independent type’: she was a self-employed, single and sexually confident woman who was articulate, educated and culturally informed—and in no rush to be a wife and mother. After complaints from a Catholic newspaper in Milan and allegedly also the Vatican, the RAI management met with Garoppo to discuss her mode of dress for future programs, and insisted that she wear more modest clothes.116 Displaying a good degree of media savvy, Garoppo went to the press, gave interviews and held her own. She suggested she might leave the quiz show and publically expressed her low opinion of both the RAI management and the media coverage asking, ‘Is it my fault I am not a telegraph pole?’117 The drama heightened as Garoppo fell ill immediately before the next program: when she did not appear on the show, the enjoyment ratings dropped from 87 to 80. While 80 still reflected a high level of enjoyment, it was the lowest recorded level of the program to date.118 The following week, the televiewing public came together to see just what would happen next for the ‘new star’. RAI’s book on the popular quiz observed that ‘maybe this evening there was not a television switched off in Italy, and at every television there was the greatest number of people watching as possible’.119 For her return to the show, Garoppo wore clothes that La Stampa newspaper described as ‘chaste’ and the RAI described as ‘a triumph of good sense’.120 Even Communist newspaper L’Unità reported that Garoppo’s bust had radically reduced.121 For Garoppo, her dress was ‘dignified but a little tight’ lamenting that her ‘108 centimetres are reduced to only 92’.122 The RAI observed that Marissa Boroni, a less buxom contestant, had comfortably worn the same dress, implying there had been some disingenuous padding for Garoppo’s previous appearances.123 Welcoming her back to the show, Bongiorno asked Garoppo if she had received any marriage proposals: she answered that she had received

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thirty-five and a half, the half proposal being from someone who had written and asked her to marry him, and then wrote again to say that he had changed his mind.124 Over the next weeks, Garoppo went on to win the prize money and she also received a gift of a trip to Greece from the Greek ambassador to Italy.125 While Garoppo was a little too modern for some of the more traditional parts of society, her time on the program received high enjoyment ratings from a clear majority of the viewing public, ranging between 85 and 88 in the satisfaction ratings.126 As journalist and writer Vincenzo Rovi reported, she was the most popular of all the quiz show’s contestants to date: … the surveys of the public’s opinion of television, put [Garoppo] in first place, ahead of all who have appeared on the television screens of Lascia o raddoppia.127

Despite this strong popularity and appeal with viewers, historians cite Maria Luisa Garoppo’s appearance on Lascia o raddoppia? as evidence of the conservative and controlled nature of the early years of television, and as proof of the traditional values of the viewers.128 Certainly, RAI was conservative, promulgating Catholic values through programming and censorship. Still, the RAI had selected Garoppo to appear on the show not only knowing what she looked like, but promoting her in advance. The problems arose not solely from her figure, but from her dismissal of the traditional female role of wife and the reference to divorce. The very high levels of enjoyment of the episodes featuring Garoppo, and the millions of viewers who gathered to watch her progress, suggests instead, that it was those who complained to the RAI, and the RAI managers who deferred to them, who were out of step with the values of the public. Stephen Gundle argues that Catholic disapproval of Garoppo was a continuation of the Catholic Church’s strong reaction against the ‘carnality’ of the maggiorata film stars Sophia Loren and Gina Lollobrigida, and that the Church was ‘annoyed to find the same model of female physicality being proposed in a medium over which they had greater control’.129 As with Lollobrigida and Loren, audiences liked Garoppo for her appearance, strong personality and, in this case, the comic nature of the enforced reduction of her chest size. Magazines recounted with amusement that some religious institutes had switched off their televisions when Garoppo appeared on the quiz.130 A clear majority of the show’s millions of viewers had found Garoppo, and the collision of traditional and modern values, to be engaging and very

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entertaining. Garoppo’s views on marriage illustrated the risk of live television with unpredictable responses from members of the public, rather than staff who were required to follow internal guidelines. Lascia o raddoppia?, the host Bongiorno and the general media coverage of the program celebrated the modern characteristics of the young female contestants, even though, as the Garoppo case demonstrated, the RAI tried to constrain some excesses. The media often described the female contestants as ‘modern girls’, and they were admired for their capability and intellect, although ambition needed to be tempered with other interests, beauty and femininity. Marriageability was still a woman’s greatest asset and represented traditional values of selflessness and family in a modern context. However, the female quiz contestants with secondary school education and university aspirations had reached a higher level of schooling than most Italians. They offered a visible sign of the generational change in female education that had started in the post-war period. Their educational attainment and self-taught expertise was clearly part of their quality and appeal. In the last weeks of the program, contestant Milva Carro, competing on the works of Liugi Pirandello, was celebrated for her beauty, shyness and desire to use the prize money to study literature at university.131 Fortuitously, these first public appearances of educated female citizens on Italian television turned out to be quite lovely. The focus of the audience and media was squarely on smiles, dimples, curls and curves as well as the cultural expertise or schooling. Typically in their late teens or early twenties, the youth of the contestants made them appealing and, importantly, unintimidating.

The End of the Phenomenon In 1957, the number of Lascia o raddoppia? viewers increased as the broadcast network reached the south and islands. The enjoyment ratings were still positive, although lower overall, they ranged between 62 and 80.132 As the interest of viewers in the north and centre who had watched the program for longer started to wane, the response of those in the south who had watched the program for less time boosted the enjoyment ratings. Between May and November 1957, the quiz experienced volatile ratings. Following the high enjoyment levels of 83 for self-educated young man Felice Mannarelli’s win, the program had a two-month slide in enjoyment ratings down to 62—an average level of enjoyment, not quite good, yet more than fair.133 The enjoyment ratings returned back to the 70s for the one hundredth episode of the show, which

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included the appearance of the popular Italian actress Pina Renzi as a contestant with the history of Milan as her subject, and the American starlet Jayne Mansfield as a guest star.134 It is interesting to note, as well as an important way to understand the nature of Lascia o raddoppia?’s success, that the appearance of these celebrities, and indeed Pina Renzi’s victory four programs later, did not excite enjoyment ratings as high as the hard-working, ‘poor, young Everyman’ Felice Mannarelli. At the beginning of 1958, the quiz program maintained good viewer enjoyment ratings around the 75 mark. Yet by the second half of the year, viewers were enjoying the program less and less, with ratings in the 60s and even down to 52.135 The show introduced a segment that brought back popular winning contestants such as The Divine Comedy expert Maria Teresa d’Aramengo for ‘Sfida al campione’ (Challenge the Champion) to be challenged by new contestants. These programs resulted in newspaper headlines such as, ‘Finally the awaited Dantean clash between the Torinese Countess and the fruit vendor’.136 Between

Fig. 4.5  Giorgio De Chirico explains modern art to contestant Maria Moritti and host Mike Bongiorno on Lascia o raddoppia?, 11 December 1958 (Per gentile concessione di Rai Teche/Courtesy of RAI Teche)

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2 October and 6 November, opera baritone Gino Bechi competed on the subject of ‘railways real and miniature’, although enjoyment levels ranged between 57 and 70, lower than the average enjoyment level of 73 across all television programs.137 The program included a live cross to Brussels to fit in with Bechi’s concert schedule.138 Giorgio de Chirico appeared on the show as a special guest in late 1958, after the defeat of Maria Moritti, a lovely doe-eyed contestant competing on the subject of seventeenth century European art (see Fig. 4.5). De Chirico observed that, ‘in the seventeenth century artists painted well, whereas today they paint badly’. When pressed by Bongiorno to explain this statement, the artist added, ‘It is enough to go to the Palazzo Reale to see Modigliani’s exhibition’.139 The quiz resumed as De Chirico urged the young contestant to come to see his own exhibition and meet him to discuss art.140 Audiences reported the lowest enjoyment level for the program yet, 52.141 Between 1955 and mid-1958, 400,000 people had applied to appear on the show, many selecting the category of popular music although both the Kings of France and Italian literary classic I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed) were also commonly nominated subjects. Of these, only 50,000 applications were considered and 11,000 would-be contestants attended the exam. Five hundred contestants had competed and 60 had won the 5,120,000 lire prize money.142 It was clear that most viewers had lost their enthusiasm for the quiz. In 1956, 79 out of 88 cinemas in Turin had shown Lascia o raddoppia?. Yet by 1958, only 16 out of 103 cinemas continued to do so.143 By the beginning of 1959, enjoyment ratings were generally in the 50s and on occasion dropped to an average viewer response in the 40s, meaning that most viewers were not enjoying the program.144 The format had lost its appeal, perhaps because the contestants became savvier and aimed to play the celebrity game, or perhaps because audiences had heard all they needed to hear about the lives and works of Italian artists and composers, and sought new entertainments. Like all media phenomena, the precise reason that the audience moved on is difficult to pin down, yet it was clear that the magical connection between viewers and contestants was happening less frequently, and there were other programs to debate in the bar. The audience satisfaction with the program rose slightly for an episode with an appearance by the popular Italian music star Adriano Celentano and again for the final program.145 As media speculation mounted on the future of the program, the RAI received 30,000 letters a month in support of continuing the quiz.146

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The lowest audience enjoyment ratings for the quiz came during the appearance of the avant-garde American composer John Cage, who joined the quiz show as both a celebrity guest and contestant. He answered questions on biology, specifically on the subject of mushrooms. As a professional musician, Cage was not eligible to compete on a music subject. In the end, it was no great disadvantage as his knowledge of mushrooms was extensive. The program’s enjoyment ratings had already been very low at the beginning of 1959, and the television audience did not appreciate the introduction of a famous American composer of experimental music. In January, audience enjoyment levels were very low, in the mid-to-low 50s, yet by his third performance of experimental music on 19 February, the show had recorded its lowest enjoyment rating yet—49.147 Cage performed Water Walk, a piece composed especially for the program, inspired by his time in Venice staying with his friend Peggy Guggenheim. Cage performed his music using household items including blenders, a bath and radios as instruments (see Fig. 4.6).

Fig. 4.6  American composer John Cage performs Water Walk on Lascia o raddoppia?, 19 February 1959 (Per gentile concessione di Rai Teche/Courtesy of RAI Teche)

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The other celebrity appearance on the show that evening was actress Jean Seberg, and Mike Bongiorno’s chat with her and presentation of a pretend Oscar for best actor to the cat from Bonjour Tristesse certainly may have contributed to the low enjoyment of the program.148 Cage was admired for his international status and success in winning the quiz’s top prize. Host Mike Bongiorno, however, delivered one of his famous ‘gaffes’ when he farewelled Cage by wishing wistfully that Cage was staying in Italy and his music returning to America, rather than the other way around.149 Culture, to be enjoyable, was not strange, foreign and avant-garde; it was familiar, traditional and Italian. By the time the program was cancelled, more than one-third of the Italian adult population still watched Lascia o raddoppia?, they just enjoyed it less. The musical variety programs Un, due, tre and Mario Riva’s Il Musichiere were now the most watched and appreciated programs on television. Lascia o raddoppia?’s brief moment entertaining a substantial part of the Italian population with a competition centred on the citizens’ recall of high culture, history and football had ended.150

Conclusion Lascia o raddoppia? was the first popular television program in Italy. It became a cultural and social phenomenon and was recognised as one in its day by the public, the RAI and by the print media. The quiz show played a vital role in attracting large audiences to television, and viewer preferences provide a valuable insight into social attitudes and the changes underway in a modernising Italy. Watching the program was a cultural and social experience; viewers were highly engaged. Audiences varied in their responses to different programs based on their interest in and empathy for the contestants and their material. The audience reaction to contestants and the level of enjoyment of different programs challenges some of the accepted myths about early television viewers. Despite the show’s popularity, audiences did not passively accept all episodes, viewers varied in their responses. The show became a source of public debate in Italy’s bars and homes as viewers argued about answers and questioned the accuracy of the judges’ decisions. Public opinion could influence the RAI management, such as the readmission of Lando Degoli after a popular outcry, international media coverage and questions in parliament. The popularity and high enjoyment levels of programs featuring contestants such as Maria Louisa Garoppo indicate that

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Italian television audiences did not always share the conservative views of the church regarding television and sexually confident women. The program was important because of the way that audiences actively engaged with, and participated in, the attempts, victories and defeats of contestants. Significantly, it provided a public demonstration of the generational change underway in education levels, particularly for young women but also for working class men. American mass culture was a significant cultural influence in this period, and yet the total malleability of Italian audiences is called into question when the presence of celebrities or Hollywood stars did not guarantee that a program would be enjoyed. The quiz introduced and applauded culture in people’s everyday lives rather than in ivory towers. It represented self-educated people with a passion for refined or high culture. The prevalence of contestants competing on the subject of opera reflected the enthusiasm for opera music by amateurs and the general public, not solely the rich and the maestri. Lascia o raddoppia? was the first immensely successful television program and one of the first cultural events shared by many millions of Italians from all classes, education levels, ages and regions. For a brief period, Lascia o raddoppia?’s blend of high and mass culture was a popular, exciting and fun way for millions of viewers to experience art, music, theatre and literature. Far from being passive and indiscriminate, audiences varied in their responses to different programs, based on their interest in, and empathy for, the contestants. The attempts by self-taught Italians, the modern young women, older semi-literate labourers overcoming disadvantages or an ambitious young man from a small village resonated most with viewers. Significantly, audiences responded to contestants in unexpected ways as the great popularity of the very unconventional Maria Luisa Garoppo demonstrated. Her case also reinforces the importance of giving the responses of the Lascia o raddoppia? audience a place in the history of the program. Far from judging and condemning Garoppo, many millions of Italian television viewers across Italy found her appearance on the show, her challenge to conservative values and her exuberant personality all very appealing and immensely entertaining. The strong audience response to Garoppo contrasted with the Catholic Church’s condemnation of her physical appearance and embodies the differing social influences in modern Italy. Whether by providence or design, Garoppo was away on her complimentary trip to Greece when Pope Pius XXI held his private audience with the Lascia o raddoppia? champions in the month after her victory.

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Notes

















1.  Carlo Levi, ‘La sapienza’, La Nuova Stampa, Domenica 15 luglio 1956, 3. Note: Levi’s mention of an interruption to law making, referenced a widely believed although probably apocryphal story, that the Prime Minister Giovanni Leone had ended a parliamentary debate one Thursday at 8:45 p.m. in order to get home in time for Lascia o raddoppia?. This account was described in Claudio Ferretti, Umberto Broccoli, and Barbara Scaramucci, Mamma RAI: Storia e storie del servizio pubblico radiotelevisivo (Firenze: Le Monnier, 1997), 175. 2. RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana, Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni: 1 La televisione e il suo pubblico (Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1957), 39. RAI figures from DOXA audience research estimated 10 million viewers in 1956 with television licenses and their families. Beyond these private licence holders, millions of viewers watched television at the homes of friends or in local venues including bars, cinemas and local clubs. 3.  ‘Il Papa ha conversato per venti minuti coi personaggi di “Lascia o Raddoppia„’, L’Unità, domenica 7 ottobre 1956, 2. 4. RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana, Annuario Rai 1953–1955 (Turin: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1958), 129. At this time, around 60% of all programming was live. The remaining 40% comprised: news programs (10%) and films (30%). 5. RAI, Annuario Rai 1953–1955, xxiii. 6. See Chapter 1 for a discussion about terms describing culture, including mass culture and high culture. 7. For a comprehensive discussion on political aspects of Italian television see Cinzia Padovani, A Fatal Attraction: Public Television and Politics in Italy (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2005). 8.  RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana, Annuario Rai 1964 (Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1964), 253. 9. RAI, Annuario Rai 1964, 253. There were seven transmitters functioning on 1 January 1954: Turin, Milan, Monte Penice, Portofino, Monte Serra, Monte Peglia and Rome. 10. RAI, Annuario Rai 1964, 253. 11. RAI, Annuario Rai 1953–1955, 538; RAI: Radiotelevisione Italiana, Annuario Rai 1955 (Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1956), 545; and RAI: Radiotelevisione Italiana, Annuario Rai 1957 (Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1957), 85. In March 1956, television reached 30 million Italians or 62% of the population. 12. RAI, Annuario Rai 1957, 85. 13. RAI, Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 1, 39–40. 14. RAI, Annuario Rai 1953–1955, 549.

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15. RAI, Annuario Rai 1953–1955, 10. 16. Fernaldo Di Giammatteo, ‘Cinema e televisione’, in Televisione e vita italiana (a cura di) Segretaria Centrale della Rai (Torino: ERI RAI, 1968), 449–526, 468. 17. RAI, Annuario Rai 1953–1955, 10. 18.  RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana, Indagini sull’ascolto della televisione Volume 7 di Quaderni del Servizio opinioni (Torino: ERI, 1961), 42. 19. John Foot, ‘Television and the City: The Impact of Television in Milan, 1954–1960’, Contemporary European History 8 (1999): 379–394, 380. 20. RAI, Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 1, 14. Note: Approximately 75% of men in small towns and 43.5% in large towns (the definition of small town: fewer than 20,000 inhabitants; medium town: between 20,000 and 100,000 inhabitants; and large cities: more than 100,000). 21. RAI, Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 1, 14. Note: 17.4% of women aged between 19 and 34 watched television in public. 22. RAI, Annuario Rai 1953–1955, 139. Cost of licence; The cost of televisions in 1954 ranged from around 160,000 lire to 300,000 lire. As featured in advertisements for ‘CGE il televisore’ in Epoca 16 gennaio 1954, 22; and ‘televedete Radiomarelli’ in Epoca 12 dicembre 1954, 22. 23. Epoca, 21 luglio 1957, FIAT Advertisement, 2; ‘Italia domanda’, Epoca, 20 aprile 1958, 22. 24. Francesco Alberoni, ‘Presenza della TV in Italia’, in Televisione e vita italiana, 25. 25. See Chapter 1 for discussion about terms describing class and categories used. 26. RAI, Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 1, 18. Middle-class people made up 47% of television owners as compared to 45% upper class owners. 27. RAI, Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 1, 18. 28. RAI, Annuario Rai 1953–1955, 139. 29. Silvio Lanaro, Storia dell’Italia repubblicana: L’economia, la politica, la cultura, la società dal dopoguerra agli anni ’90 (Venezia: Marsilio Editore, 1992), 215–217. 30. Paul Ginsborg, A History of Contemporary Italy: Society  and Politics 1943–1980 (London: Penguin Books, 1990), 214; Franco Monteleone, Storia della radio e della televisione in Italia: Costume, società e politica (Venezia: Marsilio Editore, 1995), 297. 31. ‘Sciopero per tre giorni alla tv: Anticipata la trasmissione di «Lascia o raddoppia»’, La Nuova Stampa, Sabato 17 dicembre 1955, 8. 32.  RAI: Radiotelevisione Italiana, 1956–1957 Due anni di Lascia o Raddoppia (Torino: Edizione Radio Italia ERI, 1958), 31 and 379.

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33.  Gigi Ghirotti, ‘L’assurdo «QUIZ» proposto dalla tv al Professore Degoli: Il pubblico si chiede: chi mai avrebbe saputo rispondere alla domanda?’, La Stampa Sera, Lunedì 19–Martedì 20 dicembre 1955, 3. 34. ‘Non ha «Lasciato» ma non ha «Raddoppiato» Il prof. Degoli sconfitto alla TV’, L’Unità, Domenica 18 dicembre 1955, 2. 35. ‘Lascia o raddoppia gli ha portato notorietà e fortuna Degoli s’incontra a Milano col pittore Giorgio De Chirico’, La Nuova Stampa, 25 dicembre 1955, 5. 36.  ‘Il “QUIZ” televisivo è arrivato in parlamento: Un’interrogazione a Segni sul caso di “Lascia o raddoppia”’, La Stampa Sera, 20–21 dicembre 1955, 1. 37.  ‘Lascia o raddoppia gli ha portato notorietà e fortuna’, La Nuova Stampa, 25 dicembre 1955, 5. 38. ‘$4000 TV Opera Quiz Jars Italy: Prato Has His Say But Controversy Whirls On’, Chicago Daily Tribune, 24 December 1955, 3. 39. Achille Campanile, ‘Improvvisamente impopolare: Ha parlato troppo e male’, Corriere d’Informazione, 9–10 gennaio 1956, in Aldo Grasso, L’Italia alla TV: La critica televisiva nelle pagine del Corriere della Sera (Milano: Fondazione Corriere della Sera and Rizzoli, 2010), 32–35. 40.  ‘Bassoon’s Burp More to Lando Than Many Lire’, Chicago Daily Tribune, 8 January 1956, 9. 41.  Cortese Arnaldo, ‘$4000 TV Opera Quiz Jars Italy’, Chicago Daily Tribune, 24 December 1955, 3; ‘5,120,000 Lire Question’, New York Times, 12 February 1956, 1. 42. John Foot, Milan Since the Miracle: City, Culture and Identity (Oxford and New York: Berg, 2001), 97–98. 43.  Victoria De Grazia, Irresistible Empire: America’s Advance Through Twentieth Century Europe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005); Chiara Ferrari, ‘“National Mike” Global Hosts and Global Formats in Early Italian Television’, in Global Television Formats: Understanding Television Across Borders, Tasha Oren and Sharon Shahaf (eds.) (New York: Routledge, 2012), 135. 44. ‘Giorgio Berti, ‘Quanto guadagnano i divi della Tv?’, Epoca, 9 marzo 1958, 66–69; “Lascia o raddoppia” è costato oltre un milliardo alla RAI’, La Nuova Stampa, Domenica 9 giugno 1957, 5. 45.  Berti, ‘Quanto guadagnano i divi della Tv?’, Epoca, 9 marzo 1958, 66–69. 46.  Bolero Film, 1959–1960. 47. Enzo Biagi, ‘Televisione: Le vie della gloria sono infinite’, Epoca, 6 luglio 1958, 75. 48. ‘Minuto per minuto, la trasmissione di ieri sera di Lascia o raddoppia’, Stampa Sera, Venerdì 14–Sabato 15 dicembre 1956, 4.

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49. Gigi Ghirotti, ‘“Lascia o raddoppia” cerca dilettanti di materie curiose’, La Stampa, Martedì 7 febbraio 1956, 3. 50. RAI, Due anni di Lascia o raddoppia, 284–285. Data derived from ‘Tabella N.7 Concorrenti che hanno partecipato a «Lascia o raddoppia» suddivisi per regione, materia e titolo di studio’. 51. RAI, Due anni di Lascia o raddoppia, ‘Le domande’, 295–545. Data derived from list of all contestants, topics and programs between 1956 and 1957. 52. RAI, Due anni di Lascia o raddoppia, ‘Le domande’, 295–545. Data derived from list of all contestants, topics and programs between 1956 and 1957. 53.  ‘Il Papa ha conversato per venti minuti coi personaggi di “Lascia o Raddoppia„’, L’Unità, 7 ottobre 1956, 2. 54. Francesco Alberoni, ‘Pubblicità e società dei consumi’, in Pubblicità e televisione a cura del Servizio Documentazione e Studi della Segretaria Centrale RAI, 135–148 (Torino: ERI Edizioni Rai, 1968), 147–148; Silvio Lanaro, Storia dell’Italia repubblicana, 215–217; Described in, Adam Arvidsson, ‘Consumi, media e identità nel lungo dopoguerra. Spunti per una prospecttiva d’analisi’, in Genere, generazione e consumi: L’Italia degli anni sessanta, Paolo Capuzzo (ed.), 29–52 (Rome: Carocci Editore Fondazione Istituto Gramsci, 2003), 32. 55. Panicucci, A. ‘RAI dove vai?’, Epoca, 1 gennaio 1956, 17–21. 56.  Epoca, 27 maggio 1956, 9. 57.  Diego de Castro, ‘I dillettanti e la cultura formazione educative di “Lascia o raddoppia”’, La Stampa, 28 aprile 1956, 3. 58. de Castro, ‘I dillettanti e la Cultura’, La Stampa, 28 aprile 1956, 3. 59. Gigi Ghirotti, ‘Gli italiani cercano un’evasione al tedio della vita quotidiana, Ottantamila persone hanno chiesto di partecipare a «Lascia o raddoppia»’, La Stampa, 10 febbraio 1956, 5. 60. ‘37 Domande a Federico Fellini’, Tempo, 5 luglio 1956, 6. 61.  ‘32 Domande a Giovanni Ansaldo’, Tempo, 4 aprile 1957, 6; ‘43 Domande a Edda Ciano’, Tempo, 2 agosto 1956, 6. 62. ‘Discussi alla tv i quiz di «Lascia o raddoppia»’, La Stampa, Martedì 6 marzo 1956, 3. 63.  Enciclopedia di Lascia o raddoppia, RAI, RAI Mediateca: P56226/001 broadcast 13/8/1956. 64. Vicenzo Rovi, ‘Spiegati in trenta minuti I quiz di “Lascia o raddoppia”’, in Stampa Sera, Lunedì 5–Martedì 6 marzo 1956, 3. 65. Camera dei Deputati, Parlamento Italiano, XXXIX. Seduta di Martedi 23 settembre 1958: Presidenza del Vicepresidente Bucciarelli Ducci indi del Presidente Leone, 1525. 66. Umberto Eco, Dario minimo (Milano: Bompiani, 2008); Umberto Eco, Misreadings (London: Picador, 1994).

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67.  Eco, ‘Regretfully, We Are Returning Your… Reader’s Reports’, Misreadings, 33–46. 68. Eco, Misreadings, 159. 69. Eco, ‘The Phenomenology of Mike Bongiorno’, Misreadings, 156–164. 70. Eco, Misreadings, 158. 71. Eco, Misreadings, 158. 72. Eco, Misreadings, 160. 73. RAI, ‘Tav. N. 7: Concorrenti che hanno partecipato a «Lascia o raddoppia» suddivisi per regione, materia e titolo di studio’, Due anni di Lascia o raddoppia, 284–285. Derived data. 74.  Ginsborg, ‘Table  22: Educational Qualifications of Italians Over Six Years of Age, by Geographical Area, 1951–1981’, A History of Contemporary Italy, 440. 75. Ginsborg, A History of Contemporary Italy, 440. 76. Martina Corgnati e Giuliana Caterina Galvagno, ‘L’arte in quiz’, in Arte in TV: Forme di divulgazione, Aldo Grasso e Vincenzo Trione (eds.) (Milano: Johan & Levi Editore, 2014), 29. 77. RAI, Due anni di Lascia o raddoppia, 261. 78. Corgnati, ‘L’arte in quiz’, 30. 79. RAI, Due anni di Lascia o raddoppia, 264. 80. RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana, Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni: 5. La televisione e il suo pubblico (Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1959), 13. 81. RAI, Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 1, 3. 82. RAI, Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 1, 38–40. 83. Franco Monteleone, Storia della radio e della televisione in Italia: Costume, società e politica (Venezia: Marsilio Editore, 1995), 323. 84. RAI, Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 1, 38. 85. RAI, Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 1, 40. 86. Silvio Lanaro, Storia dell’Italia repubblicana, 125. 87. RAI, Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 1, 41; Maria Antonietta Santoro, ‘Le reazioni del pubblico alla luce delle inchieste del Servizio Opinioni’; RAI, Due anni di Lascia o raddoppia, 288–295. 88. Camillo Brambilla, ‘Il popolare telequiz non sarà soppresso’, Stampa Sera, 11–12 agosto 1958, 3. 89. RAI, Due anni di Lascia o raddoppia, 269–271. 90. RAI, Due anni di Lascia o raddoppia, 269–271. 91. Brambilla, La Stampa 1958, 3 92. Mike Bongiorno, La versione di Mike (Milano: Mondadori, 2007), 143. 93. RAI, Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 1, 36. 94. Gigi Ghirotti, ‘Dossena, Ghiglione, Cappelli e Zago cadano su «quiz» molto complicati’, La Stampa, 12 febbraio 1956, 5. 95. RAI, Due anni di Lascia o raddoppia, 152.

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96. Gigi Ghirotti, ‘Tutta tranquilla la quarantasettesima di “Lascia o raddoppia” Il muratore Cristini ha vinto i cinque milioni Marianini supera allegramente il proprio turnò’, La Nuova Stampa, Venerdì 19 ottobre 1956, 7. 97. RAI, Due anni di Lascia o raddoppia, 284–285. Data derived from ‘Tabella N.7: Concorrenti che hanno partecipato a «Lascia o raddoppia» suddivisi per regione, materia e titolo di studio’. Note: Sixty-one percent of contestants with a primary school-level education selected humanities subjects for the show. 98. G. B. Angioletti, ‘“Lascia o raddoppia” e la poesia’, in RAI, Due anni di Lascia o raddoppia, 231. 99. Gigi Speroni, ‘Intervista con il più popolare presentatore della radio–tv Mike Bongiorno si confessa’, Bolero Film, 24 maggio 1959, 24. 100.  Giovani oggi, dir. Carlo Alberto Chiesa, RAI televisione, 1960. Puntata 3 6:25 to 7:30 RAI mediateca identificazione C376. 101.  Giovani oggi, dir. Chiesa. 102. Tullio De Mauro, Idee per il governo: La scuola (Roma: Laterza, 1995), 24. 103. RAI, Due anni di Lascia o raddoppia, 549–552. For the first two years of the program. 104. RAI, Due anni di Lascia o raddoppia, 401. 105. ‘Anche due donne alle prese con i “quiz”’, La Stampa Sera, 7–8 gennaio 1956, 1. 106. RAI, Due anni di Lascia o raddoppia, 122. 107. RAI, Due anni di Lascia o raddoppia, 42; ‘Italy’s TV Blonde Collects’, Chicago Daily Tribune, 29 March 1956, 1. 108. RAI, Due anni di Lascia o raddoppia, 42; ‘Italy’s TV Blonde Collects’, Chicago Daily Tribune, 29 March 1956, 1. 109. Stephen Gundle, ‘Signorina Buonasera: Images of Women in Early Italian Television’, Women in Italy, An Interdisciplinary Study 1945–1960, Penelope Morris (ed.), 65–76 (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006), 7. 110. ‘Il calcio apre a Paola la via del cinema’. Oggi, 15 marzo 1956, 8, 64. 111. RAI, Due anni di Lascia o raddoppia, 63. 112. RAI, Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 1, 265. 113.  Atomica was a colloquial expression meaning that someone’s beauty was prodigious or unsettling. 114. David Forgacs and Stephen Gundle, Mass Culture and Italian Society: From Fascism to the Cold War (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2007), 80. 115. ‘Minuto per minuto, la trasmissione di ieri sera di “Lascia o raddoppia„ Congedo (coi million) del cancelliere e del medico mentre entra in scena la tabaccaia di Casale’, Stampa Sera, Venerdì 17–Sabato 18 agosto 1956, 4. 116. Maurizio Costanzo e Enrico Vaime, Memorie dal Bianco e Nero (Roma: RAI ERI, 2010), 81.

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117. l.g., ‘Il vestito era stato approvato dai dirigenti della tv Umiliata per le critiche alla sua floridezza la tabaccaia di Casale ha deciso di non raddoppiare’, La Nuova Stampa, Martedì 21 agosto 1956, 5. 118. RAI, Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 1, 71. 119. RAI, Due anni di Lascia o raddoppia, 70. 120. Francesco Rosco, ‘La Garoppo in casto abito raddoppia allegramente’, La Nuova Stampa, 31 agosto 1956, 5; RAI, Due anni di Lascia o raddoppia, 70. 121. ‘Serata piena di emozione alla popolare rubrica “Lascia o raddoppia”: Neppure le trovate dei censori della T.V. frenano le esuberanze della Garoppo’, L’Unità, Venerdì 31 agosto 1956, 2. 122. l.b., ‘Maria Luisa Garoppo intervistata nella sua casa’, La Stampa Nuova, 29 agosto 1956, 8. 123. RAI, Due anni di Lascia o raddoppia, 70. 124. ‘Minuto per minuto, la trasmissione di ieri sera di “Lascia o raddoppia„, in una serata dedicata alle donne fortunate le brune, sfortunate le bionde’, La Stampa, Venerdì 1 settembre 1956, 4. 125. RAI, Due anni di Lascia o raddoppia, 150. 126. Santoro, ‘Le reazioni del pubblico’, 289. 127. Vincenzo Rovi, ‘La Garoppo con un abito nuovo all’assalto di quota di 2 milioni e 560 mila’, Stampa Sera, Giovedì 13 settembre 1956, 3. 128. Monteleone, Storia della radio e della televisione, 347. 129. Gundle, ‘Signorina Buonasera’, 73. 130. G. Poggi, ‘La tabaccaia di Casale fu scoperta da Mike Bongiorno’, Oggi, 30 agosto 1956, 37–38. 131. ‘Al telequiz Milva Carra, esperta torinese di Pirandello: Vuole laurearsi in lettere coi gettoni d’oro della tv’, La Stampa Sera, Giovedì 14–Venerdì 15 maggio 1959, 2. 132. Santoro, ‘Le reazioni del pubblico’, 290. 133. Santoro, ‘Le reazioni del pubblico’, 290. 134. RAI: Radiotelevisione Italiana, ‘Fig 22: Gradimento per “Lascia o raddoppia” 1957’, Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 5, La televisione e il suo pubblico (Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1959), 70. 135. RAI, ‘Fig 23: Gradimento per “Lascia o raddoppia” 1958’, Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 5, 72. 136. ‘Finalmente l’atteso scontro dantesco fra la contessa torinese e il fruttivendolo’, Stampa Sera, Giovedì 20–Venerdì 21 novembre 1958, 5. 137. RAI, ‘Fig 23: Gradimento per “Lascia o raddoppia” 1958’, Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 5, 72. 138. ‘Il baritone Gino Bechi ha vinto i cinque milioni’, La Nuova Stampa, Venerdì 7 novembre 1958, 9. 139. See Chapter 2 for an Epoca magazine reader’s question to ‘Italia domanda’ about this statement and responses from art experts and artists.

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140. ‘De Chirico (naturalmente) ha criticato anche Modigliani’, Stampa Sera, Venerdì 12–Sabato 13 dicembre 1958, 8. 141. RAI, ‘Fig 23: Gradimento per “Lascia o raddoppia” 1958’, Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 5, 72. 142.  Camillo Brambilla, ‘Il popolare telequiz non sarà soppresso: Ancora un anno di vita per «Lascia o raddoppia»’, Stampa Sera, Lunedì 11– Martedì agosto 1958, 3. 143. ‘Declino di «Lascia o raddoppia»’, La Nuova Stampa, Venerdì 6 giugno 1958, 2. 144. RAI, ‘Fig 24: Gradimento per “Lascia o raddoppia” 1959’, Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 5, 73. 145. RAI, ‘Fig 24: Gradimento per “Lascia o raddoppia” 1959’, Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 5, 73. 146. Brambilla, ‘Il popolare telequiz non sarà soppresso’, 3. 147. RAI, ‘Fig 24: Gradimento per “Lascia o raddoppia” 1959’, Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 5, 73. 148.  ‘Al quiz l’attrice con il gatto vincatore dell’ «Oscar»’, La Stampa, Venerdì 20 febbraio 1959, 4. 149.  Camillio Brambilla, ‘Trionfo della «Nonnina Milanese» a «Lascia o Raddoppia»’, Stampa Sera, Venerdì 30–Sabato 31 gennaio 1959, 4. 150. RAI: Radiotelevisione Italiana, Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 5, La televisione e il suo pubblico (Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1959), 149–156.

References Primary Sources Magazines and Newspapers Bolero Film. Chicago Daily Tribune. Epoca. New York Times. La Stampa, La Nuova Stampa, Stampa Sera. Tempo. L’Unita. Television Programs Enciclopedia di Lascia o Raddoppia 1956, RAI, RAI Mediateca: P56226/001. Giovani oggi, dir. Carlo Alberto Chiesa, RAI televisione, 1960. Puntata 3 6:25 to 7:30 RAI mediateca identificazione C376. Lascia o Raddoppia? 1955–1959, dir. Romolo Sienna, Host. Mike Bongiorno, RAI, RAI Mediateca, Various.

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Secondary Sources Alberoni, Francesco. Consumi e società. Bologna: Il Mulino, 1964. Anania, Francesca. Davanti allo schermo: Storia del pubblico televisivo. Roma: Carocci editore, 1997. Anania, Francesca. Breve storia della radio e della televisione italiana. Roma: Carocci editore, 2015. Barra, Luca. Palinsesto: La storia e tecnica della programmazione televisiva. Roma: Editori Laterza, 2015. Bongiorno, Mike. La versione di Mike. Milano: Mondadori, 2007. Capuzzo, Paolo (cura di). Genere, Generazione e Consumi: l’Italia degli anni sessanta. Rome: Carocci Editore Fondazione Istituto Gramsci, 2003. Caroli, Menico. Proibitissimo! Censori e censurati della radiotelevisione italiana. Milano: Garzanti, 2003. Corgnati, Martina e Giuliana Caterina Galvagno. ‘L’arte in quiz’, in Arte in TV: Forme di divulgazione. A cura di Aldo Grasso e Vincenzo Trione. Milano: Johan & Levi Editore, 2014. Costanzo, Maurizio e Enrico Vaime. Memorie dal Bianco e Nero. Roma: RAI ERI, 2010. De Grazia, Victoria. ‘Mass Culture and Sovereignty: The American Challenge to European Cinemas, 1920–1960’. The Journal of Modern History 61, no. 1 (1989): 53–87. De Grazia, Victoria. Irresistible Empire: America’s Advance Through Twentieth Century Europe. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005. De Mauro, Tullio. Idee per il governo: La scuola. Roma: Laterza, 1995. Eco, Umberto. Misreadings. London: Picador, 1994. Eco, Umberto. Dario minimo. Milano: Bompiani, 2008. Ferrari, Chiara. ‘“National Mike” Global Hosts and Global Formats in Early Italian Television’. In Global Television Formats: Understanding Television Across Borders, edited by Tasha Oren and Sharon Shahaf. New York: Routledge, 2012. Ferrarotti, Franco. La televisione: I cinquant’anni che hanno cambiato gli usi e i costume degli italiani. Roma: Newton and Compton Editori, 2005. Ferritti, Claudio, Umberto Broccoli, and Barbara Scaramucci. Mamma RAI: Storia e storie del servizio pubblico radiotelevisivo. Firenze: Le Monnier, 1997. Foot, John. ‘Television and the City: The Impact of Television in Milan, 1954– 1960’. Contemporary European History 8 (1999): 379–394. Foot, John. Milan Since the Miracle: City, Culture and Identity. Oxford and New York: Berg, 2001. Forgacs, David and Stephen Gundle. Mass Culture and Italian Society: From Fascism to the Cold War. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2007.

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Ginsborg, Paul. A History of Contemporary Italy: Society and Politics 1943–1980. London: Penguin Books, 1990. Grasso, Aldo. L’Italia alla TV: La critica televisiva nelle pagine del Corriere della Sera. Milano: Fondazione Corriere della Sera and Rizzoli, 2010. Grasso, Aldo e Vincenzo Trione (eds.). Arte in TV: Forme di divulgazione. Milano: Johan & Levi Editore, 2014. Gundle, Stephen. Between Hollywood and Moscow: The Italian Communists and the Challenge of Mass Culture 1943–1991. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2000. Gundle, Stephen. ‘Signorina Buonasera: Images of Women in Early Italian Television’. In Women in Italy, An Interdisciplinary Study 1945–1960, edited by Penelope Morris, 65–76. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. Lanaro, Silvio. Storia dell’Italia repubblicana: L’economia, la politica, la cultura, la società dal dopoguerra agli anni ’90. Venezia: Marsilio Editore, 1992. Monteleone, Franco. Storia della RAI dagli Alleati alla DC: 1944–1954. Roma: Laterza, 1980. Monteleone, Franco. Storia della radio e della televisione in Italia: Costume, società e politica. Venezia: Marsilio Editore, 1995. Morris, Penelope (ed.). Women in Italy, An Interdisciplinary Study 1945–1960. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006. RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana. 1956–1957 Due anni di Lascia o Raddoppia. Torino: Edizione Radio Italia ERI, 1958. RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana. Annuario Rai 1953–1955. Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1958. RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana. Annuario Rai 1956. Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1956. RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana. Annuario Rai 1957. Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1957. RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana. Annuario Rai 1964. Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1964. RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana. Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 1. La televisione e il suo pubblico. Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1957. RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana. Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 3. Il pubblico della televisione nelle varie regioni d’Italia con particolare riguardo al Sud. Torino: Edizioni Radio Italiana, 1958. RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana. Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 5. La televisione e il suo pubblico. Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1959. RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana. Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 7. Indagini sull’ascolto della televisione. Torino: ERI Edizioni Radio Italiana, 1961. Segretaria Centrale della Rai (a cura di). Televisione e vita italiana. Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1968. Sullustio, Ferdinando. Un popolo di concorrenti: 50 anni di storia d’Italia attraverso i telequiz. Milano: Lemuri, 1994. Valentini, Paola. Televisione e gioco: Quiz e società italiana. Bologna: Archetipolibri, 2013.

CHAPTER 5

Lip-Syncing Rossini: The Highs and Lows of Italian Television Opera

Early in 1816, Gioachino Rossini’s comic opera Il barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville) premiered at Rome’s Teatro Argentina. It was a disastrous first performance featuring an un-tuned serenade guitar, an injured and bleeding bass-baritone, a cat walking across the stage, and the loud hissing and booing of a rival composer’s associates.1 Fortunately for Rossini, the second night improved and the opera went on to become one of the comic operas most loved by audiences. Italian opera was at the start of a golden age that now dominates the international opera repertoire and defines high culture in many parts of the world. In April 1954, one hundred and thirty-eight years after this troubled premiere, Il barbiere di Siviglia became the first opera to be broadcast on Italian television.2 Its comic, family friendly storyline proved accessible and enjoyable for television audiences. La Scala’s principal conductor Carlo Giulini directed it, featuring telegenic and celebrated opera singers: the soprano Antoinetta Pastori (Rosina), tenor Nicolas Monti (Almaviva) and baritone Rolando Paneria (Figaro). For opera’s television debut, performers mimed live in the studio to pre-recorded music as the cameras followed them around the stage. The young and beautiful Rosina, beaming and swooning from the effects of Almaviva’s serenade, sits in her home, coquettishly arranging flowers as she sings Una voce poco fa, miming rapturously at the camera to a few hundred thousand television viewers watching in bars, social clubs, their homes or the homes of friends. © The Author(s) 2018 E. Barron, Popular High Culture in Italian Media, 1950–1970, Italian and Italian American Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90963-9_5

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Opera and Mass Culture This televised performance was not the first attempt to popularise opera and seek audiences outside the traditional opera theatre. Earlier attempts to find new audiences had mixed success before the immensely popular opera films of the 1930s opened up mass audiences for opera. During the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century, new technologies such as pianolas, music boxes, early phonograph recordings and sheet music provided a way for people to listen to opera outside the theatre.3 However, the high costs of these innovations meant that recorded opera was the provenance of the upper and middle classes, and these markets in Italy were small.4 In 1901, Italian born tenor Enrico Caruso was the first singer to sell more than one million records and he went on to release more than 200 different opera records.5 Yet, Caruso’s market was not in Italy, which had only a small record market until after the end of the Second World War. In 1924, the total number of records for all genres sold in Italy was 10,458.6 In contrast, America and other parts of Europe boasted mass markets. For example, in 1929, 150 million records were sold in America and 30 million in both Britain and Germany.7 In a similar way, the introduction of radio to Italy in 1924 failed to make a big impact on opera audiences beyond existing opera fans. For Italian broadcasting historian Giuseppe Richeri, early Italian radio was just, ‘a musical box, at a time when in Italy musical consumption was not yet a mass phenomenon’.8 RAI’s live radio opera broadcasts began on 9 May 1931, with Alberto Franchetti’s opera, Cristoforo Colombo (Christopher Columbus, 1892).9 By this time, the ‘big four’ nineteenth-century Romantic composers: Bellini, Donizetti, Rossini and Verdi had lost favour in a verismo world.10 RAI radio programming reflected this and frequently broadcast works by Giacomo Puccini, Pietro Mascagni, Umberto Giordano and Alberto Franchetti during the 1930s.11 In contrast, RAI programmed Giuseppe Verdi operas for only 43 out of the 582 opera broadcasts between mid1932 and mid-1945.12 In late 1936, RAI attempted to develop new opera audiences (and new martini markets) with the Martini and Rossi sponsored Concerti Martini e Rossi that featured celebrity singers performing entire operas. Famous tenors included Giacomo Lauri-Volpi, Beniamino Gigli, Tito Schipa and Aureliano Pertile, all of whom had successful professional careers performing at the major international opera houses including La Scala opera theatre in Milan and the Metropolitan Opera in New York, and all but Pertile had sung at Covent Garden in London.13

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‘…Only a litte more than the normal price of cinema tickets’ During the early twentieth century and later in the Fascist regime, opera impresarios attempted to revitalise the number of large opera performances outside the traditional environment of the opera theatre. This push started with the reopening of the Verona arena in 1913 as a popular performance venue for opera, boasting a seating capacity of 20,000. The first season celebrated the centenary of the birth of Giuseppe Verdi with spectacular performances of Aida. During the Fascist regime, with its strong focus on national culture, the education and leisure clubs Opera Nazionale Dopolavoro (OND) organised theatre and opera tours by well-known performers throughout Italy attended by 1.25 million people in seven years. The theatre tours of the Carro di Tespi (Thespian wagon) also mounted opera performances, the first one lead by the verismo opera composer Pietro Mascagni, author of Cavalleria rusticana, a one-act opera set in a Sicilian village. Their tour of Giacomo Puccini’s opera La bohème gave a pilgrimage-like performance at the Torre del Lago where Puccini had lived and worked.14 Writing in 1939, theatre historian Mario Corsi with some apparent sympathies for the regime rapturously described the open-air theatre performances of the Fascist era: The Carri di Tespi are, without doubt, one of the most typical, significant and perfect institutions created and implemented by the Fascist regime in the artistic and cultural field, and are at the same time the first instance in the world of a mobile theatre for the masses. With the Carri di Tespi the idea that theatre is the privilege of only one type of person and constituted an idle pastime was finally overcome in the minds of the people. With the Carri di Tespi the people have finally found the right place to raise their spirits towards the beauty of art and find in them a fruitful source of life, as the faithful find in the Church.15

The following year, productions of Verdi’s Aida and Puccini’s Madama Butterfly and La bohème toured nationally featuring the internationally renowned celebrity tenors Beniamino Gigli and Giacomo Lauri Volpi. Mario Corsi’s enthusiasm for both the opera theatre tours and the fact that he was writing about this Fascist initiative during the Regime may not make him the most unbiased of sources on audience numbers. However, he estimated that around 200,000 people attended the concerts staged in 1931, and that the annual audience numbers

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reached 400,000 by 1938.16 The ticket prices were slightly more than a cinema ticket, as Mario Corsi enthused ‘…the performances, offered on mass to an enormous public, with low prices, a little more than normal prices for cinema, stood up to comparisons with performances of the main Italian opera theatres’.17

Cineopera:

‘A great opera spectacle at Movie Prices!’ While the outdoor opera performances and tours of famous tenors found a degree of success with the public, it was cinema that gave opera its first breakthrough to mass audiences. Opera films referred to as cineopera were a central part of Italian cinema programming from the 1930s to the mid-1950s. While not highly regarded by either the film or opera worlds, these adaptations of operas and period-drama romantic fictions depicting the lives behind the artistic genius were popular with audiences and achieved great box-office success. As Louis Bayman observes, in each year between 1946 to 1955 cineopera films ranked in the top twelve in box-office takings, and in 1953 there were three in the top six.18 From the end of the war until the introduction of television, cineopera appealed to Italian audiences. One of the most successful and prolific cineopera directors was Carmine Gallone, whose work in the genre and overall film career spanned almost fifty years.19 His 1930s fictional films about the lives of opera composers projected an image of Italian cultural greatness, which while not overtly Fascist, received awards and the approval of the Italian Fascist regime. Gallone was awarded the prize for the best Italian film, the ‘Mussolini Cup’ at the 1935 Venice Film Festival for Casta Diva a film about the life of Vincenzo Bellini, which was released in Italy and elsewhere in Europe, as well as in Turkey, Japan and America.20 The American film industry newspaper Film Daily reported that it was ‘thoroughly up–to–the minute in general technique and boasts uncommonly fine direction by the deft Carmine Gallone. Miss Eggerth is pleasing, alluring and effective’ in the role of Bellini’s love-interest, Maddalena Fumarol.21 Gallone was awarded the prestigious honour, the Fascist Party Cup at the 1938 Venice Film Festival for Giuseppe Verdi. Gallone’s 1939 film about an opera singer performing Madama Butterfly called Il sogno di butterfly (The Dream of Butterfly) was nominated for

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the ‘Mussolini Cup’ (for best Italian film) and awarded the ‘Agriculture Ministry Cup’. During the Second World War, the films Giuseppe Verdi and Il sogno di butterfly were released in Italy and Germany, occupied and neutral European countries, and in America. After the fall of Italian Fascism, the film section of the Allied Forces Psychological Warfare Branch banned all of Gallone’s past films in Italy, as well as films featuring the famous tenor Beniamino Gigli, a suspected fascist collaborator.22 Gallone was one of only two directors banned from making films for six months by the film industry’s Commission for purges for an ‘over–implication in the Italian film industry under fascism’.23 This was as partially a result of his success with the Venice Film Festival judges, yet chiefly for his 1937 propaganda film Scipione l’Africano (Scipio the African). The film had received ten million lire of state funding to create what Stephen Gundle describes as, ‘a propaganda blockbuster set in imperial Rome that the government itself had financed since its theme of African conquest dovetailed with its own policy’.24 When Gallone returned to work, he continued with the opera film genre, releasing Rigoletto (1946). This film was the highest earning film of the 1947–1948 cinema season gathering over 224 million lire at the box office.25 Cinema ticket prices varied greatly throughout Italy, costing an average of 100 lire in Milan, 74 lire in Rome and as low as 25 lire outside the city of Ragusa in Sicily.26 Nationally, the average ticket price was 54 lire. This gives us a rough but useful approximation of Rigoletto’s box-office impact—at least four million cinema tickets for one opera film as opposed to the 1.47 million opera theatre tickets sold for all opera in Italy in 1947. In the same year, Gallone’s film Avanti a lui tremava tutta Roma (1946), named after the famous Tosca aria, starred actress Anna Magnani and the internationally renowned baritone Tito Gobbi in a story about partisan opera performers in Rome during the Nazi occupation. The voice of soprano Onelia Fineschi was dubbed over Anna Magnani’s lipsynced performance of the role of Tosca.27 The response of film critics to Avanti a lui tremava tutta Roma was not enthusiastic: We hoped that the end of the war would at least spare us from Gallone films, and instead, here he is back again, melodramatic and pompous… indulging himself in flights of fancy in the only area for which he has any remaining suitability, the opera film.28

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Italian film and audiences scholar Catherine O’Rawe highlights the similarities between the Gallone film and the neorealist classic Roma città aperta (Rome open city) released the year before: both had a Resistance storyline set in Rome, both starred Anna Magnani and both used the same composer, Renzo Rossellini. Yet, as O’Rawe notes, one is now part of international cinema history and the other is forgotten.29 Despite the different places they occupy in film history, the box-office figures for the two films were very similar: Roma città aperta earned 162 million lire and Avanti a lui tremava tutta Roma earned 159 million lire.30 Even with this success, and as the film review above reflects, the ‘melodramatic and pompous’ cineopera held a second-class status in the industry and with critics. Carmine Gallone directed an adaptation of Verdi’s La forza del destino (1949) and then La leggenda di Faust an adaptation of French composer Charles Gounod’s Faust (1950). Gallone’s La forza del destino was released in America in 1952 as The Force of Destiny and promoted to the American market as; ‘A great opera spectacle at Movie Prices!’.31 This was indeed part of the appeal of opera films in Italy, America, Germany, the UK—all the countries where opera films had found an audience. Viewers could participate in an affordable cultural event in a familiar environment. While opera theatres were out of the reach of most Italians, the cineopera was accessible and affordable to millions. In Italy, there were more than three hundred times as many tickets sold to watch a film than sold to watch an opera.32

Watching Opera in the 1950s In 1950, operagoers bought 1.8 million opera tickets at an average price of 712 lire. Most tickets sold, around 80%, were to see works by Italian composers.33 Opera formed a seasonal and geographically specific cultural practice that was predominantly city-based. The theatres of Milan (450,000 tickets) and Rome (almost 300,000 tickets) represented about 40% of ticket sales and fewer than 10% of performances occurred outside capital cities.34 The other regions with sizable opera audiences included: the Veneto with both the Verona Arena and Venice’s La Fenice Theatre (over 230,000 tickets); the cities of Emilia-Romagna, and its capital Bologna, where Rossini had grown-up and studied; and Verdi country near Parma and Modena (approximately 161,500 tickets); as well as, Palermo (approximately 135,500), Florence (under 133,000) and the Tuscan Puccini’s hometown of Lucca scheduling small, yet regular tributes.35

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In 1951, to commemorate the fifty years since the death of Giuseppe Verdi, the Verona Arena staged a popular performance of Aida with tickets for 50 centesimi. The concert featured 1000 performers and an audience of 30,000. The illustrated news magazine Epoca described the full arena with its audience seated on the hard stone steps, ‘consuming tonnes of bread and rivers of valpolicella’.36 This popular spectacle was culturally remote from the magazine’s coverage of the elite performance of Verdi’s I Vespri Siciliani, which opened La Scala’s opera season later in the year. The Epoca cover displayed a beautiful young woman in an evening gown, diamonds hanging heavily on her ears, throat and wrists. She looked regal, framed like an artwork by the sumptuous fixtures in her opera box—red velvet and gold brocade, garlands of yellow roses and holly, ornate gold lions. The opera theatre was the place to display or flaunt social power, wealth and refined taste: The opening of the season at La Scala, for centuries now, represents not only an artistic event but also the best and most coveted occasion to show off the evening gowns that the designers have developed in the secrecy of their ateliers. For the evening, anticipated… [for the whole year] and dedicated to I Vespri Siciliani, Miss Ivana Peliti Bezzo wore an original Biki design in purple and emerald green satin.37

Miss Biki was one of Milan’s most sought after couturiers and would become Maria Callas’s designer of choice. La Scala had always been considered a place to exhibit beauty and elegance. The writer observed that modern audiences no longer maintained the nineteenth-century habit of talking and playing cards during the performance. Clearly the performance remained a secondary event for some, as the actual opera performance was not mentioned in the article. During the early 1950s, cineopera and films dramatising the lives of Italian composers continued to attract large audiences at the cinema. Two hugely popular films on the lives and works of the greatest of the great Italian composers—Giacomo Puccini and Giuseppe Verdi made a big impact at the Italian box office. The film Puccini (1953) directed by Gallone earned 790.4 million lire. Even more popular than Puccini, the film Giuseppe Verdi (1953) directed by Raffaello Matarazzo starred famous opera tenor Mario Del Monaco, Tito Gobbi, and theatre actress Anna Maria Ferrero, as Mrs Verdi. The film earned 886.5 million lire at the Italian box office. This represented around seven million tickets to see

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Giuseppe Verdi and 6.5 million tickets to Puccini.38 So in 1953, six times as many people went to see a film about the works of Verdi and Puccini than went to see the works of Verdi and Puccini in an opera house.39 Clemente Fracassi’s Aida (1953) was the first colour cineopera, more than colour, it screened in splendid Technicolor. World famous Italian soprano Renata Tebaldi provided the singing voice for the young actress Sophia Loren as Aida. The RAI Rome’s radio orchestra and chorus performed the opera accompaniment.40 Sophia Loren was a relatively unknown nineteen year old whose job was to lip-sync the role of Aida to Tebaldi’s great voice. The results are mesmerising, the dark pancake makeup of Loren’s Ethiopian princess combined with the film’s full Technicolor effect gives her a lurid ‘otherness’, like a nightmare, or a Vladimir Tretchikoff print. The songs of a thirty-one-year-old professional soprano in her prime boomed out of a lip-syncing nineteen-year-old body. Loren breathed as if talking rather than singing. It is fascinating to watch in an unsettling way and a thoroughly awkward combination of radio, cinema and opera. Sophia Loren was not the only Italian film star to start out in cineopera. Gina Lollobrigida had appeared in a minor uncredited role in Mario Costa’s L’elisir d’amore (1947), and in the following year as the lead Nedda in his play within a play adaptation of Ruggero Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci (1948). Later, Marcello Mastroianni appeared as Gaetano Donizetti in Carmine Gallone’s Casa di Ricordi (1953) a film about the history of the sheet music publishing empire Ricordi, which had represented the great Italian opera composers and shaped the industry. The diminished box-office takings of Carmine Gallone’s Madama Butterfly (1954) showed that although the genre still attracted audiences, it was in decline. The adaptation of Puccini’s classic opera was filmed in Japan with a Japanese cast. It earned just over 324 million lire, which was less than half of the box office of the biographic film Puccini.41 For cinema journalist, Alessandro Ferraù writing in the early 1960s, this ‘mediocre result indicated that films about opera were no longer popular’.42 However, opera films were not entirely dead yet, as the number of Italians with access to television was still low. Carmine Gallone continued making opera films to decreasing audiences. He also made comedy films and achieved great box-office success with cinema adaptations of the popular Don Camillo books Don Camillo e l’onorevole Peppone (1955, Don Camillio and the Honourable Peppone) and Don Camillo monsignore… ma non troppo (1961, Don Camillo monsignor,

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but not too much) both of which earned more than one billion lire at the box office.43 In America at this time, the Hollywood musical genre experienced a similar decline. Like the cineopera genre, which had systematically worked its way through the Italian repertoire and the lives of the composers—Giuseppe Verdi, Giacomo Puccini and Vincenzo Bellini— Hollywood had worked its way through the successful Broadway musicals and fictionalised stories of the composers, such as Glenn Miller and George Gershwin. With notable exceptions such as the Sound of Music (1965), Hollywood musicals were similarly defeated by television, as their main audience members, particularly older people and women, preferred to stay at home. Younger cinemagoers were attracted to different types of films than musicals and opera.44

Opera in the Early Years of Television In 1954, a comparatively small audience witnessed the television debut of Il barbiere di Siviglia and the debut of opera on television. At the end of the first year of television there were 72,148 private television licences for home use and 15,970 licences for public use. The size of television audiences was still low in comparison with the number of people going to see opera theatre and opera films. In 1954, 1.8 million tickets were bought to see opera in the theatre and in the cinema Gallone’s Madama Butterfly ‘disappointing’ box office of 324 million lire was the equivalent of around 2.5 million cinema tickets.45 Television opera developed within an existing opera ecosystem. The RAI’s lip-syncing premiere of Il barbiere di Siviglia adopted techniques from cineopera and engaged the opera performers and conductors of the major Italian opera houses, who had been working on RAI radio for years. The RAI’s own long established orchestra and chorus had provided the music for radio and cineopera. It now found itself with a significant new role producing opera for television. The close connection between people working in film, on the opera theatre circuit, radio and now television continued and strengthened. Famous opera singers such as Renata Tebaldi, Tito Gobbi, Mario Del Monaco moved not only between the stages of the international opera circuit of La Scala, the Metropolitan and Covent Garden, they worked regularly on the film productions for cinemas throughout Italy, Europe and America. These famous singers also performed in the RAI radio concerts and now joined

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the RAI television studio productions and opera concerts. While RAI radio concerts and orchestras provided RAI television with a strong foundation to build on, there was not a large radio audience for opera, nor did opera concerts on the radio receive high enjoyment ratings.46

Lip-Syncing and Playback The miming or ‘playback’ approach used in televised opera built on RAI’s existing expertise in studio recording, which had developed with the live and recorded opera broadcasts on radio from 1931. The RAI had its own orchestras and choruses at Rome, Turin and Milan in studios with existing systems and expertise in high quality opera recordings.47 The RAI produced opera programs in the studio because of the technical difficulties with television broadcasts of opera theatre performances. Above all, it became very difficult to see the performers when an opera theatre stage was reduced to the width of a television screen. As the RAI lamented in its annual report, ‘everything becomes indecipherable with microscopic characters’.48 In addition, fixed cameras made filming stage action difficult, and opera theatre lighting was insufficiently bright for television.49 The RAI favoured lip-syncing of the live studio broadcasts owing to the problems with sound quality and performers unable to see the conductor. The RAI playback approach meant that: the whole opera is recorded on tape beforehand, to obtain as perfect a performance as possible, with due regard to sound perception, the differing acoustics of indoor and outdoor scenes, and so on. Then for the transmission, the original cast mimes to its own recording.50

The RAI television operas differed from those in Britain, the USA and Canada, which were broadcast live from studios to prioritise ‘conviction and spontaneity’. German television used the playback method, although they went even closer to the cineopera model with a cast of young and telegenic opera singers miming to the singing of older, larger, established opera performers.51 It is significant that Germany and Italy, countries with very strong opera traditions and large audiences for cineopera, opted for an approach that privileged the quality of the music and the appearance of the performers. They demanded high quality recordings and they accepted lip-syncing. For the RAI, the playback approach met musical and aesthetic needs:

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The results of this system have proved to be excellent and, when it has been possible, as now normally happens, to find for each opera, performers adequate not only vocally but also physically, the television opera product made in the studio was, in many ways, commendable. Opera has remade the way it is and from the new and more agile dimension of television has acquired a new way of expressing itself and a new language.52

Unlike live broadcasts from an opera theatre, studio playback and miming allowed the cameras to get right into the action on stage and created a greater sense of drama (see Fig. 5.1). Unfortunately for the RAI, the studio operas were expensive: each costs six million lire to make. Artist fees would have made the studio operas even more expensive, except that the playback miming method meant that performers, even the famous opera singers, were paid at the rate for ‘recitazione muta’, or non-speaking roles, which according to media reports at the time was between 150,000 and 200,000 lire. In contrast, a performance

Fig. 5.1  Tenor Franco Corelli lip-syncing Puccini the year after his La Scala debut, performing with Renata Heredia Capnist as Tosca, Tosca (1955) in the RAI studio (Per gentile concessione di Rai Teche/Courtesy of RAI Teche)

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broadcast live from an opera theatre was around one-tenth of the cost of a studio production: between 600,000 and 1,000,000 lire.53 During 1954, RAI televised five playback studio productions from their studios in Turin and Rome, as well as two partial performances, individual acts broadcast live from opera theatres in Florence and Rome. By September, RAI broadcast an opera each month. The early studio productions were all Italian operas: Gioachino Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia; Gaetano Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore (The Elixr of Love); Ruggero Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci; Giacomo Puccini’s La bohème; and Giuseppe Verdi’s La traviata. The first act of Gaspare Spontini’s Agnese di Hohenstaufen (Agnes of Hohestaufen) from the Teatro Comunale (Communal Theatre) in Florence and the second act of Verdi’s La forza del destino (The Force of Destiny) from the Teatro dell’Opera (Opera Theatre) in Rome relayed the first live opera broadcasts.54 In 1955, 60% of all television programs were live.55 For opera, the RAI’s policy was to broadcast the well-known and popular works in the lip-synced studio format with its camera close-ups and acting, which they believed was more appealing to audiences. The works of the lesser known Italian composers, the non-Italian composers and the operas that the RAI believed to be more difficult were broadcast live from the opera theatres or external venues, often only in part. The introduction of opera to television was not entirely smooth and the RAI described the early attempts: The problems related to this particular type of program, and the solutions adopted, testify, not only to the difficulty of the task, but also to its artistic interest. It is enough to cite the interesting discussions in the press regarding the performance of opera on television, and from which emerged a general recognition of the opportunity that television has to give a new dimension to performance, as a means to find a new way to interpret the rhythm of the onstage action.56

Audience Enjoyment of Television Opera Television owners liked opera broadcasts. RAI research found 50% of the viewers with a television licence, enjoyed the monthly performances moltissimo (very much) or molto (a lot). Yet, this group was not yet representative of the broader Italian population. In the early years of television, set ownership remained out of reach for all but the upper and

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middle classes, as we saw in the previous chapter. The responses of viewers who watched television in public at bars and cafes are not captured in the early data.57 Younger people enjoyed opera less, and older people enjoyed opera more, while men and women had similar levels of enjoyment, as did television viewers of different education levels and class categories. Towards the end of the decade, in the south, almost 75% of viewers aged over fifty-five enjoyed the performances moltissimo (very much) or molto (a lot) with the viewers aged 45–54 years old not far behind.58 Some operas and performers found particular popularity with viewers. The young soprano Rosanna Carteri received three thousand marriage proposals after her 1954 television appearance in La traviata.59 This was not as many as would be offered to Lascia o raddoppia?’s Paola Bolognani in 1956, but a respectable quantity of besotted suitors regardless. Later in the decade, RAI research found that the television operas appealed to a large number of people who, for various reasons (such as place of residence or age), could not attend the theatre.60 Only a small percent of RAI’s audience for televised opera attended the opera theatres. Of the 50% of viewers who enjoyed the opera broadcasts or enjoyed it very much, only seven percent said that they frequently or occasionally went to the theatre to listen to opera.61 This difference was even greater in the south where 58% of viewers with a television licence enjoyed the opera broadcasts moltissimo (very much) or molto (a lot) and of these viewers interested in opera, only five percent had been to see a performance at a theatre.62 State-run television organisations across Europe sought ways to provide their citizens with access to opera. As Kenneth A. Wright of the British Broadcasting Corporation observed in a patronising but well meaning way, viewers were interested in seeing opera on the television, not because they had attended an opera before, but because of a ‘friendly familiarity’ with famous works: …even in operatic countries like Germany and Italy, each of which has scores of opera houses in regular action, there are nevertheless millions of people who never have the opportunity of seeing an opera done on the stage. Still more true is it of Great Britain and our Dominions, and of the United States, where such opportunity never occurs for probably 90 percent of the adult population. Yet hundreds of the best–known and best–loved tunes whistled by messenger boys all over the world come from

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opera, from Mozart and Rossini to Verdi and Puccini, Bizet, even Wagner – and certainly Sullivan. That this friendly familiarity predisposed a vast public to enjoy the operas themselves when presented on “The Telly” is suggested by the success of productions in BBC and American television of complete operas by Verdi, Puccini and Bizet.63

In 1955, RAI replayed all five operas from the previous year and produced eleven more in the studio, with an additional eight external broadcasts. The eleven new live studio productions were Francesco Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur, Gaetano Donizetti’s Don Pasquale, Umberto Giordano’s Andrea Chénier, Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana, Giulio Massenet’s Werther and Manon, Giacomo Puccini’s Tosca and Gianni Schicchi, Gioachino Rossini’s La Cenerentola (Cinderella) and Giuseppe Verdi’s Rigoletto. The external broadcasts televised one-act of performances of Vicenzo Bellini’s La sonnambula Act I from La Scala in Milan, and Norma Act II from the amphitheatre in the Boboli Gardens in Florence, Georges Bizet’s Carmen Act II from the Arena of Verona, Alfredo Catalani’s Loreley Act II from the Terme di Caracalla in Rome, Gaetano Donezetti’s Don Sebastian Act I from the Teatro Comunale in Florence and Rita from the Teatro Donizetti in Bergamo, Guiseppe Verdi’s Aida from the Arena of Verona and Otello Act II from the Teatro Comunale in Florence, and Ermanno Wolf-Ferrari’s La vedova scaltra.64 It was a lot of opera. The Italian state television monopoly had a captive audience. Up until 1961, there was only one television channel in Italy. Many evenings, typically on a Tuesday or Saturday, the choice was between two hours of opera or no television at all. In 1956, research found that audiences responded in one of three ways to the opera on television: roughly onethird of viewers loved it, one-third of viewers were ambivalent and onethird of viewers really hated it. On average, the viewer level of enjoyment for opera was 56 (just over an average of discreto or fair) but it was a combination of three very different points of view. Compared to other television programs shown at the time, opera generally was more popular than the sports (football) news, film and telefilms and yet, less popular than the quiz show Lascia o raddoppia?, news programs, comedies and variety shows.65 In 1956, there was even more opera on television. RAI broadcast thirteen live studio operas and five repeats recorded from the studio performances of 1955.66 In the following years, of the twenty-nine full-length

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operas broadcast monthly between January 1957 and June 1958, audiences found fifteen operas even more enjoyable, or equally enjoyable to an average television program (73).67 Audiences enjoyed the studio opera Il trovatore the most.68 This Verdi opera set in the fifteenth-century Spanish civil war found a particularly high viewer enjoyment rating of 86, higher even than the legendary emotional victory of Lascia o raddoppia? contestant Felice Mannarelli (83) in the same year.69 Popular opera became even more appealing with the participation of celebrated singers in the principal roles, and audiences appreciated the internationally fêted tenor Mario Del Monaco in the lead role (Fig. 5.2).70 A re-broadcast of Georges Bizet’s Carmen (1956), and the new studio productions of Verdi’s Otello and Puccini’s Turandot proved popular with audiences; all receiving enjoyment ratings over 80. Repeats of earlier studio productions of Bellini’s La sonnambula (1956) and Puccini’s La bohème (1954) continued their popular appeal with audiences; both rated 80. In a rare success for external broadcasts, audiences greatly

Fig. 5.2  Mario Del Monaco as Manrico in Il trovatore finds popularity with television audiences (Per gentile concessione di Rai Teche/Courtesy of RAI Teche)

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enjoyed the performance of crowd-favourite La traviata, and it too was rated 80.71 By far, television audiences enjoyed the operas of Giuseppe Verdi and Giacomo Puccini the most. Georges Bizet and Umberto Giordano were the only two other composers to come close. RAI unsuccessfully attempted to develop audiences’ interest in ‘forgotten operas of the eighteenth century’. Nor did audiences respond to the works of non-Italian composers and contemporary opera, which elicited low enjoyment ratings between 43 and 56. The performances of works by German composers Wolfgang Mozart and Engelbert Humperdinck received lukewarm responses in the 60s, far less popular than average television programs (72) and also less popular than average opera programs (70).72 Opera had not found popularity on Italian television in the 1950s, the works of Italy’s national cultural icons Verdi and Puccini had. In 1957, the increasing number of broadcasts from opera theatres had, for the RAI ‘contributed to bringing the public to the natural home of Opera, illustrating the ambience and fashion that traditionally accompanies opera performance’.73 Their annual report to government enthused that television audiences had experienced opera at the Teatro San Carlo of Naples, the Teatro Verde on the island of San Giorgio in Venice, the Piccola Scala in Milan, the Teatro alla Pergola in Florence and the Teatro dell’Opera in Rome: This invitation to the places consecrated to opera, including their exteriors, was one of the main ways in which TV has contributed to the reclamation and conservation of opera, a type of performance that in Italy celebrates such illustrious traditions and a past of worldwide renown.74

The following year RAI continued to broadcast live from the opera theatres of Italy, noting that: The production of television opera was inspired by the principle of watching opera as a theatrical occasion, which is basically the role that it had always had in Italian tradition and for which it continues to be alive and interesting for vast popular masses.75

Of the ten studio operas broadcast that year, two were new full opera productions of Puccini’s Turandot and Verdi’s Otello and two additional one act operas, Puccini’s Suor Angelica (Sister Angelica) and Rossini’s

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Il turco in Italia (The Turk in Italy). External broadcasts included Adriana Lecouvreur from the Teatro San Carlo in Naples; operas by Gioachino Rossini from theatres in Naples, Florence and Bologna; and Modest Mussorgski’s Boris Godunov from the Teatro Carlo Felice opera theatre in Genoa. There were an additional six live broadcasts of single acts from a longer opera, including Act II of Gaetano Donizetti’s L’elisir d’amore and Act III of Guiseppe Verdi’s Nabucco live from La Scala theatre. These two broadcasts were well received by television audiences, Nabucco received an enjoyment rating of 78 and L’elisir d’amore 76. They formed the only two operas that viewers enjoyed more than an average television program in 1958.76

The Great Puccini Binge of 1958 At the end of 1958, the RAI celebrated the one hundredth anniversary of the birth of Puccini by increasing its opera schedule from a monthly to a weekly broadcast. The Puccini operas of the Commemorazione del Centenario Pucciniano (Commemoration of the Puccinian Centenary) were all studio productions with many repeats. The only new full opera production was Turandot, which featured American soprano Lucilla Udovich as Turandot. Popular tenor Franco Corelli looked every bit a film star with his chiselled features in close-up as he sang Nessun Dorma.77 Television audiences enjoyed Turandot the most out of all the Puccini operas broadcast for the commemoration at an enjoyment level of 80. The repeat of the 1954 production of La bohème remained popular with audiences at 78, slightly lower than the 80 rating it had received when it was shown the previous year. Audiences enjoyed Tosca (1955) as much as they had for its earlier repeat and at the same enjoyment level as an average television program at 72.78 The second repeat of the young popular American soprano Anna Moffo’s performance of Cio-Cio San in Madama Butterfly (1956) was as enjoyable for audiences in 1958 as it had been in 1957, an average audience enjoyment level of 75 (see Fig. 5.3). The heart-wrenching death of Cio-Cio San occurred in complete compliance with the Guala Code, a knife raised behind an embroidered silk screen, but no act of suicide shown on television. While opera lovers were generally delighted by their weekly Puccini dose, some complained of too many repeats from past years. For the broader television public, weekly opera broadcasts were too much.79 The public’s interest in opera on television was decreasing. In 1956,

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Fig. 5.3  Con onore muore … (With honour I die) Anna Moffo as Cio-Cio San in Puccini’s Madama Butterfly (Per gentile concessione di Rai Teche/Courtesy of RAI Teche)

70–77% of viewers had approved of the broadcasts ‘without reservation’; only 6–7% of viewers interviewed responded that they did not enjoy or approve of the television opera. By 1959, the viewers approving ‘without reservation’ had decreased to 50–60% and the number of people opposed to opera on television had risen to 15–20%.80 Perhaps we can surmise, that three months of weekly Puccini operas may have had some bearing on this increased proportion of viewers opposed to opera on television.

The Demise of Lip-Syncing and Popular Opera In 1959, the RAI listened to its audience and cut back on the repeats of studio operas, rebroadcasting just one opera, Puccini’s Suor Angelica. RAI produced only two new studio operas, both Italian, Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor and a new work, Renzo Rossellini’s Le campagne. In a noticeable change of policy, fifteen operas were broadcast live

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from opera theatres. The external performances featured a wider range of composers, no Puccini and only three Verdi works. Operas by lesser-known composers such as Giovanni Paisiello (Gioachino Rossini’s trouble-making rival of the 1816 Il barbiere di Siviglia premiere), Francesco Cilea and Domenico Cimarosa were included, as well as non-Italian composers such as eighteenth-century German composer Christoph Willibald Gluck.81 Opera houses programmed the operas, although the RAI selected from the available productions. Still, the tastes of impresarios and operagoers differed from the television opera audience and enjoyment levels slumped. During the era of lip-syncing, diva Maria Callas was notably absent from Italian television. Callas performed regularly on radio but did not perform full operas on television. The RAI television management maintained she had been invited regularly, but that she had declined, citing her numerous theatre commitments.82 It would be fair for us to conclude that a performer of the calibre and temperament of Maria Callas, with her obsessive commitment to excellence, would in no way be interested in the professional risk of live studio performance and the potentially comical appearance of her lip-syncing. As the broadcast technology improved, Callas participated in live broadcasts from the Paris opera theatre and Italian opera theatres. Callas made celebrity appearances on television for interviews, and as we saw in the last chapter, as a guest on the quiz show Lascia o raddoppia? and her brief performance on the educational spin-off Enciclopedia di Lascia o raddoppia. In 1960, the RAI reduced their annual opera schedule down to twelve operas, four from the studio and eight external broadcasts. After the unsuccessful and at times esoteric opera house programming of the year before, the programming returned to the nineteenth-century Italian composers (Donizetti, Puccini, Bellini, Rossini, Verdi) and included the approachable German composers (Mozart, Haydn and Strauss). Somewhat ironically, after the Puccini backlash, the most appreciated opera of the year was the repeat of the 1959 studio production of Puccini’s Tosca (enjoyment rating 78). The broadcast of Puccini’s La bohème from the cultural festival founded by composer Gian Carlo Menotti, the Festival of the Two Worlds in Spoleto was also popular— the average viewer enjoyment rating was 74 and 8.5 million viewers watched the first act.83 Opera programs continued to attract millions of viewers, yet the audiences enjoyed them less. Between mid-1959 and early 1961 television

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operas received an average enjoyment rating of 65. In 1962, the first act of Giulietta e Romeo (Juliet and Romeo) attracted 6.8 million viewers and Boris Godunov 5.4 million viewers, although most viewers reported they had not enjoyed either production very much, with enjoyment ratings of 52 and 54, respectively. Despite this, well-known works by Verdi and Puccini continued to attract audiences in the millions, moreover, viewers enjoyed the operas, even if they had seen them before. As an example, 8.7 million adults watched the 1961 broadcast of Verdi’s Il trovatore and found it enjoyable (72). Even with the decreasing popularity of opera on television, televised operas attracted audiences in numbers far exceeding audiences attending the nation’s opera theatres.84 In 1960, opera houses sold one million tickets, at an average cost of 1704 lire a ticket, with a 1000 lire increase in price over the course of the decade. These 1960 sales represent a decrease to around 60% of the number of opera tickets sold in 1950. Of the 722 opera productions in 1960, around 549 were for operas by Italian composers, accounting for roughly 80% of around one million tickets sold. Significantly, despite changes to the size of the audience and the costs of the tickets, there was an almost identical proportion of Italian works performed in 1960 as there had been in 1950.85 The 9:30 p.m. start time for opera broadcasts meant that many viewers went to bed well before the soprano and tenor could be happily reunited, or melodramatically perish with a final tear-inducing aria. Often, the number of viewers would shrink down to one-quarter of its initial amount by the conclusion of the performance.86 The RAI’s attempts to provide shorter alternatives by broadcasting one or two acts of an opera or short one-act operas were not successful. These selections received both lower audience numbers and lower enjoyment ratings. Audiences with a track record of enjoying operas with strong narratives, familiar stories and Italian contexts failed to embrace fragmented storytelling of performances of partial operas or single acts with a range of unfamiliar works and composers. By the early 1960s, the technology for the live broadcasts from opera theatres had greatly improved. The RAI now had the technology to record the live studio broadcasts and replay them later, but for external broadcasts this had not been possible. In 1961, the technology to record an external opera performance and broadcast it at a later time became available. This opened up television audience access to the performances in the opera theatres.

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In the area of opera, in 1961, external broadcasts from theatres were developed further, in the conviction that opera, and in particular the opera repertoire directed at a wider audience, suffered from an obvious distortion in studio staging, not always compensated by the undeniable technical advantages. Also in this area, moreover, the development of the possibilities offered by tape recording allowed the transmission of numerous operas, recorded during the year in the major Italian theatres, to be deferred to other dates.87

In 1954, the RAI had celebrated the playback approach to opera as a revitalised medium, it was ‘remade’, ‘new and more agile’ and a ‘new language’. Now it was on the way out. It was abandoned with a mea culpa by RAI in its annual report that opera had ‘suffered in the studio setting a significant deformation’.88 By 1961, all programs were external broadcasts from Italian opera houses or outdoor venues, including using the Eurovisione broadcast network to show the opera performances at the English Festival of Glyndebourne. The opera house and opera festivals were presented as opera’s natural home, and television had re-evaluated its role in the genre. This was the exact opposite to the RAI’s approach to drama, which had increased the studio productions and limited theatre broadcasts.89 The final shake-up for television opera was the introduction of a second channel in 1961. Now there was a choice not to watch opera. As Epoca’s editor Enzo Biagi observed: In 1961 we will have the anticipated Second Program. We can choose. On the one hand we will have Mina, for example, and on the other Callas; on the one hand Mike Bongiorno, and on the other, again for example, Mario Soldati; politicians instead, I think, we will find on both ‘channels’.90

Choice came at a price; the cost to modify the antenna was between twenty and thirty thousand lire.91 This would give the viewers access to an additional three hours a day from 9:05 p.m.92 The first opera broadcast on the Second channel in late 1961 was a performance of Verdi’s Aida at La Fenice Theatre in Venice using a new approach—to film the opera in an empty theatre, taking seats out and using moving television cameras. The audience response to this production was very positive and received a high enjoyment rating of 83, meaning that the small number

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of people who had paid for a new antenna had enjoyed it very much. When the performance was replayed the following year on the National channel it was less popular with a broader demographic, although still enjoyed molto (73). By 1962, the RAI broadcast around 30 hours of opera on the National channel and over 40 hours on the Second channel throughout the year.93 The average number of viewers for all programs during the 9:00 p.m. peak evening slot on the National channel grew from 10 million to 15 million between 1964 and 1970.94 For the Second channel the peak viewing time was 10:00 p.m., which in the same period grew from 3.3 million to 6.6 million viewers. In the early years of the Second channel, the potential audience was substantially smaller.95 With two channels, and now the technology to record the performances at opera theatres and replay them later, RAI increased the annual number of operas broadcast to twenty, with only three from the studio. In addition, the RAI televised studio concerts, where the opera performers sang in the studio with an orchestra, but did not act out the opera. Performers on the National channel included famous tenor Mario Del Monaco, soprano Teresa Stich Randall and baritone Mario Sereni while the Second channel featured Mario Del Monaco and soprano Rosanna Cartier.96 The RAI experimented with opera commissioned for television with Battono alla porta by Riccardo Malipiero with a libretto by popular author Dino Buzzati. On the Second channel, the RAI programmed lesser known operas that were ‘less popular but of more refined taste’, as well as the Eurovisione live broadcast of Rossini’s L’italiana in Algeri from Bregenz, Austria to an audience of one million, who enjoyed it molto (75).97 The most popular televised opera of 1962 was Puccini’s Madama Butterfly broadcast from La Fenice Theatre in Venice shown on the Second channel with an enjoyment rating of 80. While 5.8 million viewers watched Giovanni Paisiello’s Socrate immaginario on the National channel, the audience did not enjoy the opera overly (48).98 The 150th anniversary of the birth of Giuseppe Verdi and the centenary of the birth of Pietro Mascagni shaped the RAI programming in 1963. The National channel broadcast of Giuseppe Verdi’s La traviata from the Teatro comunale in Florence was watched by 6.2 million people with a very enthusiastic response, an enjoyment rating of 81. Verdi’s lesser-known Luisa Miller was watched by five million people and enjoyed reasonably, but not excessively at 66. Performances of Verdi’s Il trovatore (85) and La traviata (81) on the Second channel and Puccini’s

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Tosca (76) were well received by audiences. RAI increased the number of studio concerts in their Rome, Turin and Milan studios to eleven, including performances by tenors Mario Del Monaco and Tito Gobbi.99 By the end of 1964, there were five million private television licences in Italy, which meant more than one-third of Italian families owned a television.100 Opera on television struggled as more and more people watched television at home and television ownership was no longer limited to the upper and middle classes. Contrary to its 1950s position, endorsed as a national and cultural birth right, RAI now considered it part of the unpopular serious music genre of symphony, chamber music and opera. Instead, the RAI continued reducing the number of opera performances on television, one-third of programs were broadcast on the National channel and two-thirds on the Second channel.101 The RAI programmed concerts by celebrity singers, presenting recitals by Italo Tajo, Fedora Barbieri, Giulietta Simionato, Elena Rizzieri and Nicola Rossi Lemeni. The performance of Giuletta Simionato was very well received with an enjoyment rating of 81. However, the recital by Italo Tajo received a lower enjoyment rating of 69 and was beaten out in the popularity stakes by a Concert of the Guardia di Finanza or Italy’s tax police band. In 1964, RAI trialled other approaches, including the ‘pagine scelte’ (selected pages) concert of highlights from Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci, Verdi’s Aida and La forza del destino, with an overall enjoyment level of 79.102 Broadcasts recorded from Italy’s opera houses included Aleksandr Borodin’s Il principe Igor (Act II) from La Scala, which was watched by 5.2 million viewers on the National channel with a high enjoyment rating of 80.103

Understanding Italian Music Tastes In 1964, viewer enjoyment of televised opera declined to a low average rating of 33 and by 1966, it had slid further to 31. In the last years of the decade, opera enjoyment ratings dropped again, down to 28 and 27. Viewers enjoyed only one type of program less than opera on television: the symphony concert programs.104 In 1964, the RAI undertook a large research project to help them understand the Italian public’s musical tastes. The research found music to be an important part of people’s everyday lives. Around two-thirds of people responded that they liked music very much or a lot, and most said that for them, it was an entertainment or enjoyable pastime. Three-quarters of the population

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regularly listened to musica leggera or light popular music, usually at least three to four times a week.105 All other types of music: opera, jazz and symphony music were less well liked. Despite, or perhaps because of, a decade of RAI operas, two-thirds of the Italian adult population had never been to see an opera at the theatre. More than two-thirds said that they rarely or never listened to opera. Those who did enjoy opera enjoyed it greatly and opera music was an important part of their lives; around one-fifth of the population listened to opera once or twice a week, or every day. Interestingly, research on the music tastes in Britain found similar levels of opera enjoyment; onefifth of the survey respondents enjoyed opera.106 The most significant factor in the enjoyment of opera music in Italy was education level. Only 14% of adults without formal education enjoyed opera music, as did 23% of those with a primary school education. Forty-three percent of adults with a middle school education enjoyed opera, as did 48% of those with a high school education. The people most likely to enjoy opera were the 54% of people with a university qualification.107

Loving La traviata In keeping with the preferences shown in the audience responses to RAI opera programs, the research found that people who said they were interested in opera generally had traditional musical tastes. They were almost exclusively interested in the nineteenth-century and early twentieth-century Italian greats. The works of Giuseppe Verdi and Giacomo Puccini found the greatest popularity, although Gioachino Rossini and Pietro Mascagni rated mentions. La traviata was by far the most popular opera. Indeed, Giuseppe Verdi had composed the three most cited operas: La traviata, Aida and Rigoletto. A resounding 60% of adults in the survey named La traviata as one of their favourite operas. The other favourite operas cited by interviewees were Puccini’s Tosca, La bohème and Madama Butterfly and Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia.108 The extent to which interviewees preferred La traviata is consistent across sex, education and age. La traviata was a favourite opera for 58% of men, and 62% of women. La traviata was a favourite opera of 59% of people without formal education, 61% of people with a primary school level education, 62% of people with middle school education, 57% of people with a high school education and 50% of people with university education.109 While education-level was a substantial factor in whether

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or not someone enjoyed opera, interviewees largely agreed on favourite operas regardless of their sex or level of education. Only one percent of opera lovers said that they did not like the works of Verdi and two percent did not like the works of Puccini.110 There were interesting variations in opera taste across education level when it came to the works of Puccini and Rossini. La bohème, while popular with one-third of interviewees, was less popular with respondents without formal education (20%). Il barbiere di Siviglia was more popular with people who liked opera and had low levels of education, than with those with education (30% of respondents without a formal education; 18% of university educated respondents, named it as a favourite work). The popularity of Madama Butterfly also varied depending on educational attainment. While around one-third of respondents with tertiary or secondary education named it as a favourite, and it was popular with 18 to 24 year olds, far fewer people without formal education nominated it as a preferred opera (6%). This presented a challenge to RAI’s television opera programs as television ownership increased. As we saw above, a relatively small 14% of Italians with primary or lower level of education interviewed said that they liked opera. Between 1966 and 1970, the proportion of people with a television who had a primary school or lower level of education grew from 58% to 65%.111

Opera on the Second Television Channel By 1967, the average evening program on the National channel attracted 15 million viewers and the Second channel attracted just over four million.112 One million viewers watched Verdi’s Otello on the Second channel with an enjoyment rating of 83. La forza del destino was also enjoyed greatly (81) by 1.2 million viewers and Georges Bizet’s Carmen slightly less so at an enjoyment rating of 77 with an unrecorded number of viewers.113 To compare this result with other programs, in the same year an average of 18.2 million viewers watched the television adaptation of I Promessi Sposi, (The Betrothed, which we will look at in detail in Chapter 9) and more than 21 million viewers watched the final of the Festival of San Remo.114 Opera, it seems, had been left behind. In 1968, RAI celebrated the centenary of Giaochino Rossini’s birth with a new studio version of Il barbiere di Siviglia, this time without lip-synching.115 Just under three million viewers watched the new adaptation on the Second channel with an enjoyment level of 79.116

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The celebrated mezzo-soprano Fiorenza Cossotto sang the role of Rosina, while popular Peruvian tenor Luigi Alva performed Almaviva and well-known baritone Sesto Bruscantini played Figaro. It was a star cast. All had sung at La Scala, Convent Garden and the Vienna State opera houses, and both Cossotto and Alva had also performed at the Metropolitan Opera house. Other television opera productions that year also brought international and famed singers into people’s living rooms, including Semiramide starring Australian soprano Joan Sutherland, L’italiana in Algeri with American mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne, Tancredi with English mezzo-soprano Anna Reynolds and Mosè starring the Bulgarian bass Nicolai Ghiaurov.117 The fiftieth anniversary of the end of the First World War was commemorated with a concert performance of Verdi’s I Vespri Siciliani attracting an audience of 7.5 million viewers and received a high enjoyment rating of 82.118 In 1969, repeats of Puccini’s Turandot attracted 5.2 million viewers on the National channel on a Tuesday night, with a high enjoyment level of 78. Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana attracted 1.9 million viewers on a Saturday evening, with high levels of enjoyment of 82.119 Despite the plummeting popularity of television opera performances, special anniversary events, favourite Italian composers or famous singers could still attract audiences over seven million. The RAI traditionally used anniversaries and acclaimed performers to stimulate popular interest, for example the fiftieth anniversary of Verdi’s death in 1951 (RAI radio broadcast all but three of Verdi’s works), the two-hundredth anniversary of the birth of Mozart in 1956, the centenary of the birth of Puccini in 1958, the centenary of Rossini’s birth in 1968, the centenary of Berlioz’s death in 1969 and the Beethoven bicentenary in 1970.

Conclusion Opera in Italy in the 1950s and 1960s existed as both mass and elite culture for audiences at the theatre and viewing television. Opera existed in an integrated ecosystem where theatre, film, radio and television opera production merged and overlapped. The different players including commercial film producers, the subsidised RAI radio and later RAI television worked together with the opera theatres, the conductors, performers and orchestras to create different formats and to reach different audiences. Millions of tickets were sold to see opera films from the 1930s to the mid-1950s, and millions of television audience viewers watched at first

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studio and later live and recorded opera theatre broadcasts from the mid1950s throughout the 1960s. Audio-visual adaptations of opera brought a central aspect of Italy’s national culture to a large audience through its mass culture. The number of people watching opera on film and television far outstripped the number of people attending the opera theatres, which heightened their role as segregated cathedrals. Annual opera theatre ticket sales by 1970 were 1.2 million, an increase from 1 million in 1960, yet down from 1.8 million in 1950. The cultural practice of watching opera was played out in two very different locations. On one hand, the television viewers at home, and on the other, the theatre audiences in the opera houses. By the late 1960s, the two separated audiences experienced the same performances when television was broadcast from the opera houses. Television and theatre opera audiences watched the same tenors, sopranos and baritones perform the same works from the great Italian opera repertoire of Giuseppe Verdi, Giacomo Puccini and an occasional Il barbiere di Siviglia.

Notes









1. Burton D. Fisher, Rossini’s the Barber of Seville: Opera Classics Library Series (Miami: Opera Journeys Publishing, 2005), 23. 2. Il barbiere di Siviglia, Conductor. C. Giulini, Director. F. Enriquez. RAI. Broadcast: 23 April, 1954. RAI mediateca identifier: F73614. 3. Roberto Leydi, ‘The Dissemination and Popularization of Opera’, in Opera in Theory and Practice, Image and Myth, Lorenzo Bianconi and Giorgio Pestelli (eds.) (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 287–367, 316. 4. See Chapter 1 for discussion about terms describing class. 5. P. David Marshall, Celebrity and Power: Fame in Contemporary Culture (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997), 155; Enrico Stinchelli Le stelle della lirica: I grandi cantanti della storia dell’opera (Rome: Gremese Editore, 2002), 19. 6. Giuseppe Richeri, ‘Italian Broadcasting and Fascism 1924–1937’, Media, Culture and Society 2, no. 1 (1980): 50, n. 4, quoted in David Forgacs and Stephen Gundle, Mass Culture and Italian Society from Fascism to the Cold War (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007), 178. 7. Forgacs and Gundle, Mass Culture and Italian Society, 178. 8. Richeri, ‘Italian Broadcasting and Fascism’, 50; Forgacs and Gundle, Mass Culture and Italian Society, 178. 9. Giorgio Gualerzi and Carlo Marinelli Roscioni, 50 anni di opera lirica alla RAI 1931–1980 (Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1981), 33.

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10.  Verismo was a late nineteenth-century to early twentieth-century realist opera music style that celebrated the ‘real life’ stories of people in cities, and characters such as the poor artists of La bohème. Giacomo Puccini became the most well known and successful of the verismo composers. This style differed from the plots of earlier operas, which told the stories of historical figures, mythical gods and royalty. 11. Gualerzi and Marinelli Roscioni, 50 anni di opera lirica, 10. 12. Gualerzi and Marinelli Roscioni, 50 anni di opera lirica, 16–17 n. 13. Enrico Stinchelli, Le stelle della lirica: I grandi cantanti della storia dell’opera (Rome: Gremese Editore, 2002), 23; Gualerzi and Marinelli Roscioni, 50 anni di opera lirica, 20. 14. Mario Corsi, Il teatro all’aperto in Italia (Milan–Rome: Rizzoli and Co., 1939), 270. 15. Corsi, Il teatro all’aperto, 265. 16. Corsi, Il teatro all’aperto, 272, 276–277. 17. Corsi, Il teatro all’aperto, 275–276. 18. Louis Bayman, The Operatic and the Everyday in Post-War Italian Film Melodrama (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014), 129–130; See also Louis Bayman, Directory of World Cinema: Italy (Bristol and New York: Intellect Books, 2011), 22. 19. The full list of Carmine Gallone’s film versions of opera, adaptations and biographies appears in Gino Moliterno, Historical Dictionary of Italian Cinema (Plymouth: Scarecrow Press, 2008), 141–142. The composer biographies: Casta diva (1935) a fictional account of the life of Vincenzo Bellini, Giuseppe Verdi (1938), Melodie eterne (1940) on the life of Wolfgang Mozart, Puccini (1953). The operas and adaptations: Manon Lescaut (1940), Rigoletto (1947), Il trovatore (1949), Madama Butterfly (1954) a modern setting of Tosca in Avanti a lui tremava tutta Roma (1946) and Carmen in Trastevere (1963). 20. Moliterno, Historical Dictionary of Italian Cinema, 347. 21. Film Daily, October 8, 1937, in Motion Picture Review Digest December 12, 1938, quoted in Forgacs and Gundle, Mass Culture and Italian Society, 210. ‘Miss Eggerth’ refers to German actress Márta Eggerth in the role of Maddalena Fumarol. 22. Forgacs and Gundle, Mass Culture and Italian Society, 219–220. 23. Jonathan White, ‘Opera Politics and Television: Bel Canto by Satellite’, in A Night in at the Opera: Media Representations of Opera, Jeremy Tambling (ed.) (London: J. Libbey, 1994), 267–296, 281. The other director was Luchino Visconti. 24.  Forgacs and Gundle, Mass Culture and Italian Society, 210; and, Stephen Gundle Mussolini’s Dream Factory: Film Stardom in Fascist Italy (New York: Bergahn Books, 2013), 22.

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25.  Daniela Treveri-Gennari, ‘Table 5.2: Italian Films with the Highest Box Office Takings, 1945–54’, Post-War Italian Cinema: American Intervention, Vatican Interests (New York and Abingdon: Routledge, 2009), 94. 26.  Società Italiana degli Autori ed Editori (SIAE) statistical database, http://www.siae.it: ‘Tab. 13 – Giorni di spettacolo, numero dei biglietti venduti e incassi lordi e prezzi medi, nei capoluoghi, nel resto delle province e nel totale delle province’, Statistica documentazione annuario dello spettacolo 1947. 27. Lol Henderson and Lee Stacey (eds.), Encyclopedia of Music in the 20th Century (Oxford and New York: Routledge, 2013), 251. 28.  Il tempo quoted in Catherine O’Rawe ‘Avanti a lui tremava tutta Roma: opera, melodrama and the Resistance’, Modern Italy 17, no. 2 (2012): 185–196, 187. 29. O’Rawe, ‘Avanti a lui tremava tutta Roma’, 187. 30.  Roma città aperta box office in Treveri-Gennari, Post-War Italian Cinema, 94; Box-office figure for Avanti a lui tremava tutta Roma in C. O’Rawe, ‘Avanti a lui tramava tutta Roma’, 186. 31. IMDB. Entry La forza del destino (1949), dir. Carmine Gallone. 32. SIAE, ‘Tab. 25 – Cinema – Numero dei giorni di spettacolo, numero dei bigletti venduti, spesa del pubblico (*) e prezzi media, dal 1938 al 1955’, Annuario dello spettacolo 1955. This estimate is calculated on the basis of 661.5 million cinema tickets at an average price of 96 lire. 33. SIAE, ‘Tab. 15 – Teatro primario – Lirica e balletti – Numero delle rappresentazioni, numero dei biglietti venduti, spesa del pubblico e prezzi medi, secondo la nazionalità del compositore’, Annuario dello spettacolo 1950. Note: In 1950, audiences bought 1,435,108 tickets to Italian operas and ballet out of 1,783,729 tickets to all opera (such as German and French opera) with an average ticket price of 712.6 lire. Public expenditure on opera tickets in 1950 was 1.27 million lire. The SIAE statistics do not provide a breakdown of opera and ballet by Italian composers, however, as opera represented 94% of the total opera and ballet figures and there are few Italian ballet composers, this figure provides a reasonable indication of tickets sold to see works by Italian opera composers. 34. SIAE, ‘Tab. 20 – Teatro primario – Lirica e Balletti – Numero delle rappresentazioni, numero del biglietti venduti e spesa del pubblico nei capoluoghi, nel resto delle province e nel totale delle province’, Annuario dello spettacolo 1950. 35. SIAE, ‘Tab. 15 – Teatro primario – Lirica e balletti’, Annuario dello spettacolo 1950. 36. Giuseppe Silvestri, ‘Ingresso 50 centesimi: Aida con 1.000 in scena’, Epoca, 4 agosto 1951, 36–39.

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37.  Epoca, 15 dicembre 1951, cover; 9. 38. SIAE, ‘Tab. 26 – Cinema – Numero dei giorni di spettacolo, numero dei biglietti venduti, spesa del pubblico e prezzi medi nei capoluoghi, nel resto delle province e nel totale delle province, secondo i mesi’, Annuario dello spettacolo 1953. Estimation of box office is based on the 1953 average cinema ticket price of 121 lire. 39. Just over two million opera tickets were bought in Italy in the same year. SIAE, ‘Tab. 17 – Teatro primario – Lirica e balletti – Numero delle rappresentazioni, numero dei biglietti venduti, spesa del pubblico e prezzi medi, secondo la nazionalità del compositore’, Annuario dello spettacolo 1953. 40.  Aida (1953), dir. Clemente Fracassi. DVD (Immortal, 2009); Bayman, Directory of World Cinema: Italy, 22. 41.  Alessando Ferraù, ‘Il «borderõ», questo sconosciuto’, SIPRAUNO 2 (1966), 91–109, 101. 42. Ferraù, ‘Il «borderõ»’, 101. 43. Ferraù, ‘Il «borderõ»’, 98. 44. Michael Dunne, American Film Musical Themes and Forms (Jefferson, NC: MacFarland and Company, 2004), 5. 45. SIAE, ‘Tab. 26: Cinema – Numero dei giorni di spettacolo, numero dei biglietti venduti, spesa del pubblico e prezzi medi, dal 1936 al 1960’, Annuario dello spettacolo 1960. 46. RAI: Radiotelevisione  italiana, Annuario Rai 1971 (Torino: ERI – Edizioni RAI Radiotelevisione italiana, 1971), 174. Note: Listening to opera on radio had enjoyment ratings in the low 50s in 1956, sliding down through the 40s and 30s to a very low 27 in 1969, with a slight rally to 38 in 1970. Radio’s popular music and news programs, in contrast, were enjoyed widely; between 1956 and 1970 these programs had average enjoyment ratings in the high 60s and low 70s. 47. Note: Radio had an important role in Italian society and in 1954, the number of radio licenses in Italy surpassed 5 million. The RAI estimated that in 1955, 17 million people (adults and children older than 12) listened to the radio at home, three million in the houses of others and two million in public places. Many listened at lunchtime (10.5 million) and even more in the evening between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. (11 million). There were three radio channels: the National Program for information; the Second Program for recreation; the Third Program for culture, established in 1950. Yet the most popular radio programs were the news and popular music, the opera programs did not attract large numbers of listeners. During 1955, RAI radio broadcast 214 operas and 372 transmissions of opera concerts or highlights. RAI: Radiotelevisione Italiana, Annuario Rai, 1954–56 (Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1958), 138, 548– 549, 572.

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48. RAI, Annuario Rai, 1954–56, 548–549. 49.  RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana, Annuario Rai, 1957 (Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1958), 90. 50. RAI, Annuario Rai, 1954–56 (Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1958), 572. 51.  Kenneth A. Wright, ‘Television and Opera’, Tempo, New Series 45 (1957): 8–18, 9. 52. RAI, Annuario Rai, 1957, 91. 53.  Giorgio Berti, ‘Quanto guadagno i divi della TV?’, Epoca, 9 marzo 1958, 66–69, 69. 54. RAI, Annuario Rai 1954–56, 265. 55. RAI, Annuario Rai 1954–56, 129. 56. RAI, Annuario Rai 1954–56, xv. 57. RAI, Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 1, 18. In 1955, upper-class people owned around two-thirds of television sets. By 1956, middle-class people made up 47% of television owners as compared to 45% upper-class owners. 58. RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana, Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 3. Il pubblico della televisione nelle varie regioni d’Italia con particolare riguardo al Sud (Torino: Edizioni Radio Italiana, 1958), 45. Note: The data refer to viewers with a television licence, not the general public. 59. ‘Tremila volevano sposare la Violetta della televisione’, La Stampa Sera, Giovedì 28 – Venerdì 29 novembre 1957, 6. 60. RAI, Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni: 1, 52, 55. 61. RAI, Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni: 1, 52. 62. RAI, Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni: 3, 44. 63. Wright, ‘Television and Opera’, 9–10. 64. RAI, Annuario Rai 1954–56, 468. 65. Sports news was very popular with male viewers but not popular with female viewers. Telefilms and films went on to improve in technique and quality, reaching enjoyment levels of 80 by 1968. 66. RAI, Annuario Rai 1957, 116–117. The live studio productions were: Vincenzo Bellini’s La sonnambula (The Sleepwalker); Georges Bizet’s Carmen; Domenico Cimarosa’s Il matrimonio segreto (The Secret Marriage); Umberto Giordano’s Fedora; Pietro Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana; Giancarlo Menotti’s Amahl e gli ospiti notturni (Amahl and the night visitors); Giacomo Puccini’s La fanciulla del West (The Girl of the Golden West), Madama Butterfly, and Manon Lescaut; and Giuseppe Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera (A Masked Ball) and Falstaff. The five replays from studio performances were: Gaetano Donizetti’s Don Pasquale; Umberto Giordano’s Andrea Chénier; Giacomo Puccini’s operas Gianni Schicchi and Tosca; and Gioachino Rossini’s La Cenerentola. The live external broadcasts were Luigi Cherubini’s

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opera Il crescendo (The Crescendo) and Gaetano Donizetti’s Rita from the Piccola Scala (the small theatre attached to La Scala); Gioachino Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia Act II from the Verona Arena; Gioachino Rossini’s La cambiale di matrimonio (The Marriage Contract) from the Ca’ Pisani theatre in Venice and Giuseppe Verdi’s Aida Act II from La Scala in Milan. Importantly, the external broadcast included a live performance from Munich of a German Singspiel opera (a spoken dialogue and songs) by Wolfgang Mozart Il ratto dal Serraglio (in German Die Entführung aus dem Serail and in English The Abduction from the Seraglio) Act II. This live performance used the Eurovisione network established by continental European state television stations for sharing live broadcasts of news, sports, special events and now opera. 67. RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana, ‘Figure 1: Gradimento per Trasmissioni di Opere Liriche’, Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni: 5 La televisione e il suo pubblico (Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1959), 20. 68. Gualerzi and Marinelli Roscioni, 50 anni di opera lirica, 144. 69. RAI, ‘Fig 22: Gradimento per “Lascia o raddoppia” 1957’, Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni: 5, 70; RAI, ‘Fig 1: Gradimento per Trasmissioni di Opere Liriche’, Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni: 5, 20. 70.  RAI: Radiotelevisione Italiana, Annuario Rai, 1958 (Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1959), 106. 71. RAI, Annuario Rai, 1958, 106. Other popular replays included Verdi’s Un ballo in maschera (1956) rated 77, and Puccini’s Manon Lescaut (1956) rated 76, Madama Butterfly (1956) rated 75, and Tosca (1955) rated 72. Viewers also enjoyed the new studio production of Umberto Giordano’s 1896 opera Andrea Chénier, a story of thwarted love and death during the French Revolution (78). 72. RAI, ‘Fig 1: Gradimento per Trasmissioni di Opere Liriche’, Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 5, 20. Viewers gave Domenico Cimarosa’s Il mercato di Malmantile a rating of 43, meaning that most people enjoyed it poco or not much. Viewers enjoyed an external broadcast of Valentino Fioravanti’s Cantatrici villane only slightly more at 56. A studio production of Boris Godunov by the Russian composer Modest Mussorsky also failed to achieve popular enjoyment with a rating of 53. Gian Carlo Menotti, an Italian composer living and working in America, wrote The Medium (1955), aiming to attract popular audiences to opera, the Italian television average audience response of 55 was rated just above discreto or fair. 73. RAI, Annuario Rai 1957, 106. 74. RAI, Annuario Rai 1957, 106. 75.  RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana, Annuario Rai 1959 (Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1959), 105.

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76. RAI, ‘Fig 1: Gradimento per trasmissioni di Opere Liriche’, Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 5, 20; and ‘Fig 2: Gradimento per trasmissioni di Opere Liriche atti unici o singoli atti’ Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 5, 22. 77. Turandot (1958), Giacomo Puccini, dir. Mario Lanfranchi, broadcast 23 December 1958. DVD, Video Archives International, 2004. 78. RAI, ‘Fig 3: Gradimento per trasmissioni di Opere Liriche’, Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 5, 23. 79. RAI, ‘Fig 3: Gradimento per trasmissioni di Opere Liriche’, Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 5, 24. 80.  RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana, Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 7. Indagini sull’ascolto della televisione (Torino: ERI Edizioni Radio Italiana, 1961), 23–24. 81.  RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana, Annuario Rai 1960 (Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1960), 137–138. Francesco Cilea’s Adriana Lecouvreur (Acts II, III, and IV) from the Teatro San Carlo in Naples; Domenico Cimarosa’s Le trame deluse from La cometa Theatre in Rome; Gaetano Donizetti’s Il Duca d’Alba from Bologna’s Teatro Comunale and L’elisir d’amore from the Arena della Casa Antica in San Marino; Pietro Mascagni’s L’amico Fritz from the Gran Guardia Theatre in Livorno; Giuseppe Verdi’s La battaglia di Legnano (Acts III and IV) from the Pergola Theatre in Florence and La forza del destino (Acts III and IV) from Bologna’s Teatro Comunale, La traviata from the Bellini Theatre in Catania; Camille Saint-Saens Sansone e Dalila (Acts II and III) from the Teatro San Carlo in Naples; Giovanni Paisiello’s La Molinara (Act I) from the Teatro di Corte del Palazzo Reale in Naples; Gioachino Rossini’s La Cenerentola (Act II) from the Festival of Glyndebourne in Great Britain and La pietra di paragone (last Act) from the Piccola Scala in Milan; Georges Bizet’s Carmen (Act II) from the Teatro dell’Opera in Rome; Christoph Willibald Gluck Ifigenia in Aulide (Act III) from La Scala in Milan; and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro (Act I) from the Teatro di Corte del Palazzo Reale in Naples. 82.  Velia Veniero, ‘La Diva Callas Televisiva’, Bolero Film, 13 settembre 1959, 11. 83. RAI, ‘Fig. 6: Gradimento per Trasmissioni di Opere Liriche’, Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 7, 60. Less popular operas included Richard Strauss’s Il cavaliere della rosa (Der Rosenkavalier) from the Salzburg Festival (enjoyment rating 70) as well as the new studio production of Riccardo Zandonai’s Francesca da Rimini (enjoyment rating 69). The presence of popular American soprano Anna Moffo in the lead role of Donizetti’s La figlia del reggimento did not earn the studio production

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an audience enjoyment rating higher than 63, less than the average enjoyment level for all television programs (70) and an average opera program (65). Audiences enjoyed the live broadcast from the Festival of Glyndebourne of Guiseppe Verdi’s Falstaff only slightly more than fair (58) and Haydyn’s Lo speziale was not enjoyed by audiences (45). 84. RAI, Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 7, 60. 85. SIAE, ‘Tab. 16 - Teatro primario - Lirica e balletti - Numero delle rappresentazioni, numero dei biglietti venduti, spesa del pubblico e prezzi medi, secondo la nazionalità del compositore’, Annuario dello spettacolo 1960; Note: The SIAE statistics do not provide a breakdown of opera and ballet by Italian composers, however, as opera represented 94% of the total opera and ballet figures (in both 1950 and 1960) and there are few Italian ballet composers, these figures provide a reasonable indication of tickets sold to see works by Italian opera composers. 86. RAI, Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 7, 61. 87.  RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana, Annuario Rai 1962 (Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1962), 189. 88. RAI, Annuario Rai 1962, 189. 89. RAI, Annuario Rai 1962, 188. 90. Enzo Biagi ‘Quello che la tv promette per il 1961 e cio’ che vorrebbero due milioni di utenti’, La Stampa, 29 dicembre 1960, 3. 91. Biagi ‘Quello che la tv promette’, 3. 92.  RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana, Annuario Rai 1963 (Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1963), 8. 93. RAI, Annuario Rai 1962, 205; RAI, Annuario Rai 1963, 300. 94. RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana, ‘Ascolto del Programma nazionale TV dal 1964 al 1974’, Annuario Rai 1972–75 (Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1977), 105. 95. RAI, Annuario Rai 1972–1975, 106. 96. RAI, Annuario Rai 1963, 82. 97. RAI, Annuario Rai 1963, 82. 98. RAI, Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 7, 296. 99.  RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana, Annuario Rai 1964 (Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1964), 134; RAI, Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 7, 296. The live broadcast of Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro from the Salzburg Festival received an enjoyment rating of 67. 100.  RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana, Annuario Rai 1965 (Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1965), 276. 101. RAI, Annuario Rai 1965, 68. 102. RAI, Annuario Rai 1965, 237. 103. RAI, Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 7, 296.

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104.  RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana, Annuario Rai 1971 (Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1971), 185. 105. RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana, Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 13. La cultura ed i gusti musicali degli italiani (Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1968), 10–12. 106. RAI, Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 13, 16. 107. RAI, ‘Tabella 6: Indici di gradimento per i vari generi di musica in relazione ad alcune caratteristiche degli intervisati’, Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 13, 17. 108.  RAI, ‘Tabella 30: Opere Liriche preferiti’, Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 13, 69–70. 109.  RAI, ‘Tabella 30: Opere Liriche preferiti’, Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 13, 69–70. RAI survey of music tastes, public who had responded that they liked opera very much, a lot or fair. 110.  RAI, ‘Tabella 31: Adulti interessati all musica operistica Conoscenze e gradimento per alcuni compositori di musica lirica’, Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 13, 72. 111. RAI, ‘Caratteristiche socio–demografiche dei possessori di apparecchi televisivi’, Annuario Rai 1972–1975, 108. 112.  RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana, Annuario Rai 1968 (Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1968), 388. 113. RAI, Annuario Rai 1968, 337. 114. RAI, Annuario Rai 1968, 338. 115. Gualerzi and Marinelli Roscioni, 50 anni di opera lirica, 25. 116. RAI, Annuario Rai 1969–70, ‘Ascolto e gradimento di alcune transmission televisive del 1968 e 1969’, 168. 117. Gualerzi and Marinelli Roscioni, 50 anni di opera lirica, 25. 118. RAI, Annuario Rai 1969–70, ‘Ascolto e gradimento di alcune transmission televisive del 1968 e 1969’, 168. 119. RAI, Annuario Rai 1969–70, 173.

References Primary Sources Magazines and Newspapers. Bolero Film. Epoca. La Stampa, La Stampa Sera. Television and Film. Aida (1953), Giuseppe Verdi, Dir. Clemente Fracassi. DVD, Immortal, 2009.

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barbiere di Siviglia, Il, Gioachino Rossini, Cond. C. Giulini, Dir. F. Enriquez. RAI. Broadcast: 23 April, 1954. RAI mediateca identifier: F73614. International Movie Database (IMDB) La forza del destino (1949), http://www. imdb.com/title/tt0041385/. Società Italiana degli Autori ed Editori (SIAE) statistical database: Statistica documentazione annuario dello spettacolo, http://www.siae.it. Turandot (1958), Giacomo Puccini, Dir. Mario Lanfranchi, broadcast 23 December 1958. DVD: Video Archives International, 2004.

Secondary Sources Bayman, Louis. Directory of World Cinema: Italy. Bristol and New York: Intellect Books, 2011. Bayman, Louis. The Operatic and the Everyday in Post-War Italian Film Melodrama. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014. Bianconi, Lorenzo, and Giorgio Pestelli (eds.). Opera Production and Its Resources. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1998. Bianconi, Lorenzo, and Giorgio Pestelli (eds.). Opera in Theory and Practice, Image and Myth. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2003. Corsi, Mario. Il teatro all’aperto in Italia. Milan–Rome: Rizzoli and Co., 1939. Dunne, Michael. American Film Musical Themes and Forms. Jefferson, NC: MacFarland and Company, 2004. Ferraù, Alessando ‘Il «borderõ», questo sconosciuto’, SIPRAUNO, 2 (1966), 91–109. Fisher, Burton D. Rossini’s The Barber of Seville: Opera Classics Library Series. Miami: Opera Journeys Publishing, 2005. Forgacs, David, and Stephen Gundle. Mass Culture and Italian Society from Fascism to the Cold War. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007. Gualerzi Giorgio e Carlo Marinelli Roscioni. 50 anni di opera lirica alla RAI 1931–1980. Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1981. Henderson, Lol, and Lee Stacey (eds.). Encyclopedia of Music in the Twentieth Century. London and New York: Routledge, 2014. Leydi, Roberto. ‘The Dissemination and Popularization of Opera’. In Opera in Theory and Practice, Image and Myth, edited by Lorenzo Bianconi and Giorgio Pestelli, 287–367, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2003. Mallach, Alan. The Autumn of Italian Opera: From Verismo to Modernism, 1890– 1915. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2007. Marshall, P. David. Celebrity and Power: Fame in Contemporary Culture. Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1997. Moliterno, Gino. Historical Dictionary of Italian Cinema. Plymouth: Scarecrow Press, 2008.

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O’Rawe, Catherine. ‘Avanti a lui tremava tutta Roma: Opera, melodrama and the Resistance’, Modern Italy 17, no. 2 (2012): 185–196. Pistone, Danièle. Nineteeth-Century Italian Opera from Rossini to Puccini. Translated by E. Thomas Glasow. Portland, OR: Amadeus Press, 1995. Reich, Jacqueline, and Piero Garofalo (eds.). Reviewing Fascism: Italian Cinema, 1922–1943. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002. Rosselli, John. The Opera Industry in Italy: From Cimarosa to Verdi: The Role of the Impresario. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984. Rosselli, John. Music and Musicians in Nineteenth Century Italy. London: B. T. Batsford, 1991. Stinchelli, Enrico. Le stelle della lirica: I grandi cantanti della storia dell’opera. Rome: Gremese Editore, 2002. RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana. Annuario Rai 1954–1956. Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1958. RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana. Annuario Rai 1957. Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1958. RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana. Annuario Rai 1958. Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1958. RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana. Annuario Rai 1959. Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1959. RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana. Annuario Rai 1960. Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1960. RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana. Annuario Rai 1962. Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1962. RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana. Annuario Rai 1963. Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1963. RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana. Annuario Rai 1964. Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1964. RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana. Annuario Rai 1965. Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1965. RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana. Annuario Rai 1968. Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1968. RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana. Annuario Rai 1971. Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1971. RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana. Annuario Rai 1972–75. Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1977. RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana. Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 1. La televisione e il suo pubblico. Torino: ERI Edizioni Radio Italiana, 1957. RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana. Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 3. Il pubblico della televisione nelle varie regioni d’Italia con particolare riguardo al Sud. Torino: Edizioni Radio Italiana, 1958.

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RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana. Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 5 La televisione e il suo pubblico. Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1959. RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana. Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 7. Indagini sull’ascolto della televisione. Torino: ERI Edizioni Radio Italiana, 1961. RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana. Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 13. La cultura ed i gusti musicali degli italiani. Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1968. Treveri-Gennari, Daniela. Post-War Italian Cinema: American Intervention, Vatican Interests. New York and London: Routledge, 2009. White, Jonathan. ‘Opera Politics and Television: Bel Canto by Satellite’. In A Night in at the Opera: Media Representations of Opera, edited by Jeremy Tambling 267–96. London: J. Libbey, 1994. Wright, Kenneth A. ‘Television and Opera’, Tempo, New Series 45 (1957): 8–18.

CHAPTER 6

Puccini, Botticelli and Celebrity Endorsements: The Art of Magazine Advertising

Fig. 6.1  Giacomo Puccini endorses Odol mouthwash in L’Illustrazione Italiana, 13 July 1902

© The Author(s) 2018 E. Barron, Popular High Culture in Italian Media, 1950–1970, Italian and Italian American Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90963-9_6

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In 1902, dental hygiene secured a high-ranking celebrity endorsement in the weekly magazine L’Illustrazione Italiana with Giacomo Puccini’s praise of the purportedly effective and economical product Odol, a concentrated mouthwash (Fig. 6.1).1 Not only did Puccini strongly recommend the product, larks sang Mimi’s song from La bohème while his tooth pain disappeared. Puccini advised everyone with bad teeth, like Mimi’s former lover the poet Rodolfo, should use Odol. Italian advertising has a history of using opera and other high-culture references to impress potential consumers.2 In the early twentieth century, before the development of mass markets, advertising was an elite activity targeting a narrow section of society through low-circulation newspapers and the higher-circulation, but still far from ubiquitous, magazines. When the weekly magazine L’Illustrazione Italiana was founded in 1873, it attracted a small readership of the urban bourgeois. As historian Nello Ajello dryly observes, for tens of thousands of bourgeois Italians, subscribing to L’Illustrazione Italiana was as much a part of their world as having a daughter who played the piano and spoke French.3 The magazine featured the work of firme ‘big names’ such as the writer Giovanni Verga, poet and Tosca librettist Giuseppe Giacosa and novelist Matilde Serao.4 Advertising historian Adam Arvidsson suggests that L’Illustrazione Italiana offered its urban middle-class market entertainment mixed with advertisements for desirable products.5 For this readership, the magazine, ‘combined human interest with infotainment and stories on the wonders of science and industry, and served as a backdrop for the popularization of new consumer goods, like patent medicines, bicycles and kitchen equipment’.6 In this way, L’Illustrazione Italiana and similar publications provided a prelude to the magazine boom of the 1950s and 1960s. From the turn of the century, an increasing number of people across Italian society acquired at least basic reading skills so that illiteracy dropped below 40% by 1911.7 Magazine markets expanded as publishers developed easier to read illustrated supplements such as the Domenica del Corriere, the Sunday magazine of the newspaper Corriere della Sera.8 By 1963 and the end of the ‘economic miracle’, this illustrated magazine would reach 5.3 million readers across the country.9 For the first half of the twentieth century, however, weekly magazines remained a predominantly elite activity. The early advertising content reflected the cultural values and interests of this affluent target audience. In sharp contrast, by the second half of the twentieth century, economic growth,

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technological advances and increased access to education provided new magazine markets within the middle, lower-middle and lower classes. The viability and profitability of magazines depended on sales, regardless of whether elite or mass markets read them. The readers formed what would later be described as an ‘audience commodity’, a business model where the editor sold access to their readers to advertising agencies or in-house company marketing teams through advertising space or integrated content.10 Advertisers targeted the magazines with high-status and high-income readers, as Italy’s low per capita income limited the buying capacity of the broader magazine market. As the century progressed, advertisers increasingly focused on readers who wished to be seen by others as socially superior, with the conjecture that the ownership of particular products reflected membership of social groups. Additionally, beyond information on products, advertisers shared a ‘known’ cultural reference or joke to further define or express membership. The nod to the La bohème characters Mimi and Rodolfo was a contemporary cultural reference that would have been understood by most, if not all, of the readership of L’Illustrazione Italiana, regardless of whether or not they had seen the opera performed in Italy in the few years since its 1896 premiere in Turin. Significantly, the Puccini endorsement was delivered in a playful tone rather than as a sacred or reverent reference to high art and musical genius. This good-humoured approach, and adaptation for comic effect, was a common feature of the use of high culture in advertising. Puccini, who repurposed his own work for a different commercial use and magazine reader enjoyment, winkingly invites the reader to recognise the La bohème references, the operatic drama of toothache and the artful repetition of the product name that appeared thirteen times throughout the poem. High-culture images in advertising linked cultural knowledge to class and social position; however, it often took a nuanced, blended and even playful form, rather than a straight appropriation of sacred high culture. High culture and Italy’s national cultural heritage operated as powerful symbols of knowledge, style and affluence in magazine advertising of the 1950s and 1960s. This chapter explores the ways magazine advertising drew on high culture in the 1950s and 1960s. Firstly, advertisers adapted cultural icons, the celebrities and associated products with artistic talent and also with artworks and quality. This approach occurred in campaigns targeting the middle-class and lower-middle-class readers of the illustrated

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news magazines as well as the less-educated, lower-class female readers of fotoromanzi. Advertisers used high culture in a commercial context by harnessing the symbolic use of the Italian creative genius and historical masterpieces as well as the international firme ‘big names’ of art, literature and music. Producers of luxury goods, alcohol and domestic and health products adapted high culture to support their products. Secondly, advertisers invited consumers to differentiate themselves with the use of their product. This advertising approach was prevalent in the illustrated news magazines. Advertisers presented their products as exclusive, used only by the culturally informed. The product and the discriminating consumer were both represented as imbued with good taste. Advertising campaigns depicted desirable sophisticated lifestyles attending the opera or visiting art galleries, with their products integrated into this stylish picture. This approach highlights the role of culture in maintaining class divisions. Thirdly, and less predictably, advertisers associated high culture with affordable and advantageous cultural practices. Advertising agencies recognised the market opportunity presented by the growing number of families with waged incomes and leisure time. Advertisements for affordable literature took an inclusive approach, selecting accessible books ‘for all tastes’, while emphatically stressing the need for everyone to be familiar with the literary masterpieces. This inclusiveness is evident in advertisements for affordable books aimed at the broad category of ‘modern man’ in illustrated news magazines and ‘for everyone’ in fotoromanzi. High culture gave a mark of quality to affordable products for beauty or hygiene, as advertisers deployed high culture to attract customers not only to luxury items but also to everyday products. As we saw in Chapter 2, magazine reading was a common everyday activity and by the 1950s, Italy had the highest number of people in Europe regularly reading magazines.11 This readership provided advertisers with millions of readers, and yet, as consumers, most people’s income and expenditure remained limited, or even at subsistence level. Ownership of white goods stayed low throughout the 1950s: in 1953, four percent of families owned a washing machine, marginally increasing to five percent by 1960; while in 1953, 14% of families owned a refrigerator rising to 17% by the end of the decade.12 Advertising conferences held in the early 1950s demonstrate that the industry was acutely aware of the economic situation and low average family incomes, assisted by DOXA’s detailed statistics on family income distribution.

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For advertisers, the outlook seemed bright. Mario Bellavista, the head of the successful Italian agency Studio Sigla, advised the industry to ‘adapt the product to the purchasing power’. Noting that, with Italy’s 46 million consumers, ‘Despite the modest individual purchasing power, ours is nevertheless a large and important market’.13 Bellavista offered the example of strong growth in the motorised bike and motorcycle market, helped along by instalment plans. He signalled future opportunities in leisure, citing the 62 billion lire Italians spent going to the cinema in 1950—110 times as much as they spent in 1938. The increasing birth rate, Bellavista enthused, meant another 1000 consumers a day.14 This optimism about future purchasing power and consumption turned out to be well placed, as between 1950 and 1973 Italy’s per capita income tripled, and, in doing so, rose from being the lowest in Europe to just below the average per capita income in Europe.15 At the beginning of the ‘economic miracle’ in 1958, more than 21 million people read weekly magazines. The socio-economic breakdown of this readership helped attract advertisers and enabled them to target markets based on income and assumptions about education and taste. An estimated 1.6 million readers came from the upper-class, 8.6 million from the middle class, 7.2 million lower-middle class and 1.4 million people from the lower class. By the end of the ‘economic miracle’, advertiser research found that the market had grown to 23 million weekly magazines readers, which comprised: a marginal increase of upper-class readers to 1.7 million and increase of 900,000 readers to 9.5 million middle class readers. The biggest gains were in the lower-middle and lower class with an extra two million lower-middle-class readers, now totalling 9.2 million, and an extra 1.3 million readers to total 2.7 million lower-class readers.16 The middle-class and lower-middle-class readers with increasing incomes frequently worked in the growing industrial and services sector. This group now narrowly provided the largest audience for magazines, seeking current affairs, light entertainment and information on new consumer goods. Despite this shift to a broader readership, people’s incomes, type of employment and literacy levels still varied greatly throughout the peninsula and affected access to magazines. Those in professional occupations, white-collar jobs, commercial roles and skilled factory jobs remained the most likely to read weekly magazines (85%, 90%, 70% and 77% respectively).17 Even at a time when cultural practices were changing as a large proportion of the population obtained entertainment and information

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through new and affordable forms of media, those who remained outside the cities and towns were less likely to have access to mass media due to limited literacy, distribution and income. People working in agriculture—farmers and farm labourers—made up the lowest levels of people reading magazines and newspapers, watching television, listening to radio and going to the cinema. Around one-third of agricultural workers read a magazine in an average week: 39% of farmers and 34% of farm workers.18 In 1962, an estimated 11.5 million Italians lived ‘out of reach of the press’ in isolated areas or small communities.19 With this larger and more prosperous readership came greater investment in advertising. In 1962, Studio Sigla estimated that advertisers spent 162.7 billion lire in Italy, a 16% increase on the previous year. Of this, 38% or 62 billion lire went on print advertising, forming the largest single investment in the advertising market. Outdoor advertising such as billboards comprised 12% of advertising expenditure and television advertising, 10%.20 The advantage of print came from its segmented market and the growing knowledge about the economic and social situation of their readers. Advertisers paid particular attention to housewives, calculating that they spent 80% of their husband’s pay, or administered its expenditure.21 Fifty-six percent of housewives read weekly magazines, fewer than the 61% of all women and 64% of men who read a weekly magazine.22 Gian Paolo Cesarini, who worked in Italian advertising in the 1950s, suggests that Italy’s history of advertising runs in parallel with the history of its social and economic transformation: as illustrated by the advertisements for white goods, cleaning and beauty products.23 Advertising research sought to capture the significant social shifts for women and attempted to comprehend the new generation of massaia (housewives). One industry account portrayed housewives as split into two categories of new and old generations. The ‘new generation’ of housewives had greater expectations; they envied the independence of single women who worked outside the home, at a time when the civil service and many companies would not employ married women. Reportedly, they felt ashamed of their hands coarse from housework and used the ‘same bitter expression:—I am the servant of my home, my husband and the children’. Yet, for young married women, life offered more choices, she was less likely to live with her parents or parents in law, and produced fewer children. The less ripe consumer market, the ‘old generation’, of minor interest to the

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advertisers remained, ‘proud of their aprons and their cooking’ and felt satisfied by their thrifty home management and large families.24 Imported, or hybrid forms of American popular culture, offered exciting and novel features to Italian consumer and mass culture in the 1950s and 1960s. American companies and advertising techniques promoted new household and personal grooming products to emerging consumer markets in cities and towns. These American images appeared alongside or merged with traditional Italian cultural images. Italian advertisers used both attractive images of modern blonde housewives with shining new cleaning appliances and the symbolic images of high-culture art and artists to attract Italian consumers to their idealised products. The American influence on Italian mass culture provided a catalyst for the use of high culture in a mass culture context in two ways. Italian culture incorporated high-culture authors, artists and images as part of the rearguard action against Americanisation and mass culture. High culture was offered as a meaningful and rich alternative to the new commercial and allegedly trivial culture, appealing to an existing cultural prejudice that represented the American Ford-like production of art as producing soulless, empty and mediocre art, in contrast to the rich Italian and European traditions. Cultural producers also learned how to reach consumers by looking at the ways that American popular culture expanded its markets when they crossed over cultural and class distinctions. Victoria De Grazia’s research into the American influence on European culture suggests that one of the most significant challenges of the American commercial culture was its classlessness and lack of adherence to traditional cultural forms and boundaries that: challenged the distinctions between high and low, elite and popular cultures that since the seventeenth century had arisen in response to the democratizing tendencies attendant on the print revolution.25

America was synonymous with advertising, particularly magazine advertisements. Adam Arvidsson argues that in the post-war period Italian advertising and media was dominated by ‘American–style consumer culture’ that would provide ‘a model of modern life that had a vast impact on the everyday aspirations of Italians’. Intellectuals, he suggests, interpreted this model, as ‘part of a homogenizing process of “Americanization”’.26

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In his still influential 1986 article on the Americanisation of the everyday, Stephen Gundle explores why America operated as ‘a lighthouse on the horizon’ and was, for so many Italians, ‘a model to emulate and assimilate’.27 He argues that the process of Americanisation was facilitated by the speed of the social and economic change that created a demand for new ideas, models of behaviour and cultural values that was not being met within existing Italian culture, nor was it countered by a strong national culture. It is difficult to draw a sharp demarcation line between Italian high culture and American mass culture. The line is fuzzy. High culture became more accessible with the production and promotion mechanisms of the American cultural industries. In some cases, the popularisation of high culture was part of Americanisation. In other cases, Italian high culture and its masterpieces provided opposing models to the American cultural values. Both Stephen Gundle and Victoria De Grazia suggest, the ‘irresistible’ values and products of America appealed to people and met a social and cultural demand.28 A number of recent scholars have continued this challenge to the orthodox view of Americanisation as an all-consuming and triumphant cultural imperialism. They argue rather that Italians deliberately selected elements of American culture instead of absorbing it all as compliant, brainwashed consumers. Paolo Capuzzo suggests in his work on youth and consumption that, ‘the category of Americanisation does not pay enough attention to processes of adaptation, reception, and reworking of the American commercial culture’.29 Magazine advertisements form part of this reworking of national and American commercial cultures. Historian of Italian consumerism, Paolo Scrivano also finds that American influences were adopted if, and when, they challenged outdated traditional boundaries, that ‘American images loosened and redefined traditional social hierarchies governing Italian society, in a way which effectively challenged the divide between ‘high’ and ‘low’ culture and the old markers of social distinction’.30 American mass culture producers were often agnostic in their use of cultural symbols and open to a range of audiences. Italian adaptation of American culture was purposeful and selective, as Scrivano’s analysis of the Italian domestic sphere suggests. Consumers could negotiate and resist cultural influence: ‘Initially reluctant to follow American examples, Italian society soon demonstrated an unusual capacity for remaking and hybridizing imported transatlantic models’.31

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Similarly, American historian Richard Pells argues that Europeans used American mass culture for their own purpose regardless of the intent of the Americans. He also suggests the dismissive attitude of Italian intellectuals to American culture was a strategic play to maintain their authority, arguing that intellectuals exploited fear of cultural invasion and vulgarity to defend their diminishing positions of influence and status in society.32 Conversely, as we will see in this chapter, intellectuals also participated in consumer culture and lent their authority to select Italian products, typically alcohol. This current recalibration of consumer responses to American influences now recognises advertising as an iterative and selective process, rather than a passive assimilation of cultural imperialism. In particular, Simona De Iulio and Carlo Vinti challenge the idea that the American advertising approaches swept through the Italian advertising industry and society like ‘a steamroller crushing customs and traditions rooted in national cultures’.33 Their research into Italy’s advertising industry in the 1950s and 1960s demonstrates that a cultural transfer developed from interactions and adaptations of imported approaches and the existing Italian advertising traditions of strong graphic design and privileging aesthetics, beauty and good taste continued throughout the 1950s and 1960s. For De Iulio and Vinti, the ‘American Way’ met with an ‘Italian Way’ and the Italian advertising profession integrated, reworked and adopted approaches from both in a critical and strategic way. The use of high-culture symbols and references in advertising provides evidence of the hybrid forms that combined traditional and new cultural influences. Italian advertisers, like their American counterparts, aimed to inform public opinion, shift product and make money. In addition, many assumed an additional role to shape and improve public taste. This ambition reflected a continued perception by the educated in Italy that the masses lacked the refinement of class, good taste and education and were, therefore, in dire need of their cultural superiors to guide them. Books and articles on advertising published earlier in the century had affirmed its potential to, ‘contribute to elevating the life of the masses. … impose new customs, new habits’; indeed, a well-constructed campaign had the potential to, ‘become a formidable force that pushed a people toward a higher faith, teaching it the virtues of prevention, savings, hygiene, and a happy life’.34 Decades later, Olivetti’s advertising department manager observed in an even more paternalistic way, ‘the taste of the masses is not something to be respected in abstract, since this

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taste does not exist and the public unconsciously follows the lead of an elite which is culturally more advanced’.35 There were two main approaches to advertising in Italy in this period. The first grounded in the strong local commercial art tradition. Billboard, poster and magazine advertising featured designs that were themselves works of art. The lithograph posters of the early twentieth century were often signed, depicting stylised representations of products and beautiful women consuming the products. The close connection between these advertisements and contemporary art movements is distinctly evident in Martini and Rossi’s art nouveau poster ‘La Dama Bianca’ (‘The White Lady’) by Marcello Dudovich, and the later futurist inspired work of Giorgio Muggiani presenting an image of electric sparks streaming from a Martini Vermouth bottle held powerfully, triumphantly above the head of a naked muscular man as he shoots through space.36 Martini and Rossi’s corporate history observes: With its simultaneous, rapid, allusive breakaway language, futurism could not but have a following in the advertising world; advertising experts promptly sense the great potential and thus take over futurism’s expressive models in the 1920s and 1930s. Maybe Muggiani was thinking of a playful re–interpretation of Nietzsche and D’Annunzio, of a superman launched into space in a vortex of confetti…37

Armando Testa the so-called father of modern advertising communication in Italy successfully crossed over from the commercial art poster tradition to mass-produced advertising for magazines and later television.38 His works, as we will see below, adapted high-culture images, created new symbols and were artworks. Studio Testa successfully combined the graphic and artistic of traditions Italian advertising with modern designs and new marketing and market research techniques. An important aspect of the local market that would confound foreign agencies was a prevalence of in-house marketing and advertising in larger companies. This provided a strong local presence outside the agency model through staff or contract designers. An American advertising industry magazine feature on American companies in Italy observed, with amazement:

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Not being educated in the advertising profession, their first question is, “What can you do for us that’s worth all that money that we can’t do for ourselves?” And so it is that about 70% of Italian companies, including giants like Fiat and Olivetti do it themselves.39

The second approach was shaped by the strong Anglo-American influence on Italian advertisers and the independent Italian divisions of American agencies such as J. Walter Thomson, Young & Rubicam and McCann-Erickson that brought American images, techniques and market surveys to product sales. The Americans, however, did not dominate the market until the late 1960s. It is important to acknowledge the strong market position of British agencies establishing offices in Milan: Colman Prentis Varley Ltd, CPV Italiana, Lintas and Radar & Benson. In 1964, the top ten advertising companies included three British, two Italian and five American agencies.40 Modern advertising agencies were supported by the scientific analysis and market segmentation of audience research institutes like DOXA, established by Pierpaolo Luzzatto-Fegiz in 1946. Professor LuzzattoFegiz, reflecting on the recent changes in opinion surveys and demographic studies in the 1950s, observed that, while many companies remained ignorant of market analysis, the advertising agencies used and understood the research techniques to inform marketing strategies. The fundamental role of market research, he explained, was to help businesses sell. Lowering unit costs, improving distribution and increasing sales all mattered. And yet, he concluded, you must always consider the consumer, and it was, ‘essential to ascertain how he (the consumer) behaves today, and how he tends to change behavior under the influence of variations in the quality and cost of the goods and services offered’, as well as variations, ‘in the display, in the advertising campaigns’.41 This knowledge reduced risk for businesses. So within this complex environment of international and local approaches, a legacy of artistic images, middle-class consumers and ideas of good taste became part of imported modern advertising images and techniques for mass consumer markets, rather than being entirely replaced by them. In this context, as Simona De Iulio and Carlo Vinti observe, it is important not to overstate the idea of a polarised system. De Iulio and Vinti argue that a ‘rigid contrast between pragmatic advertising experts of the American school and disinterested lovers of beauty sheltering within the advertising departments of major Italian companies bears little

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resemblance to reality’42 Indeed, Elisabetta Bini suggests that CPV found success in Italy in part by its capacity to combine both the American scientific approach with the Italian artistic approach.43 Significantly, both the foreign and local agencies and designers adapted Italian high culture as a meaningful symbol and cultural reference point, yet for different reasons.

‘Hamlet in the theatre, Vespa in life’ Advertising agencies paid celebrities to endorse products; the beauty, smiles and testimonies associated these products with quality and glamour, selling much more than face cream or soap. It was a dream that the consumer never believed in, but liked the look of. Stars promoted products and attributed their good looks or glamorous days to its use. Sophia Loren was one of a string of international film stars promoting the American beauty product Lux, yet everyone knew she was gorgeous before she ever picked up a bar of soap. Other prominent Italian film stars working in advertising included Elsa Martinelli, who headlined a national campaign for the Italian vermouth Gancia Amaro, and Virna Lisi who used both beauty and humour to promote print and television advertisements for Chlorodont toothpaste with her ‘Mouth of truth’ that could say anything. Celebrity endorsements extended beyond film stars and into high art symbols. In the early 1950s, Studio Testa’s Brindisi a Verdi (Toast to Verdi) shows a smiling Giuseppe Verdi and the fictional brand personification, Re Carpano ‘the Vermouth King’, toasting with a glass of Punt e Mes. Likewise, the consumer is invited to toast the genius of an Italian great and associate this greatness and history with the liquor. Adam Arvidsson argues that early stages of consumer culture develop, ‘shared symbolic resources’ to draw on existing cultural images—such as movie stars and royalty.44 Italy’s cultural royalty played a similar role, as we saw with Giacomo Puccini and mouthwash, a caricature of Giuseppe Verdi with Punt e Mes vermouth, and as we will see in the 1950s and 1960s, a variety of adaptations of images from Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Sandro Botticelli, Tintoretto and Italy’s cultural celebrities and legacies. These cultural authorities, repurposed in a commercial context, were destined to associate a product with excellence and yet could sometimes be playfully subverted, merged with symbols of modern Italy—the freedom of a motor scooter, or the sophisticated fun of cocktail hour.

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Italy’s strong graphic art and design tradition provided the means to create fictional scenarios and cultural references such as the Giuseppe Verdi of Punt e Mes. In a similar way, an advertisement for the food producer Cirio (maker of tinned tomatoes, tinned fish, as well as bottled fruits and conserves) hypothesised, ‘What would Rossini say?’ about Cirio products.45 The ‘glutton’ Gioachino Rossini ‘would say’ that ‘a plate of macaroni is the libretto, seasoned by the music of the Super Cirio tomato puree. Cirio sardines, anchovies and olives are the prelude to every lunch’. The use of metaphor and underlining continues with the tomato sauce Rubra (described using the American term ‘Tomato Ketchup’) as ‘the kitchen’s leitmotiv’—a recurring musical theme. The opera comparison reaches its dramatic climax by declaring that with Cirio products comes a ‘crescendo of appetite and dying of expensive food’.46 Like all good opera, it ends in death… of expense, not the diner. The Punt e Mes and Cirio advertisements operated in two ways: they used the celebrity of a respected composer and Italian cultural icon, and then subverted, even domesticated the image for comic impact. As photographic images and television broadcasting played a greater role in advertising, celebrity endorsements brought in the living cultural authorities. In the late 1950s, Punt e Mes developed a campaign of cultural icons and intellectuals with the tagline ‘Il Punt e Mes non si discute: si beve’ (‘Punt e Mes you do not discuss it: you drink it’), featuring photographs of artistic celebrities drinking Punt e Mes—the painter Giorgio De Chirico (see Fig. 6.2), writer Carlo Levi as well as painter Renato Guttuso and poet Vincenzo Cardarelli.47 The photographs of these important artists reflecting over a glass of vermouth sought to connect the product to an intellectual elite, with modern creativity and artistic excellence. Presented as fotoreportage (photojournalism), the advertisements adopted a style resembling the news or social pages of the illustrated magazines, incorporating a small logo-like image of the vermouth king Re Carpano of the earlier ‘Brindisi a’ (Toast to) advertisements. One advertisement featuring De Chirico appears under the caption—‘King Carpano and… Giorgio De Chirico’, and the photograph captures De Chirico seated in a cane chair. With his sleeves rolled up, the artist holds a sketch pad or small canvas board, and his pencil rests on the table next to a bottle of Punt e Mes vermouth and a mountain of grapes. He contemplates his vermouth, perhaps about to take another sip. His artistic efforts placed to one side as De Chirico focuses on the unwavering quality of a Punt e Mes vermouth, ‘Trends and styles can

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be discussed. Punt e Mes you do not discuss it: you drink it’.48 The art world and advertising formed a strong relationship. De Chirico, for example, not only appeared in advertisements, but also he created advertising posters including a 1950 painting of the FIAT 1400 in front of swirling clouds and the mythological figure of Bellerophon and the winged horse Pegasus. In 1967, he painted a still life of fruit with brandy bottle for Stock Brandy’s ‘Art and Industry’ campaign. Seeking a broader audience of young people and cinemagoers, Piaggio’s promotion of Vespa scooters skilfully blended high culture with modern culture. In a magazine advertising campaign of 1959, Vittorio Gassman waxed lyrical about Vespa scooters, one of the powerful symbols of the new modern Italy. Vittorio Gassman was a respected Shakespearean actor, known as Italy’s Lawrence Olivier, yet he also had film star status after effectively crossing over into cinema, achieving popularity with audiences, box-office success and international recognition.49 Gassman worked on many of the RAI’s early television adaptations and theatre broadcasts, including Hamlet in 1955, and he was a key figure in the RAI attempts to popularise Shakespeare. The Vespa advertisement

Fig. 6.2  ‘You do not discuss it! You drink it’, Giorgio De Chirico about to drink his Punt e Mes in Tempo, 12 February 1956, 8 (Image used with permission of Arnoldo Mondadori Editore)

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reads, ‘Hamlet in the theatre, Vespa in life’. Gassman’s star testimonial highlights the modern problem of parking, ‘finding somewhere to park in the city is almost as difficult as interpreting a character on stage, for this reason, Gassman rides a Vespa’.50 The advertisement draws on both the celebrity of Shakespeare and the cinema star power of Gassman in a way that conveys the theatre and culture as part of the modern world.

‘Quality is an Art’ Advertisements deployed masterpieces as a familiar symbol to create a visual connection to a product. Great masterpieces operated as a sign of good taste to communicate a product’s quality, uniqueness and timelessness by association. A range of modern products for the home, including sewing machines, painkillers and alcohol, made, at times, tenuous associations between their products and the works of Italy’s Renaissance or Rococo masters. A 1960 Singer sewing machine campaign claimed the Singer automatica 4 to be a sewing machine ‘masterpiece’.51 The Italian masterpieces of Michelangelo and Sandro Botticelli are shown alongside a modern masterpiece, the Singer sewing machine. A campaign for the pain medication Lederle claimed to be ‘più forte del male’ (stronger than evil) through the depiction of famous good versus evil battles in Renaissance sculptures and paintings. These works included the masterpieces of Florence’s famous galleries, Antonio del Pollaiolo’s Hercules and the Hydra, Benvenuto Cellini’s Perseus and the head of Medusa and Guido Reni’s masterpiece in the Church of the Capuchins in Rome, Archangel Gabriel.52 For Rosso Antico vermouth’s campaign, ‘Quality is an art’, the product was promoted by the masterpieces of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo including Armida abandoned by Rinaldo and Aeneas and Achates abandoned.53 Monier Amaro went one better and not only used masterpieces in its advertising above a photograph of the amaro bottle and glass of the digestive bitters, they offered six limited colour prints with each bottle purchased. The word ‘Gratis’ (Free) appears in large lettering below a framed print by Giovanni Antonio Canal, more commonly known as Canaletto. The advertisement declared the offer to be ‘A unique occasion to enrich your home with six masterpieces by famous painters of eighteenth century Venice (Guardi, Canaletto, Bellotto) and to taste the amaro Monier, the good digestivo that you can drink without grimacing’.54 Across these examples, the advertisers wish to confer the authority and quality of the masterpieces and Italian

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masters onto their products and position them as part of a longer tradition of Italian excellence and cultural distinction. Advances in colour printing and the Monier Amaro offer allow the consumer to bring pictures of Venice by masters of the Venetian school into their homes for enjoyment and display. Health, especially the benefits of good digestion and how to maintain it, is a popular topic of conversation in Italy, and digestion products have a substantial local market. Italian advertising used artistic and literary references metaphorically and euphemistically to promote health products to aid digestion. A particularly famous example is the 1940s advertisement for the laxative Beatrice, the slogan used an intentionally misquoted line from Dante that ‘Beatrice makes you go’. For Italian historian Amilcare Iannucci, this is an example of the way in which Dante had ‘crossed over’ from the elite culture to popular use.55 Many more of Italy’s cultural icons would cross this Rubicon and often, use humour to do it. In general, art, music and literature provided advertisements with tasteful euphemisms for laxatives, conveying tranquillity and internal balance. It also provided appealing images for the visual medium of magazine advertising. Falqui tablets featured the silhouette of a ballerina and a drawing of a harp to visually represent intestinal ‘equilibrium and rhythm’.56 An advertisement for effervescent digestive Sali di Frutta Alberani features Flora, the Goddess of Spring (Primavera) cut out of her Botticelli masterpiece, announcing that ‘in art the Spring of Botticelli, in life the spring cleaning of the body with Sali di Frutta Alberani’.57 Art could take on a less sacral role and interact with the product or, in the case of the 1958 Laurens cigarette advertising campaign, even desire it. This advertising campaign Laurens filtra Irresistibile! (Laurens filter Irresistible) shows the subject of a classic painting reaching out of her frame to take a Laurens cigarette.58 The images blend traditional and modern and the advertisement works by inverting the serious nature of art. In the same campaign, a Roman statue lights the cigarette of a sophisticated young woman, a courteous gesture as the ancient meets the modern (Fig. 6.3). This advertisement for Laurens filtered cigarettes offers an interaction between art and a modern product, or perhaps a nod to the eternal urge to flirt gallantly with an elegant woman. In either case, Laurens filtered cigarettes, ‘will let you savour the full joy of smoking and, above all, they will be like a business card of your good taste’.59

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‘Art and Good Taste’ High-culture masterpieces and distinguished artists conveyed creativity and exclusiveness to products and offered a way in which advertisers framed good taste as an essential modern attribute. Martini and Rossi became one of the most recognisable Italian companies and product brands. The company represented the epitome of good taste and sophistication, and an international reach served only to reinforce their claim to style. Throughout the early to mid-twentieth century, Martini and Rossi’s campaigns developed a tradition of strong visual and artistic graphics with an international brand association with elegance, art and elite society crowds. Martini and Rossi incorporated culture into their product image, which included sponsorship of the weekly radio program Grandi Concerti Radiofonici Martini & Rossi from 1936 to 1943 and then again after the end of the war from 1945 to 1964. They aimed to promote the Martini and Rossi’s brand and to raise awareness of ‘classical music and leading musicians and artists in Italy’, featuring elite international artists such as Maria Callas and Beniamino Gigli.60 Between 1955 and 1958, in the years leading up to the ‘economic miracle’ and during the company’s own significant market expansion, Martini and Rossi released a print media campaign Arte e Buon Gusto (Art and good taste). The three Martini vermouths—white, red and dry—promoted alongside Italian and international masterpieces. The path to art and good taste demanded, ‘Non chiedete un vermouth chiedete un Martini’ (Don’t ask for a vermouth, ask for a Martini), a tagline that emphasised both the quality of the product and the discernment of the consumer.61 The campaign published full-page colour advertisements in weekly magazines such as Tempo, Epoca and Oggi—an appropriate reading market to understand the importance of masterpieces, as well as the double meaning of the good taste of the drink and the good taste of the consumer. Their advertisements present the three bottles—Martini Bianco, Martini Rosso and Martini Dry—in front of the masterpieces of Ancient Greece, Byzantine mosaics, the Italian Renaissance and the French Impressionists and post-Impressionists. One advertisement featured the treasured antiquities of the Temple Concordia in Sicily.62 Another used images from the early Christian Byzantine mosaics from San Vital in Ravenna of Empress Theodora and her attendants. However, the advertisement did not present the whole mosaic, or the subject of the work, Empress Theodora. Instead, it showed

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Fig. 6.3  Would you like a light? The ‘Irresistible’ Laurens filtered cigarettes advertisement in Tempo, 26 August 1958, 4 (Image used with permission of Arnoldo Mondadori Editore)

a close-up of three of the attendants, echoing the image of the three bottles of martini.63 The same visual device was used for the three graces Aglaia, Euphrosyne and Thalia representing beauty, chastity and pleasure in Sandro Botticelli’s Renaissance masterpiece, Primavera (1482).64 Deftly, the Martini Vermouth rosso bottle covers the transparency of Euphrosyne’s gown. As well as creating a visual link or echo of the three

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bottles, the three less-recognisable figures of well-known artworks create a test of culture and art knowledge in both cases. People with good taste and an understanding of the finer things would recognise the less-obvious cultural references. The advertisement rewarded the reader who knew the artworks well with acknowledgement of their good taste. None of the Italian masterpieces are named, their identities already known by the discerning and cultivated reader. Italian masterpieces featured in the campaign included Amore e Psiche by neoclassical sculptor, Antonio Canova (Fig. 6.4).65 Canova’s white marble sculpture reveals the Roman mythology of the winged Amore (Cupid) and his estranged lover Psyche. Psyche is asleep after misadventures in Hades, and his kiss brings the young beauty back to consciousness, and they are reunited. The use of Canova’s masterpiece and its mythological subject matter provides two reference points within the advertisement, of sculpture and Ancient Rome. In the second year of the campaign, the artworks extended to modern French artworks. The advertisements featuring non-Italian artworks provided the names of the artists, although not the titles of the works. The famous masterpieces included: Pierre-Auguste Renior’s Luncheon of the Boating Party (Fig. 6.5), Éduoard Manet’s A Bar at the Folies-Bergère and Paul Cèzanne’s The Card Players.66 The advertisement provided a cultural reference for the benefit of the educated readers, a shared knowledge—or what French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu would later describe as cultural capital.67 The reader can recognise the small excerpts from masterpieces and know the Italian greats and the French masters. Similarly, the reader can discern the art and good taste in the three types of martini. The culturally literate magazine reader will also know, ‘Don’t ask for a vermouth, ask for a Martini’. At the same time that the classic art of the Arte e Buon Gusto campaign appeared in Italy, Martini was promoting two of the three vermouth products, sweet and extra dry vermouth, in the USA. This was one of Martini and Rossi’s last graphic artwork-based campaigns. It featured beautiful illustrations of martini glasses, vermouth and ice, and evocative scenes of Venice. Andy Warhol illustrated the Great Straight and Smartest Thing on the Rocks campaigns in 1959 when he was working in advertising as a successful commercial artist, just before he gained fame in the early sixties as a driving force of the American Pop Art movement. Martini and Rossi’s advertisements focused on sophistication and glamour of imported Italian vermouth. The Great Straight

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Fig. 6.4  ‘Art and Good Taste’ Martini & Rossi Campaign, Martini Vermouth. Designer: Ravinale, featuring Cupid and Psyche (Amore e Psiche), Antonio Canova (Image courtesy of the Martini & Rossi Archive)

advertisements celebrated the Italian origin of the product and featured scenes from Venice, Piazza San Marco and the Grand Canal: Great straight!… on the rocks. Martini & Rossi imported vermouth is so nice on ice! Easy to make, easy to take. It’s the drink for sophisticated people. Martini & Rossi extra dry vermouth is a mustissimo for Martinis too. Mmmmm!68

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Fig. 6.5  ‘Art and Good Taste’ Martini & Rossi Campaign, Martini Vermouth. Designer: Ravinale, featuring Pierre-Auguste Renior’s Luncheon of the Boating Party (Image courtesy of the Martini & Rossi Archive)

This rendering of Italian culture for American consumption with its images of Venice offered ‘a nod to Hemingway’s Venice’, referring to the celebrity American author Ernest Hemingway’s association with the Italian city and his popular, though not critically acclaimed, Across the River and Into the Trees (1950).69 Hemingway’s well-researched novel told the story about a retired American Colonel spending a lot of time in Harry’s Bar, the Gritti Palace Bar and Florian’s Bar in post-war Venice. The advertisements took care to separate the different drawings of modern martini and traditional Venice but presented them within the same marketing campaign. Martini’s international bars, the Terrazze Martini (Martini Terraces) brought urban elites, film stars, intellectuals and artists together into a

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glamorous space where Martini’s modern brand promise of an exclusive and sophisticated lifestyle took physical form. In Italy, the terraces opened in Milan, Genoa and Pessione, near Turin. Martini Terraces appeared in the major European capitals of London, Paris, Barcelona and Brussels, and another in San Paolo, Brazil. Martini and Rossi’s company history describes the terrazze as: well established in the local social life, dedicated to culture – in that sense that they were a tool to communicate with the world – the atmosphere was never loud and guests were always cordially welcomed. The Terrazze Martini became history and were immediately a point of reference for the protagonists of intellectual circles and society, in the fields of literature, show business, science, sport or politics.70

Martini advertising promoted the celebrities and the ‘never loud’ invitation-only events at the clubs. They were parties you wanted to be at. The events merged culture and celebrity; the ‘advertorial’ columns placed in magazines pictured a launch of two books, one about Wassily Kandinsky and another on Pre-colombian art. The column enthused that ‘critics and personalities of culture from all over Italy’ had come to this elite culture event and depicted the beautiful and famous of the theatre set and parties, ‘for the critics, to the elites and the enthusiasts’.71 By the end of the 1960s and into the 1970s, Martini and Rossi’s idea of a drink ‘with taste’ would focus less on culture and art and more on a high life of exotic travel to tropical and alpine locations, or expensive and exciting pastimes of horse riding, hot air ballooning and sailing. Nevertheless, Martini and Rossi continued their sponsorship of cultural events including a significant co-production with RAI television for performances of the works of Mozart.72 This association with high culture and the sophistication of the product remains part of Martini and Rossi’s brand.

‘A product of class at an accessible price’ High-culture references or advertisements endorsing appropriate cultural activities were not solely the domain of campaigns in Epoca and Tempo. Advertisements in fotoromanzi magazines also highlighted masterpieces and celebrity artists. Fotoromanzi magazines had strong market position with housewives in the middle and lower-middle classes.73 While the exact demographic breakdown varied, depending on the magazine,

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Bolero Film attracted a high number of lower-middle-class and lower-class readers. In 1963, more than 2 million people read Bolero Film each week: 2% upper-class readers; 37% middle-class readers; 47% lower-middle-class readers; and 15% lower-class readers.74 An advertising campaign in Bolero Film for Viset Acqua di colonia classica (classic cologne) perfume featured a woman in front of different works of art including a Canaletto painting of the Grand Canal. The tag line read—‘a product of class at an accessible price’.75 The product assumed the qualities of a masterpiece and good taste, and yet not in an exclusive manner. The appeal was that the product had class and affordability. Graphic artist Ravinale designed the Viset campaign, the same artist who had developed Martini and Rossi’s Arte e Buon Gusto (Art and good taste) campaign advertisements. The two campaigns used the quality of art in two ways to target to different audiences. While Ravinale’s Martini advertisements differentiated those with artistic and sophisticated tastes, Ravinale’s perfume designs in Bolero Film targeted the female middle-class and lower-middle-class readership in an inclusive way. Perfume advertisements provide a fascinating example as they formed an important component of the increasing spending on hygiene and beauty products in the 1950s and 1960s. As Emanuela Scarpellini remarks in her consumer’s history of Italy, perfume and toothpaste advertisements reflect advertiser awareness of class divisions and the social importance of behaving well and making a good impression.76 Products of refinement and good taste in the middle-class and lower-middle-class home serve to diminish these visible class differences.

‘Their toothpaste is Squib’ Advertisements depicted people enjoying cultural activities as part of their sophisticated modern lives. One common way to represent products was to create a scene of the product and consumer in a cultured environment. The consumption of products including cigarettes, chocolates, toothpaste and liquors were positioned as part of refined activities—such as Baci Perugina chocolates at the theatre interval. Squibb toothpaste advertisements depicted scenes of sophisticated activities of sophisticated people—going for a drive, visiting an art gallery and attending the opera with the slogan ‘Their toothpaste is Squibb’.77 We never see the subjects’ teeth in the advertisement, only their elegant and perfect cultured surroundings (see Fig. 6.6). In a similar way, advertisers

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introduced Egyptian cigarette Maspero to Italian markets with a close-up of a man’s hand holding both a cigarette and a Teatro alla Scala program. To the right, we see another man smoking a cigarette in a theatre foyer as he reads the program. He is dressed in white tie and accompanied by an elegant woman wearing long gloves and evening gown. The advertisement proclaims: Twenty cigarettes for 400 lire.78 Opera at the theatre and La Scala, as we saw in the last chapter, denoted a very narrow group of society, the refined elite of opening nights and sumptuous ball gowns. It was one of the highest of remaining cultural barriers, and you could aspire to it through chocolate, toothpaste and cigarettes. Inside the home, leather-bound books signalled refinement and good taste. Reading habits, which will be discussed in more detail in Chapter 8, indicated social status. During the 1950s and 1960s, as cheap paperback novels became more widespread, hardback books retained an elite value; indeed, the market for books costing more than 1500 lire increased.79 New markets for the elaborate leather-bound editions developed as owners of these books were differentiated from the owner of a 100 lire newsstand distributed paperback novel. Moreover, it would be a pleasing feature in any lounge room. Advertisements linked together sophisticated activities with stylish, expensive possessions. Brandy was consumed in book-lined libraries, people who went to the tailor read leather-bound books. Books were a status symbol and a sign of good taste and gentility. For example, Sidi advertised their luxury suit material with the discriminating tag line, ‘For those who know how to dress well’, accompanied by a picture of a man who is so cultured he simultaneously looks at an artwork in his home while holding a leather-bound book.80 Writer Giancarlo Buzzi observed at the time, ‘The book is still considered by many in Italy to be a product for elites’, adding with disappointment that for some possessing books remains a mystifying and decorative way to mask cultural inadequacy.81

‘A complete library for the Modern Man’ The major magazine publishers, such as Rizzoli and Mondadori, were Italy’s largest book publishers. The companies used their magazines to develop new markets and build book sales. Advertisements in Epoca and Tempo targeted male and middle-class readers with the message that book reading was educated, sophisticated and modern. Reading was a

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Fig. 6.6  Refined personality at the opera. ‘Her toothpaste is Squibb’ advertisement in Tempo, 13 May 1958, 41 (Image used with permission of Arnoldo Mondadori Editore)

pastime for, and defining feature of, ‘the modern man’. The Mondadori Modern Library (BMM) offered the classics of literature for 200 lire: From PLATO to TOLSTOY, from SHAKESPEARE to IBSEN, from MACHIAVELLI to LEOPARDI, to DI GIACOMO, TRILUSSA, O’NEIL, the BMM provides a complete library for the modern man that in addition to the works of these masters of poetry, of theatre, of literature,

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offers more volumes dedicated to physics and biology, to the arts, to philosophy, to politics and to history.82

Mondadori’s Economic Library (BEM) was also priced at 200 lire yet included popular authors such as Vicky Baum, Georges Simenon and P. G. Wodehouse. The BEM series were promoted as books ‘for everyone’ and ‘for all tastes’, chosen from the best novels of today. The pamphlet presented reading as a ‘pastime’ and enjoyable.83 The advertisements for Rizzoli and Mondadori book publishing houses focused on literary masterpieces and well-known authors, both Italian and international. For campaigns in fotoromanzi, publishers adopted an inclusive tone for female readers, most of whom possessed a primary school level of education or lower. Mondadori developed a campaign written like an advice or literature column Libri per voi (Books for you). The advertisement was run in Bolero Film to target its predominantly female middle-class and lower-middle-class readership, which included a considerable number of housewives. The text of the advertisement provides advice and background on famous authors, concluding with the imperative ‘Read it: it is a masterpiece’.84 The educational tone of the Libri per voi advertisement emphasised the popularity and simplicity of W. Somerset Maugham’s work and quotes the author as saying that the best compliment he ever received was from an American soldier serving in New Guinea who had written to him to say that he had read one of Maugham’s novels and yet did not need to look up a single word in the dictionary. The advertisement is written in the style of an advice column and recommends Theatre, published in Italy as Ritratto di una attrice (Portrait of an actress) by Mondadori in 1957, focusing on the sentimental and romantic elements of the work. The description of the main character reads like a fotoromanzo or Hollywood plot. Julia Lambert is an actress: a romantic creature, passionate, vibrant with imagination and inspiration, in the theatre she has found how to give free rein to her abilities. To add to this, she is a woman for whom pretending is second nature, this fiction becomes fatally confused with reality. So art and life, and their inseparable combination in Julia: the overlap of fiction and reality in the complex character of the protagonist which Maugham describes across a succession of scenes pitiful moments, hilarious moments, naughty moments, a true reflection of the book’s heroine.85

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Mondadori marketing used its understanding of the tastes of fotoromanzi readers to shape their advertisements to new readers. The emphasis is on emotional themes and dramatic storylines. As Jessica Harris notes in her research into modern American beauty marketing in Italian women’s magazine Annabella, the advertisements, advice columns and articles, ‘“schooled” readers on how to create attractive, modern, radiant, and elegant personalities’.86 The book advertisements adapt this communication style to encourage reading. In the context of rapid economic and social changes, people were learning to use new products such as electric washing machines or the now iconic coffee mokkas. As a result, many advertisements presented ‘how-to’ guides and provided information on product use. For some people, changes to their social and economic situation meant that they were engaging in new behaviours. Information on social competencies such as table manners and modern housekeeping was often learned through magazines and advertising. Advertisements with advice on modern etiquette showed readers how to set a table, escort a lady down the stairs and behave at the theatre, for example the campaign Come dovete comportarvi Nuovi consigli di Galateo moderno (How you must comport yourselves New advice on modern etiquette). The target audience for this advertising approach was the lower-middle-class reader who wished to understand and adopt the social codes and behaviours of the middle class. The use of the product, in this case Idrolitina, a powdered soda to add to water, was represented as another element of appropriate behaviour and social ascent.87 Adam Arvidsson observes the social significance of different products and pastimes, ‘consumption was a kind of language from which one could easily deduce both the social status of the family and the moral qualities of the housewife’.88 While cultural behaviours perhaps did not reach the (alledged) highly competitive consumer attitudes towards white laundry, cultural knowledge and books or art in the home became a way for advertisers and companies to convey status and domestic qualities. Advertisements implied their product would differentiate a consumer from the undiscriminating. This was desirable for some, as the rapid social and economic changes had removed many of the traditional and visible ways to differentiate class. To illustrate, in his history of Italy, Martin Clark observes that in the 1950s, few men had been able to afford regular trips to the barber and being clean-shaven was a sign of social status and wealth. This changed when affordable safety

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razors and greater numbers of homes with running water ‘destroyed a reliable indicator of social class’.89 With this arrival of affordable consumer goods, culture and leisure remained a good indicator of class and a reliable barrier against the uninitiated and uneducated. In the 1960s, contemporary modern art increasingly played a role in advertising, particularly and somewhat ironically with the rise of the Pop Art movement. Pop Art appropriated advertising, consumer culture images and their production processes and raised them to avant-garde art. Dot-printing and screen-printing techniques of comics and magazines were artfully mimicked in the skilled brushwork of American artists such as Roy Lichtenstein. Advertising in turn used this artistic appropriation of their work. Modern art suggested a consumer at the cutting edge, an individual rather than one of the faceless, conforming masses. This approach formed part of the shift in the relationship between advertiser and consumer, with motivational research creating a new focus on the selective individual using products in their unique way.90 By the beginning of the 1970s, advertisement for Mini cars used Pop Art visuals and enlarged comic book-style dot screen printing to ask the reader ‘e tu? Sei uno dei mini o uno dei tanti?’ (and you? Are you one of the mini or one of the many?), asking if you are the type of person who ‘tu non sopporti essere confuse con gli altri?’ (You can’t bear to be confused with the others?).91 Another advertisement in the series even offered an example of the kind of person who did not cut it as a Mini car owner. This was ‘Amalia Seri’ a not to be envied nor emulated fictional character who had said no to miniskirts, trousers and pop music, and as a result was clearly not one of the Mini set. This campaign used modern art and youth consumer behaviour as an identity and as the means to stand out from the crowd. Great masterpieces and contemporary modern art movements were used to differentiate consumers by their consumption behaviour and practice of cultured or modern taste. Despite the appearance of exclusiveness, purchasing the product could offer social and cultural access to a youth identity. Advertisers built these boundaries in the commercial context to be breached by consumers with a product.

Conclusion So what does the use of traditional Italian culture and international masterpieces in magazine advertising show us about mass culture during and after the ‘economic miracle’? It demonstrates that the image of the modern world projected by magazine advertisers incorporated and

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blended both high culture and mass culture. Advertisers targeted not just the middle-class, but also lower-middle-class and lower-class readers with celebrity high-culture symbols—great artists, maestri, as well as contemporary actors and intellectuals. While many advertisements encouraged readers to distinguish themselves from others, some advertisements presented an inclusive approach to potential new product consumers. Both approaches offered education on social and cultural behaviour such as art appreciation, theatre attendance or book reading. The traditional symbols were open to a modern reworking and were blended with modern products and personalities: Giuseppe Verdi or Giorgio De Chirico and a glass of Punt e Mes; Sandro Botticelli’s Primavera and three bottles of Martini and Rossi’s vermouth; or a Shakespearean actor astride a Piaggio Vespa. These advertising campaigns of high-culture references and symbols appeared alongside campaigns for modern ‘new!’ and ‘improved!’ beauty products, the glamorous film star endorsement, an American dream in a product. The traditional symbols and the new dreams co-existed within the modern life, displaying the benefits of education, leisure time and sophisticated living. In the absence of magazine surveys to reveal what the readers made of this merging and ‘crossing over’ of artistic symbols, celebrity artists and masterpieces in advertisements, we can only speculate whether or not they resonated with audiences. What we do know is Italian agencies adapted and combined traditional artistic and cultural symbols. We also know that the new market research techniques offered businesses and advertisers detailed information on their segmented magazine market to effectively target a particular customer demographic: by sex, age and class through magazines. If a product was to be promoted to potential consumers with established or growing incomes, a good way to reach them was through the illustrated news magazines that attracted millions of readers from upper-class, middle-class and lower-middle-class socio-economic groups. The Italian advertising industry, at times, displayed a paternalistic approach to popular taste with a self-appointed, top-down civilising remit of the culturally superior elite towards the ignorant masses. This humanistic and educational approach was in sharp contrast to the American advertising approach on consumer desires. The democratising influence of American culture and the importance of providing an alternative to top-down and constrained culture is clear. Prior to mass education, mass waged employment and mass advertising, it was literacy and education, class and status that had determined the cultural hierarchy. As

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the borders moved in this previous form of cultural segregation, magazine mass advertising used the symbols of high culture to resonate with the interests and values of new consumers. High culture in magazine mass advertising formed a new type of hierarchy, presenting products as distinct and elite and yet a highly permeable boundary that by the 1960s consumers could dream of approaching, and those with increasing incomes or a good repayment plan could cross.

Notes



1. Daniele A. Martino, Catastrofi sentimentali: Puccini e la sindrome pucciniana (Torino: EDT, 1993), 30–31; L’Illustrazione Italiana, 13 luglio 1902, 22. 2. See note in Chapter 1 on the use of the terms high and mass culture. 3. Nello Ajello, ‘Il settimanale di attualità’ in Valerio Castronono e Nicola Tranfaglia (a cura di), La stampa italiana del neocapitalismo (Roma: Editori Laterza, 1976), 180. 4. Ajello, ‘Il settimanale di attualità’, 180. 5. See note in Chapter 1 on the use of the terms upper, middle and lower class. 6. Adam Arvidsson, Marketing Modernity: Italian Advertising from Fascism to Postmodernity (London and New York: Routledge, 2003), 16. 7. David Forgacs, Italian Culture and the Industrial Era 1880–1980: Cultural Industries, Politics and the Public (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990), 31. 8. Ajello, ‘Il settimanale di attualità’, 180–181. 9.  DOXA Istituto per le Ricerche Statistiche e l’Analisi dell’Opinione Pubblica, ‘4. Lettura di singoli settimanali, Attualità e per famiglia, 3.1.7—Secondo zone geografiche’, Indagine nazionale OTIPI sui mezzi pubblicitari (Milano: Stab. Pol. G. Colombi, 1963), 70. 10.  Adam Arvidsson, Tiziano Bonini, ‘Valuing Audience Passions: From Smythe to Tarde’, European Journal of Cultural Studies 18, no. 2, 2014, 158–173, 158. 11. Forgacs, Italian Culture in the Industrial Era, 1880–1980, 74. 12. Paul Ginsborg, ‘Statistical Appendix 9: Consumer Durables Possessed by Italian Families, 1953–85’, A History of Contemporary Italy Society and Politics 1943–1980 (London: Penguin Books, 1990), 238. 13.  Mario Bellavista, ‘Per un maggiore rendimento economico della pubblicità in Italia’, 2˚ congresso nazionale della pubblicità 1951, 155. SIPRA Archive.

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14. Bellavista, ‘Per un maggiore rendimento economico della pubblicità in Italia’, 155. SIPRA Archive. 15. Emanuela Scarpellini, Material Nation: A Consumer’s History of Modern Italy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 127. 16. DOXA, Indagine nazionale, 233. 17. DOXA, Indagine nazionale, 76–77. 18. RAI: Radiotelevisione Italiana, Dieci anni di televisione in Italia (Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1964), 323. 19.  Marco Beltramo Ceppi, ‘Press Advertising in Italy’, International Communication Gazette 1965, 11, 27–42, 29. 20. Mario Bellavista, ‘Tav. Investimenti pubblicitari in Italia 1962’, ‘Nuovi mercati per l’industria italiana’, 7˚ congresso nazionale della pubblicità 1963, 291. SIPRA Archive. 21. Dottoressa Adriana Battaglia Ferrari, ‘La donna e la pubblicità: aspetti psicologici, sociali, economici del problema’, 4˚ congresso nazionale della pubblicità 1954, 57. SIPRA Archive. 22. DOXA, Indagine nazionale, 52. 23.  Gian Paolo Ceserani, Storia della pubblicità in Italia (Roma: Editori Laterza, 1988), 149. 24. Battaglia Ferrari, ‘La donna e la pubblicità’, 57. SIPRA Archive. 25.  Victoria De Grazia, Irresistible Empire: America’s Advance Through Twentieth Century Europe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005), 54. 26. Arvidsson, Marketing Modernity, 11. 27. Stephen Gundle, ‘L’americanizzazione del quotidiano: Televisione e consumismo nell’Italia degli anni cinquanta’, Quaderni Storici 62, no. 2 (1986): 561–593, 563. 28.  Gundle, ‘L’americanizzazione del quotidiano’, 561–593; De Grazia, Irresistible Empire. 29. Paolo Capuzzo, ‘Youth and Consumption’, in The Oxford Handbook of the History of Consumption (ed.) Frank Trentmann (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 610–617. 30. Paolo Scrivano, ‘Signs of Americanization in Italian Domestic Life: Italy’s Postwar Conversion to Consumerism’, Journal of Contemporary History 40, no. 2 (2005): 317–340, 336. 31. Scrivano, ‘Signs of Americanization’, 317. 32. Richard Pells, Not Like Us: How Europeans Have Loved, Hated and Transformed American Culture Since World War II (New York: Basic Books, 1997). 33.  Simona De Iulio and Carlo Vinti, ‘The Americanization of Italian Advertising During the 1950s and the 1960s’, Journal of Historical Research in Marketing 1, no. 2 (2009): 270–294.

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34.  Carlo Cassola quoted in Adam Arvidsson, ‘Between Fascism and the American Dream: Advertising in Interwar Italy’, Social Science History 25, no. 2 (2001): 151–186, 163. 35. De Iulio and Vinti, ‘The Americanization of Italian Advertising’, 282. 36.  Marcello Dudovich, 1918. Lithographic Poster, ‘Vermouth Bianco, Martini and Rossi, Torino’; Giorgio Muggiani, 1921 Lithographic Poster, ‘Martini Vermouth, Martini and Rossi, Torino’, in Martini and Rossi Spa., Mondo Martini: A Journey Through a Unique Style (Torino: Sori Edizioni, 2006), 122, 126. 37. Martini and Rossi, Mondo Martini, 126. 38. Martini and Rossi, Mondo Martini, 131. 39. ‘Italian TV: No Clutter, No Ratings, Tough on US Admen’, Sponsor: The Weekly Magazine Radio/TV Advertisers Use, 9 March 1964, 17–21, 18. 40.  ‘Italian TV: Government Says No to Many Would Be Advertisers’, Sponsor: The Weekly Magazine Radio/TV Advertisers Use, 16 March 1964, 44–50, 47. The Italian arm of British agency Colman Prentis Varley Ltd, CPV Italiana dominated the market with reported billings of $10 million. Next, came Lintas (British) with billings of $6 million. The Italian company Sigla Studio reported the third highest billings of $5 million, followed by the British Radar and Benson on $4.5 million. Only then, do we get to the American companies Young and Rubicam and J. Walter Thompson each reporting billings of $4 million; Batten, Barton, Durstine and Osborn (BBDO, McCann-Erickson, Masius-Omnia reporting $3 million in billings. Italian company IMA (Idea–metodo–arte) also reported $3 million in billings. 41.  Pierpaolo Luzzatto Fegiz, ‘Sondaggi dell’opinione pubblica e studi di mercato’, 4˚ congresso nazionale della pubblicità 1957, 123. SIPRA Archive. 42. De Iulio and Vinti, ‘The Americanization of Italian Advertising During the 1950s and the 1960s’, 284. 43. Elisabetta Bini, ‘Una repubblica dei consumi’, Comprare per credere: La pubblicità in Italia dalla Belle Époque a oggi (a cura di) Ferdinando Fasce, Elisabetta Bini e Bianca Guadenzi (Roma: Carocci Editore, 2016), 90. 44. Arvidsson, Marketing Modernity, 7. 45. Cirio advertisement, ‘Che direbbe Rossini?’, Epoca, 13 novembre 1955, 7. 46. ‘Che direbbe Rossini?’, 7. 47. Marcello Morelli, L’immagine dell’impresa. Le leve strategiche della comunicazione nell’epoca del cambiamento (Milano: FrancoAngeli s.r.l, 2002), 288. 48. Punt e Mes Advertisement, Epoca, 12 febbraio 1956, 8. 49. Gassman had appeared in the Academy Award nominated neo-realist classic Riso amaro (1949) and the successful comedy I soliti ignoti (1958).

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Also Academy Award nominated the latter achieved box-office takings of over 900 million lira. In 1962 he starred as Bruno Cortona, the personification of modern bad-influences in Il sorpasso (box office). Box-office figures in 1958 values. Alessando Ferraù, ‘Il «borderõ»questo sconosciuto’, SIPRAUNO, 2 (1966): 91–109, 104. 50. ‘In teatro Amleto nella vita Vespa’, Tempo, 24 marzo 1959, 65. 51. ‘Singer automatic 401: Il capolavoro delle machine per cucire’, Tempo, 8 ottobre 1960, 56–57. 52. ‘Lederle—É più forte del male: Ercole arbbatte L’idra di Pollaiolo, Uffizi Firenze’, Tempo, 22 novembre 1956, 67; ‘Lederle—É più forte del male: Perseo uccide Medusa di Benvenuto Cellini (Museo Nazionale) Firenze’, Tempo, 3 gennaio 1957, 33; and ‘Lederle—É più forte del male: L’arcangelo Gabriele, Guido Reni (Chiesa del Cappuccini) Roma’, Epoca, 31 marzo 1957, 2. 53. ‘Rosso Antico: La qualità è un’arte: Venere abbandona Enea ed Acate’, Tempo, 28 ottobre 1973, 35; ‘Rosso Antico: La qualità è un’arte: Rinaldo abbandona Armida’, Tempo, 25 novembre 1973, 43. 54. ‘Monier Amaro’, Tempo, 22 novembre 1969, 36. 55.  Amilcare A. Iannucci (ed.), Dante, Cinema, and Television (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2004), 3. 56. ‘Falqui lassativo’, Epoca, 14 marzo 1954, 8. 57. ‘Nell’arte la Primavera del Botticelli nella vita le primavera dell’organsimo con I Sali di Frutta Alberani’, Tempo, 18 febbraio 1954, 33. 58. ‘Laurens filtra Irresistibile!’, Tempo, 20 maggio 1958, 65. 59. ‘Laurens filtra Irresistibile!’, Tempo, 26 agosto 1958, 4. 60. Martini and Rossi Spa., Mondo Martini, 170. 61. Martini and Rossi Historical Archives: Campaign: ‘Arte e Buon Gusto’ (1955–58), Design: Ravinale, Martini and Rossi Historical Archives, Fifty Years of Martini Advertising Campaigns (1937–1989) (Turin, Unpublished, 2004), no page numbers. 62. ‘Arte e Buon Gusto: Tempio Concordia’, Tempo, 21 aprile 1955, Back Cover. 63. ‘Arte e Buon Gusto: Ravenna mosaici’, Tempo, 14 aprile 1955, Back Cover. 64. ‘Arte e Buon Gusto: Primavera’, Tempo, 28 aprile 1955, Back Cover. 65. ‘Arte e Buon Gusto: Canova’, Tempo, 12 maggio 1955, Back Cover. 66. ‘Arte e Buon Gusto: Renior’, Tempo, 19 aprile 1956, Back Cover; ‘Arte e Buon Gusto: Manet’, Tempo, 26 aprile 1956, Back Cover; and ‘Arte e Buon Gusto: Cezanne’, Tempo, 10 maggio 1956, Back Cover. 67. Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (London and New York: Routledge, 2010), 72–74. 68. Campaign: ‘Smartest Thing on the Rocks…’ (1956–63), Design: Andy Warhol. Martini and Rossi Historical Archives, Fifty Years of Martini

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Advertising Campaigns (1937–1989) (Turin, Unpublished, 2004). U.S.A. 1956/1963, Images B2K950050; B2K950051; B2K950052; B2K950060; B2K950061; B2K950063; and B2K950064. no page numbers. Martini and Rossi Historical Archives. 69. Martini and Rossi, Fifty Years of Martini Advertising, U.S.A. 1956/1963, no page numbers. 70. Martini and Rossi, Mondo Martini, 139. 71. ‘Incontri sulla Terrazza Martini’, Epoca, 26 aprile 1959, 9. 72. Martini and Rossi, Mondo Martini, 176. 73. DOXA, ‘3. Lettura di settimanali, 3.4.2—Donne di casa secondo classe sociale’, Indagine nazionale 1963, p. 65. 74. DOXA, ‘6. Lettura di singolo settimanali Fotoromanzi, programmi radio– TV e diversi, 6.1.4—Secondo sesso e secondo classe sociale’, Indagine nazionale 1963, 119. 75. ‘Un prodotto di classe a un prezzo accessibile’, Design: Ravinale, Product: Acqua di colonia classica Viset, Bolero Film, 14 luglio 1957, 33. 76. Scarpellini, Material Nation, 153. 77. ‘Il suo dentificio è Squibb’, Tempo, 13 maggio 1958, 41; ‘Il suo dentificio è Squibb’, Tempo, 20 maggio 1958, 51. 78. ‘Ecco lo Maspero filtro!’, Epoca, 7 luglio 1957, 28. 79. Istituto Centrale di Statistica, ‘Opere secondo il prezzo, Tav. 39: Opere secondo il prezzo e per gruppi e classi di material trattata’, Statistiche culturali. Stampa periodica produzione libraria Serie 1, Vol. 2, 1955 (Roma: ICS, 1955), 100–101; ‘Produzione libraria, Tav. 6: Opere secondo il prezzo per gruppo di material trattata’, Annuario delle statistiche culturali Vol VIII, 1966 (Roma: ICS, 1966), 7. 80. ‘Sidi tessuti’, Epoca, 1 dicembre 1963, 137. 81. Giancarlo Buzzi, ‘Il libro oggi nel contesto dei consumi’, SIPRAUNO, no. 3 maggio giugno 1967, 7–24, 9. 82.  Fondo Guido Lopez, Busta Comunicati stampa 1/1, Bolletino BMM Biblioteca Moderna Mondadori, 1950. Mondadori Archive. 83. Fondo Guido Lopez, Busta Comunicati stampa 1/1, Bolletino Biblioteca Economica Mondadori, Maggio 1954. Mondadori Archive. 84. ‘Libri per voi’, Bolero Film, 25 agosto 1957, 3. 85. ‘Libri per voi’, Bolero Film, 25 agosto 1957, 3. 86.  Jessica L. Harris, ‘In America è vietato essere brutte’: Advertising American Beauty in the Italian Women’s Magazine Annabella, 1945– 1965, Modern Italy 22, no. 1 (2017): 35–53. 87. ‘Come dovete comportarvi Nuovi consigli di Galateo moderno: come ci si dispone in un palco?’ Product: Idolitina, Epoca, 25 agosto 1957, 81. 88.  Adam Arvidsson, ‘Consumi, media e identità nel lungo dopoguerra. Spunti per una prospettiva d’analisi’, in Genere, generazione e consumi:

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L’Italia degli anni sessanta (a cura di) Paolo Capuzzo (Roma: Carroci Editore, 2003), 39. 89. Martin Clark, Modern Italy 1871–1982 (London and New York: Longman, 1984), 369. 90. Adam Arvidsson, ‘The Therapy of Consumption Motivation Research and the New Italian, 1958–62’, Journal of Material Culture 5, no. 3 (2000): 251–274. 91. ‘e tu? Sei uno dei mini o uno dei tanti?’, Tempo, 26 marzo 1972, 51.

References Primary Sources Magazines Bolero Film Epoca L’Illustrazione Italiana Sponsor: The Weekly Magazine Radio/TV Advertisers Use Tempo Archival Documents Battaglia Ferrari, Adriana. ‘La donna e la pubblicità: aspetti psicologici, sociali, economici del problema’. 4˚ congresso nazionale della pubblicità 1954. SIPRA Archive. Bellavista, Mario. ‘Per un maggiore rendimento economico della pubblicità in Italia’. 2˚ congresso nazionale della pubblicità 1951. SIPRA Archive. Bellavista, Mario. ‘Nuovi mercati per l’industria italiana’. 7˚ congresso nazionale della pubblicità 1963. SIPRA Archive. Fondo Guido Lopez, Busta Comunicati stampa 1/1, Bolletino BMM Biblioteca Moderna Mondadori, 1950. Mondadori Archive. Luzzatto-Fegiz, Pierpaolo. ‘Sondaggi dell’opinione pubblica e studi di mercato’. 4˚ congresso nazionale della pubblicità 1957, 123. SIPRA Archive. Martini and Rossi Historical Archives. Fifty Years of Martini Advertising Campaigns (1937–1989) (Turin, Unpublished, 2004).

Secondary Sources Arvidsson, Adam. ‘The Therapy of Consumption Motivation Research and the New Italian, 1958–62’. Journal of Material Culture 5, no. 3 (2000): 251–274. Arvidsson, Adam. ‘Between Fascism and the American Dream: Advertising in Interwar Italy’. Social Science History 25, no. 2 (2001): 151–186.

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Arvidsson, Adam. Marketing Modernity Italian Advertising from Fascism to Postmodernity. London and New York: Routledge, 2003. Arvidsson, Adam and Tiziano Bonini. ‘Valuing Audience Passions: From Smythe to Tarde’. European Journal of Cultural Studies 18, no. 2 (2014): 158–173. Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. London and New York: Routledge, 2010. Buzzi, Giancarlo. ‘Il libro oggi nel contesto dei consumi’. SIPRAUNO, 3 (1967): 7–24. Capuzzo, Paolo. Genere, generazione e consumi: L’Italia degli anni sessanta. Roma: Carroci Editore, 2003. Capuzzo, Paolo. ‘Youth and Consumption’. In The Oxford Handbook of the History of Consumption, edited by Frank Trentmann, 601–617. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Castronono, Valerio e Nicola Tranfaglia (a cura di). La stampa italiana del neocapitalismo. Roma: Editori Laterza, 1976. Ceppi, Marco Beltramo. ‘Press Advertising in Italy’. International Communication Gazette 11, (1965): 27–42. Ceserani, Gian Paolo. Storia della pubblicità in Italia. Roma: Editori Laterza, 1988. Clark, Martin. Modern Italy 1871–1982. London and New York: Longman, 1984. Codeluppi, Vanni. Storia della pubblicità italiana. Roma: Carocci Editore, 2013. De Grazia, Victoria. Irresistible Empire: America’s Advance Through Twentieth– Century Europe. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005. De Iulio, Simona and Carlo Vinti. ‘The Americanization of Italian Advertising During the 1950s and the 1960s’. Journal of Historical Research in Marketing 1, no. 2 (2009): 270–294. DOXA Istituto per le Ricerche Statistiche e l’Analisi dell’Opinione Pubblica. Indagine nazionale OTIPI sui mezzi pubblicitari. Milano: Stab. Pol. G. Colombi, 1963. Fasce, Ferdinando, Elisabetta Bini e Bianca Guadenzi (a cura di). Comprare per credere: La pubblicità in Italia dalla Belle Époque a oggi. Roma: Carocci Editore, 2016. Ferraù, Alessando. ‘Il «borderõ», questo sconosciuto’. SIPRAUNO, 2 (1966): 91–109. Forgacs, David. Italian Culture and the Industrial Era 1880–1980: Cultural Industries, Politics and the Public. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990. Ginsborg, Paul. A History of Contemporary Italy: Society and Politics 1943–1980. London: Penguin Books, 1990. Gundle, Stephen. ‘L’americanizzazione del quotidiano: Televisione e consumismo nell’Italia degli anni cinquanta’. Quaderni Storici 62, no. 2 (1986): 561–593.

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Harris, Jessica L. ‘“In America è vietato essere brutte”: Advertising American Beauty in the Italian Women’s Magazine Annabella, 1945–1965’. Modern Italy 22, no. 1 (2017): 35–53. Iannucci, Amilcare A (ed.). Dante, Cinema, and Television. Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2004. Istituto Centrale di Statistica (ICS). Statistiche culturali: Stampa periodica produzione libraria Serie 1. Vol. 2. Roma: ICS, 1955. Martino, Daniele A. Catastrofi sentimentali: Puccini e la sindrome pucciniana. Torino: EDT, 1993. Martini and Rossi (Spa.). Mondo Martini: A Journey Through a Unique Style. Torino: Sori Edizioni, 2006. Morelli, Marcello. L’immagine dell’impresa. Le leve strategiche della comunicazione nell’epoca del cambiamento. Milano: FrancoAngeli s.r.l, 2002. Pells, Richard. Not Like Us: How Europeans Have Loved, Hated and Transformed American Culture Since World War II. New York: Basic Books, 1997. RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana. Dieci anni di televisione in Italia. Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1964. Scarpellini, Emanuela. Material Nation: A Consumer’s History of Modern Italy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Scrivano, Paolo. ‘Signs of Americanization in Italian Domestic Life: Italy’s Post– war Conversion to Consumerism’. Journal of Contemporary History 40, no. 1 (2005): 317–340.

CHAPTER 7

Reciting Shakespeare for Amaretto di Saronno: The Art of Carosello

Give me the glass, and therein will I read. No deeper wrinkles yet? Hath sorrow struck So many blows upon this face of mine, And made no deeper wounds? O flatt’ring glass, Like to my followers in prosperity, Thou dost beguile me! Was this face the face That every day under his household roof Did keep ten thousand men? Was this the face That, like the sun, did make beholders wink? Is this the face which faced so many follies, That was at last out–faced by Bolingbroke? A brittle glory shineth in this face. As brittle as the glory is the face. For there it is, crack’d in a hundred shivers. Mark, silent king, the moral of this sport, How soon my sorrow hath destroy’d my face.1 Nando Gazzolo for the Amaretto di Saronno carosello—‘Poetry of all times’ (1969)

Shakespearean actor Nando Gazzolo recited Richard II’s monologue ‘In a looking glass’, promoting Amaretto di Saronno liquor in the ‘Poetry of all times’ campaign. While an Italian television advertisement may seem an unlikely place for a Shakespearean monologue, from the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s, companies such as Barilla, Amaretto © The Author(s) 2018 E. Barron, Popular High Culture in Italian Media, 1950–1970, Italian and Italian American Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90963-9_7

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di Saronno and Baci Perugina used the revered works of The Bard to sell their pasta, liquor and chocolates. In a similar way, the poetry of Dante also promoted Barilla pasta and Simmenthal tinned meat, as contemporary artist Renato Guttuso endorsed Gran Senior Fabbri Brandy, and the timeless masterpieces of Giuseppe Verdi and Giacomo Puccini exemplified the quality of Vecchia Romagna Brandy. Television advertising, like print advertising before it, employed high culture, artists and intellectuals to convey excellence and class in a modern world.2 There was another very practical reason why advertisers harnessed readily recognisable symbols and personalities. Government restrictions on television had meant that when advertising was permitted from 1957, it was corralled into one ten-minute program of four advertisements called Carosello, broadcast daily at 8:50 p.m. The government imposed limits aimed to stem the perceived threat of a transition from traditional to modern values, consumerism and Americanisation. Within this ten-minute advertisement program, only eighty seconds—a fleeting twenty seconds out of each advertisement—permitted any promotion of the product or mention of its name. The remaining content provided light entertainment that could not directly refer to the product. As television historian Giovanni Gozzini observes, ‘Carosello, with taste and caution, brought the Italians across the threshold to consumerism’.3 These constraints on even discussing the product were very cautious indeed. The caroselli featured celebrity endorsements from Hollywood film stars including Jayne Mansfield for the aperitivo Biancosarti, a dubbed Jerry Lewis for digestivo Ramazzotti Amaro, Abbe Lane and Xavier Cugat for Pilla, as well as singer Frank Sinatra for Baci Perugina and Anita Ekberg for the beer industry. Likewise, Italian celebrities including film stars Alberto Sordi for Vermouth Gancia, Virna Lisi for Chlorodont toothpaste and singer Mina for Barilla pasta promoted both luxury and domesticity. The potential of the television format was huge. In contrast to magazine advertisements that featured static celebrity photographs or illustrations, television advertising enabled a brief performance, a wink or a comedic exchange. A performer could sing on stage or play a piano, and an actor could recite poetry or perform a sketch. This format suited both mass-culture and high-culture performers and references. Celebrities, and even cartoon animations, brought popular films, opera or literary characters to life. Franco Monteleone suggests that the advertisers often sought to provide an ‘artistic justification’ to their caroselli,

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and in the process, they featured some of Italy’s finest stage and film performers from Shakespearean stage actors to popular cinema comedians.4 The Carosello format delivered a short entertainment and product name. At their best, the caroselli offered commercial sponsorship of a comical, fun or witty sketch. At their worst, they spawned a painful and laboured segment with a disjointed product mention at the end. Either way, the brief exposure of product names and disconnect between product and advertisement content made it very difficult for viewers to remember products. This offered a considerable challenge for advertisers working in a very expensive medium. As a result, advertisers invented, adopted or employed characters and celebrities who would be remembered and, hopefully, associated with their product. Advertisements developed series with continuing storylines and characters that aimed to develop a recognisable brand and theme. The advertisements in the early years had an additional element of difficulty; they could only be played once. This not only meant fewer viewers remembered the product, it but also added considerably to advertising costs. Gian Paolo Cesarini, working in the advertising industry at the time, observes that the advertisers developed ways ‘all’italiana’ (Italian style) to work around this absurd system, including seeking approval to rerun advertisements. Cesarini describes the government’s approach as anti-industrial and anti-modern, designed to mediate Italy’s passage between a traditional and agricultural society and new forms of modern life, between ‘poverty and hedonism’.5 The potentially negative impact of both television and television advertising on the Italian people greatly concerned the Christian Democrat government. As historian Stephen Gundle suggests, while television played a key role introducing Italians to consumer capitalism, the RAI mediated rather than promoted consumerism.6 The 1952 broadcasting agreement between the government and the RAI restricted television advertising so that the advertisements did not interrupt or impact on the integrity of a program.7 Advertisements could not be shown within a program and nor could there be corporate sponsorship, such as the American model of naming rights seen in Revlon’s $64,000 Question. The total amount of advertising permitted on television was limited to five percent of programming time, or eight percent with Ministerial approval. Carosello had strict limits imposed on product promotion including how many mentions the product received, and when. In the early years, each sketch ran for two minutes and ten seconds, and only allowed twenty seconds of advertising. The product could only be

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referred to at the beginning and end of the short sketch. Unexpectedly for the government, these format restrictions fuelled the development of a comic style and entertaining vignettes. As a result, the Carosello program became an important part of daily life for millions of Italians. While these restrictions on television advertising were in large part due to the government’s wish to contain consumerist values, the government also imposed these limits in response to successful lobbying from the print industry. The print industry was determined to protect its lion’s share of the advertising market against a powerful new player. In 1958, Italy’s adult population was 35.7 million. Of this overall potential consumer market, print advertising reached 24.5 million adults, or more than two-thirds of the potential market. Radio advertising reached 17.5 million adults or about half the market. Cinema advertising reached around 11 million adults or just under one-third of the market. Television reached the smallest audience of just under 10.5 million adults, or less than one-third of the market.8 While many Carosello advertisements highlighted American symbols of glamour and success, or home-grown stars from film, music and television, it was the cartoon animations that found greatest popularity with adults and children. These characters became recognised brand symbols with catch-cries and a personality. Lavazza’s Carmencita and the small ‘black’ chick Calimero for Ava washing powder were among the most popular animations and are still referenced in advertising campaigns or merchandise today. The Italian advertising studios Armando Testa and La Gamma Film formed part of a broader national animation style a world away from Walt Disney.9 As well as the animations, popular comic sketches and serials included the bald Detective Inspector Rock promoting Brill Cream. This advertisement and similar caroselli often drew on recognisable mass-culture references such as Detective or Western genres. As we will see below, caroselli frequently adopted recognisable high-culture symbols, images, storylines and renowned artists. Advertisers used the name and work of William Shakespeare and also contemporary actors famed for Shakespearean roles such as Nando Gazzolo, Vittorio Gassman and Anna Maria Ferrero. William Shakespeare, Dante Alighieri and Giacomo Puccini joined Hollywood and Italian film and television stars in the promotion of the new wave of consumer goods, as advertisers piggybacked products onto existing symbols, recognisable names and common cultural references, reworking meanings to promote their products. Advertisers leveraged

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viewers’ pride and ownership of Italy’s history, art and cultural heritage. Although Italian identity remained closely tied to the regions and local traditions rather than a cohesive national identity, a soft nationalism is evident in references to Italy’s ancient history and other past glories, particularly the strong and internationally valued cultural heritage of artists Leonardo Da Vinci, Michelangelo and composers Giacomo Puccini and Giuseppe Verdi all of whom were part of an Italian humanist tradition, or what historian of Italian advertising, Adam Arvidsson refers to as ‘shared symbolic resources’.10 Every night at 8:50 p.m. from 1957, and from 8:45 p.m. throughout the 1960s, around 10 million Italian adults and an unrecorded number, yet undoubtedly millions, of children watched the ten-minute, and later fifteen-minute evening episode of Carosello.11 Black-and-white advertisements featured animations with popular cartoons; others were comic sketches with television personalities or variety actors. There was a lot of white laundry. Although the Carosello program was very popular with Italian audiences, most viewers did not turn the television on to watch it, since they had already been watching the news.12 Part of the program’s success came from its position in the middle of the peak television viewing time, after the news and before the evening program of variety, drama, music or film. In 1957, RAI television broadcast 49 hours 12 minutes of advertising in the year, all through the Carosello program. By 1967, this had increased to 140 hours 45 minutes, just under half of which was Carosello.13 From 1959, new advertising programs were added to the National (first) channel and also to the Second channel, which started broadcasting at the end of 1961. These other advertising programs did not follow the Carosello formula and instead showed a short sequence of spot advertisements that could mention the product name throughout. After 1961, television viewers watching the evening news on RAI National would see three advertising spots or programs either side and within the program: Tic–Tac before the news, Arcobaleno between the news and the weather and then Carosello after the weather and before the evening programs.14 However, it is Carosello that resonated most with audiences and still retains a special place in the hearts of many people who grew up with it. Box sets of DVDs with compilations of advertisements are currently sold for around €50 and uploaded onto YouTube by fans and corporations alike. However, there were large proportions of the population that did not watch any television advertising programs. Market research carried

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out by telephone in 1961, immediately after the programs were aired, showed who did and did not watch Carosello, Arcobaleno and Tic–Tac based on where people lived within Italy and the size of the city they lived in. Housewives living in large cities were far less likely to have seen any television advertisement programs: with around one-third watching Carosello, less than one-quarter Arcobaleno and one-sixth watching Tic– Tac. Housewives living in both the northern and southern regions, and in smaller cities, were more likely to watch the advertising programs. In these places, almost half of surveyed housewives had watched Carosello, one-third Arcobaleno and one-quarter Tic–Tac. In central Italy, the number of housewives watching television advertising programs was lower again, one-third watching Carosello, one-sixth watching Arcobaleno and about one-in-twelve watching Tic–Tac. The research noted a key factor in this difference, in central Italy and in larger cities families ate dinner later than in the north, whereas in the south and smaller cities the television was not switched on during meals and that this family time would take precedence over Carosello.15

‘Give me the glass, and therein will I read’ In the Richard II monologue recited by Nando Gazzolo for Amaretto di Saronno, the setting moves from a terrace at the home of the actor, to a stage, to the home of the viewer. Actor Nando Gazzolo is introduced by a voiceover, he starts reciting the monologue from a book as he sits at a table on a terrace, and he then rises and walks along a balcony continuing his recitation. Suddenly, Gazzolo snaps his book closed, and now we see a mirror on a dark background appear as if floating. The reflected face of Gazzolo fills the screen as he pours out Richard II’s anguish over his abdication. Gazzolo is no longer an actor reading Shakespeare; he is on the theatre stage and continues his monologue. He is Richard II. We hear the sound of shattering glass as he casts the mirror to the ground. The monologue ends, the stage darkens and shrinks down to become a television screen watched by elegant young people at home, a young man in a suit, young women wearing pearls. They discuss the qualities of the actor as one observes that Nando Gazzolo is modern and ‘full of good taste’. The advertisement concludes with the announcement: … the style with which a gift is made, and in these presents the style is called Illva,. Give AMARETTO DI SARONNO, the liquor of intense

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flavour, alive and velvety. In an elegant, refined container. When you need style, personality and refinement: AMARETTO DI SARONNO liquor, the gift that speaks for you. In every pleasant occasion, give this exquisite liquor. You offer it with pleasure and you receive it always with joy. AMARETTO DI SARONNO Illva: it is a question of style.16

The carosello used a Shakespearian monologue read by a well-known actor to entertain the television viewer with both the quality of Gazzolo’s reading and his acting. The approach was both entertaining and educational. The advertisement was directed by Sandro Bolchi, a well-regarded television director known for his many RAI television literary adaptations, including I Promessi Sposi (1967), which I will examine in detail in Chapter 9. The advertisement connects the characteristics of the performance to the product, described with the words ‘modern’ and of ‘good taste’. Gazzolo the actor is modern and tasteful. So is the liquor. Amaretto di Saronno is represented as a sophisticated gift that will show others that you have style when you give it. Style is conveyed in the product, the promotion and the consumer. Martini and Rossi’s series Caccia all’errore (Catch the mistake) offered entertaining puzzles for viewers to solve as it promoted China Martini. Popular actor Romolo Valli observed, ‘we live in an age where it is necessary to be precise’, and challenged viewers to find the mistakes in the different sketches. In one sketch, Valli recited the famous ‘To be or not to be’ monologue from Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The punchline, there was no mistake in Valli’s performance—the mistake was having only one China Martini.17 Half of all men interviewed about the Carosello program the following day were able to remember this advertisement, although only around one-third of women recalled it. It was popular with the viewers who did remember it, and 60% said that they had enjoyed it.18 Martini and Rossi’s promotion and the Amaretto di Saronno carosello built on the special role of William Shakespeare in Italian culture. Although Shakespeare is an English author, many of his plays retell Italian stories of well-known classics including Giovanni Boccaccio’s The Decameron, or were inspired by the history of ancient Rome. In all, thirteen of Shakespeare’s plays, roughly one-third of his works, are wholly or partially set in Italy. When historians write about Italy’s transformation during and after the ‘economic miracle’, Carosello is cited as a driving force in the growth of consumerism in Italy. Pier Paolo Pasolini was scathing in

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his assessment of the program and its impact on Italian society, culture and consumerism. For anthropologist Laura Bonin studying television advertising in 1968, Carosello offered audiences a world view even more homogenous and stereotyped than other television programs or print advertisements ‘in which old traditional values are disguised and fed on by parasites making ample room for infantile regression’.19 Undoubtedly, beautiful people, entertaining sketches and cheeky animations made a strong impact on viewers. Yet the fact that so few of the viewers could recall the products calls into question assumptions about the way the program shaped consumer choices and values. The viewer impact was more complex. The early years of Carosello corresponded with a growing field of market and audience research in Italy, using approaches imported from the USA. Digging into this research provides useful information on how audiences received Carosello advertisements and suggests that far from being an exercise in consumerist brainwashing, responses to television advertising varied depending on gender, region, size of cities and time of viewing. There was no homogenous ‘Italian’ response or unanimous view of consumers. It is worthwhile to look more precisely at who did and did not watch Carosello. In 1963, RAI estimated that 16.4 million adults watched Carosello at least once a week and 7.7 million adults watched it every day. This still left a significant portion of the adult population—20.6 million Italians—who did not watch Carosello at all. Advertisers targeted the 13.7 million housewives of Italy, and the program reached five million of these.20 The program was more popular with young people and those living in the north than with other groups. Half of all people aged between 16 and 44 years watched Carosello at least once a week, the highest level among all age groups. After that, about 40% of people aged between 45 and 54 years watched the program, and slightly fewer, 38% of people aged between 55 and 64 years also watched. The program was far less popular with pensioners and retirees, less than 30% of people over 65 years watched the program at least once a week.21 There were regional differences in the popularity of the program. In the north-west regions (such as Lombardy and Piedmont) more than half the adult population watched Carosello, and in central regions (such as Emilia-Romagna, Tuscany and Lazio), it was watched by just under half the adult population. In less-prosperous regions, the program was not as popular. Forty-three percent of the adult population in the northeast (such as Veneto and Friuli) regions, 40% of the adult population in the southern regions (such as Campania and Basilicata) and 35% in

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the islands (Sicily and Sardinia) watched the show.22 While there were many millions of Italians watching Carosello, there were also many more who did not. Those who did not watch were television viewers from age groups and regions less likely to be able to afford a television set or advertised consumer goods.23 Another important factor to consider is that Carosello was not a homogenous entity. Carosello comprised advertisements for four and later five different products, which in the space of ten to fifteen minutes could embrace the bold future of modern industrial Italy and, in the next slot, celebrate the timeless tradition of the Bel Paese. Products were pitched not only as new and improved but also as trusted and reliable. Advertisements presented modern American values and traditional Italian values, or a hybrid version of the two. American advertising, the new, the blonde, the modern kitchen co-existed and rubbed shoulders with Italian variety comedy sketches and theatre tradition. Products promoted staying home and going out for adventure. They promoted the excitement of modern life in the city, highlighted the problems of stress in modern city living or emphasised the connection to the timeless beauty of Italy’s countryside. To illustrate the breadth of content in one show and the need to differentiate product, we can look in detail at the Carosello program screened in October 1966 where Nando Gazzolo mellifluously recited passages from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet for Amaretto di Saronno, the liquor advertisement was one of five products promoted that evening. An advertisement for Pronto cleaning spray offering a sketch parody of James Bond by comic actors Ave Ninchi and Aroldo Tieri followed the Amaretto di Saronno carosello. After Pronto came an animated cartoon promoting Motta Ciocori confectionery for children, then a promotion for Collirio ALFA eye drops. The final advertisement was one of the Carosello legends, the popular animation for Ava washing powder, the endearing little chick Calimero with his adorable catch-cry ‘It’s an injustice’ and the racist punchline, relief that he was ‘not black, only dirty’. Each advertisement approached the job of entertainment and product promotion in distinct ways.24 Viewers struggled to remember advertisements they had seen the night before. A viewer survey found that over 20% of viewers interviewed the day after watching this program could not remember any of the advertisements without prompting. Indeed, 40% of people who had watched the program recalled only one or two caroselli in the program.25 Advertisers who had successfully linked their products with a fun and recognisable Carosello character and theme, such as Ava

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washing powder’s Calimero animation campaign, fared the best and were most likely to have their product remembered and their advertisement enjoyed. Indeed, two-thirds of surveyed viewers recalled the brand of washing powder Ava and even more could recite the tag line. Ava caroselli achieved the rare double victory of creating both memorable and enjoyable advertisements, and 85% of viewers of this advertisement responded that they had enjoyed it.26 Half of the people who watched Nando Gazzolo’s Romeo and Juliet recitation enjoyed it, although women enjoyed it more. Forty percent, a reasonable, but not overly impressive number of viewers recalled the carosello the next day.27 Beyond ensuring that viewers recalled the product name and advertising tag line, the advertisers sought to ascribe symbolic value to the product. Women were most likely to remember the slogan Amaretto di Saronno—it’s a question of style. Other associations with the product made by viewers included ‘elegance’, ‘style’, ‘refinement’ and ‘chic’. However, the study found that viewers were more likely to recall the performance and the actor Nano Gazzolo, rather than the name of the product.28 The high-culture references commonly functioned in two ways: respect or comedy. Some advertisements presented high culture in a straight, respectful manner like Nando Gazzolo’s Shakespearean monologues and poetry of Dante. In contrast, other Carosello advertisements adopted a comic approach to the classics, employing high art and literature for parody and to send-up themes, stories and characters. Frequently, the humour is found in the combination of stars of both high and mass culture. For example, the humour of a Simmenthal carosello, which we will look at in more detail later, springs from the incongruous set-up of the popular actor Walter Chiari playing Dante in a domestic scene to promote tinned meat. The audience participates in the irreverence and is in on the joke.

‘Here is the painting that gives every home a frame of good taste’ In 1957, prominent contemporary Italian artists presented advertisements for Gran Senior Fabbri Brandy in a campaign linking the product with excellence and creativity. ‘Painter of the Week’ featured artists Renato Guttuso, Giuseppe Capogrossi, Anna Salvatore, Franco Gentilini, Corrado Cagli and Carlo Levi. Each advertisement showed an artist

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creating a work of art as the narrator explained their contribution to contemporary art and the inspiration for the artist’s work.29 Renato Guttuso draws directly onto a wall as a voice-over described Guttuso as ‘one of the most important personalities of modern Italian art’. A guitar plays slowly in the background as we watch the genius creator complete his work of sunbathing figures at the seaside. The announcer enthusiastically proclaims that, ‘Here is the painting that gives every home and every environment a mark of good taste, of personality’. Cutting to the next scene, we see two couples dining at a long table in front of Guttuso’s artwork. A butler serves the meal as, in a surge of excitement, the announcer adds: ‘Here is the work that gives a frame of elegance to every environment and to every house their own personality’.30 Similarly, Giuseppe Capogrossi starts his artwork while a voice-over explains his abstract designs, elaborating that Chinese characters inspire the work. Viewers experience the brushstrokes and the forming of the design as Capogrossi paints onto a glass in front of the camera, and we are inside the creative process. With the same tag line, we hear about good taste, elegance and personality. We see the final work framed in an office with a man working at a desk as his secretary stops her typing to fetch him a glass of Senior Brandy ‘For all occasions Senior Brandy Fabbri. At the bar, at home, wherever Senior Fabbri’.31 Atypically, one advertisement featured not only a female artist Anna Salvatore but also a solo female brandy drinker. Anna Salvatore works in her studio surrounded by her paintings. She works at an easel painting a portrait of a young woman while the narrator describes her as a neorealist artist whose work captures everyday life. At the end of the advertisement, the finished painting appears on the wall behind a young woman at a desk who smokes a cigarette as she attends to her correspondence. She pours herself a brandy. It is all very modern. The series of advertisements aimed to associate the artist’s personality, creativity and excellence to the brandy and the elegant lifestyle it belongs to. The home scenes are of rich couples or individuals living their stylish lives of good taste, an atmosphere of quality underpinned by art and brandy.32

‘It’s your destiny to remain in your masterpiece’ The 1962–1963 ‘Masterpieces of Atmosphere’ campaign for Buton’s Vecchia Romagna Brandy presented another view on the collision of modern world and traditional culture. The advertisement mounts a

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defence of art and the immutability of tradition. In this campaign, the authenticity and integrity of masterpieces need to be protected from the changes of modern society. Actor and celebrity Gino Cervi was the public face of Vecchia Romagna Brandy in the early 1960s. Like Vittorio Gassman, Cervi worked in both popular films and theatre, gaining high regard for his interpretations of classics including works of Sophocles and Shakespeare.33 Cervi achieved fame as the Communist mayor Beppone in the Don Camillo films, which in 1952 achieved the highest box-office taking of any Italian film to date.34 Cervi sits in his booked-lined lounge room at a piano with the music score of a famous opera and starts to explain Pietro Mascagni’s opera Cavalleria rusticana when a cartoon animation of the character Turiddù, talking with a caricature of a strong Sicilian accent, jumps out of the score and onto the piano until Cervi tells him he needs to ‘go back into his place’. Turiddù slips out of his music score again and heads towards the score for Giuseppe Verdi’s I Lombardi alla Prima Crociata (The Lombards and the First Crusade), but is turned away by a cartoon Crusader. Cervi returns Turriddù to his opera and tells him ‘It’s your destiny to remain in your masterpiece’.35 The idea is continued in another carosello from the same campaign where Cervi smokes a cigarette seated at a piano and starts to explain that Madama Butterfly is one of the major masterpieces of Giacomo Puccini. The coughing of a small cartoon animation on top of the piano—the opera’s lead character Cio-Cio San, interrupts him. Cio-Cio San promptly changes into a minidress and starts to sing the 1962 Edoardo Vianello popular dance hit Guarda come dondolo and dances the Twist. Cervi insists she put her kimono back on and remonstrates ‘Guarda come dondolo (Watch how to rock) – if Puccini could hear you!’ Though the question was asked rhetorically, Cervi has raised an interesting issue, what would Puccini say if he could hear a 1960s animation of Cio-Cio San singing a popular dance song? If Puccini’s mouthwash advertisement and other endorsements were anything to go by, I suggest he would probably have been quite comfortable with it. The carosello ends with Cervi telling CioCio San that she cannot change and needs to stay as she is, inside her masterpiece. He then closes the music score on the cartoon animation and makes a final philosophical observation, ‘Because all masterpieces remain authentic originals which are eternally relevant and create atmosphere like Vecchia Romagna black label, the brandy that creates an atmosphere’.36

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Creating an atmosphere or a distinct personality offered important ways to distinguish a home and represent social standing. Carosello advertisements made references to art or artists to confer quality and prestige on their product. This association with quality also highlighted the importance of good taste in modern life, in particular for the growing middle class, as part of the art of homemaking and modern living. Style, culture and good taste in the home reflected status and a modern life. Products associated with art and artists reflected the quality of the item and placed it in the wider context of the tasteful home to reflect the quality of the consumer.

‘A celebrity for you’ Other examples of respectful and pedagogical approaches to high culture include an early campaign ‘A celebrity for you’, promoting L’Oreal’s Shampoo Plix in 1957. These caroselli blended mass-culture and high-culture personalities in a form of entertainment journalism. The advertisements presented celebrities from literature, art and film in a television interview format as television’s most popular personality Mike Bongiorno interviewed celebrity writer Alberto Moravia, famous painter Renato Guttuso and actor Virna Lisi.37 With the exception of the advertisements featuring quiz host Mike Bongiorno, these poetry and theatre recitations, interviews and reminiscences were a lower-cost alternative to writing a sketch with an ensemble of actors or Hollywood and Cinecittà stars. In 1961, the cost of an advertisement on Carosello was 2,700,000 lire the equivalent to $432,000 (US) with estimated nightly audiences of four million Italians for Carosello, and a demographic breakdown by gender and age showing that: women made up just under half of the viewer numbers, 1.5 million men watched the program, as did 737,000 children younger than 14. The cost of screening the advertisement, without including the cost of producing it, worked out at 0.66 lira (11 cents, US) per viewer, 0.81 lira (13 cents, US) per adult, 1.46 lira (23 cents, US) per woman and 3.66 lira (59 cents, US) per child.38

‘Fond Regards, Your Dante’ Dante Alighieri is Italy’s most famous poet, possessing an iconic status across high and mass cultures. The stories and themes of The Divine Comedy have been taught in schools, referenced in film and used in

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advertising throughout the twentieth century. Dante forms a significant part of Italian national culture. While there were serious uses of Dante and his work, true to Carosello’s comic style, advertisements played with and inverted the ending of a story or the status of the artist. The popular 1966 Simmental tinned meat series ‘Siamo felici’ (We are happy) featured film stars Walter Chiari and Silva Koscina as a modern couple who transform through daydreaming to another life—becoming famous singers, being on Saturn in the year 2000 and assuming the roles of Antony and Cleopatra, the Manzonian characters Renzo and Lucia or the famous Renaissance couple Dante and Beatrice.39 In the ‘Dante and Beatrice’ carosello, Dante visits Beatrice at home, to discover she is angry with him about the sonnet he has sent her. Beatrice reads Dante’s famous love sonnet from La vita nuova (The new life), ‘Tanto gentile e tanto onesta pare…’ (Very noble and very h ­ onest she seems).40 Indignantly, Beatrice questions Dante’s meaning, ‘Why “seems”, am I not honest?’ Beatrice continues her rant ‘la donna mia?’ (My lady, literally my woman), demanding irately, ‘My woman? Who am I? Your maid?’ Dante apologises and suggests changing the sonnet to, ‘Very noble and very honest is she, my lady when she makes coffee’.41 Here, the comedy works by placing a well-known cultural reference of Dante’s sonnet in the everyday as part of a domestic situation, where a woman cannot help but complain and criticise. A dismayed Dante sighs, ‘Lucky modern men, when they write, put only “Fond Regards, Your Dante”’.42 The carosello returns to the present day, and Walter Chiari concludes with nostalgia, ‘in life today there is something less than in the life of yesterday’. Sylva Koscina responds, ‘Perhaps, but we have more comfort, more youth…’ and at the table, ‘more meat, more Simmenthal’.43 Parodies based on modern interpretations and inversions of familiar characters and stories from famous works were a common device in caroselli. In 1962, Campari advertisement ‘Il cantastorie Campari’ (The Campari Troubadour) featured a musical version of the story of Faust sung by popular singer Paolo Poli with animations of Faust and the devil.44 Far from faithful to the original text, the 1966 series of advertisements for Pronto spray cleaner ‘Better than a dream, except that…’ featured a maid played by television actress Ave Ninchi who falls asleep and dreams of the handsome neighbour (Aroldo Tieri). The sketches adapted recognisable characters from popular films, such as Zorro, Lawrence of Arabia or James Bond. In the same mode, Pronto Spray also ransacked high culture for recognisable characters based on Othello

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and Desdemona, Romeo and Juliet, Ulysses and Circe and Cyrano de Bergerac. These appropriations often subverted the expected tragedy, creating a happy ending. Pronto Spray’s Romeo is delighted to find his Juliet dead because she is so ugly.45

‘Reading poetry, and searching for the word “Barilla”!’ The 1958–1959 Barilla campaign L’album di Giorgio Albertazzi (The Album of Giorgio Albertazzi) offered both nostalgia and edification with actor (and former Fascist) Albertazzi reading poems and recounting stories. The campaign draws many touchstones of Italian national culture, the opera celebrity of world-famous tenor Enrico Caruso, Dante Alighieri, playwright Luigi Pirandello and the Veronese lovers Romeo and Juliet. In a 1958 Barilla carosello, Giorgio Albertazzi finds an old reel of film at home, which includes footage of two Italian personalities of the 1920s. First, we see shots of the garlanded cyclist Ottavio Bottecchi a ‘legend of sport’, who in 1924 was the first Italian to win the Tour de France. Next, Albertazzi shows footage of the famous Italian playwright Luigi Pirandello in rehearsal for Henry IV as Albertazzi explains the importance of Pirandello’s masterpiece Six Characters in Search of an Author. He recounts the drama of the play’s first performance—as the ‘snobs’ of Rome disparagingly threw small change onto the stage. The advertisement concludes with Albertazzi ‘searching for the word “Barilla”!’, followed by a Barilla logo and confident voice-over, ‘Barilla offers mothers the new gluten pasta with wheat germ. It is safe for all children and for everything that happens in life’. In an impressive non-sequitur, children sing and dance holding hands in a ring around a giant box of Barilla Pastina Glutinata as the advertisement ends with the statement, ‘A box of 200 grams, 140 lire. This is the gluten pasta for everyone’.46 The 1959 campaign included a solemn recitation of Dante’s poem to Beatrice ‘Tanto gentile e tanto onesta pare’, noting that everyone will know it, at least from school.47 In addition to the Italian cultural icons, Albertazzi introduces viewers to the perhaps less well-known love poetry of the Russian Symbolist Aleksandr Blok, Sulle dune (In the dunes).48 Continuing along this educational vein, Albertazzi informs viewers that German playwright Bertolt Brecht wrote poems as well as famous play Mother Courage and Her Children. He reads Ricordo di Marie A. (Memory of Marie A.) a nostalgic love poem that uses a memory and a

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white cloud as the central images. The cloud vanishes in last line of the poem, as Albertazzi observes, has the time… theatrically looking at his watch, before he searches for, and finds the word, ‘Barilla!’49 Carosello advertisements regularly used high culture to entertain audiences, to share jokes and iconic cultural references. Even people who had never seen a play or an opera at the theatre appreciated the short sketches and references to well-known works and characters. The cultural symbols were chosen to resonate with audiences, and they were the firme ‘big names’—great Italian composers Giacomo Puccini or Giuseppe Verdi, the Italian inspired Englishman William Shakespeare, and the Italian great Dante Alighieri. Well-known film stars and television personalities interpreted, brought to life and even translated these cultural references for viewers. Well-known cinema comic actors Vittorio Gassman, Walter Chiari, Carlo Campanini and Gino Cervi were familiar faces for television audiences. Their rendering of masterpieces provided accessible entertainment in an often comical and, at times, self-deprecating way. In addition to Hollywood and high culture, caroselli drew ideas from popular or well-known nineteenth-century fiction familiar to viewers who had read the books, or who, as I will discuss in Chapters 8 and 9, had more likely watched the television or film versions or read fotoromanzi adaptations. Advertisements presented stories inspired by popular classics such as Don Quixote, Ivanhoe, Robinson Crusoe, Sherlock Holmes and The Three Musketeers. The impact of modern life on the classics or the differences between commercial culture and art was also a theme employed to comic effect in Carosello advertising.

‘Artists above all’ Carosello sketches were often very funny. Actor Vittorio Gassman’s advertisement for Perugina Baci chocolate ‘Artisti inanzi tutto’ (Artists above all) played with his dual status as a popular actor and a serious Shakespearean actor.50 Here, the carosello is a kind of celebrity non-endorsement in that Gassman and actress Anna Maria Ferrero, who appeared with Gassman in the 1957 television adaptation of Othello, spend most of the advertisement trying to avoid promoting the chocolate. The story set-up is that Vittorio Gassman is asked to appear in an advertisement for Baci chocolates.51 Gassman assumes a mock-superior tone and haughtily explains that he cannot possibly appear in an advertisement because he is a serious artist, listing his Shakespearean

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performances as Hamlet, Othello, Richard II and Richard III as well as Henry IV, V, VI and also VII and VIII. Gassman and the actress Anna Maria Ferrero pointedly discuss respect for art as opposed to the love of money. The two actors are then offered even more money and quickly suspend their artistic principles to sell Baci chocolates. The advertisement finishes as the actors appear in costumes featuring the Baci brand, and Gassman still tries to avoid saying the product name. ‘Artists above all’ openly reference the conflict between artistic principles and commercial culture, the actors make the joke about artistic principles at their own expense, and the audience laughs along with them. The sketch requires the audience to have an awareness of the conflict between elite and commercial culture and provides an extra gag to those familiar enough with the works of Shakespeare to know that there was no play Henry VII.52 In a follow-up Baci Perugina advertisement, ‘Arte e pubblicità’ (Art and advertising), Vittorio Gassman and Anna Ferrero appear together, again as themselves, this time in a lecture hall as Gassman attempts to answer the question ‘What is art?’. He talks of the artists who do not betray their mission and notes, in what he calls a painful parenthesis, well-known actor colleagues who make advertisements. Gassman holds forth in horror at such an idea, asking the audience if it is pardonable, as he and Ferrero open their jackets to reveal the product name ‘Baci’ on her shirt and his cummerbund. The actors recite in turn, ‘Where there is art, there is sincerity’, ‘Where there is sincerity, there is feeling’, ‘Where there is feeling, there is love’, ‘And wherever there is love, there is a Bacio Perugina’.53 An important reason for this light-hearted approach to the classics was that the comedy of Carosello became a defining feature of the program. Market research on Carosello during the late 1950s was very limited and not national so needs to be read as indicative rather than hard evidence. However, surveys undertaken in and around Turin found that respondents reported a high level of enjoyment of Carosello (seventy percent found the program to be good or great) and showed a clear preference for comic sketches above other advertising approaches including music, sports, didactic presentations or pantomime.54

‘To counter a modern life, I drink Cynar’ The 1962 Carosello sketch ‘Salotto letterario’ parodies the world of the elite literary salon through the comic situation of very different worlds meeting—the Everyman and the intellectual. The carosello is set in a

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stark modern literary salon, and comedian Carlo Campanini confesses to the camera that he has been invited because he is a man of little culture. He fears he may not have the capacity for a literary discussion.55 The self-important intellectual, played by actor Gianni Cajafa, starts the discussion quoting the poet Giacomo Leopardi ‘e il naufragar m’è dolce in questo mare’ (it is sweet to be shipwrecked in this sea), asking Campanini if he knows ‘The Infinite of Leopardi’? Campanini replies— it must be ‘Leopard–are’, mistaking the question on poetry for one on grammar. Fortunately for Campanini, he finds chocolates wrapped with small notes of famous quotations and using them replies, ‘“The ends justify the means” – Machia’. The intellectual corrects Campanini, adding ‘…velli’ (as in Machiavelli). Campanini apologises, ‘Sorry, there was a mark (macchia) on “velli”’.56 Campanini maintains his side of the intellectual conversation full of literary references by continuing to read the small notes from chocolate wrappers. The intellectual asks Campanini if he knows the work of ‘Shaw, George Bernard Shaw’. Campanini responds he only knows the ‘Perry Como Show’, at which point the intellectual responds that he has not read any of Perry Como Show’s work, and asks for a recommendation. At the end of the advertisement, Campanini announces ‘to counter a modern life, I drink Cynar’.57 The humour of the advertisement is based on empathy for Campanini, wordplay and mockery of the conceited intellectual. This stereotyping of intellectuals and mockery of fake or boring experts is a recurring image in mass culture. Art historian Bettina Funcke has examined the constructions of high and low hierarchies within art and the way in which high culture and mass culture reference each other. She suggests that the elite construct of the ‘masses’ is matched by the mass culture constructed stereotype of ‘the artist’, suggesting that: Through their reciprocal reference, high culture and mass culture create independent, interlocking fictions and constructed images and figures. The sheer quantity of images representing “the masses,” along with mass– media culture’s corresponding invention of “the artist,” suggests an element of mutual desire, a longing for something represented by an Other that lies beyond one’s reach.58

Funcke’s idea of reciprocal stereotyping is useful in this context; Campanini does desire something beyond his reach or capacity but at the same time reveals the pretentions of the intellectual and references

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the debate about mass culture. The humour comes from punning and the mistakes made by both Campanini and the intellectual regarding the high-culture and mass-culture references that the audience knows, Giacomo Leopardi, Niccolò Machiavelli, George Bernard Shaw and Perry Como. The jokes only work if the audience understands both the high Italian and mass American cultural references. Funcke suggests mass culture that laughs at high culture is the ‘counter part to high culture’s construction of a weak, malleable, and ominous mass’.59 She provides the example of a 1977 Saturday Night Live skit ‘E. Buzz Miller Art Classics’ about, ‘a really nice painting of a broad on a couch’, Titian’s Italian masterpiece Venus d’Urbino. The skit plays with the disparity between Italian art and American mass culture, from the American perspective.

‘The Intellectual Female’ Artists and intellectuals in Carosello advertisements were almost exclusively male. The Senior Fabbri Brandy advertisement with artist Anna Salvatore discussed earlier in the chapter was a notable exception to the general invisibility of female artists. While film actresses gave product endorsements and caroselli referenced female characters, such as Dante’s Beatrice or Shakespeare’s Juliet, real-life artists and actors played the parts of genius, artist and modern intellectual. The 1969 carosello ‘La donna in gabbia – Femina intellectualis’ (woman in a cage—intellectual female) provided a striking representation of the intellectual as an exotic or confusing ‘other’, in this case it is, as the advertisement notes, one of the rarest specimens, the intellectual woman.60 The male game hunter explained the main characteristics, behaviour and habitat of the captured specimen—a lovely blonde caged intellectual. Surprisingly, she does not read comics, no matter how interesting, and prefers art books and manuscripts. Distracted by books and aloof, she cannot be wooed in the normal way and will reject flowers and chocolates. She is commonly found in her natural environment of literary salons in apartment penthouses or modern art galleries. Again humour played an important part in this representation of intellectual proclivities and a wildlife documentary parody, where the jokes lay in the shared amusement at the intellectual woman’s rejection of desirable items like jewellery and furs as ‘insufficiently literary’. The advertisement concluded by showing that in contrast to these deviant and confusing behaviours, at home she is like all women as she likes a comfortable and a better life with her Triplex kitchen.

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The 1962 hairspray advertisement for L’Oreal brought together the opportunities of modern life, travel and female independence with the reading of an Italian classic novel. In the advertisement, the modern young woman Joy takes her copy of I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed) and a can of Elnett hairspray for an enjoyable day out to explore the small town near Lake Como where the book was set.61 As Joy jumps off her motor scooter, book in hand, she discovered that the modern world has not been kind to literary history and the home of the heroine Lucia is now a restaurant with an I Promessi Sposi theme. On the site where Don Abbondio met the henchmen of Don Rodrigo, a major turning point at the beginning of the novel, there is now a traffic light. Joy is a modern young woman; she reads books and is free to explore the countryside unaccompanied and above all, beaming with the confidence that her smart bobbed hair will stay in place.62 This representation of Italian modernity combines positive images of free time and modern life, with amusing jabs at the negative aspects progress, tacky tourism and literary places lost to car ownership and traffic management. The products promoted on Carosello were predominantly domestic, to be used or consumed in the home. This tendency increased with time. The types of products advertised on Carosello in 1958 were: food, sweets and drink (37%); hygiene, beauty or medical (37%); household products and cleaning products (8%); and electro-domestic products (4%).63 Almost ten years later, advertisements for food, confectionery and drink had increased (44%), whereas advertisements for hygiene, beauty or medical products had reduced by more than half (16%); cleaning products remained steady (7%); and advertisements for electro-domestic items had more than doubled (9%).64 Fausto Colombo suggests that Carosello had an important role to educate Italian consumers about unknown products or socialise previously unacceptable products like make-up, positioning the modern within traditional values. The pedagogy of Carosello, in regards to adults, showed the road to modernisation rendered compatible with traditional values (protected by the television advertising agency, SACIS’s code): it showed housewives that the use of household appliances or cosmetics was socially acceptable, even desirable in the leap in quality of life that economic growth had brought.65

This familiarity extended not just to household products and cosmetics, but also to cultural knowledge in both serious and comic contexts.

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In 1958, a year after the introduction of advertising on Italian television, there were still fewer than one million television licenses, and programs were broadcast from 5:00 p.m. to just after 11:15 p.m. with the exception of Sunday when television was broadcast from 10:00 a.m.66 Carosello was incredibly popular and grew further in popularity during the 1960s. However, while some historians have called it the most popular program on Italian television, especially with children, this is perhaps a better reflection of the fondness with which the program is remembered rather than of the actual audience figures of the time.67 The program was without doubt very, very popular. By 1961, Italian market research company DOXA estimated that more than 16 million adults watched at least one Carosello show a week and 7.7 million watched it every day.68 By 1968, 25 million adults watched Carosello at least once a week, 13 million watching it daily or almost daily. Nevertheless, the evening programs that followed Carosello were consistently more popular, being watched by an extra 3–4 million viewers, particularly the Saturday night variety shows. In 1968, Canzonissima attracted 21 million viewers.69 Carosello attracted millions of middle-income adult viewers, yet it remained less popular with the sought after higher-income groups and housewife demographic. People from lower-income groups watched Carosello less, although this was not likely to be a concern to advertisers. However, if advertisers wanted greater volume and to target highyield market segments, they still needed to go to the print industry. The advantage that television and television advertising had over print advertising was its role in the home and family life. The television shaped evening routines, and the end of Carosello meant bedtime for Italian children. By 1967, around two-thirds of families had their television in the room where the family ate and about a quarter in a lounge room, although this occurred to a lesser extent in cities (here, 58% of people watched television where they ate and just over a third in a lounge room).70 Traditional accounts of Carosello present a stereotype of the passive viewer and the dazzled Italian housewife eager to emulate an American home. Looking through the detail of the audience research, a different picture emerges. In the first instance, it was very difficult to get anyone to remember the advertising at all and, beyond that, responses to advertisements varied greatly, and not all of them were found to be enjoyable by the viewers. Audience surveys undertaken by the television advertisers provide a useful insight into the ways audiences watched

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and responded to Carosello and tend to challenge prevalent assumptions about the passive reception of both television and television advertising. Advertisements for American products such as toothpaste and laundry powder could receive a lukewarm response from audiences, an example, the carosello featuring the Italian television quiz king Mike Bongiorno for DASH laundry powder. During the 1966 survey, less than 50% of viewers remembered the DASH advertisement the next day, and of those, only half reported that they enjoyed it, more men enjoying it than women.71 Far from being brainwashed by American capitalism or Christian Democrat conservative values, viewers responded in varying ways.

Conclusion Cultural literacy was associated with a modern and affluent lifestyle. The adjectives used in the examples here refer to ‘atmosphere’, ‘good taste’ and ‘personality’. The purpose of the advertisement, the art and the product is differentiation from others. These presenters are cultural authorities mapping out cultural difference, and yet at the same time they are entertaining raconteurs and teachers. Luckily, this cultural and social difference had a permeable barrier, and buying a product brought with it access to elegance and good taste. At the same time, the parodies of cultural snobbery mocked this attempt at demarcation and distinction. Both approaches offered a sense of belonging, suggesting membership of a group. The audience and survey data, although limited, suggest that viewers liked these representations, the Dante readings and the Shakespearean monologues by well-known actors to sell biscuits or chocolates. Notably, one thing that the research categorically showed was that all advertisers struggled to have their products remembered by the viewers. Highculture references, particularly Italian cultural greats such as Dante Alighieri and Giacomo Puccini, were appropriated as readily remembered symbols and icons. The audience research found that comic sketches were the most popular and that a straight didactic approach was not. The importance of entertainment and comedy in Carosello helped to make the boundaries around high culture less fixed and sacred, and the endings were changed as film stars and comedians subverted well-known characters and artists. The viewer was included in the joke. The representation of the intellectual or pure artist as a well-meaning hypocrite

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or outrageous snob provided a counter-stereotype to the ignorant mass consumer and a source of comedy. The direct and ironic reference to the contemporary debates on the destructive influence of mass culture is significant because it mocks a polarised approach to culture, proposing instead the ideal of a viewer who is literate in both mass-culture and high-culture references. The caroselli that blended high and mass cultures, and combined the commercial and sacred in a humorous and teasing tone were not a world away from Giacomo Puccini’s ‘Ode to Odol’ mouthwash advertisement in Italy’s first illustrated weekly magazine of the beginning of the century. It was just that by the end of the 1960s, many more millions of people were now in on the joke.

Notes







1. English original of Richard II’s monologue in a looking glass, William Shakespeare, ‘The Life and Death of King Richard the Second’, in The RSC Shakespeare Complete Works, Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen (eds.) (Basingstoke: Macmillan Publishers, 2008), 829–891, 877, lines 271–286. 2. See Chapter 1 for discussion about terms describing culture. 3. Giovanni Gozzini, La mutazione individualista: Gli italiani e la televisione 1954–2011 (Roma: Editori Laterza, 2011), 21. 4. Franco Monteleone, Storia della radio e della televisione in Italia: Costume, società e politica (Venezia: Marsilio Editore, 1999), 318–319. 5.  Gian Paolo Ceserani, Storia della pubblicità in Italia (Roma: Editori Laterza, 1988), 181–182. 6. Stephen Gundle, L’Americanizzazione del quotidiano. Televisione e consumismo nell’Italia degli anni cinquanta’, Quaderni Storici 62, no. 2 (1986): 561–594; 577. 7.  Walter U. Bedon, Considerazioni sulla pubblicità televisiva in Italia e propose di riforma dell’attuale formula Trieste 4–5– luglio 1958, 1º Convegno nazionale degli utenti e tecnici della pubblicità televisiva (Conference Paper, Unpublished, 1958), 7. SIPRA Archive. 8.  DOXA Istituto per le Ricerche Statistiche e l’Analisi dell’Opinione Pubblica and SIRM Società Italiana Ricerche di Mercato, ‘Tav. 0.0 Persone raggiunte dai vari «media» pubblicitari, Totale Uomini e Donne’, Indagine nazionale sui lettori dei quotidiani e dei periodici sui telespettatori, radioascoltatori e cinespettatori Market Research for the Advertising Association Utenti Pubblicità Associati (Unpublished, 1958), 419. SIPRA Archive.

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9. Fausto Colombo, La cultura sottile: Media e industria culturale in Italia dall’Ottocento agli anni Novanta (Milano: Bompiani, 1999), 239. 10. Adam Arvidsson, Marketing Modernity: Italian Advertising from Fascism to Postmodernity (London and New York: Routledge, 2003), 7. 11. DOXA, Indagine nazionale (1958), 419. 12. RAI, Inchiesta sulla pubblicità televisiva (1957), 8. Eighty percent noted that they had not turned the program on to watch it (Unpublished Research: This survey has a low sample size of 185 television owners in Turin and surrounding areas); DOXA, ‘Tav. 3.13 – Ascolto della rubric Carosello secondo la durate dell’ascolto’, ‘Audience’ e modalità di ascolto delle rubriche pubblicitarie televisive (Unpublished Research: November– December 1968 based on 4373 interviews nationally). The research estimated that 9.6 million viewers out of 14.6 million watched the television programs before and after Carosello. SIPRA Archive. 13. RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana, Annuario Rai 1969–1970 (Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1970), 228–229. 14.  RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana, Annuario Rai 1962 (Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1962), 206. Advertising program schedule: Gong after the 6:30 p.m. news (from 1959), Tic–Tac before the news at 8.30 p.m. (from 1959), Arcobaleno after the news and before the weather report (from 1961) and then Carosello at 8:50 p.m. or 9:00 p.m. (from 1957); and on the second channel Intermezzo (from 1962), and Girotondo broadcast daily at 5:30 p.m. before the children’s program (from 1964); Irene Piazzoni, Storia delle televisioni in Italia: Dagli esordi alle web tv (Roma: Carocci Editore, 2014), 98. 15. MISURA Studi dell’opinione pubblica e rierche di mercato, L’audience di ‘TIC–TAC’ ‘Arcobaleno’ e ‘Carosello’, maggio 1961, 15. 16. Carosello, ‘Monologo dello specchio’ (1969), series: Poesie di tutti i tempi, dir. Sandro Bolchi, product: Illva – Amaretto Disaronno. DVD. Carosello – Un mito intramontabile: 11 (RAI ERI, 2013). 17. Carosello, Episode: ‘Cinetelevisione’, series: Caccia all’errore (1968), dir. Attilio Vassallo, product: Martini and Rossi, China Martini; CID ricerche pubblicitarie, ‘Risultati della prima serata’, Indagine televisiva Carosello 1966 (Unpublished results of market research by CID ricerche pubblicitarie s.r.l.,) IV. Note: Survey conducted by telephone with 24,000 families in Milan, Turin, Genoa, Venice, Trieste, Bologna, Florence, Rome, Naples and Palermo. SIPRA Archive. 18. CID ricerche pubblicitarie, ‘Risultati della prima serata’, 29, 34. 19.  Cited in Francesco Alberoni, ‘Pubblicità e società dei consumi’, in Radiotelevisione italiana (RAI), Società italiana pubblicità per azioni (SIPRA) and Società per azioni commerciale iniziative spettacolo (SACIS), Pubblicità e televisione: saggi di Francesco Alberoni (et al.)

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documenti: La pubblicità TV in Italia dal 1957 al 1966 (Torino: ERI Edizioni Rai, 1968), 147–148. 20.  DOXA Istituto per le Ricerche Statistiche e l’Analisi dell’Opinione Pubblica, ‘Tab. 10.a Frequenza di ascolto delle trasmissioni pubblicitari TV, 10.a.2 Secondo sesso – Carosello’, Indagine nazionale OTIPI sui mezzi pubblicitari (Milano: Stab. Pol. G. Colombi, 1963), 259. 21. DOXA, ‘Tab. 10.a Frequenza di ascolto delle trasmissioni pubblicitari TV, 10.a.3. Secondo età – Carosello’, Indagine nazionale (1963), 262. 22.  DOXA, ‘Tab. 10.a Frequenza di ascolto delle trasmissioni pubblicitari TV, 10.a.3. Secondo zone geographiche – Carosello’, Indagine nazionale (1963), 256. 23.  DOXA, ‘Tab. 10.a Frequenza di ascolto delle trasmissioni pubblicitari TV, 10.a.3. – Secondo età – Carosello’, Indagine nazionale (1963), 262. Secondo zone geographiche – Carosello, Indagine nazionale (1963), 256. 24. CID ricerche pubblicitarie, ‘Risultati della sesta serata’, Indagine Carosello 1966, 107–122, i–ix. 25. CID, ‘Risultati della sesta serata’, 108. 26. CID, ‘Risultati della sesta serata’, 122, 112, 116. 27. CID, ‘Risultati della sesta serata’, 122, 116. 28. CID, ‘Risultati della sesta serata’, ii. 29.  Carosello, Episodes: ‘Renato Guttuso’, ‘Giuseppe Capogrossi’, ‘Anna Salvatore’, ‘Franco Gentilini’, ‘Corrado Cagli’, series: Un pittore alla settimana (1957), dir. Luciano Emmer, product: Fabbri distillerie – Brandy Grand Senior. The Fabbri company YouTube channel ‘fabbriTV’ features caroselli series, see bibliography for links. 30.  Carosello, Episode: ‘Renato Guttuso’ (1957), fabbriTV. 31. Episode: ‘Capogrossi’ (1957), fabbriTV. 32. Episode, ‘Anna Salvatore’ (1957), fabbriTV. 33.  Gino Moliterno, (ed.), Encyclopedia of Contemporary Italian Culture (London and New York: Routledge, 2000), 586. 34. Alessandro Ferraù, ‘Il «borderò», questo sconosciuto’, SIPRAUNO, no. 2 (1966): 91–109, 98. 35.  Carosello, Episode: ‘Cavalleria rusticana’, series: Capolavori d’atmosphera (1963), dir. Alfredo Danti, product: Buton Vecchia Romagna. 36. Carosello, Episode: ‘Madama Butterfly’, series: Capolavori d’atmosphera (1963), dir. Alfredo Danti, product: Buton – Vecchia Romagna, DVD. Carosello… e poi a letto: 1957–1977 La storia della televisione italiana 4, no. 10 (CG Home Video, 2010). 37.  Carosello, Episodes: ‘Alberto Moravia’, ‘Renato Guttuso’, ‘Virna Lisi’, series: Un personaggio per voi (1957), dir. Bruno Baldaccini, Vittorio Carpignano, product: Saipo L’Oreal – Shampoo Plix.

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38. SIPRA Archive: MISURA L’audience di…‘Carosello’, 19–20. Note: lire to cents at 1961 values. 39. Carosello, Episodes: ‘Il cantante famoso’, ‘Due attori famosi’, ‘Nel 2000 su Saturno’, ‘Dante e Beatrice’, ‘Renzo e Lucia’, ‘Antonio e Cleopatra’, series: Siamo Felici (1967–68), dir. Luciano Emmer, product: Simmenthal – tinned meat. 40. Dante Alighieri, La vita nuova, David R. Slavitt (trans.) (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010). 41.  Carosello, Episode: ‘Dante e Beatrice’ (1968), dir. Luciano Emmer. 42. ‘Dante e Beatrice’ (1968). 43. ‘Dante e Beatrice’ (1968). 44.  Carosello, Episode: ‘Faust’, series: Il cantastorie Campari (1962), dir. Nino Pagot, Toni Pagot, product: Campari – Bitter. 45.  Carosello, Episodes: ‘Il segno di Zoddo’, ‘Agente 007’, ‘Lawrence di Arabia’, ‘Otello e Desdemona’, ‘Romeo e Giulietta’, ‘Ulisse e Circe’, ‘Cyrano’, series: Meglio di un sogno non c’é che…(1965–1967), dir. Vittorio Carpignano, product: Johnson and Son Italiana, Cera Glo–cò, Pronto Johnson. 46. Carosello, Episode: ‘Ottavio Bottecchia e Pirandello’, series: L’album di Giorgio Albertazzi (1958), dir. Mario Fattori, product: Barilla – Pastina glutina. 47.  Carosello, Episode: ‘Tanto gentile e tanto onesta pare’, series: L’album di Giorgio Albertazzi (1959), dir. Mario Fattori, product: Barilla – Pastina glutina. 48. Carosello, Episode: ‘Sulle dune’, series: L’album di Giorgio Albertazzi (1959), dir. Mario Fattori, product: Barilla – Pastina glutina. 49.  Carosello, Episode: ‘Ricordo di Marie A.’, series: L’album di Giorgio Albertazzi (1959), dir. Mario Fattori, product: Barilla – Pastina glutina. 50. Carosello, Episode: ‘Artisti innanzi tutto’, series: I registi di Gassman (1959), dir. Mario Fattori, product: Perugina – Cioccolatini Baci. DVD. Carosello… e poi a letto: 1957–1977 1, no. 11 (CG Home Video, 2010). 51. Vittorio Gassman was known as Italy’s Lawrence Olivier and one of the few actors to successfully cross over from theatre to popular film and television. 52.  Carosello, Episode: ‘Artisti innanzi tutto’ (1959). 53.  Carosello, Episode: ‘Arte e pubblicità’, series: I registi di Gassman (1959), dir. Mario Fattori, product: Perugina, Cioccolatini Baci. 54. Inchiesta sulla pubblicità televisiva (1957), 12. 55. Carosello, Episode: ‘Salotto letterario’, series: Chi si diffende si salva (1962), dir. Guido Leoni, product: Cynar. DVD. Carosello… e poi a Letto: 1957–1977 1, no. 11 (CG Home Video, 2010). 56.  Carosello, Episode: ‘Salotto letterario’ (1962).



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57. Carosello, Episode: ‘Salotto letterario’ (1962). 58. Bettina Funcke, Pop or Populus: Art Between High and Low (New York: Sternberg Press, 2009), 18. 59. Funcke, Pop or Populus, 105. 60.  Carosello, Episode: ‘Femina intellectualis’, series: La donna in gabbia (1967), dir. Alfredo Danti, product: Triplex Kitchens. 61. The nineteenth century novel by Alessandro Manzoni is one of the celebrated classics of Italian literature. I will examine the representation of this work in mass culture over the next two chapters. 62. Carosello, Episode: ‘I Promessi Sposi’, series: Il diario di Gioia (1962), dir. Aldo Rossi, product: L’Oreal Elnett Hairspray. SIPRA archive: Mediateca del Museo della Pubblicità del Castello di Rivoli. 63. RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana, Annuario Rai 1959 (Torino: ERI Edizioni, 1959), 347. 64. RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana, ‘Tav. Fatturato pubblicitario radiofonico e televisivo per gruppi merceologici dal 1963 al 1967’, Annuario Rai 1968 (Torino: ERI Edizioni, 1968), 383. 65. Colombo, La cultura sottile, 240. 66. RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana, Annuario Rai 1958 (Torino: ERI Edizioni, 1958), 101, 120. 67. Paul Ginsborg, A History of Contemporary Italy: Society and Politics 1943–1980 (London: Penguin Books, 1990), 241; Gundle, ‘L’Americanizzazione del quotidiano’, 587. 68. DOXA, ‘10.a. Frequenza di ascolto delle trasmissioni pubblicitarie TV, 10.a.2: Secondo sesso, Carosello’, Indagine nazionale 1963, 259. 69. RAI, Annuario Rai 1969–1970, 175, 177. 70. DOXA, ‘Tav. 10.1: Posto del televisore in casa’, ‘Audience’ e modalità di ascolto, 212. 71. CID, ‘Risultati della nona serata’, 162, 166.

References Primary Sources Carosello Television Advertisements Amaretto Disaronno. Episode: ‘Monologo dello specchio’, series: Poesie di tutti i tempi (1969), dir. Sandro Bolchi, product: Illva – Amaretto Disaronno. DVD. Carosello – Un mito intramontabile: 11 (RAI ERI, 2013). Baci Perugina. Episode: ‘Artisti innanzi tutto’, series: I registi di Gassman (1959), dir. Mario Fattori, product: Perugina – Cioccolatini Baci. DVD. Carosello… e poi a letto: 1957–1977 La storia della televisione italiana 1, no. 11 (CG Home Video, 2010).

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Baci Perugina. Episode: ‘Arte e pubblicita’, series: I registi di Gassman (1959), dir. Mario Fattori, product: Perugina, Baci. http://carosellomito.net/ episodio/i–registi–di–gassman–arte–e–pubblicita/. Barilla. Episode: ‘Tanto gentile e tanto onesta pare’, series: L’album di Giorgio Albertazzi (1959), dir. Mario Fattori, product: Barilla – Pastina glutina. http://carosellomito.net/serie/lalbum–di–giorgio–albertazzi/tanto–gentile–e–tanto–onesta–pare/; Episode: ‘Ricordo di Marie A.’, series: L’album di Giorgio Albertazzi (1959), dir. Mario Fattori, product: Barilla – Pastina glutina. http://carosellomito.net/serie/lalbum–di–giorgio–albertazzi/ricordo– di–maria/; Episode: ‘Sulle dune’, series: L’album di Giorgio Albertazzi (1959), dir. Mario Fattori, product: Barilla – Pastina glutina. http://carosellomito.net/serie/lalbum–di–giorgio–albertazzi/sulle–dune/. Barilla Pasta Glutinata. Episode: ‘Ottavio Bottecchia e Pirandello’, series: L’album di Giorgio Albertazzi (1958), dir. Mario Fattori, product: Barilla – Pastina glutina. http://carosellomito.net/episodio/lalbum–di–giorgio– albertazzi–ottavio–bottecchia–e–pirandello/. Campari Bitter. Episode: ‘Faust’, series: Il cantastorie Campari (1962), dir. Nino Pagot, Toni Pagot, product: Campari – Bitter. http://carosellomito.net/ episodio/il–cantastorie–campari–faust/. Cynar. Episode: ‘Salotto letterario’ (1962), series: Chi si diffende si salva, dir. Guido Leoni, product: Cynar. DVD. Carosello… e poi a letto: 1957–1977 La storia della televisione italiana, 1 (CG Home Video, 2010). Dreft. Episode: ‘La scultrice’, series: Dicono che sulle mani sia scritto il destino (1962), dir. Vittorio Carpiagnano, product: Dreft. SIPRA Archive: Mediateca del Museo della Pubblicità del Castello di Rivoli. Grand Senior Brandy. Episodes: ‘Renato Guttuso’, ‘Giuseppe Capogrossi’, ‘Anna Salvatore’, series: Un pittore alla settimana (1957), dir. Luciano Emmer, product: Fabbri distillerie – Brandy Grand Senior. The Fabbri company YouTube channel ‘fabbriTV’; Episode: ‘Renato Guttoso’, fabbriTV. https:// youtu.be/nSmrfb5RpEc; Episode: ‘Anna Salvatore’, fabbriTV. https:// youtu.be/7ANziFmlbj8; Episode: ‘Capogrossi’, fabbriTV. https://youtu.be/ KPhrNDgduOY. L’Oreal Elnett Hairspray. Episode: ‘I Promessi Sposi’, series: Il diario di Gioia (1962), dir. Aldo Rossi, product: L’Oreal Elnett Hairspray. SIPRA Archive: Mediateca del Museo della Pubblicità del Castello di Rivoli. L’Oreal Shampoo Plix. Episodes: ‘Alberto Moravia’, ‘Renato Guttoso’, ‘Virna Lisi’, series: Un personaggio per voi (1957), dir. Bruno Baldaccini, Vittorio Carpignano, product: Saipo L’Oreal – Shampoo Plix. Martini and Rossi – China Martini. Episode: ‘Cinetelevisione’, series: Caccia all’errore (1968), dir. Attilio Vassallo, product: Martini and Rossi, China Martini.

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Pronto and Cera Glo–Cò. ‘Il segno di Zoddo’, ‘Agente 007’,‘Lawrence di Arabia’, ‘Otello e Desdemona’, ‘Romeo e Giulietta’, ‘Ulisse e Circe’, ‘Cyrano’, series: Meglio di un sogno non c’é che…(1965–1967), dir. Vittorio Carpignano, product: Johnson and Son Italiana, Cera Glo–cò, Pronto Johnson. Simmenthal. Episodes: ‘Il cantante famoso’, ‘Due attori famosi’, ‘Nel 2000 su Saturno’, ‘Dante e Beatrice’, ‘Renzo e Lucia’, ‘Antonio e Cleopatra’, series: Siamo felici (1967–1968), dir. Luciano Emmer, product: Simmenthal – tinned meat; Episode: ‘Dante e Beatrice’ (1968), dir. Luciano Emmer. http://carosellomito.net/episodio/siamo–felici–dante–e–beatrice/. Triplex Kitchens. Episode: ‘Femina intellectualis’, series: La donna in gabbia (1967), dir. Alfredo Danti, product: Triplex Kitchens. http://carosellomito. net/episodio/la–donna–in–gabbia–femina–intellectualis/. Vecchia Romagna. Episode: ‘Cavalleria rusticana’, series: Capolavori d’atmosphera (1963), dir. Alfredo Danti, product: Buton – Vecchia Romagna. http:// carosellomito.net/episodio/capolavori–datmosfera–cavalleria–rusticana/. Vecchia Romagna. Episode: ‘Madama Butterfly’, series: Capolavori d’atmosphera (1963), dir. Alfredo Danti, product: Buton – Vecchia Romagna. DVD. Carosello… e poi a letto: 1957–1977 La storia della televisione italiana, Vol. 4 (CG Home Video, 2010). SIPRA Archive Bedon, Walter U. Considerazioni sulla pubblicità televisiva in Italia e propose di riforma dell’attuale formula Trieste 4–5– luglio 1958, 1º Convegno nazionale degli utenti e tecnici della pubblicità televisiva (Conference Paper, Unpublished). CID ricerche pubblicitarie. Indagine televisiva Carosello 1966. Unpublished Results of Market Research by CID ricerche pubblicitarie s.r.l., 1967. DOXA, “Audience” e modalità di ascolto delle rubriche pubblicitarie televisive. Unpublished Research: November–December 1968. DOXA Istituto per le Ricerche Statistiche e l’Analisi dell’Opinione Pubblica and SIRM Società Italiana Ricerche di Mercato. Indagine nazionale sui lettori dei quotidiani e dei periodici sui telespettatori, radioascoltatori e cinespettatori. Unpublished Market Research for the Advertising Association Utenti Pubblicità Associati (UPA), 1958. DOXA Istituto per le Ricerche Statistiche e l’Analisi dell’Opinione Pubblica. Indagine nazionale OTIPI sui mezzi pubblicitari. Milano: Stab. Pol. G. Colombi, 1963. MISURA Studi dell’opinione pubblica e rierche di mercato, L’audience di “TIC– TAC” “Arcobaleno” e “Carosello”, maggio 1961. RAI. Inchiesta sulla pubblicità televisiva. Unpublished Research, 1957.

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Secondary Sources Alighieri, Dante. La vita nuova. Translated by David R. Slavitt. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010. Arvidsson, Adam. Marketing Modernity: Italian Advertising from Fascism to Postmodernity. London and New York: Routledge, 2003. Ceserani, Gian Paolo. Storia della pubblicità in Italia. Roma: Editori Laterza, 1988. Colombo, Fausto. La cultura sottile: Media e industria culturale in Italia dall’Ottocento agli anni Novanta. Milano: Bompiani, 1999. Ferraù, Alessandro. ‘Il «borderò», questo sconosciuto’. SIPRAUNO, no. 2 (1966): 91–109. Funcke, Bettina. Pop or Populus: Art Between High and Low. New York: Sternberg Press, 2009. Ginsborg, Paul. A History of Contemporary Italy: Society and Politics 1943–1980. London: Penguin Books, 1990. Giusti, Marco. Il grande libro di Carosello: e adesso tutti a nanna. Milano: Sperling and Kupfer, 1995. Gozzini, Giovanni. La mutazione individualista: Gli italiani e la television 1954– 2011. Roma: Editori Laterza, 2011. Gundle, Stephen. ‘L’Americanizzazione del quotidiano. Televisione e consumismo nell’Italia degli anni cinquanta’, Quaderni Storici 62, no. 2 (1986): 561–594. Moliterno, Gino (ed.). Encyclopedia of Contemporary Italian Culture. London and New York: Routledge, 2000. Monteleone, Franco. Storia della radio e della televisione in Italia: Costume, società e politica. Venezia: Marsilio Editore, 1999. Piazzoni, Irene. Storia delle televisioni in Italia: Dagli esordi alle web tv. Roma: Carocci Editore, 2014. RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana. Annuario Rai 1958. Torino: ERI Edizioni, 1958. RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana. Annuario Rai 1959. Torino: ERI Edizioni, 1959. RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana. Annuario Rai 1962. Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1962. Radiotelevisione italiana (RAI). Società italiana pubblicità per azioni (SIPRA) and Società per azioni commerciale iniziative spettacolo (SACIS), Pubblicità e televisione: saggi di Francesco Alberoni (et al) documenti: La pubblicità TV in Italia dal 1957 al 1966. Torino: ERI Edizioni Rai Radio televisione Italiana, 1968. RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana. Annuario Rai 1969–1970. Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1970. Shakespeare, William. ‘The Life and Death of King Richard the Second’. In The RSC Shakespeare Complete Works, edited by Jonathan Bate and Eric Rasmussen. Basingstoke: Macmillan Publishers, 2008.

CHAPTER 8

The Classics and the Everyday: From I Promessi Sposi to I Promessi Paperi

Alessandro Manzoni’s I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed) is an Italian literary masterpiece. For Giuseppe Verdi, it represented, ‘not only the greatest book of our epoch, but one of the greatest ever to emerge from a human brain’, and the composer wrote his acclaimed Requiem Mass to commemorate Manzoni’s death.1 The novel has held an important role in Italian culture since its publication in the early nineteenth century, and this position continues today. I Promessi Sposi is a classic love story, set in 1628 in rural Lombardy. The novel starts on the day before the planned wedding of Renzo and Lucia, a young couple who live in a small village near Lake Como. The wedding is cancelled when Don Rodrigo, a powerful aristocrat intent on seducing Lucia, sends his bravi—or private thugs—to threaten the priest and stop the marriage. For the next 500 or so pages, depending on the edition, the ‘betrothed’ face a succession of obstacles and challenges to their efforts to marry, including popular rebellion and food riots. Renzo is sentenced to death, Lucia is kidnapped, and there is convent intrigue, famine and the plague. Exhibiting many of the classic characteristics of Romantic literature, I Promessi Sposi reveals a polarised world of good-versus-evil with simple villagers carried along by larger social and historical events. Providence, the grace of God, and forbearance in adversity are presented as the only way out of the maelstrom. The way that Italians have experienced and enjoyed the novel reveals much about cultural practice and cultural hierarchies in Italy. Today, © The Author(s) 2018 E. Barron, Popular High Culture in Italian Media, 1950–1970, Italian and Italian American Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90963-9_8

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almost every Italian teenager grinds through I Promessi Sposi at school, or at least pretends to do so. Italian popular culture is full of references to it, and most Italians can (and will) quote the opening lines. The responses of readers interviewed in Rome in the early 1960s reflect the mixed reactions people had to the classic. One literature graduate interviewed in the early 1960s declared that not only was it her favourite book, it guided her steps in life. A factory worker had read it three times as an adult and could rattle off quotes, ‘Farewell mountains…’. Alongside those with fond memories of the classic, came those still bearing scars from their education, ‘at school I hated it’ and ‘I Promessi Sposi bored me, but La Divina Commedia (The Divine Comedy) bored me more’.2 Despite an almost unassailable position in Italy’s literary canon and culture, the likelihood that Italians actually read the novel is a relatively recent phenomenon. I Promessi Sposi, like many other literary classics, was predominantly received, understood and enjoyed by Italians through adaptations of the novel into visual forms: magazines, film and television. This chapter explores the representation of the novel in a range of different popular print forms—magazines, fotoromanzi and comics. The next chapter will examine its representation in television and film.

Education and Reading in Italy in the 1950s and 1960s Illiteracy and semi–literacy were commonplace throughout Italy during the early-to-mid-twentieth century. This was partly a result of the central role played by agriculture in the economy (a sector that did not need a literate workforce) and the limited industrial activity in the south. The low demand for literate workers was accompanied by an education system that was simply unable to deliver universal education. Although Italy introduced one of the earliest of Europe’s compulsory primary school level education acts in 1859, it was not enforced. Throughout the early-to-mid-twentieth century, there was little requirement to meet the minimum schooling age in a regional and fragmented system that varied greatly in both resources and quality. Even those who completed primary school generally lacked the opportunity to use and maintain their literacy skills in later life. Another important factor was the reluctance of the Catholic Church to encourage mass education. The education reforms during the Fascist era created a secondary school curriculum with a strong humanist focus and an emphasis on literature and history. This approach best served the few who planned

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to continue to university rather than educating the general population beyond primary school.3 Although a minimum school leaving age of 14 was introduced in 1923, again it was not enforced. The war years provided an additional disruption to schooling. Historian Martin Clark is scathing in his assessment of the quality of education offered by Italian schools in the post-war period and early 1950s: This frightful, rigid, unreal, enclosed, boring and profoundly stupid system did its best to anaesthetize successive generations of pupils. One wonders who suffered most from it: the ‘failures’, who left school as early as possible, stigmatized and barely literate; or the ‘successes’, arrogantly convinced that what they had learned at school was worthwhile knowledge. Probably the latter, for their taught lack of common sense and ignorance of the real world would often prove a terrible handicap in later life.4

By the early 1950s, around three in four Italian adults finished their education at a primary school level, or had achieved basic literacy without a formal school qualification. Approximately one in eight Italians were illiterate, and this proportion varied greatly depending on the region, the local economy and education systems. For example, in the industrialising north-west of Italy (which includes Piedmont and Lombardy), there were generally higher literacy levels and as few as one in every thirty-five people were illiterate. Whereas, in the mixed agricultural and industrial economy of the north-east and centre (which includes the Veneto and Tuscany), one in eleven people were illiterate; and Lazio (the region of which Rome is the capital) had similar levels of around one in ten. Illiteracy was very common in the agricultural regions and in the islands (which includes Campania, Sicily and Sardinia), where around one out of every four people could not read or write.5 While town size and regions reflected literacy levels and cultural practice, it is important to note that these divisions were in a state of flux. First, some regions were industrialising from an agricultural economy or an economic mix of agriculture and industry. Second, populations were moving as government restrictions on internal migration were lifted and job opportunities came with new manufacturing and service industries. As a result of the internal migration in Italy during the 1950s and 1960s, millions of people moved from country areas to the cities and inter-regionally from the south to the north or the east to the west. The industrial northern capitals of Milan and Turin had hundreds of thousands of resident

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southern Italians. Indeed, northern Turin had the third largest population of southern Italians after the southern cities of Naples and Palermo.6 Female illiteracy was high across Italy throughout the twentieth century, especially in the south. Wives and mothers did not need to be educated to raise families—for many, this was a middle-class luxury. Indeed, it would not be until the late 1960s and early 1970s that substantial numbers of women received a secondary level education and accessed tertiary level education. The industrialisation of Italy following the ‘economic miracle’ had brought with it an increased demand for educated workers and educated women and delivered more opportunities for Italians to receive an education. Following the educational reforms in 1962, the state introduced compulsory eight-year school attendance replacing the five-year compulsory education required previously. As Alberto Martinelli notes, the school system had been split into two types of schools along class lines ‘one for bourgeois students preparing for high school, the other preparing workers’ and peasants’ children for work’ adding that, ‘the transition from elite education to mass education took place a few decades later in Italy than in other major Western countries’.7 In addition to demand and opportunity, there was an emerging sense of education as a vital prerequisite for success in a ‘modern’ world. Education was the key to the future. State-driven education reforms enforced the minimum school attendance age of fourteen years as well as requiring the completion of a middle school level of education. Greater numbers of young Italians stayed longer at school. Twenty years after the start of the ‘economic miracle’, approximately twice as many students completed middle school and high school as had in the early 1950s.8 The increased access to education, in particular for girls and working-class male children, was one of the most significant of the many transformative social changes of this time. Illiteracy rates halved over this twenty-year period. Changed attitudes to female education also helped to increase literacy. Nevertheless, despite the significant transformation of popular education and attitudes to school attendance, the changes to the national education levels took time to flow through the population. At the beginning of the 1960s, 15% of the population had gained a school qualification higher than primary school. By the early 1970s, this had increased to 23% and to 38% by the early 1980s.9 The education levels of the majority of the population and the generally low literacy rates shaped the cultural practice and pastimes of Italians in significant ways. For many, the easy comprehension of complex written material was neither possible nor enjoyable. This was particularly

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the case for the long novels in the Italian tradition of elegant language, floral vocabularies and poetic flights of fancy. Even newspaper reading required a high level of education in order to penetrate the dense and formal text. Magazines varied in their use of written language and, as we will see below, the use of photography. A visual approach and straightforward language enabled magazines to become the most accessible and popular reading material. In 1957, however, more than 40% of families did not read any books, magazines or newspapers. Reading levels varied throughout the population. Unsurprisingly, reading habits, education level and employment were closely linked. The profession of the head of the household, their sector of employment, and the resulting socio-economic situation of the family influenced household reading behaviour. Almost three-quarters (71%) of families did not read books, magazines or newspapers in households where the head of the household worked in agriculture, whereas, almost all families read books, magazines or newspapers in homes where the head of the household worked in business as an owner or manager.10 There were strong regional differences in reading habits, shaped by education and literacy levels and the local economy’s demand for a literate workforce. While people in 25% of households in Rome did not read books, magazines or newspapers, this increased to 70% of households in Abruzzi and Molise.11 Even with the changes to education and increased literacy, the cultural practice of book reading and book ownership remained limited to a small part of the population. In the mid-1960s, almost two-thirds (over nine million) of all Italian families did not own any books. First-hand accounts from this period illustrate the limited use of books in everyday life. Lena, a former rice worker and maid from Emilia-Romagna born in 1935, reported that her family did not own books while she was growing up, and that there were only fotoromanzi magazines in the house. For her and her friends, book buying was a low priority. When asked if she read books she replied: No, because there was no chance to get them and maybe if I had had the money to buy a book, I would not spend it on a book, I would have wanted to buy something to wear, or if I found a book we shared it around between friends. But, novels not really … Yes, I read ‘Little Women’ and those things … we went to church and they gave them to us to read, it was the parish club, and you took them home … but at home, except the fotoromanzi that my sister shared, there were no books.12

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Of the Italian families that did keep books in the house, more than four million said that they owned novels and literature. Significantly, over two million families also had encyclopaedias in the home, or were in the process of acquiring them.13 Encyclopaedia sales reflected the growing importance of children’s education and the many families that had made the connection between success, education and knowledge. Magazine advertisements during the 1960s pointedly represented encyclopaedias as a ticket to future success. Research into reading habits demonstrated the importance of encyclopaedias for people with lower levels of education who explained their desire to improve their own knowledge, or to help their children. In one such case, A. N. (a 35-year-old builder with a fifth grade primary school education) had bought the  Enciclopedia nuovissima (New Encyclopaedia) for 20,000 lire for his children. Another, A. U. (an 18-year-old manicurist with a fifth grade primary school education) was reading the Garzanti encyclopaedia, which she explained, was a collection of six volumes, on subjects including literature, culture and history. A. U. observed ‘I like culture and fairy tales, but these are not fables, they are stories from India, from exotic places. I like the stories from far away places’.14 Similarly, I. P. (a 47-year-old jewellery designer with a sixth grade primary school education and four children) owned both the Enciclopedia dei bambini (Encyclopaedia for children) and the eighteen volume Enciclopedia della famiglia (Encyclopaedia for the family). He said that sometimes he looked up things about art or ancient history and added that ‘I am particularly interested in Greco–Roman art, ancient history… more classical art than Egyptian, I also like Etruscan art, particularly the painting…’.15 On the other hand, G. G. (43 years old with a fifth grade primary school education working in the Ministry for Public Education) said that he had bought the Enciclopedia dello studente (Encyclopaedia for students) for 80,000 lire but that while he had leafed through it, he was not very interested in it.16 Established and educated members of society also found encyclopaedias important, L. M. (42 years old with a Masters Degree and also working at the Ministry of Public Education) had bought the Enciclopedia dei ragazzi (Encyclopaedia for children). He observed that, ‘we bought it with enthusiasm and great sacrifice, though only the children have the time and the curiosity to go and consult it’.17

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Changes to the Cultural Practice of Reading in Italy Book-reading behaviours slowly began to change, and lower levels of education were becoming less of a barrier to book ownership. In the mid-1960s, books were in the homes of three million families where the head of the household had completed a primary school level of education or less, or was illiterate.18 However, the employment sector and socio-economic status of the head of the household still remained a strong indicator of book ownership. As in the previous decade, when the head of the family worked in agriculture, families were very unlikely to have books. Around 80% of all agricultural families had no books, which in Italy at this time represented around two million households. In the households where the head of the family worked in industry, around two-thirds or 2.7 million households had no books.19 When looking at reading and literacy, it is important to consider the collective skills of a family unit and note that reading could be present in a family environment even when only some or one family members were literate. Family environments mediated and facilitated cultural practice. As literacy historian Marina Roggero suggests, ‘marking a clear distinction between literates and illiterates risks being misleading because it neglects the opportunities for contact between illiterates and better educated people within the same family or circle’.20 Households with members from different generations had experienced different education requirements and opportunities. As a family unit, the new education benefits could be shared. Younger members of a family with higher literacy levels were able to read to older members of the family, who were far less likely to have attended school. A generational change was underway in the cultural practice of reading, in particular, reading by women. During the mid-1960s, older Italians were less likely to read books or magazines as a pastime, whereas most of the younger men and women educated since the Second World War were readers. While around 40% of Italian men aged over 66 years described themselves as readers, this number had grown to over 60% in the younger age group of 15–25-year-old Italian men. The generational change was even more marked for Italian women. Fewer than one in four women aged over 66 years described themselves as readers. Whereas most young women read as a pastime—almost two out of three young women aged between 15 and 25. This was even slightly higher than the

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number of male readers in the same age group. Italy had its first generation of women that read more than men.21 Despite these substantial changes to reading habits, the growth of new reader markets, and the rise of inexpensive paperback books and ‘best–sellers’, Italy did not develop anything resembling a popular tradition of book reading until the 1970s or later. As we saw in Chapters 2 and 3, magazines dominated Italian cultural practice. Well over half the adult population read magazines. As a result, most Italians read classic literature through abridged, serialised and visual formats in magazines. The three most popular types of magazines were the illustrated news magazine, the fotoromanzi (photonovels) and fumetti (comic books). Each had very different markets and yet all three integrated humanist culture and classical literature into their weekly content with approaches that varied from sacred respect to whimsical parody. Magazine publishers recognised culture and education as commercial opportunities.

Reading Fotoromanzi Magazines From the late 1940s right through to the 1970s, fotoromanzi magazines played an important role in Italian culture, particularly for women. Fotoromanzi stories were told, not with text, but through a sequence of captioned photos. The magazines targeted the large numbers of people with lower education levels, which was a strong, and growing market. In the 1950s, 56% of fotoromanzi readers had either a primary school education or no school qualifications.22 By the early 1970s, almost 70% of Bolero Teletutto’s 2.1 million readers had a primary school education or no school qualifications. Reader education levels for fotoromanzi resembled the overall national education levels, whereas readers of weekly and monthly publications that combined text and photojournalism attracted a greater proportion of readers with higher education levels. For example, more than two-thirds of Epoca readers had completed middle school, high school or university whereas less than one-third of the population had attained these levels of education.23 Arnoldo Mondadori, head of the Mondadori publishing house which had pioneered the fotoromanzi approach in Bolero Film, described fotoromanzi to an American as, ‘like a film: but made of photographs instead of moving images’. For Mondadori and his company, fotoromanzi were a way to reach a new public ‘not yet in the habit of buying and reading books’. He strategically used the serialisation of fotoromanzi

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versions of ‘great novels and stories’ in Bolero Film to develop new book markets. Mondadori believed in both the entertainment value and market development potential of the magazines: ‘The public avidly reads these fotoromanzi (photonovels), and when it has finished them, the public is easily persuaded to buy the original book’.24 While book sales failed to boom, the sales of fotoromanzi grew sevenfold from the late 1940s to the early 1960s. In the post-war period, the weekly sales of the three main fotoromanzi magazines Grand Hôtel, Bolero Film and Sogno were over 1.5 million, although the readership, once the magazine was shared with family and friends, would have been closer to three times that number at around 4.5 million. The three magazines had much in common, yet also offered diverse styles of content and attracted different audiences. Most fotoromanzi readers were female, although men read them too. In the late 1950s, while only 10% of Sogno’s readership was male, around one-third of the readership of both Grand Hôtel and Bolero Film were male.25 The three main fotoromanzi had different approaches and editorial personalities that attracted readers from different parts of society. Grand Hôtel was first published by the Del Duca company, Universal in 1946, and it is still published in Italy today. It used an illustrated style similar to comics, which it continued to employ alongside the later photonovels. It was the first, and always the most popular, of the fotoromanzi as it appealed to a broad audience that included both younger and older readers. During the late 1950s, Grand Hôtel’s three million readers were drawn from all parts of society, yet mostly from the middle, lower-middle and lower socio-economic groups. The largest group of readers—more than one million—came from a lower-middle-class background; followed by almost one million middle-class readers; and over half a million lower-class readers.26 Mondadori launched Bolero Film in 1947. Bolero Film readers came from across society, yet were generally female, young and lower-middle class. In the late 1950s, around two-thirds of the magazine’s readers were aged between 16 and 34.27 The popular fotoromanzo was renamed Bolero Film Teletutto in 1966 and then Bolero Teletutto at the end of 1967. The name change reflected that the importance of film in Italian life had been usurped by television. Although, the demarcation lines between fotoromanzi, cinema and television were blurred, as they enjoyed an interdependent relationship, reporting on and promoting each other. In the late 1950s, television celebrities such as Mike

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Bongiorno and Enzo Tortora featured in interviews and articles, or were photographed on the ski slopes of Cortina. Notably, Bongiorno also appeared in serialised fotoromanzo stories. In one sentimental Christmas tale, Addio Zio Mike (Goodbye Uncle Mike) that ran from December 1957 through to May 1958, Bongiorno played himself in an allegedly true story of a young boy and his dog who wandered into Bongiorno’s home in Milan one Christmas.28 The third main fotoromanzo magazine, Sogno was first published in 1947 and continues through to the present day. Sogno, like Grand Hôtel featured illustrated stories yet also adopted the photostory approach. Sogno’s readers were young, female and drawn from a fairly even mix of lower-middle and middle-class backgrounds. Two-thirds of Sogno readership was aged between 16 and 34 years.29 In the early 1950s before her film career took off, Sophia Loren appeared in fotoromanzi stories in Sogno using the name Sofia Lazzaro. By the late 1950s, the combined readership numbers of the three main fotoromanzi had grown to almost 6.5 million, a figure that included both sales and shared copies. Grand Hôtel had almost 3 million readers; followed by Bolero Film with almost 2 million readers; and Sogno with 1.5 million.30 By the early 1960s, market research estimated that 10.8 million people read a fotoromanzo each week and the combined readership of the three major titles had risen to 9.3 million. The market growth was all in the middle. The number of lower-middle-class readers had increased by 65%, and the number of middle-class readers had increased by 57%.31 Yet as television became more popular during the 1960s, and television ownership more ubiquitous, the fotoromanzi market ended its rapid expansion and started to contract. The market shrank in the middle, particularly visible in the loss of 1.5 million lower-middle and middle-class readers of both Grand Hôtel and Sogno. By 1967, the readership of fotoromanzi contracted from 10.8 million down to 7.4 million. Bolero Film’s weekly readership remained steady at around two million throughout the 1960s and into the 1970s. The fotoromanzi market rallied in the early 1970s, when the readership of fotoromanzi increased slightly to 7.8 million. This increase was a result of Grand Hôtel’s regaining some of its middle-class audiences.32 Fotoromanzi were an Italian innovation yet were seen by many to be the epitome of Americanised, consumerist culture and decried by Italian intellectuals as part of the cultural apocalypse. They were largely

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dismissed as substandard and an affront to culture. Their popularity with women reinforced their inferior cultural status. Like many other forms of popular culture, the left condemned fotoromanzi as the source of escapist and conformist behaviour in the working and middle classes. For others, they were a form of substandard writing for the illiterate. It is only relatively recently that historians have acknowledged the cultural significance of fotoromanzi. For Anna Bravo, the purchase of a fotoromanzo in the 1940s and 1950s was far from conformist behaviour. It could be a transgression of good Catholic values that made families and neighbours suspicious: the readers of Grand Hôtel were bad girls like Silvana Mangano in Riso Amaro.33 David Forgacs and Stephen Gundle’s oral history sources confirm that the new values, modern products and romantic stories featured in the fotoromanzi at times challenged existing mores and traditional family values. Grand Hôtel was passed round among young women and the fashions in it inspired envy and a desire for emulation. Augusta R., who grew up in a strongly Catholic household, recalled that Grand Hôtel was forbidden in the home by her mother, along with other women’s magazines like Gioia, although her friends read it and she sometimes looked at it.34

Yet in a landscape of changing values, housewives also recalled fotoromanzi reading as a non-controversial, social and enjoyable pastime. Roman housewife Sara, born in 1928, said that she regularly read Grand Hôtel after she was married and observed nostalgically that, ‘whoever had a Grand Hôtel had something to do’.35 The experience of Lina, the Emilia-Romagna maid and rice-worker, highlights how magazine reading became a collective experience with friends. She recounted that they purchased all three of the main fotoromanzi and then shared them around.36 While serialised romance and crime stories featured strongly in the magazines, abridged versions of classics were also included alongside these more scandalous tales. The inclusion of high culture content in popular magazines was a commercially savvy move at a time when new markets and audiences were rapidly developing in a range of cultural and leisure activities. The inclusion of classic literature also formed part of a divulgative approach reflecting a democratic, and at times Gramscian, attitude to mass culture. As Damiano Damiani, director of Bolero Film observed:

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For us the most important thing was to provide the masses more and more extensive things to read and contribute to their emancipation. We did not believe that what was successful with the masses should necessarily be a lower level of cultural product, as was the elitist vision of the very culture rooted in Italy.37

The first classic rendered in fotoromanzo form was Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’Urbervilles in Sogno in 1951, which increased sales to 80,000.38 The following year Bolero Film serialised Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables weekly in twenty-seven parts from March to September. Bolero Film director Luciano Pedrocchi observed that, ‘To translate in the rapid and modern language of the fotoromanzo such a masterpiece of literature was a noble and arduous task, faced with courage and completed with scrupulous respect’.39 Between late September 1952 and mid-April 1953, the fotoromanzo magazine Le Grandi Firme serialised I Promessi Sposi over thirty weekly issues (Fig. 8.1). The adaptation was re–published later in 1953 as a collated masterpiece album for Bolero Film edition costing 250 lire, or the same as a paperback book. The head of the Mondadori publishing house, Arnoldo Mondadori, observed that not only was the serialised fotoromanzo version of I Promessi Sposi successful and proving to be popular with readers, it was increasing sales of the original book.40 Luciano Pedrocchi’s introduction to the 1953 Bolero Film album edition of I Promessi Sposi reads as a challenge to other cultural forms and to the intellectuals and critics of mass culture. It shows that fotoromanzi magazines were seen as modern and an exciting future direction for culture. It could be better than film, as good as a novel, and even in photograph form, remain utterly faithful to the text: For those who still do not consider the fotoromanzo as a form of art or at least as a modern “vulgar” language in the classic and noble sense of the word; in short for those who still doubt that our dynamic and atomic era would actively seek a new means of expression appropriate for the age of speed and of television, a fotoromanzo adaptation of I Promessi Sposi could appear to be a work that is at least risky, if not in vain. It is to those doubters we are pleased to offer this Bolero album, which delivers, in photographic images, the immortal masterpiece. If the sceptics would like to examine and read it, we are certain it will convince them that the art of fotoromanzo has reached its full maturity, enough to compete with film and perhaps surpass it. In this adaptation, characters, settings, customs, scenery strictly adhere to the Manzonian text, and above all the dialogue of the

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Fig. 8.1  Don Rodrigo’s henchmen encourage the priest Don Abbondio not to perform the marriage of Renzo and Lucia. First episode of I Promessi Sposi in the fotoromanzo magazine Le Grandi Firme, 23 September 1952 (Cover image used with permission of Arnoldo Mondadori Editore)

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great Milanese writer was, even in the commas, scrupulously respected. All the characters from the book, from Lucia and Renzo, from Don Abbondio to Father Cristopher to Don Rodrigo, appear as alive as when the reader of the novel sees them leap from those wonderful pages. It is therefore with justifiable pride that we offer to our readers this new Bolero album that can be called the jewel in the masterpieces series.41

In 1966, Mondadori reprinted the 1954 Bolero Film version of I Promessi Sposi in the months before the scheduled RAI broadcast of an eight-part television adaption of the novel (see Fig. 8.2). The introduction to the new edition, again written by Pedrocchi, observed that the fotoromanzo version of I Promessi Sposi had ‘anticipated, in a certain sense, the path that television was taking… with a ‘dramatised’ version of the immortal masterpiece’.42 The introduction suggested that the fotoromanzo would provide an excellent guide to help television viewers follow the television adaptation in a closer and more meaningful way. Pedrocchi wrote that despite a general familiarity with the theme of the work and its characters, most people did not read the novel. He added that Bolero Film had reissued the fotoromanzo version to overcome this and so that many more people could discover the masterpiece. He observed: Broadly speaking the plot is known to most. But it is always the bitter destiny of masterpieces to be more cited than read or to be known only superficially. We think not even I Promessi Sposi escapes from this rule. It remained an accumulation of memories, images and situations that are destined to fade with time.43

In this context, the fotoromanzo is presented as a valuable educational tool and appropriate format to provide a deeper understanding of the masterpiece, as well as helping to bring the characters to life. The role of the fotoromanzo as a potential stepping stone to book reading is also acknowledged: If then, when reaching the last word in our fotoromanzo, readers feel an urgent desire to find, also in the pages of the book, the unforgettable characters, this will be another reason for pride for all of us.44

Yet for Italian writer Libero Bigiaretti, writing on the impact of television on book reading, it was a travesty that Manzoni was not spared the injustice of being turned into a fotoromanzo by an ‘enterprising publisher’ following the television adaptation.45

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Fig. 8.2  The Nun of Monza leads Lucia to kidnappers, I Promessi Sposi: Grande fotoromanzo dal capolavoro di Alessandro Manzoni. Albi di Bolero Film, n. 200, (1966), 95 (Image used with permission of Arnoldo Mondadori Editore)

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Tempo Magazine and Serialised, Illustrated Literature Cultural literacy and sophistication were socially important. With so many magazines and affordable books available, one new guide to modern art stated, ‘there is no excuse for those who do not know how to explain the meaning of art today’.46 Magazines found ways to sweeten the sometimes bitter medicine of high culture and contemporary art and poetry. The back page of Tempo in the mid-1950s featured a regular photo shoot that would juxtapose a modern, young and gorgeous actress with a less modern, less young and less gorgeous male artist or poet; oftentimes, seated on his knee. Combinations included ‘Lea Padovani has surprised De Chirico’; ‘The unusual Anna Magnani meets Salvatore Quasimodo’; while, artist Franco Gentilini ‘explains realism’ to Fanny Landini.47 Divulgazione was never lovelier or as sexually charged. In a virile, and manly vein, feature articles included glamorous photostories on international celebrity artists such as the safaris of Ernest Hemingway and the private life of Pablo Picasso.48 Modern art and the Venice Biennale formed part of the cultural lexicon although writers such as Paolo Monelli, who dared to mock abstract art and the seriousness of the art world, could subvert the educational or informative tone.49 The reader needed to understand modern art to get the jokes about figurative and non-figurative art and other jibes. The double-act of art and celebrity continued when Tempo used the illustrations of celebrity artists alongside serialised literary masterpieces. From 1964 to 1966, Tempo presented weekly instalments of unabridged popular classics, including Don Quixote illustrated by Salvador Dalí and Hemingway’s Death in the Afternoon illustrated by Pablo Picasso. These weekly supplements could be collected and bound in elegantly designed hardcovers purchased separately. By 1964, when Tempo started to publish these classics, it had become the most popular of the weekly illustrated news magazines with an adult readership greater than 2.8 million.50 In mid-1964, Tempo published a 358-page version of I Promessi Sposi over twenty-three editions, or almost half the year. Illustrations by one of Italy’s most famous (and one of the most media savvy) living artists, Giorgio de Chirico accompanied the serialised novel. The sketches were printed both in colour and in black and white, with key scenes featured as full double-page spreads. Tempo’s market reach was in the millions and a world away from the novel’s original print run of two thousand copies

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Fig. 8.3  The modern woman reads I Promessi Sposi, an advertisement for Tempo subscribers promoting a special binder for their serialised Manzoni novel. Tempo, 11 April 1964, 3 (Image used with permission of Arnoldo Mondadori Editore)

in 1827.51 The Tempo serialisation of I Promessi Sposi, in its weekly fifteen page portions, had the potential to reach many more Italians than all previous editions of the classic. Tempo had included the supplement to boost sales, and as they added another print run, described it as a ‘clamorous success’ proving popular with readers ‘in a manner surpassing even

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the most optimistic prediction’.52 Although there is no evidence that all of Tempo’s readers would have read any or all of the supplements, it is reasonable to suppose that the serialisation provided, at the very least, hundreds-of-thousands of Italians and potentially millions, with an inexpensive, appealing and easy way to read Manzoni’s classic. The editor of Tempo noted that the magazine had received many letters congratulating them of this ‘great initiative’ and praising the illustrations of Giorgio de Chirico. One letter from reader Alfonso Micheli of Sienna commended the idea to present weekly serialisations of literary masterpieces and expressed his hope that the next serialised classic, Don Quixote illustrated by Salvador Dalí, would be followed by even more classics, adding that he was certain they were proving to be popular with the public.53 Around half of Tempo’s readers were likely to have already had the opportunity to read I Promessi Sposi at middle or high school. However, just under half of Tempo’s readership (1.3 million readers) had either no formal schooling, or a primary school level education and were thus unlikely to have had been impelled to read it.54 It was these readers who were encouraged to become familiar with the Manzoni classic, not solely for their personal enlightenment, but also in the hope that they would start to read, and more importantly, to buy this and other books. As Mondadori’s promotion of the serialised classic suggests, education and reading the classics formed part of a modern lifestyle (see Fig. 8.3).

Walt Disney and the Classics Italy had a strong tradition of comic book reading. In Italy, comic books are known as fumetti, in reference to the voice-bubbles that look like puffs of smoke. Comic strips imported from America appeared in newspapers from the late nineteenth century and also in the early twentieth century. These comic strips targeted children and appeared in children’s newspaper supplements such as the Corriere dei Piccoli, yet they also established a huge following of adult readers. American imports influenced Italian comics culture from the Katzenjammer Kids (known in Italy as Bibì e Bibò), through to the arrival of Mickey Mouse (known as Topolino or little mouse), Dick Tracy, Superman, Flash Gordon and much later, Snoopy. Although many characters and comics were imported and translated without change, others were produced locally. The banning of American comics during the war years helped to foster a strong local industry that created original works, as did the local

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translations and production of American-style comics. The locally produced comics at times strayed far from their American origins. Italian writers of Topolino created Fascist adaptations and storylines.55 Representatives of the Mondadori publishing house even argued to Mussolini that Topolino should not be included in the ban on American imports after 1939, as it was largely an Italian product with local designers and storylines. Mondadori also argued that the general appeal of Topolino meant that it should be classified as universal culture rather than specifically American. Topolino won a temporary stay of execution until America entered the war at the end of 1941, David Forgacs has suggested that this was both due to its popularity with the younger members of the Mussolini household, as well as to Arnoldo Mondadori’s tact and business acumen.56 The Italian comic book market was made of around three million readers in the late 1930s and grew to over twelve million readers by the mid-1950s.57 The local industry developed a distinct style and as fumetti historian Daniele Barbieri argues, during the 1960s and 1970s, ‘the Italian school represented the most lively and interesting comics produced at Disney, and commercially the most sought after’.58 The American Disney characters proved popular with Italians, yet the Disney fumetti reflect the appeal of both the translated American stories and the locally produced Italian stories. Without doubt Disney embodied American culture, while the comic book stories also incorporated and leveraged relevant local culture and expertise. In a similar way, Western comics such as Tex Wyler, published from 1958 through to the present day, tapped into Italy’s historical and ongoing fascination with the Wild West.59 By the late 1960s, Topolino attracted not only young readers, the fumetto also had a strong adult market. This market of young and old amounted to annual circulation figures of 26 million. Within a few years, despite an industry-wide decline in magazine sales, Topolino markets continued to expand as it became one of the best selling weekly magazines in Italy, achieving an annual circulation of 44.5 million.60 Bonelli Publishers introduced the weekly comic Diabolik from 1967 in a small, inexpensive 100-page format, aiming to attract readers of comic books and fotoromanzi. The modern adventures and crimes of Diabolik, a daring anti-hero and his gorgeous partner-in-crime Eva strategically targeted new reading markets such as the commuting factory workers of Milan. The markets for adult fumetto readers evolved in an industrialising environment that delivered personal disposable income

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and travel to factories, which for many required train or bus commuting. Regulated industrial work hours led to after-work demand for low-cost entertainment and leisure activities. Looking at the weekly fumetto reading figures in detail, we can see how the readership represented a range of people, comprising different ages, socio-economic status and education levels. In 1972, the Topolino weekly readership was estimated at 5.5 million readers over the age of fifteen, a figure that included both sales and sharing. Of these Topolino readers: 2.2 million were aged 15–24 years and 3.3 million were 25 years or older. This demonstrates the broad appeal of the Disney characters. The data on the socio-economic status of Topolino’s readership support Paolo Capuzzo’s observation that in the 1950s and 1960s mass culture attracts readers and audiences across social classes, as well as Victoria De Grazia’s argument that American cultural products were intentionally classless.61 People of all socio-economic backgrounds read the Disney comic book, 2.7 million with a middle-class background, almost two million with a lower-middle-class background.62 The education data suggest that hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of people who could and did read books or other magazines, chose the entertainment of Topolino. While 2.4 million Topolino readers lacked a formal education qualification or had completed primary school, another two million had completed their middle school diploma, and 900,000 had completed their high school diploma. Over 100,000 Topolino readers were university graduates.63 Disney in the USA had long used classical music, opera and literature as a source for storylines and music from the film Fantasia (1940) or smaller vignettes such as the racially stereotyped and Hemingwayinspired For Whom the Bulls Toil (1953). This tradition was not only upheld in Italy, it was completely taken to the next level. In 1941, the magazine Topolino featured Faust adapted by Luciano Pedrocchi (who would go on to edit Bolero Film). From late 1949 to early 1950, Topolino magazine serialised L’Inferno di Topolino with Mickey Mouse as Dante.64 There was a major difference between the adaptation of classic literature in comic magazines and its portrayal in serialised illustrated news magazines, or a fotoromanzi format—there was no self-imposed requirement to respect, or to stay true to the text. The aim was entertainment not education. Storylines were sampled, parodied, adapted and given new endings. Yet, as mass culture historian Fausto Colombo observes, even with the strong American Disney tradition of rifling through the classics

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for ideas, the Topolino Disney characters were adapted to the Italian environment and the Mickey Mouse Dante was far from the American original. Certainly, the characters are recognisable, but the style is far from the American one. The images of the damned are referring evidently– albeit through a grotesque lens – to a cultured and European descriptive tradition.65

The humour in these parodies depended on the reader’s knowledge of the appropriateness of the casting of well-loved cartoon characters as familiar classic characters—the Mickey Mouse-Dante or the Donald Duck-Don Quixote. I Classici di Walt Disney (The Classics of Walt Disney) was published in 1957 and then reprinted in 1959 and 1961. The reader did not need to have read the original classic, yet they did need a basic familiarity with the characters and their personalities. Classic interpretations included Donald Duck (known in Italy as Paperino) interpreting the French and Spanish nineteenth-century historical novels—Paperino e il Conte di Montecristo (Donald Duck and the Count of Montecristo); Paperino e i tre moschettieri (Donald Duck and the Three Musketeers); Paperin di Tarascona (Donald Duck of Tarascona) and Paperino Don Chisciotte (Donald Duck Don Quixote). Nor were the Italian Renaissance poems safe from Donald Duck. He tackled three well-known classics in Ludovico Ariosto’s sixteenth-century poem, Orlando Furioso (Mad Orlando) and transformed it into Paperin Furioso (Mad Donald Duck); and Paperopoli liberata (Freed Donald Duck-city) a parody of a Renaissance poem about the Crusades, Gerusalem liberata (Freed Jerusalem) by Torquato Tasso.66 For fumetto historian Gino Frezza, these ‘Paperodie’ Donald Duck parodies of the classics provide strong examples of Italian creativity within the American product.67 The only surprise with the 1976 parody of I Promessi Sposi entitled I Promessi Paperi (The Betrothed Ducks) was that it had not been published earlier. Donald Duck was well cast as the not entirely savvy Renzo or ‘Paperenzo’, as he was called. The joke with Daisy Duck’s portrayal of the devoted and gentle Lucia was her significant anger management issues and general inappropriateness for the demure role (see Fig. 8.4). The story starts as Manzoni had, ‘Quel ramo del lago di Como, che volge a mezzogiorno tra due catene non interrotte di monti…’ (This branch of Lake Como, that flows south between two

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Fig. 8.4  BASTA! (Enough!), Lucilla Paperella (Daisy Duck) communicates her disappointment to Paperenzo Strafalcino (Donald Duck). Walt Disney, I Promessi Paperi: e altri capolavori della letteratura universale (Milano: Mondadori, 1998), 42 (Image used with permission of Arnoldo Mondadori Editore)

uninterrupted chains of mountains…).68 Yet from this undulating description of the natural landscape, we do not move onto the meeting of Don Abbondio with the bravi as in Manzoni’s text. Instead, we go to the castle of Don Paperigo—or Uncle Scrooge to see him counting his gold. The Nun of Monza has morphed into Gertrude of Monza and appears to no longer be a nun. Nevertheless, she retains her amorous eye for the aristocracy and has come to marry Don Paperigo. He is less than thrilled to see her, exclaiming, ‘UACK! La rompiscatole Lombarda!’ a euphemistic expression referring to Gertrude as a ball-breaker.69 Paperenzo arrives at the castle as a troubadour, whereas in the original book Renzo is a silk weaver. It is Renzo, not Don Abbondio, who meets the bravi and who is strongarmed into agreeing to marry Gertrude, so Don Rodrigo does not have to. The story ends, when the evil Don Rodrigo, rather than dying in the plague as in the Manzoni version, is arrested for tax evasion and put in the stocks.

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Throughout the story, the Disney cartoon and Manzoni novel characters are recognisable and yet highly adaptable. It is a Manzoni–Disney merger. The story uses familiar themes, yet they are rewritten, reorganised, adapted and taken in other directions. Humour is an important device, and the targets include the original classic and contemporary references. Paperenzo’s torture was with the loud noise of a rock band singing, ‘Your punch is like a rock’, a playful reference to the Adriano Celentano hit, ‘Your kiss is like a rock’. By far the best joke of I Promessi Paperi is that ‘la peste di Milano’ the plague of Milan, becomes, with the change of a couple of letters ‘le poste di Milano’ or, the postal service of Milan. Milan is shown as city in chaos overflowing with undelivered mail as the postal workers sing, ‘When you feel the need to work… Try to resist: you will see that it passes!’70 By the early 1970s, the cultural practice of book reading had become more widespread and the number of people who said that they read books had increased to 12 million. This was a sizeable increase on the 7.5 million book readers of 1965.71 There are two striking characteristics of the Italian book market in this period. First, that during the 1950s and 1960s as the Italian book market grew, it became divided between the new inexpensive paperbacks and the expensive showpiece leather-bound volumes. The market polarised on class and income. New, strong markets developed for inexpensive books of 100–200 lira, only slightly higher than the 60 lira price of an illustrated news magazine. These inexpensive paperbacks were also sold in the magazine stands alongside the illustrated news magazines, fotoromanzi and comics where most people bought their reading material. In contrast, expensive books were sold in bookstores and were visually pleasing additions to any lounge room. In a 1959 article in Turin’s La Stampa newspaper, major book publishing houses reported that the average market for mid-range books that cost 1000 lire—traditionally the price-point for bourgeois families—was disappearing. Novels by well-known writers were considered, ‘moderately successful if they sold one thousand copies’.72 The article observed that expensive and well-presented books were used as gifts in business and as a signal of status in the home: ‘These are the books that the rich are buying today to adorn their rooms or to make a gift to their friends and customers. Mostly they are beautiful books, that you flick through, but no one reads’.73

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Conclusion Literary classics permeated Italy’s mass culture. This high culture presence in no way diminished the influence of modern American film and celebrity culture rather it happily complemented it. In fact, the classics were integrated into the general mass culture as publishing houses learned new lessons from the other side of the Atlantic on the commercial value of cultural mass markets. Broadening cultural interests presented a sizeable market opportunity. This was fuelled by the growing incomes of the lower-middle and middle classes. There was strong public interest in understanding and becoming familiar with the literary greats as part of the modern cultural lexicon. The magazine publishers responded to this demand and opportunity by converting a written literary tradition for the well-educated few into a modern visual format that exposed popular reading audiences to the classics. It is significant that, despite the expanding array of cultural options, the classics were popular with readers. References to Dante and other Renaissance poets signalled the value of a shared national culture. Yet given the low number of popular historical novels other than I Promessi Sposi, the cultural sources were often international rather than national, such as The Three Musketeers or Don Quixote. Many themes and characters were borrowed from internationally recognised and familiar nineteenth-century classics, particularly the French novels. Two distinct approaches emerged. On the one hand, literature was presented in a magazine format swaddled in deference and respect. The sacred work of genius remained intact and retained its power to enlighten. Publishers proclaimed the ‘scrupulous respect’ for the original work and the ‘rigorous adherence to the Manzonian text’.74 The adaptations were faithful to literature, within the scope of a modern ‘atomic era’ format. On the other hand, and in contrast to the idea of the sacred text, many interpretations used parody and took the story and its characters as a starting point for play and fun. Classics were blended with popular and modern cultural references and Disney characters. The audiences willingly participated in the light-hearted transgression of the sacred text, a mockery of the seriousness of literary hierarchies, which demonstrates ownership of the content. Yet within these two different approaches, there was a shared idea, the classics were represented as universal culture that was owned by all. Italy’s magazine culture borrowed storylines, lifted characters, faithfully reproduced and gently parodied

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classical literature. For the ‘apocalyptic’ intellectuals reading the translated warnings of the Frankfurt School, this was an affront to literature.75 For others, perhaps influenced by Antonio Gramsci’s Letters from Prison, it was a laudable battle against the ‘bitter destiny’ of literary masterpieces to be quoted and not read.76 Within the world of publishing, it was a commercially smart use of available cultural resources and fed a growing demand for accessible knowledge. Many Italians have enjoyed reading the story of Renzo and Lucia. Others hated it. In the mid-to-late twentieth century, most would read it in a popular magazine. In Le Grandi Firme and later the Albi di Bolero Film, the scenes of the novel had been acted out, photographed and captioned. The celebrity and skill of Giorgio De Chirico brought star value and visual interest to Manzoni’s masterpiece for Tempo’s 2.8 million readers and the many millions more who read the reprint. However, in terms of bringing this Italian literary classic to Italians, one of Renzo and Lucia’s largest reading audiences had been found in the Topolino comic books. By the 1970s, this classic Italian tale told by an American cartoon duck would have reached at least 5.5 million adult readers, or around one in seven adult Italians.77

Notes







1. David Rosen, Verdi Requiem (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 6. 2. Simonetta Piccone Stella e Annabella Rossi, La fatica di leggere (Roma: Editori Riuniti, 1968), (a) S. P., 32 years old, university graduate, translator; 390, (b) P. R., 22 years old fifth grade primary school, factory worker; 116, (c) L. M., 42 years old, Masters degree, Ministry of Public Education; 277, (d) C. D., 23 years old middle school, storeman, 321. 3. Martin Clark, Modern Italy 1871–1982 (London and New York: Longman, 1984), 277. 4. Clark, Modern Italy, 364. 5.  Paul Ginsborg, ‘Statistical Appendix 22: Educational Qualifications of Italians Over Six Years of Age by Geographical Area 1951–1981’, A History of Contemporary Italy: Society and Politics 1943–1980 (London: Penguin, 1990), 440. 6. Ginsborg, A History of Contemporary Italy, 220. 7. Alberto Martinelli, Antonio M. Chiesi and Sonia Stefanizzi, Recent Social Trends in Italy 1960–1995 (Montreal: McGill–Queen’s University Press, 1999), 263.

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8. Ginsborg, ‘Statistical Appendix 22’, A History of Contemporary Italy, 440. Students completing high school increased from 3.3% to 6.9% and student completing middle school increased from 5.9% to 14.7%. 9. Ginsborg, ‘Statistical Appendix 22’, A History of Contemporary Italy, 440. 10. Istituto Centrale di Statistica (ICS), ‘III: Famiglie i cui componenti leggono o non leggono pubblicazioni’, Note e Relazioni No. 2: Indagine speciale su alcuni aspetti delle condizioni di vita della populazione’ (Roma: Istituto Centrale di Statistica, 1958), 13. 11. ICS, ‘IV: Famiglie i cui componenti leggono o non leggono, per regione statistica’, Note e relazioni No. 2, 14. 12.  David Forgacs and Stephen Gundle,  Oral History of Cultural Consumption in Italy, 1936–1954 [Computer File] (Colchester, Essex: UK Data Archive [Distributor], June 2010). SN: 6479, http://dx.doi. org/10.5255/UKDA–SN–6479–1, UK database, Lina interview N. 68. 13.  Repubblica Italiana Istituto Centrale di Statistica (ICS), ‘Tavolo 108: Famiglie che possiedono libri’, Annuario delle statistiche culturali Vol. VIII 1966 (Roma: Istituto Centrale di Statistica, 1966), 121. 14. Stella, La fatica di leggere, 203. 15. Stella, La fatica di leggere, 242. 16. Stella, La fatica di leggere, 259. 17. Stella, La fatica di leggere, 274. 18.  ICS, ‘Tav. 108: Famiglie che possiedono libri’, Statistiche culturali 1966, 121. 19.  ICS, ‘Tav. 108: Famiglie che possiedono libri’, Statistiche culturali 1966, 120. 20.  Marina Roggero, ‘The Meaning of Literacy: An Italian Reappraisal’, Journal of Modern Italian Studies 14, 3 (2009): 346–356, 348. 21. ICS, (a) Tav. 106: Persone di oltre 6 anni che leggono o non leggono’, Statistiche culturali 1966, 119–120. 22. Anna Bravo, Il fotoromanzo (Bologna: Il Mulino, 2003), 81. 23.  Demoskopea, Doxa, ‘Lettori ultimo period, titolo di studio’ ISPI— Indagine sulla stampa periodica in Italia Vol. 3, 1973, 3.1.2. (Unpublished Market Research, SIPRA, 1973). 24.  Letter from Arnoldo Mondadori to Mr Alexander Stephens Mitchell (Author Margaret Mitchell’s brother responsible for her Estate) dated 3 December 1952 proposing a fotoromanzo version of Gone with the Wind. The book had been published by Mondadori in 1937 and republished after the success of the film in Italy in 1951, which had not been released in Italy 1939 due to restrictions on foreign films. Mondadori Archive: Quanto Basta online, http://www.fondazionemondadori.it/qb/. 25.  DOXA Istituto per le Ricerche Statistiche e l’Analisi dell’Opinione Pubblica and SIRM Società Italiana Ricerche di Mercato, ‘0–Totale: Tav.

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0.0—Secondo sesso’, Indagine nazionale sui lettori dei quotidiani e dei periodici sui telespettatori, radioascoltatori e cinespettatori (Unpublished Market Research for the Advertising Association Utenti Pubblicità Associati (UPA), 1958), 267–268. 26.  DOXA, ‘Tav. 0.2: Secondo condizione economico–sociale’, Indagine nazionale 1958, 273–275. See Chapter 1 for discussion about terms describing class. 27. DOXA, ‘0–Totale: Tav. 0.0: Secondo sesso’, ‘Tav.01: Secondo età’;‘Tav. 0.2: Secondo condizione economico–sociale’, Indagine nazionale 1958, 267–275. In 1958, 1.98 million readers of Bolero Film fell into the following categories: 1.5 million female and 0.48 million male; 70% of readership was aged between 16 and 34. There were 0.9 million lower-middle-class readers, the next largest group were middle-class readers at 0.6 million. 28. ‘Addio Zio Mike’, Bolero Film, 29 dicembre 1957–4 maggio 1958. 29. DOXA, ‘0–Totale: Tav. 0.0: Secondo sesso’, ‘Tav.01: Secondo età’;‘Tav. 0.2: Secondo condizione economico–sociale’, Indagine nazionale 1958, 267–275. 30. DOXA, ‘0–Totale: Tav. 0.0: Secondo sesso’, Indagine nazionale 1958, 267–269. 31.  DOXA Istituto per le Ricerche Statistiche e l’Analisi dell’Opinione Pubblica, ‘6. Lettura dei singoli settimanali Fotoromanzi, 6.1.4: Secondo sesso e secondo classe sociale’, Indagine nazionale OTIPI sui mezzi pubblicitari (Milano: Stab. Pol. G. Colombi, 1963), 119. 32.  Demoskopea, ‘Lettori ultimo period, classe economico–sociale’, ISPI 1973, 3.1.7. (Unpublished Market Research, 1973). There was a 30% increase in the number of middle-class readers and a 14% increase in the number of lower-middle-class readers bringing total readership up to 4.2 million. 33. Bravo, Il fotoromanzo, 80. 34. David Forgacs and Stephen Gundle, Mass Culture and Italian Society: From Fascism to the Cold War (Indiana: Indiana University press, 2007), 42. 35. Forgacs and Gundle, Oral History of Cultural Consumption in Italy, Sara interview N. 21. UK. 36. Forgacs and Gundle, Oral History of Cultural Consumption in Italy, Lina interview N. 68. UK. 37. Bravo, Il fotoromanzo, 15. 38. Bravo, Il fotoromanzo, 47–48. 39.  Albi di Bolero Film—Collana Capolavori, I miserabili: Grande fotoromanzo dal capolavoro di Victor Hugo (Milano: Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 1953), inside cover.

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40.  Letter from Arnoldo Mondadori to Mr Alexander Stephens Mitchell (Author Margaret Mitchell’s brother responsible for her Estate) dated 3 December 1952. Mr Stephens Mitchell responded in a letter dated 17 January 1953 that a fotoromanzo version of Gone with the Wind in Bolero Film would not be possible as the author had ‘always opposed all suggested abridgements or condensations (including picture versions), sequelizations or variations of her novel in any way. She always insisted on a complete and faithful translation of the entire text’. Mondadori Archive: Quanto Basta online, accessed 9 April 2014. 41. Albi di Bolero Film—Collana Capolavori, I Promessi Sposi Grande fotoromanzo dal capolavori di Alessandro Manzoni (Milano: Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 1953), 2. 42.  Albi di Bolero Film, I Promessi Sposi Grande fotoromanzo (Milano: Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 1966), 2. 43. Albi di Bolero Film, I Promessi Sposi Grande fotoromanzo (1966), 2. 44. Albi di Bolero Film, I Promessi Sposi Grande fotoromanzo (1966), 2. 45. Libero Bigiaretti ‘L’editoria e la TV’, Televisione e vita italiana, (a cura di) Segretari Centrale della RAI (Torino: ERI—Edizioni Radiotelevisione Italiana, 1968), 723. 46. ‘L’Arianna dell’arte moderna’, Tempo, 13 gennaio 1955, 40. 47. Tempo, 18 febbraio 1954, back cover; Tempo, 13 maggio 1954, back cover; Tempo, 22 luglio 1954, back cover. 48. ‘Tregua di un mese tra Picasso e Francesca’, Tempo, 12 agosto 1954, 44. 49.  Monelli, Paolo, ‘Un profano alla Biennale’, Tempo, 22 luglio 1954, 16–18. 50.  DOXA, ‘Lettura dei singoli settimanali Attualita’ e per famiglia Tav. 4.1.4.: Secondo sesso e secondo classe sociale’, Indagine nazionale, 1963, 74. 51. g.c.f., ‘«I Promessi Sposi » sono un romanzo popolare?’, L’Unità, 19 febbraio 1967, 12. 52. Tempo, 18 aprile 1964, 109. 53. Tempo, 13 giugno 1964. 54. DOXA, ‘Lettura dei singoli settimanali Attualita’ e per famiglia Tav. 4.1.4: Secondo sesso e secondo classe sociale’, Indagine nazionale, 1963, 74. 55. Claudio Carabba, Il fascismo a fumetti, (Rimini: Guaraldi, 1973), 71. 56. David Forgacs, Italian Culture in the Industrial Era 1880–1980: Cultural Industries, Politics and the Public (Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1990), 62–63. 57. Forgacs and Gundle, Mass Culture and Italian Society, 36–37. 58. Daniele Barbieri, Breve storia della letteratura a fumetti (Roma: Carocci, 2009), 49.

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59. Pietro Favari, Le nuvole parlanti: Un secolo di fumetti tra arte e mass media (Bari: edizioni Dedalo, 1996), 95. 60.  Newmark nuovi servizi di marketing, ‘Tab. 10: Diffusione media a numero Settimanali–Mensili – raggruppati per settore’, ‘Tab. 11: Diffusione annua in numero di copie dei Settimanali e del Mensili raggruppati per settore’, Studio sull’andamento dei periodici in Italia, (Unpublished, 1976), 134–137. Figures for 1969 and 1973. Note: the Newmark methodology differs from the Demoskopea weekly statistics that follow. 61. Paolo Capuzzo, ‘Youth and Consumption’, in Frank Trentmann (ed.), The Oxford Handbook on the History of Consumption (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 612; Victoria de Grazia, Irresistible Empire: America’s Advance Through Twentieth Century Europe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005). 62.  Demoskopea, ‘Lettori ultimo periodo, secondo fonte di provenienza’, ISPI 1973, 3.1.6. 63.  Demoskopea, ‘Lettori ultimo periodo, secondo fonte di provenienza’, ISPI 1973, 3.1.2. Note: the Demoskopea methodology differs from the Newmark methodology for annual circulation. The breakdown of the 5.5 million: 2.2 million aged 1.2 million aged between 25 and 34 years; 1.1 million aged between 35 and 44 years; 0.6 million aged between 45 and 54 years; and those over 55 years made up another 0.4 million readers. The survey will be skewed by the lack of data from children under the age of 15, yet we can assume that the numbers for older readers are reliable. 64. Fausto Colombo, La cultura sottile: Media e industria culturale in Italia dall’Ottocento agli anni novanta (Milano: Studi Bompiani, 2009), 218, 219. 65. Colombo, La cultura sottile, 218. 66. Walt Disney, I Promessi Paperi e altri capolavori della letteratura universal (Milano: Mondadori, 1998); Walt Disney, Le Grandi Parodie, 6 vol (Milano: Walt Disney, 1994). 67. Gino Frezza, ‘Il fumetto’, Letteratura italiana: Storia e geografia, Volume Terzo, L’età contemporanea Alberto Asor Rosa (a cura di) (Torino: Giulio Einaudi editore, 1989), 1256–1259. 68. Disney, I Promessi Paperi, 9. 69. Disney, I Promessi Paperi, 21. 70. Disney, I Promessi Paperi, 50. 71. Istituto Poligrafico dello Stato, Quaderni di Vita Italiana 9: Aspetti delle letture in Italia (Roma: Ist. Polgr. Stato, 1975), 15. 72. Nicola Adelfi, ‘Statistiche della nostra vita: Gli italiani leggono poco’, La Stampa, 7 april 1959, 3. 73. Adelfi, ‘Gli italiani leggono poco’, 3.

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74. Albi di Bolero Film, I Promessi Sposi (1966), 2. 75. Umberto Eco, Apocalypse Postponed (London: Flamingo, 1995). 76. Antonio Gramsci and David Forgacs (ed.), The Gramsci Reader: Selected Writings 1916–1935 (New York: New York University Press, 2000). 77. Demoskopea, ‘Lettori ultimo periodo’, ISPI 1973, 3.1.2.

References Primary Sources Magazines and Newspapers Albi di Bolero Film, Collana Capolavori, I Promessi Sposi Grande fotoromanzo dal capolavori di Alessandro Manzoni. Milano: Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 1953. Albi di Bolero Film, Collana Capolavori, I miserabili Grande fotoromanzo dal capolavoro di Victor Hugo. Milano: Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 1953 (inside cover). Albi di Bolero Film, Collana Capolavori, I Promessi Sposi Grande fotoromanzo dal capolavori di Alessandro Manzoni. Milano: Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 1966. Bolero Film, Bolero Teletutto magazine Disney, Walt. Le Grandi Parodie, 6 vol. Milano: Walt Disney, 1994. Disney, Walt. I Promessi Paperi e altri capolavori della letteratura universal. Milano: Mondadori, 1998. Tempo L’Unità

Archival Sources Demoskopea, Doxa. ISPI—Indagine sulla stampa periodica in Italia Vol. 3, 1973, 3.1.2. Unpublished Market Research, 1973. DOXA Istituto per le Ricerche Statistiche e l’Analisi dell’Opinione Pubblica e SIRM Società Italiana Ricerche di Mercato. Indagine nazionale sui lettori dei quotidiani e dei periodici sui telespettatori, radioascoltatori e cinespettatori. Unpublished Market Research for the Advertising Association Utenti Pubblicità Associati (UPA), 1958. DOXA Istituto per le Ricerche Statistiche e l’Analisi dell’Opinione Pubblica. Indagine nazionale OTIPI sui mezzi pubblicitari. Milano: Stab. Pol. G. Colombi, 1963. Forgacs, David and Stephen Gundle, Oral History of Cultural Consumption in Italy, 1936–1954 [Computer File]. Colchester, Essex: UK Data Archive

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[Distributor], June 2010. SN: 6479, http://dx.doi.org/10.5255/UKDA– SN–6479–1, UK Database. Mondadori Archive: Letter from Arnoldo Mondadori to Mr Alexander Stephens Mitchell, 3 December1952. Quanto Basta online www.fondazionemondadori. it/qb. Newmark nuovi servizi di marketing, Studio sull’andamento dei periodici in Italia, Unpublished, SIPRA, 1976.

Secondary Sources Asor Rosa, Alberto (a cura di). Letteratura italiana: Storia e geografia, Volume Terzo, L’età contemporanea. Torino: Giulio Einaudi editore, 1989. Barbieri, Daniele. Breve storia della letteratura a fumetti. Roma: Carocci, 2009. Bravo, Anna. Il fotoromanzo. Bologna: Il Mulino, 2003. Capuzzo, Paolo (a cura di). Genere, generazione e consumi: L’Italia degli anni sessanta. Roma: Carroci editore, 2003. Carabba, Claudio. Il fascismo a fumetti. Rimini: Guaraldi, 1973. Clark, Martin. Modern Italy 1871–1982. London and New York: Longman, 1984. Colombo, Fausto. La cultura sottile: Media e industria culturale in Italia dall’Ottocento agli anni novanta. Milano: Studi Bompiani, 2009. De Grazia, Victoria. Irresistible Empire: America’s Advance Through Twentieth Century Europe. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005. Favari, Pietro. Le nuvole parlanti: Un secolo di fumetti tra arte e mass media. Bari: edizioni Dedalo, 1996. Forgacs, David. Italian Culture in the Industrial Era 1880–1980: Cultural Industries, Politics and the Public. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press, 1990. Forgacs, David, and Stephen Gundle. Mass Culture and Italian Society: From Fascism to the Cold War. Indiana: Indiana University press, 2007. Ginsborg, Paul. A History of Contemporary Italy: Society and Politics, 1943–1988. London: Penguin. 1990. Gramsci, Antonio. The Gramsci Reader: Selected Writings 1916–1935. Edited by David Forgacs. New York: New York University Press, 2000. Gundle, Stephen. ‘L’americanizzazione del quotidiano’, Quaderni Storici 62, no. 2 (1986): 561–593. Istituto Centrale di Statistica. Note e Relazioni No.2: Indagine speciale su alcuni aspetti delle condizioni di vita della populazione. Roma: Istituto Centrale di Statistica, 1958. Istituto Centrale di Statistica. Annuario delle statistiche culturali Vol. VIII 1966. Roma: Istituto Centrale di Statistica, 1966.

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Istituto Poligrafico dello Stato. Quaderni di Vita Italiana 9: Aspetti delle letture in Italia. Roma: Ist. Polgr. Stato, 1975. Martinelli, Alberto, Antonio M. Chiesi, and Sonia Stefanizzi. Recent Social Trends in Italy 1960–1995. Montreal: McGill–Queen’s University Press, 1999. Piccone Stella, Simonetta e Annabella Rossi. La fatica di leggere. Roma: Editori Riuniti, 1968. Roggero, Marina. ‘The Meaning of Literacy: An Italian Reappraisal’, Journal of Modern Italian Studies 14, no. 3 (2009): 346–356. Rosen, David. Verdi Requiem. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. Segretari Centrale della RAI (a cura di). Televisione e vita italiana. Torino: ERI— Edizioni Radiotelevisione Italiana, 1968.

CHAPTER 9

Patrolling the Border: I Promessi Sposi on RAI Television

Every Sunday night over the first two months of 1967, more than half of the adult Italian population gathered around a television to watch Renzo and Lucia’s efforts to marry. This was, without doubt, I Promessi Sposi’s largest audience to date. The production was well received by audiences and the viewers who enjoyed it most were those least likely to read any book, let alone a 500-page classic. Not only was this the largest audience of any of the RAI’s televised literary adaptations, the average weekly viewer numbers and their enjoyment levels were far greater than for most other popular weekly programs, including the musical variety programs and the American imports. Indeed in 1966, despite prevailing fears of an American domination of Italian culture, the combined weekly viewer numbers of Perry Mason, The Great Adventure and Bonanza did not match the weekly viewer numbers of I Promessi Sposi.1 Televised literary adaptations were a central part of the RAI’s cultural education of the Italian public. This chapter examines the portrayal of literature— from the parodies of the classics that emerged in television variety and film to the ‘true’ and faithful television adaptations produced by RAI in the 1960s. Most importantly, I will look in detail at the reception of I Promessi Sposi and responses of viewers. The literary canon had crossed over, not just into a mass culture format—it had found a willing mass audience.

© The Author(s) 2018 E. Barron, Popular High Culture in Italian Media, 1950–1970, Italian and Italian American Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90963-9_9

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Throughout the world, television provided a new way to communicate, distribute information and deliver programs to audiences, on a very large scale. In the post-war period, television viewing increased rapidly around the world, from fewer than 200,000 television sets in 1946 to 31 million sets in 1953 and 95 million sets worldwide by 1960.2 As we saw in Chapter 4, Italian television officially started broadcasting in 1954, in the north and centre, and by the end of 1956, in the south.3 In 1955, although there were only 150,000 private television licences and 30,000 public licences for places like bars and clubs, ten million Italians described themselves as regular television viewers.4 By 1964, after ten years of broadcasting, Italian television had achieved a mass-scale audience with 22.3 million adult viewers watching television at least once a week. This included 14.8 million viewers with a primary school level of education or lower and 7.5 million housewives.5 The number of people watching television at home increased as private television licences reached five million, and this was accelerating—around one million licences had been acquired in that year. More than one-third, 37%, of Italian families owned their own television. However, there were strong regional deviations within this national average—around 50% of families in Lazio and Lombardy had a television at home; closer to 40% of families in Piedmont, Emilia-Romagna and Tuscany; and much lower ownership levels nearer 20% in Trentino-Alto Adige, Calabria and Sicily. In the southern region of Basilicata, only 17% of families had a television at home.6 The values of early Italian television were defined by RAI in the 1954 Codice di autodisciplina Televisiva – norme interne (Code of Television Conduct—internal rules), a document of internal guidelines defining acceptable and prohibited content. It was known as the Guala Code, named for the code’s author and champion, Filiberto Guala, the RAI administrator between 1954 and 1956. The Guala Code reflected the frontier nature of broadcasting, proclaiming that ‘television constitutes a new method of diffusion for the expression of ideas, feelings, art…’.7 It highlighted the RAI’s sense of having a ‘grave responsibility’ for their charges—the television audience. The government and the RAI administration were mindful that the television audience included families at home and viewers of all ages. Television viewers represented different regions and socio-economic groups and often possessed low education levels. This paternalistic and protective approach to the audience was reflected in the principles of the code:

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Given that Italian television aims to offer families a healthy recreation, it must be noted that it intends to contribute, at every opportunity, to the education and to the moral and cultural elevation of citizens. Television, therefore, should not cause offence against the principles of general morality and the morality of customs, but, on the contrary, it must disseminate and enhance their value with all the most appropriate means. In any case it is necessary that the programs are respectful of the ethical and social values ​​ of our national community.8

The code sought to uphold Christian values and to avoid the potential for individual harm or for undesirable influences on the Italian public, and on young people in particular. The code enunciated a range of high-level moral and educational principles for television, and also contained specific detail on topics and images not to be shown or to be shown with great care. The themes were consistent with the teachings of the Catholic Church and specified that violence should be avoided in television programs. In addition, sex scenes were prohibited, and the code warned that all kissing and physical contact needed to be dealt with very carefully. Finally, caution was to be shown in the representation of surgical procedures and, oddly enough, with the portrayal of hypnotism.9 Yet the code did not focus solely on morality. Culture and its potential to civilise citizens was a key mission of state television. RAI took the cultural enrichment of Italian citizens very seriously and actively looked for ways to bring the classics to the population. Indeed, literary classics received a special dispensation from the moral guidelines so that while adultery, illegitimacy or suicide could not be shown in television serials, an exception was made for the trusted classics such as William Shakespeare or the Ancient Greek poet Homer. Significantly, the code stated that: … even wickedness and crime belong to the history of humanity, and that, from time immemorial, the literary and figurative arts have extensively drawn from crime. The classics of every time and place, the verses of the Bible and those of Homer, the Ancient Greek and Shakespearean tragedies tell dramatic tales of men who have seriously violated human and divine laws, or who have suffered violence and outrages from those outside or against social norms. Nor can it be asserted that the message given in these works could be considered harmful, since many such texts are read and discussed by adolescents in school.10

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So, in contrast to the potential perils offered by American programs or advertising, the classics were not considered harmful, indeed they were framed as educational. William Shakespeare, Giuseppe Verdi and Homer produced works perceived to be the best that Western civilisation had to offer. In the process, however, the RAI administration did allow murder, incest, suicide and adultery into television. While moral censorship by RAI’s senior management and the self-censorship of directors and writers were a dominant factor in Italy’s early television, the classics provided a loophole and safe passage for otherwise challenging and allegedly immoral ideas. Yet on occasion, even the classics could prove too much for RAI censors. Vittorio Gassman’s 1957 interpretation of Othello was censored, as Epoca editor Enzo Biagi observed, despite Shakespeare’s reputation for attracting young people to the classics, ‘…the story of the Moor is not always narrated with the prudent language that is necessary when you put a program on a television screen in front of a herd of inexperienced adolescents’.11

Choreography and the Classics: Biblioteca di Studio Uno Despite attempts to civilise audiences with the best of theatre and the Western canon, variety shows and light entertainment proved most popular with early Italian television audiences. During the late 1950s, Italian audiences had spent more than half of their television viewing time watching quiz, review and variety shows. These formats had quickly and successfully crossed over to television from radio and theatre. Film and drama, both more expensive and time-consuming to produce, took longer to transition into the new technology format. By the early 1960s, film and television series had improved considerably in quality and gained in popularity. Quiz, review and variety shows remained popular, but as more viewing options became available, the total time spent watching this genre reduced to one-third of the average viewing time. By 1963, the quiz, variety shows and light entertainment quotient had dropped further, to around one-fifth of the average viewers, television viewing time. Even, so, the Saturday evening variety programs, such as Studio Uno and Canzonissima, regularly attracted audiences of around twelve million viewers and tended to receive very high enjoyment ratings in the 80s.12 Other program genres, such as drama, opera and current affairs, rarely received such high enjoyment ratings and large audiences.13

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The variety programs were the epitome of the new modern Italy— stylish and cosmopolitan, with strong American and international influences, and yet the result proved uniquely Italian. Unlike most other television programs, variety was popular throughout Italian society; it attracted an audience that included viewers across sex, age, class, education and occupation categories.14 This trend continued throughout the 1960s, where the popularity of the format and a broad demographic reach remained consistent, although by the end of the decade the shows attracted greater numbers of women.15 Interestingly, while variety shows on television maintained a universal appeal, this was not the case for variety theatre audiences. Here, attendance demonstrated strong sex, age and education differences: women, middle-aged and older people, as well as those with low to medium levels of education, were far less likely to attend.16 Television, by contrast, provided many of these groups with access to light entertainment within or near the home. The most popular television variety shows were those of Antonello Falqui and Guido Sacerdote in the early 1960s. The shows used American Broadway styles and television production techniques on a grand scale to create a uniquely American–Italian aesthetic. The style was light and modern. It used television in a new way, not as a radio with pictures or a broadcast of a theatre stage, but with visual and technological techniques that explored and played to the strengths of the new television medium. Programs such as Giardino d’inverno (Winter Garden) and Studio Uno (Studio One) also introduced popular performers, such as Mina and the Kessler Twins, to the Italian public.17 The shows were modern and stylish, combining popular and elite subjects for urban and urbane tastes. For example, Studio Uno with its sharp choreography and new visual representation of singers and dancers represented modern sophistication: The first series was cultured, refined, a bit pretentious. Together with Emilio Pericoli and Renata Mauro you could see segments with Thomas Mann or entire episodes dedicated to George Gershwin. The show had a declared international vocation.18

Elite critics, however, branded variety shows as escapist examples of the dreaded Americanisation of Italy. They viewed audiences as undiscriminating and passive consumers. While variety was the most popular television genre overall, viewers were not always passively satisfied with the individual programs. RAI’s audience research on the variety

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programs between 1961 and 1964 found that, despite millions of regular weekly viewers, the audience satisfaction with these programs varied. The research noted, with a sense of disbelief, that even programs containing famous personalities did not guarantee high satisfaction ratings. It is useful to observe the conclusions (and the visible prejudices) of the RAI researchers in their effort to make sense of the perceived anomaly in their understanding of mass culture audiences. If strongly rating ‘escapist’ programs were not always found to be enjoyable, the low enjoyment rating could be attributed to a type of social remorse: One could also hypothesize that the critical reaction of the viewer comes from a certain sense of guilt for the time wasted watching something that adds nothing to their culture or prestige.19

Instead, the data suggest that viewers exercised judgement and personal preference rather than being the stereotype of the passive, hypnotised television viewer. The comic theatre tradition of parody, as well as the juxtaposition of high and mass culture, continued in television variety, referencing and playing with Italian and foreign classics. In early November 1958, Canzonissima broadcast a short skit of I Promessi Sposi that modified Renato Rascal’s hit song Arrivederci Roma to become Arrivederci Como featuring popular performers Ugo Tognazzi as Don Abbondio and Carlo Giuffrè as Renzo.20 The skit offered an irreverent combination of a literary classic and popular music, for an audience that understood both references. This performance was seen by millions of viewers and would have provided Manzoni’s characters Renzo and Lucia with one of their largest audiences to date. In 1964, Falqui and Sacredote developed a new eight-episode program derived from the popular Saturday night variety show Studio Uno. The program, Biblioteca di Studio Uno (Studio One Library), gave the modern musical variety treatment to popular classics with the inclusion of dance numbers and contemporary music.21 The idea was developed from comic sketches on Studio Uno, where the musical group the Quartetto Cetra parodied well-known films. The group formed the basis of the new eight-part program alongside celebrity guest performers. It was the first of the so-called kolossal or blockbuster variety shows of the 1960s with big budgets, casts and chorus. Television historian Aldo Grasso has estimated that the eight episodes of Biblioteca di Studio Uno

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employed 160 actors and singers, 1500 extras, and used 400 pieces of music with 150 scenes.22 The show drew on a broad range of sources—European literature and theatre classics, American film and Broadway variety, introducing to the mix Italian film, television and music personalities. Celebrities appeared on the show and as writer (and later, politician), Walter Veltroni records, ‘Everyone came to Biblioteca di Studio Uno. More or less like everyone came to Cinecittà at this time’.23 It was probably a little less like Cinecittà, as ‘everyone’ appearing in cameo roles on Biblioteca di Studio Uno was not quite in the same celebrity league as those passing through the ‘Hollywood on the Tiber’, Cinecittà, such as Elizabeth Taylor, Anita Ekberg, Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni. Nevertheless, Biblioteca di Studio Uno attracted many big celebrities including actors Walter Chiari, Gino Cervi, as well as comic actors Carlo Campanini, Gino Bramieri, Renato Rascel, Ave Ninchi and Raimondo Vianello. The musical numbers included popular singers Claudio Villa, Nilla Pizzi and Milly.

Fig. 9.1  ‘HEY!’, Alice and Ellen Kessler, Le Gemelle Kessler (The Kessler Twins) as sirens in Odyssey, Biblioteca di Studio Uno, 2 October 1964 (Per gentile concessione di Rai Teche/Courtesy of RAI Teche)

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The first episode parodied Homer’s Odyssey. Of course, television’s favourite showgirls, the Kessler Twins, appeared as the sirens singing and whistling to catch the attention of Odysseus, ‘Le sirene siamo noi’ (We are the sirens) in a comic song and dance routine that referenced their pin-up girl style, television quiz shows and Mike Bongiorno (Fig. 9.1). Other Biblioteca di Studio Uno adaptations included Alexandre Dumas’s popular French classics The Count of Montecristo and The Three Musketeers. Later episodes presented the stories of popular British novels, Robert Louis Stevenson’s 1886 historical crime drama, Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hyde, and Emma Orczy’s popular 1905 novel, The Scarlet Pimpernel, set during the French Revolution. Another episode adapted Austrian writer Vicki Baum’s 1929 novel Grand Hotel, which was internationally well known, largely as a successful and Academy Award-winning film. There was only one Italian work. This was an adaptation of Francesco Dall’Ongaro’s 1846 play, Il fornaretto di Venezia (The baker of Venice), which had been released in Italy as a film the year before. The Story of Scarlet O’Hara based on Gone with the Wind was the only episode of non-European work. It had been popular in Italy as both a film and book. The lack of representation by Italian literary classics is partially due to stronger traditions of accessible writing in Britain and France and their more developed international literature markets and reputations. Yet, there were other reasons why Italian literary classics were not included in the musical parody line-up. Originally, twelve episodes had been planned, including two more Italian novels, Manzoni’s I Promessi Sposi and Antonio Fogazzaro’s Piccolo mondo antico (Old fashioned world).24 When the number of episodes was reduced from twelve to eight for budget reasons, Fogazzaro’s work was cut while Manzoni’s remained. Virgilio Savona, one of the performers in the Quartetto Cetra, later recounted that rehearsals for a musical parody of I Promessi Sposi were underway, when Falqui and Sacredote stopped production. RAI’s director of television programming, Sergio Pugliese, had cancelled the parody because a television adaptation of I Promessi Sposi was in development. Pugliese told the variety show producers that Manzoni’s novel could not be mocked by their show as it was a prestigious work. Sacredote reported that ‘Sergio Pugliese does not want us to make fun of a work already in development, a prestigious novel [with a serious television adaptation] that is costing the organisation a substantial amount of money’.25 At the same time, RAI had also made significant investments in television

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adaptations of other classics, such as the Count of Montecristo scheduled for broadcast later in 1964. Pugliese allowed the Count of Montecristo and other non-Italian works to be parodied by Biblioteca di Studio Uno. The RAI found no problem with the parody of a French classic, and liberties could clearly be taken with the adaptation of foreign texts. It was the Italian masterpieces such as I Promessi Sposi that needed suitable respect and protection. The Quartetto Cetra duly cancelled their Manzoni parody, yet bided their time and eventually, twenty years later, made and broadcast their I Promessi Sposi satire after the introduction of commercial television. Biblioteca di Studio Uno presented a challenge because it was attempting more than just the adaptation of well-known classics and more than attracting new audiences. The objective of the show, rather, was to mock the classics. Parody cuts to the heart of established social and cultural boundaries being a spectacle, which, as French Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu observes: …like all forms of the comic and especially those working through satire or parody of the ‘great’ (mimics, chansonniers etc.), they satisfy the taste for and sense of revelry, the plain speaking and hearty laughter which liberate by setting the social world head over heels, overturning conventions and proprieties.26

Italian television audiences showed themselves more than ready to overturn ‘conventions and proprieties’. Biblioteca di Studio Uno was one of RAI’s most popular programs in 1964, enjoyed across diverse demographic groups and particularly enjoyed by women and older viewers. Between 12.9 and 13.7 million viewers watched each episode and the audience satisfaction for The Three Musketeers and The Odyssey was very high, reaching 80 and 81, respectively.27 Beyond this popularity with audiences, The Three Musketeers episode received accolades from the European television industry with the award for best production at the 1965 Monte Carlo Television Festival. The episode Dr Jekyll and Mister Hyde attracted a large audience yet had much lower enjoyment ratings of 64.28 This was not altogether astonishing given the artistic challenges faced by creating a dance sequence out of an identikit process, or the somewhat surprising singing and dancing chorus of London prostitutes who one by one (yet always in step) were grabbed while screaming and then murdered just off-stage.29

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The audience enjoyment of Biblioteca di Studio Uno required at least an acquaintance with the classics and a sense of their value, as well as a willingness to participate in the inversion of cultural values and mockery. The shows were light, spectacular, modern and American—exactly the type of debased culture so many Italian intellectuals had warned everyone about. For the television reviewer at the Communist newspaper L’Unità, the second episode of Biblioteca Studio Uno was already tired, monotonous and formulaic: Biblioteca di Studio Uno is starting to be a sort of second–hand modern operetta, whose usefulness, with the aim of public entertainment, is always more debatable.30

The program not only parodied the classics, it took aim at film stars and current scandals. In Il fornaretto di Venezia, Raimondo Vianello played a cameo role as the artist Tintoretto who puns on the word for Venetian bridges ‘ponte’ and Sophia Loren’s relationship with Italian film producer Carlo Ponti.31 This was at the time when Ponti’s attempt to divorce his wife and marry Loren was vigorously opposed by both the Catholic Church and the Italian State. So while the influence of the Catholic Church through the Christian Democrat controlled RAI television remained strong at this time, comedies still managed to insert jokes with social and political humour. Sergio Pugliese’s response to a parody of I Promessi Sposi might seem extreme, yet he was reacting against a broader cultural context, which included popular film adaptations and unforgiving caricatures of the novel. Recent film versions had deviated considerably from the text with the acknowledgement—at times comically—of premarital sex, abortion and illegitimacy. The novel’s strong message to accept fate and providence was subverted as reinvented characters made their own future. For Pugliese, Italian literature was to be faithfully rendered and respected. Light entertainment that parodied and played with cultural meanings could certainly be used to attract new audiences, but not if it undermined Italian literary classics or morality. The modern film adaptations released in the early 1960s are worth examining in more detail because they reached similar audiences to those of television and issued strong challenges, not just to cultural hierarchies, but also to social order and the Church.

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Totò’s Il Monaco di Monza (1962) and Monicelli’s Renzo e Luciana (1962) The 1962 film, Il Monaco di Monza (The monk of Monza) starred the hugely popular comic actor Totò and was directed by Sergio Corbucci.32 The film was a classic ‘spin–off’ based on two of the novel’s wicked characters, the Nun of Monza and the aristocrat Don Egido who both helped to kidnap the good and virtuous Lucia. The film, however, owed very little else to the original novel. Totò played the protagonist, Pasquale Cicciacalda a poor shoemaker, although not a very good one.33 Cicciacalda is a widower with twelve children to support and so decides to pretend to be a monk to collect alms and food. Travelling as the Monk of Monza, Totò arrived at Don Egido’s castle and gallantly helped noblewoman Fiorenza, elude Egido’s unrelenting attempts to force her to marry him. The film takes another sharp turn away from the virtuous Manzonian ideal, as we discover that Fiorenza is pregnant to her lover, a Spanish aristocrat (also played by Totò). Totò as the Monk of Monza helps to deliver the child, blindfolded both for the sake of modesty and full comic effect, congratulating her on twins when blindly patting her chest. The film ends as the Nun of Monza arrives, in somewhat spectacular fashion on horseback, accompanied by a posse of nuns for an action-packed ducking, diving sword fight—defeating Don Egido and his henchmen. These final scenes owed more to Westerns and adventure film genres than to Romantic literature, a merging of the contemporary and popular with the historical and culturally revered. The film combined classic literature with modern popular music, comedy and cinema genres. Popular Italian singer Adriano Celentano composed the soundtrack, and he appeared in a cameo role in the film, also as a fake monk, singing in a tavern for money. The satirical representation of the Catholic Church was neither flattering nor reverential. The film joked about Church greed and frequently referenced the money or food given by the poor to the Church. Like many of the popular Italian film comedies of the 1960s, the humour is based on the difference between the rich and the poor, and the unattainability of desirable lifestyles and goods. The gap between rich and poor is presented in its Manzonian historical context, yet with clear modern relevance and commentary. Another film adaptation of I Promessi Sposi called Renzo and Luciana appeared as one of the four short films in Boccaccio ’70, a hugely popular

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film that earned 1.1 billion lire at the Italian box office, not far behind the other home-grown film success of 1962, Dino Risi’s Il sorpasso.34 Boccaccio ’70 comprised four short films of modern stories set in the near future of 1970, told in the style of Giovanni Boccaccio’s fourteenth-century collection of stories The Decameron. The directors and their female leads were chosen with an international market in mind—Federico Fellini and Anita Ekberg, Vittorio De Sica and Sophia Loren, and Luchino Visconti and Romy Schneider.35 Renzo and Luciana inverts Manzoni’s novel, starting with the marriage of Renzo and Luciana as a jukebox plays the wedding march. The rest of the film is spent concealing the marriage because Luciana’s job contract specifies that she must resign if she marries, a common requirement by employers at the time. The cinematography highlights the anonymity and the crowds of Milan: uniformed workers in rows of desks or factory lines; claustrophobic trams and buses; and floor after floor of small windows in the modern high-rise apartments. The masses spill out of, and pack into, every space. Luciana is pursued by the modern equivalent of the evil aristocrat Don Rodrigo, the company accountant Orvaldo, with his arrogant staccato laugh and expensive car. Unlike the Manzonian tale, the couple fear that Luciana could be pregnant, meaning that she would have to admit to being married and lose her job after all. Luciana’s mother suggests a hot-mustard bath or some ‘advice from an aunt’. These scenes presented an arresting deviation from the original novel where Lucia’s virginity is certain and even promised in prayer to the Madonna in return for her benevolence and help in escaping kidnappers. It was unimaginable that these references to abortion, albeit oblique, could be shown on RAI television.

Audience Responses to RAI Television’s I Promessi Sposi (1967) In contrast to these and other popular and modern film interpretations of the Manzonian classic, RAI literary adaptations were generally faithful to the original text and, in the case of Manzoni, almost sacral. Throughout the 1950s, RAI had presented live theatre broadcasts and television studio productions of theatre that included a comprehensive selection of classic and modern works—William Shakespeare and other greats such as Anton Chekhov, Carlo Goldini and Luigi Pirandello. The early television adaptations reflected a strong theatre tradition and a

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top-down approach to cultural enlightenment. This approach changed as the RAI producers became more adept with the television medium and the senior management became more comfortable with the idea of television as entertainment. Historian Cinzia Padovani suggests that by the 1960s, television had evolved from a highbrow to a more inclusive and entertainment-based medium, away from the: …Piedmont style of administration, which instead promoted the bourgeois, highbrow theater but hardly any fiction for the middle. Bernabei encouraged big productions, the kind of fiction for television that everybody could enjoy, like the literary masterpieces… Nothing controversial, just good quality entertainment for the middle class.36

The RAI adaptations of the revered literary canon developed during the 1960s provided some of the most popular programs on television, with middle-class viewers forming an important component of this audience. Yet, it is important not to see these programs solely as middle-class fodder or as programs consumed without critical regard. For a start, the audiences were broad. Classics were not exclusively middle-class entertainment since viewers were drawn from all classes of society, including both the highly educated and non-reading segments. Second, enjoyment of adapted classics depended on the novel and the style of adaptation. Enjoyment levels varied ‘from novel to novel, spanning a range from 82 for The Daughter of the Regiment and David Copperfield, to 55 for Oblomov and 51 for Don Quixote’.37 Audiences found David Copperfield and the serialised story of his youth, troubled family life, unrequited love and various travails the most enjoyable of all the adaptations. It attracted 15.5 million viewers and received an enjoyment rating of 82. Women and people with lower levels of formal education particularly enjoyed it.38 Most importantly, it was one of the few adaptations that translated into increased book sales.39 Historian Milly Buonanno, in her examination of the literary adaptations (sceneggiato) of this period, suggests that this strong international approach to literature was an important and distinctly Italian cultural trait, and that: in giving preference to non–national literature, the sceneggiato went along with and helped to cultivate and spread throughout Italian society those traits of cosmopolitan culture, or more simply of openness to the culture

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and cultural goods of other countries, that have deep roots in Italy’s history and go back well before television was introduced.40

This cultural openness and internationalism is certainly an important characteristic of the television adaptations of the 1960s, as well as of the small but emerging paperback markets. Nevertheless, it is important not to undervalue the skill and intent of these international writers who had taken the opportunity to target the newly literate readers of popular newspapers and novels. Charles Dickens and Alexandre Dumas demonstrated great expertise in their storytelling abilities, attracting popular audiences to their serialised works in newspapers and magazines. These writers formed part of strong nineteenth-century literary traditions in Britain and France with their longer histories of writing for popular audiences. Italian literature traditions were weaker than those found in many other parts of Europe. Correspondingly, Italian literature did not demonstrate the accessible and proficient narrative of novelists like Dickens and Dumas. Although Italian newspapers had published serialised novels in both the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, newspaper markets were made up of a small group of educated readers from the upper classes and as such, these serials were not intended for a broader, general readership. Instead, magazines and television would play this disseminating role. I Promessi Sposi was the most watched of all the classic television adaptations, Italian or foreign. The eight episodes attracted a weekly average of 18.2 million adult viewers and ranged from a minimum audience of 16.8 million up to a peak audience of 19 million adult viewers for the final episode.41 Sandro Bolchi directed I Promessi Sposi and used the unknown lead actors Nino Castelnuovo and Paola Pitagora as Renzo and Lucia (Fig. 9.2), alongside recognised film actors including Massimo Girotti as Brother Christopher and popular actress Lea Massari as the Nun of Monza. Riccardo Bacchelli introduced the first episode: he co-wrote the I Promessi Sposi screenplay and was well known to the television audience as the successful author of the book and 1963 television version of Il mulino del Po (The windmill on the Po River). Bacchelli explained his approach to adapting the novel to television and emphasised the ongoing relevance of Manzoni’s classic to modern life. This was followed by an introduction by actor Giancarlo Sbragia who would narrate the adaptation and read key tracts. Sbragia, seated in a study behind a desk and dressed in period costume, gave an introduction to

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Fig. 9.2  On the set of I Promessi Sposi (1964), Director Sandro Bolchi with Nino Castelnuovo (Renzo) and Paola Pitagora (Lucia) (Per gentile concessione di Rai Teche/Courtesy of RAI Teche)

the historical, political and social context of the work, explaining it was set between 1628 and 1630 in Lombardy under Spanish rule. Sbragia also provided background information on Alessandro Manzoni and the early nineteenth century.42 For the RAI, the program succeeded in its goal to enrich and enlighten the public and introduce a large proportion of the population to the Italian classic: First of all, it was an occasion, all in all enjoyable, of cultural enrichment. The few people who knew the Manzoni text well, the many who had read it a long time ago, and the many (or very many) who only knew it by name, for different reasons, were pleased to be able to confirm or refresh their knowledge, or to fill a gap in their education.43

Viewers were committed. They watched all or at least six of the eight episodes. The prestige and popularity of the literary text were key factors in their enjoyment of the program. The viewers who were interviewed

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about their response to the program reported feeling a sense of the importance and cultural significance of the novel and believed that it was necessary to be familiar with this Italian masterpiece. They found the program accessible. One interviewee said that it was ‘a classic and at the same time very understandable for everyone’. Another thought, ‘it was a pleasure to re-live the novel, seeing it after having read it’. The program’s value as an opportunity for learning was recognised with interviewees observing that it was, ‘an educational broadcast’ or was, ‘interesting from an educational point of view’ and that, ‘it helps to make young people familiar with Manzoni’s masterpiece’.44 Overall, audiences loved it, although not quite as much as they had loved David Copperfield. The enjoyment rating was on average 76 and covered a range of between 65 and 82 for each of the eight episodes.45 To provide an idea of where these responses sit in the context of regular television programs, the average enjoyment level for all programs in 1966 was 70.46 Some episodes were found to be substantially more enjoyable than others. The least popular episode, episode four, was indeed very hard work. It recounted a seemingly endless tale of Renzo’s missteps and misadventures during his visit to Milan—his accidental leading role in bread riots, his drunkenness, his arrest and final escape. Whereas the following Sunday, the most popular of all the episodes offered the viewer heart-stopping drama and excitement of the Nun of Monza’s betrayal of Lucia, the kidnap of Lucia and the ‘Unnamed’ evil aristocrat’s repentance and redemption (Fig. 9.3). Both men and women reported similar levels of enjoyment from watching the program. Viewers in the north, centre and south enjoyed it more or less at the same high level. Nor was there much difference between viewers in small or large towns and cities. However, different preferences and levels of enjoyment emerged when it came to profession, age and education. Again, people least likely to be regular book readers produced the most appreciative audience. Agricultural workers reported the highest levels of enjoyment of the program. Housewives and pensioners also expressed high levels of enjoyment. The program found particular popularity with viewers aged over forty-five and people with a primary school level of education.47 Viewers in other professional groups, age groups and education levels enjoyed the program, but to a lesser degree than the average viewer. RAI’s audience research concluded that the enjoyment levels of some of these other groups were lower because young people, people with a

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Fig. 9.3  Lea Massari as the Nun of Monza in the most popular episode of I Promessi Sposi (1964) (Per gentile concessione di Rai Teche/Courtesy of RAI Teche)

university education, professionals and managers and industrial workers were from ‘social groups that are critical of traditional values and most of all towards a proposition so openly edifying’.48 However, this assessment overlooked the fact that the enjoyment of any television program by viewers from these groups always tended to be lower. To illustrate: I Promessi Sposi viewers with a university degree reported an enjoyment level of 73, three points lower than the average viewer enjoyment of 76. This was still a high enjoyment rating, but was all the more remarkable given television viewers with a university-level education generally found all television to be less enjoyable. They expressed an average satisfaction level of 61 rather than the viewer average of 70. This means that university graduates enjoyed the adaptation of I Promessi Sposi far more than their average enjoyment of television programs, in fact twelve points or 20% more.49 People aged between 18 and 24 liked the program to the same extent that they liked any program on television that year, both 71. It is interesting, then, that the defensive response of the RAI to these groups overlooked the broader viewing context and instead saw them as ‘critical of traditional values’ and ‘edifying’ subjects.

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In contrast, the RAI audience researchers observed that older people, people with a primary school level of education, agricultural workers, housewives and pensioners who enjoyed the program more  came from: …social groups that, in addition to being more willing to enjoy the sentimental nature of the story, and the contrasting elements of good and bad and of virtue and vice, with the necessary rewards and punishments.50

The RAI literary productions were part of a modern storytelling tradition that included the cinema, the fotoromanzi of the 1950s and 1960s, and would continue on through to the soap operas and telenovellas of the 1980s. All formats demonstrated strong narrative elements of drama, suspense, heroes, villains and the ever constant, unrequited and thwarted love. Mass culture adapted high culture stories because they often shared the themes featured in popular historical, crime and romance novels: love, death, revenge and forgiveness. Bolchi and the RAI had understood that key themes in I Promessi Sposi were very similar to those in most popular stories—a bad guy who seems to be untouchable but in the end is defeated and punished; the triumph of justice and innocence.51 Indeed, the plots, betrayals and intrigues and evil aristocrats of many classics could be easily imagined in an episode of the popular eighties soap operas such Dynasty or Dallas. Viewers found that Manzoni’s novel was ‘a moving story’ and ‘very romantic’.52 For the RAI adaptation of I Promessi Sposi, the novel’s masterpiece status was important for both producer and viewer. Faithfulness to the text was a necessary characteristic for this and other television adaptations claiming legitimacy based in the romantic ideals of the novel, the authenticity of its story and its important place in Italian society. Television historian Francesca Anania describes director Bolchi as a ‘maniac’ in his faithfulness to the Manzoni text.53 Viewers of I Promessi Sposi found the interpretation to be a faithful rendering of the story; 90% of viewers responded that it had been faithful, and 10% that it had been moderately faithful. None of the viewers responded that it was an unfaithful rendering. Given that at this time around one in seven Italians read books, the assessment of fidelity by the majority of the respondents would have been based on their general understanding of the book from family members or friends, or from their experience of the novel through magazine or film adaptations. Individual viewer responses on

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the authenticity of the program commented that it was ‘a great interpretation and staging’, and ‘responsive to the text’ as well as ‘very clear in the rendering’.54 The commitment to the authenticity of the text was apparent in the restrained and, at times austere, nature of the production. While still a ‘blockbuster’ in terms of budget and profile, it was— in contrast to other adaptations—presented with little spectacle. Sbragia, the narrator, read passages from the novel during key scenes and transitions. These elements were thought to have ‘required a certain effort, and mental exertion from the viewer’ and the audience researchers demonstrate admiration and indeed some surprise that the viewers had risen to the occasion.55 While the overall response of the RAI audience survey was positive, the program was not for everyone. The RAI’s official record of viewer feedback and complaints during 1967 registers complaints against both I Promessi Sposi and another dramatised work, The Life of Cavour, for being too pesanti, heavy and dull.56 Like many of the popular television adaptations, I Promessi Sposi was entertainment news. Magazines ran articles on the making of the program and interviews with the actors. Lead actor, Nino Castelnuovo, was on the front cover of popular fotoromanzo magazine Bolero Teletutto, and Castelnuovo and Massimo Girotti were photographed dancing in a Milan nightclub, ‘Renzo e Fra Cristofero allegrissimi al PAIPs’ (Renzo and Father Christopher very lively at PAIP’s).57 The cost of the television program also received press attention; at over 700 million lire it was, as Sergio Pugliese had predicted, a substantial investment by the RAI. The 12 million lire RAI paid to the director Sandro Bolchi, especially the Mercedes car he bought soon after, also attracted media comment.58 The popular media coverage provides useful additional material to RAI’s internal audience data. After the program finished, Bolero Teletutto undertook its own survey to see if the opinions of the general population, and some well-known people and celebrities, matched the generally positive responses of the experts that had been published in the press. The magazine interviewed people over the telephone and on the streets of Rome and Milan. As well as the public reaction, the magazine sought the views of public figures such as politicians, the captains of the major football teams and people working in film. All were asked: Had they watched the program; what score would they give it out of ten; and what other novel would they like to see on television? While the Bolero Teletutto survey lacks the scale and rigour of the RAI opinion surveys, the comments and suggestions are revealing. The people who had

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not read the novel tended to be the most supportive of the adaptation, whereas those who were familiar with the work were more critical. The magazine interviewed people in one of Italy’s most significant venues for popular debate on the important matters of the day, at least for Italian men: the cafés where men drank espresso and passed judgement on the state of world. The customers of Bar Adda in Rome liked the program ‘così–così’ (so–so) and gave the program a tepid score of 6.5 out of 10 saying that they wanted to see Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace on the television. Instead, the clientele of Bar Vittorio in Milan liked it ‘moltissimo’ (very much) and suggested Dante Alighieri’s The Divine Comedy for the next adaptation. The suggestions of the other cafés included a mix of popular and classic novels: Georges Simeon’s The Adventures of Maigret and other books in the series, Margaret Mitchell’s Gone with the Wind, Victor Hugo’s The Man who Laughs and The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls, Alexandre Dumas’s Three Musketeers and Edmondo De Amicis’s Heart.59 The suggestions bring together requests for accessible adaptations of the European literary greats Tolstoy and Dante, alongside the popular crime, adventure and romance novels of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and an adaptation of Mitchell’s 1936 novel made popular by the Hollywood film. The survey also included the opinions of newspaper and magazine vendors; a group divided over the value of the program. This group is interesting, as a low-skill occupation, we can speculate that many possessed a primary school education, yet by the nature of their work had ready access to newspapers, magazines and paperbacks. On the one hand, Michelina Camponeschi, aged 69 and working on the stand in Piazza Colonna in Rome, had followed all episodes and enjoyed them very much but she confessed, ‘to tell the truth, I would not read it’. On the other, Sergio Diafera, aged 29 and working on the stand in Via Veneto in Rome, really disliked the program. He rather provocatively responded that he would like to see John Cleland’s eighteenth-century novel Fanny Hill adapted to television (known in English as the Fanny Hill: Or the Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure and banned in Italy). Sergio Stilgen Bauer, aged 41, working at Piazza San Paolo in Rome, had watched the episodes enthusiastically and said, ‘it was a good idea the great classics were being adapted to television, so that those who have never read, like me for example, could know them’.60 Luigi Besana, aged 58 of Piazza Piemonte in Milan, rated the program highly, although he found the

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program rather heavy, particularly for the average viewing public. He wanted to watch television adaptations of Georges Simenon’s Inspector Maigret series, or of American detective novels by Mickey Spillane.61 The captains of seven major football teams, including Juventus, Rome and Inter Milan, all said they had seen some of the programs, and most enjoyed it. Pierlugi Ronzon, the captain of Naples, had seen almost all the episodes and ‘had enjoyed the faithful representation of a Manzonian masterpiece’. Ronzon confessed to struggling with the book at school, but found seeing it on television had been a real joy.62 The Swedish winger Kurt Hamrin from Fiorentina did not like the program and said he usually changed the channel. Hamrin added, in an unusual Manzoni– calcio metaphor, that he liked Lucia because, ‘she is a “victim” like me: I am, in fact the predestined victim of the other teams’ fullbacks’. The classics suggested for television by the football captains included classics, cinema and historical novels: a repetition of David Copperfield and adaptations of Gone with the Wind, The Three Musketeers, Les Misérables and War and Peace.63 Italian and international film stars, directors and singers also commented on the adaptation. Actress Silvana Mangano said she had watched all eight episodes but did not enjoy them very much, noting that she was no fan of historical drama. Russian-born Hollywood star Yul Brynner only saw the first episode, which he said he had enjoyed. Brynner added that Manzoni was ‘possibly one of the best authors in Italian literature and thought that it was not easy to turn it into a show for the masses’.64 The directors Gillo Pontecorvo and Dino Risi both responded that they had enjoyed the adaptation, which for Risi was, ‘without doubt, very popular, enjoyable and interesting to follow’.65 Sergio Leone said that he liked the way that Sandro Bolchi had adhered to the Manzonian text. Leone added that he would like to see a television adaptation of Michele Frisco’s account of the life and sexual adventures of a young woman from Naples during the Fascist era, La dama di piazza (The Woman of the Piazza), adding he did not know that television would agree. The Italian singer Mina was the most enthusiastic of all those interviewed, giving the program ten out of ten. She said it took her back to when she was a girl studying Manzoni at school. Suggestions of novels to adapt to television from this entertainment industry group included mostly foreign novels such as F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, Ernest Hemingway’s For Whom the Bell Tolls and A Farewell to Arms, Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain and Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s

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The Brothers Karamazov.66 These cultural professionals are well-read in both European and American literature. Politicians were the final group interviewed about the adaptation of I Promessi Sposi. This group had the harshest opinions and most politicians interviewed were lukewarm about the program, rating it a six or a seven out of ten. The Honourable Fernando Santi of the Socialist Party only saw a couple of episodes, saying he did not watch much television. He added, he found the program slow and the episode set in Milan terrible. The Honourable Luigi D’Amato of the Christian Democrat Party said he had watched every episode, but had not enjoyed the adaptation, observing that the reduction had cut too much from the representation of some characters and the program was slow. For the Honourable Giuseppe Pellegrino of the Italian Communist Party, some episodes were better than others and he criticised the representation of the historical content of the novel as inaccurate. The Honourable Alberto Giomo of the Italian Liberal Party and a former professor of history and philosophy enjoyed the adaptation and said he was particularly moved by the spiritual elements such as the religious conversion of the Innominato (the Unnamed). Almost all politicians suggested television adaptations of the work of Italian writers including Tomaso di Lampedusa, Giorgio Bassani and Giovanni Verga. Sir Walter Scott’s historical novel Ivanhoe stood out as the only foreign work proposed.67 Michelina Camponeschi, the Piazza Colona newspaper and magazine stand vendor who had enjoyed the program, but confided she would be unlikely to read the book, had given a response that also proved true for many other viewers. The adaptation of I Promessi Sposi did not translate into book sales.68 Italian author Libero Bigiaretti, commenting on the impact of RAI’s literary adaptations in 1968, wrote that: The occasion has put the publishing machine in motion; three popular editions of Manzoni’s masterpiece have been released. But the result was modest. Or the book was already in its place on the family bookshelf, or it had come into the house appearing modestly as part of a set, because of a need to collect and to have uniform covers, next to Rocambole and to Il Fuoco.69

The major publishing houses reported that literary adaptations for television generally had a small or incremental impact on sales. A representative from Rizzoli noted that the exceptions to this were the 1964

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adaptation of A. J. Cronin’s The Citadel and the 1966 adaptation of Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield, which both resulted in a ‘boom’ in sales. A Mondadori representative said the adaptations had not had any positive impact on their sales, except for a small increase in the luxury end of the market, people buying gifts of books they had heard were esteemed classics.70 This suggests that although the literary classics were becoming part of everyday life, the Italian population consumed and experienced them along polarised lines: on the one hand as a weekly television program, and on the other as luxury objects—gift items or matched sets of classics. By the mid-1960s, television had ceased to be a predominantly uppermiddle-class activity and had developed a mass audience. Two-thirds of the adult Italian population regularly watched television and increasingly did so in their own homes as more Italians bought their own set.71 By the late 1960s and early 1970s, television viewing had become entrenched as a family-centred experience and the family played a central role in moderating viewing behaviour. RAI research investigated the impact of television on the family and its account reads almost like a description of an alien invasion: For large segments of our society, especially for those in the middle and lower classes, television viewing seems to be the main activity outside of work hours, especially on working days. Alongside the figures of the traditional family: the father, the mother and children, it seems that a new character has been added, endowed with pictures and with a voice, whose activity seems to impose itself in a significant way and right in the hours the family spends together: instead of talking to each other, family members are silent, watching and listening. It is a new event, never before seen, that transforms the home environment, the ways of life, the degree of connection between the family unit and society.72

Television was transforming the domestic space and family leisure. The changes to the home and behaviours of the family members cited are illuminating, particularly the sex, class and regional differences that emerged. Generally, the television was situated in a central room, used by all. Most commonly, it stood in the family’s living room, or to a lesser extent in the kitchen or the dining room. Some regional differences affected the location of the television: in the south, for example, it was more likely to be in the kitchen. The television room was usually in darkness or shadow while the television was on. Families always or sometimes

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ate while watching television and 50% of wives said that they watched television while they did housework. Both meal times and bedtimes were increasingly influenced by television schedules.73 Despite the best intentions of the RAI, the social and cultural transformations brought by television did not include a significant increase in book reading by families. Most people remained content with the television adaptation as entertainment. Viewers enjoyed the literary adaptations, but women and people in the south enjoyed them substantially more.74 Nevertheless, very few people went on to read books suggested by the television. More than one-third of fathers working in white-collar jobs in the north responded that they had read a book suggested by television. For wives of working-class men in both the north and the south, only 4% responded that they had read a book suggested by television.75 Entertainment rather than education ranked high as the reason for watching television. Parents said they watched television for information and entertainment rather than for educational reasons. However, when it came to their children they said that television was watched for educational purposes.76 When the children in the family were asked the same question, they said that they too watched television for entertainment and very few watched it for education or information.77

Conclusion During the state monopoly era of television, the RAI brought the literary classics into Italian living rooms and into people’s Sunday evening routines. Unlike many other cultural programs, the literary adaptations were usually popular and were enjoyed by audiences. Initially, the RAI attempted to patrol the border between high and mass culture, protecting the Italian texts and faithfully reproducing them and other masterpieces. As the previous chapter demonstrated, in the commercial marketplace of magazine publishing—the fotoromanzi, comics and weekly magazines— parodies were popular, and entertainment proved more appealing than education or a didactic approach. Similarly, the film adaptations diverged from original works and presented moral and social ideas that television would never broadcast into Italian homes. These films offered both an acknowledgement and an inversion of the classic. By the end of the decade, in sharp contrast to the reverential and massively popular RAI interpretation of the Manzoni classic, a 1969 film adaptation took the Nun of Monza character into irreverent and erotic territory. Eriprando Visconti’s

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La monaca di Monza (1969) was one of the earliest nunsploitation genre films, a soft porn film of awkward religious sadomasochism, rape, a questionable love story and a soundtrack by Ennio Morricone. The film proved so popular it earned 1.2 billion lire at the box office. The story was ‘based on’ the real historical figure who owed her ongoing notoriety to Manzoni’s portrayal of her in I Promessi Sposi. By the close of the 1960s, in comparison with what was available elsewhere, the reverence for the classics and the Christian Democrat moral protection of television viewers was increasingly outmoded and old-fashioned. RAI had patrolled the borders between high culture and mass culture, traditional culture and modern culture, through television that generated expensive and painstakingly ‘faithful’ adaptations, although parody could be present in controlled doses, in order to encourage audience development. Despite this, the RAI did not make an impact on the reading habits of its viewers. The RAI’s Sunday night literary adaptations helped Italian families become familiar with the literary canon and made the classics part of their everyday experience. The members of society with the lowest literacy rates, those least likely to be book readers—such as women, agricultural workers and older viewers—enjoyed the RAI adaptations more than any other viewer. The final episode of I Promessi Sposi brought 19 million Italians to the much anticipated, very delayed, wedding of Renzo and Lucia. Very few, however, would ever read the book.

Notes

1.  RAI: Radiotelevisione Italiana, Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 14 L’accoglienza del pubblico per i programmi televisivi dal 1965 al 1967 (Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1968), 110–137. Perry Mason was an American legal drama (CBS production). In 1965, viewer numbers ranged between 2.2 and 8.7 million (average 4.8 million) with enjoyment ratings from 69 to 77 (Source: Tabella 121 Trasmissioni della serie ‘Perry Mason’—1965, 119.); The Great Adventure dramatised jingoistic historical adventures (CBS production). In 1965, weekly viewer numbers ranged between 4 and 11 million (average 7.8) with enjoyment ratings from 63 to 76 (Source: Tabella 119 Trasmissioni della Serie ‘La Grande Avventura’—1965, 117.); and Bonanza was a Western family drama (CBS production). In 1965 and 1966, between 3.5 and 4.9 million viewers watched the program with enjoyment ratings ranging from 69 to 77 (Source: Tabella 140: Accoglienze riservata alle trasmissioni pomeridiane di telefim a lungometraffio nel 1965 e nel 1966, 131).

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2. Luciano Imbriani, Sei anni di pubblicità T.V (Milan: I.M.A. – Organizzazione di tecnica pubblicitaria al servizio delle vendite, 1963), 3. 3. RAI: Radiotelevisione Italiana, Rai Annuario 1953–1955 (Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1958), xxii. Experimental broadcasting occurred between January and July 1953, and a limited program of films was broadcast in the north and central Italy from September 1953 for 24 hours a week. 4. RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana, Rai Annuario 1958 (Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1958), 45, 149. 5. RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana, Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 10. il pubblico della Tv nel 1964 (Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1965), 15. 6. RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana, Rai Annuario 1965 (Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1965), 151. 7. RAI Teche, Dossier Rai: 3 gennaio 1954: Cinquanta anni di televisione (Roma: RAI, 2004), 65. 8. RAI Teche, Dossier Rai, 65. 9. RAI Teche, Dossier Rai, 265–269. 10. RAI Teche, Dossier Rai, 65. 11. Enzo Biagi, ‘TELEVISIONE: NON SCHERZARE con le parole’, Epoca, 7 aprile 1957, 97. 12. Viewers rated their enjoyment of television programs: per niente = 0 (did not like it at all); poco = 25 (liked it very little); discretamente = 50 (fair); molto = 75 (liked it a lot); moltissimo = 100 (liked it very much). 80 ­represents a very popular program. 13.  RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana, Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 11. L’accoglienza del pubblico per i programmi televisivi dal 1961 al 1964 (Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1967), 77. 14. RAI, Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 10, 61. Note: Quizzes were measured in a separate category to variety in the 1950s and became less popular in the 1960s. 15.  RAI: Servizio Opinioni, Appunti del Servizio Opinioni Numero 121: Indagine sugli interessi della popolazione italiana 1969 (RAI Unpublished Internal Report, 1971), 16. 16. RAI: Servizio Opinioni, Appunti No 121, 38. 17. Mina is a popular Italian singer who epitomised the modern woman on variety shows Canzonissima and Studio Uno in the 1960s. See, Paola Valentini, ‘Mina: Narrative and Cinematic Spectacle of the Italian Woman in the 1960s’, in Writing and Perfoming Female Identity in Italian Culture, Virginia Picchietti, and Laura A. Salsini (eds.) (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 81–104. The Gemelle Kessler (Kessler Twins), Alice and Ellen featured regularly on Italian television variety shows, particularly Studio Uno and performed its opening theme tune da da umpa. These popular, German and blonde variety performers brought, what

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Franco Monteleone describes as, a ‘“cold” eroticism’ to Italian television. See, Franco Monteleone, Storia della radio e della televisione in Italia: Costume, società e politica (Venice: Marsilio Editori, 1999), 347. 18. Walter Veltroni, I programmi che hanno cambiato l’Italia: Quarant’anni di televisione (Milan: Feltrinelli, 1992), 251–252. Note: Emilio Pericoli and Renata Mauro were popular singers. 19. RAI, Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 10, 128. 20. RAI Mediateca: Canzonissima (dir.) Antonello Falqui, broadcast 5 November 1958 Arrivederci Como at 19–29 minutes. RAI Mediateca reference C1519. 21. RAI Mediateca: Biblioteca di Studio Uno (dir.) Antonello Falqui, broadcast 15 February 1964–18 April 1964 in 8 weekly episodes. RAI Mediateca references (Il conte di Montecristo, 15.2 6244; Il fornaretto di Venezia 22.2 6868; I tre moschettieri 29.2 6439; Il dott. Jekyll e Mr. Hyde, 7.3 6562; La storia di Rossella O’Hara, 14.3 6733; 4.4 6979 La Primula Rosa, 18.4 7432; Al Grand Hotel, 11.4 7513). 22. Aldo Grasso (cura di), Storie e culture della televisione italiana (Milano: Oscar Mondadori, 2013), 140. 23. Veltroni, I programmi che hanno cambiato Italia, 30. 24. ‘Il nuovo «Studio 1» va in biblioteca a parodiare romanzi’, La Stampa Sera, Giovedì 14–Venerdì 15 novembre, 1963, 11. 25. Maurizio Ternavasio, Il Quartetto Cetra: Ovvero piccola storia dello spettacolo leggero italiano (Torino: Lindau, 2002), 128. 26. Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984), 26. 27. RAI, Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 11, 102. 28. RAI, Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 11, 102. 29.  Biblioteca di Studio Uno (dir.) A. Falqui, Il dott. Jekyll e Mr. Hyde, broadcast 7 March 1964. Mediateca: 7.3 6562. 30. ‘Contro Canale’, L’Unità, Domenica 15 marzo, 1964, 9. Biblioteca di Studio Uno 0si sta avviando ad essere una sorta di operetta moderna di seconda mano la cui utilità, ai fini del divertimento del pubblico, è sempre più discutibile. 31. Biblioteca di Studio Uno (dir.) A. Falqui, Il fornaretto di Venezia broadcast 22 February 1964. Mediateca: 22.2 6868 32. Il monaco di Monza (dir.) Sergio Corbucci. 1962 (DVD. Medusa Home Entertainment, 2004). Note: Sergio Corbucci was a director of many of Totò’s film comedies and went on to make famous spaghetti Westerns including Django (1966). 33.  Cicciacalda is a colloquial reference meaning hot sausage both as a meal and double entendre. 34. Alessandro Ferraù, ‘Il  «borderò» , questo sconosciuto’, SIPRAUNO, 2 (1966): 92–109; 106–107.

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35.  Boccaccio ’70 (dir.) Vittorio De Sica, Federico Fellini; Mario Monicelli; Luchino Visconti. 1962 (DVD. Mr Bongo Films, 2009). Renzo and Luciana was included only in the Italian and Argentinian releases of Boccaccio ’70 and was cut from European and the USA releases to reduce the three and a half hour run time. The director of Renzo and Luciana, Mario Monicelli was not well-known outside of Italy and he had cast unknown leads. 36. Cinzia Padovani A Fatal Attraction: Public Television and Politics in Italy (Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield Publishing, 2007), 77. Note: Ettore Bernabei was Director General of RAI from 1961 to 1974. 37. RAI, Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 14, 19. 38. RAI, Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 14, 24. 39.  Segretari Centrale della RAI (a cura di), Televisione e vita italiana (Torino: ERI, 1968), 730. 40. Milly Buonanno, Italian TV Drama and Beyond: Stories of the Soil, Stories from the Sea (Bristol: Intellect, 2012), 23. 41.  RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana, Appunti del Servizio Opinioni – L’accoglienza del pubblico alla riduzione televisiva de ‘I Promessi Sposi’ (RAI internal document, 1967), Tabella 1: Ascolto e gradimento per ‘I Promessi Sposi’ between 1 and 2. 42. RAI mediateca: I Promessi Sposi (dir.) S Bolchi, broadcast in 8 episodes between 1 January 1967 and 19 February 1967, RAI mediateca reference: P67001/004. 43. RAI, Appunti del Servizio Opinioni: I Promessi Sposi, 8. 44. RAI, Appunti del Servizio Opinioni: I Promessi Sposi, 2 and 4. 45. RAI, Appunti del Servizio Opinioni: I Promessi Sposi, ‘Tabella 1: Ascolto e gradimento per I Promessi Sposi’, unnumbered page between 1 and 2. 46. RAI, Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 14, 105. 47. RAI, Appunti del Servizio Opinioni: I Promessi Sposi, ‘Tabella 1: Ascolto e gradimento per I Promessi Sposi’, unnumbered page between 1 and 2. 48. RAI, Appunti del Servizio Opinioni: I Promessi Sposi, Tabella 2: Gradimento per I Promessi Sposi distintamente per sesso, età, istruzione, professione e residenza degli intervistati, unnumbered page between 6 and 7. Data include: average enjoyment index for all viewers was 76. Viewers aged between 18 and 24 average enjoyment index 71; viewers aged between 25 and 34 average enjoyment index 73; viewers with a university degree average enjoyment index 73; viewers with employment as professionals and management average enjoyment index 71; and viewers employed as factory workers average enjoyment index 72. 49. RAI, Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 14, 105; and RAI, Appunti del Servizio Opinioni: I Promessi Sposi, Tabella 2: Gradimento per I Promessi Sposi distintamente per sesso, età, istruzione, professione e residenza degli intervistati, unnumbered page between 6 and 7.

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50. RAI, Appunti del Servizio Opinioni: I Promessi Sposi, 6. 51. RAI, Appunti del Servizio Opinioni: I Promessi Sposi, 9. 52. RAI, Appunti del Servizio Opinioni: I Promessi Sposi, 4. 53. Francesca Anania, Davanti allo schermo: Storia del pubblico televisivo (Roma: Carocci editoire, 2002), 49. 54. RAI, Appunti del Servizio Opinioni: I Promessi Sposi, 3. 55. RAI, Appunti del Servizio Opinioni: I Promessi Sposi, 8. 56. RAI, ‘Le telefonate del pubblico alla RAI pervenute al servizio opinioni nel 1967’. Appunto del Servizio Opinioni n.68 (Unpublished Internal Research by RAI– Radiotelevisione Italiana Servizio Opinioni), 39. 57.  Bolero Film Teletutto, ‘Renzo e Fra Cristofero allegrissimi al PAIPs’, 37. 58.  Bolero Film Teletutto, 13 marzo 1966, cover; Gigi Vesigna, ‘I Promessi Sposi: Notizie e curiosita sulla lavorazione del teleromanzo’, Bolero Film Teletutto, 8 gennaio 1967, 30. 59. ‘Si è concluso il teleromanzo “I Promessi Sposi” Promosso o bocciato?’, Bolero Film Teletutto, 26 febbraio 1967, 26–31; 26. 60. ‘Si è concluso il teleromanzo’, 29. 61. ‘Si è concluso il teleromanzo’, 29. 62. ‘Si è concluso il teleromanzo’, 27. 63. ‘Si è concluso il teleromanzo’, 27. 64. ‘Si è concluso il teleromanzo’, 31. 65. ‘Si è concluso il teleromanzo’, 31. 66. ‘Si è concluso il teleromanzo’, 27. 67. ‘Si è concluso il teleromanzo’, 30. 68. ‘Si è concluso il teleromanzo’, 28. 69. Segretari Centrale della RAI, Televisione e vita italiana, 723. 70. Segretari Centrale della RAI, Televisione e vita italiana, 729. 71. RAI, Annuario Rai 1965, 45, 277. 72.  Franco Crespi and Renzo Carli, Televisione e dinamica dei rapporti familiari Appunti del Servizio Opinioni n. 189, Giugno 1973, RAI– Radiotelevisione Italiana Servizio Opinioni, 2. 73. Crespi, Televisione e dinamica dei rapporti familiari, 11–14. The survey of family viewing habits undertaken by RAI in 1971 illustrates the impact of television on the home, although it is important to note that this survey was limited to two towns. One-hundred families where interviewed, in Asti, a town in a wine-producing area outside of Turin in Piedmont and in Foggia an agricultural town in Puglia. 74. Crespi, Televisione e dinamica dei rapporti familiari, Tabella 7. Percentuale di intervistati che si interessano ‘moltissimo–molto’ ai vari programmi televisivi, 15. Just over fifty percent of men in Asti, both white-collar employees and workers said that they enjoyed films, miniseries, literary adaptations and comedies very much or a lot. Whereas in Foggia, in the south enjoyment of these programs increased to 68% for white collar and

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76% for workers. Women greatly enjoyed films, miniseries, literary adaptations and comedies regardless of where they lived or their husband’s type of employment. Seventy-two percent of the wives of white-collar employees in the northern town of Asti enjoyed the programs very much or a lot. While this enjoyment level increased to 84% for the wives of white-collar employees surveyed in the southern town of Foggia. 75. Crespi, Televisione e dinamica dei rapporti familiari, 15. The survey of family viewing suggested that the fathers interviewed were more likely to read a book as a result of watching a program on television, particularly the literary adaptations or history programs. Fathers working as white-collar employees were the most likely to have gone on to read a book, although there were regional differences between north and south—36% in Asti and 16% in Foggia. In contrast, 8% of the working-class fathers interviewed in Asti said that they read a book as a result of watching television, down to 4% in Foggia. The wives in all the families interviewed also showed a low likelihood of reading a book suggested by television programs. Twelve percent of wives of white-collar employees in Asti and 8% in Foggia said that they had read a book suggested by television, this figure was 4% for the wives of workers in both towns. 76. Crespi, Televisione e dinamica dei rapporti familiari, 35. 77. Crespi, Televisione e dinamica dei rapporti familiari, 53.

References Primary Sources Magazines and Newspapers Bolero Film, Bolero Teletutto Epoca La Stampa Sera L’Unità Television and Film Biblioteca di Studio Uno, (dir.) Antonello Falqui, Broadcast Weekly 15 February 1964–18 April 1964. RAI Mediateca References (Il conte di Montecristo, 15.2 6244; Il fornaretto di Venezia 22.2 6868; I tre moschettieri 29.2 6439; Il dott. Jekyll e Mr. Hyde, 7.3 6562; La storia di Rossella O’Hara, 14.3 6733; 4.4 6979 La Primula Rosa, 18.4 7432; Al Grand Hotel 11.4 7513). Boccaccio ’70. (dir.) Vittorio De Sica, Federico Fellini; Mario Monicelli; Luchino Visconti. (1962) DVD. Mr Bongo Films, 2009. Canzonissima (dir.) Antonello Falqui, Broadcast 5 November 1958. RAI Mediateca reference C1519.

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Monaco di Monza, Il. (dir.) Sergio Corbucci. (1962) DVD. Medusa Home Entertainment, 2004. Promessi Sposi, I (dir.) Sandro Bolchi, Broadcast Weekly 1 January 1967 to 19 February 1967. RAI Mediateca Reference: P67001/004. Archival Sources RAI: Servizio Opinioni. Appunti del Servizio Opinioni: L’accoglienza del pubblico alla riduzione televisiva de ‘I Promessi Sposi’. RAI internal report, 1967. RAI Archive. RAI: Servizio Opinioni. Appunti del Servizio Opinioni n. 121: Indagine sugli interessi della popolazione italiana 1969. RAI internal report, 1971. RAI Archive. RAI: Servizio Opinioni. Appunti del Servizio Opinioni n. 68: Le telefonate del pubblico alla RAI pervenute al servizio opinioni nel 1967. RAI internal report, 1967. RAI Archive.

Secondary Sources Anania, Francesca. Davanti allo schermo: Storia del pubblico televisivo. Roma: Carocci editoire, 2002. Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984. Bourdon, Jérôme, and Paola Della Valle. ‘Modelli Americani alle origini delle televisioni Europee: Un primo passo verso la  «cultura Globale»  ?’ Contemporanea 4, no. 1 (2001): 47–68. Buonanno, Milly. Italian TV Drama and Beyond: Stories of the Soil, Stories from the Sea. Bristol: Intellect, 2012. Crespi, Franco, and Renzo Carli. Televisione e dinamica dei rapporti familiari, Appunti del Servizio Opinioni n. 189, Giugno. Roma: RAI– Radiotelevisione Italiana Servizio Opinioni, 1973. Ferraù, Alessandro. ‘Il  «borderò», questo sconosciuto’, SIPRAUNO 2 (1966): 92–109. Freccero, Carlo. Televisione. Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 2013. Gozzini, Giovanni. La mutazione individualista: Gli italiani e la televisione 1954–2011. Roma: Laterza, 2011. Grasso, Aldo (a cura di). Storie e culture della televisione italiana. Milano: Oscar Mondadori, 2013. Imbriani, Luciano. Sei anni di pubblicità T.V. Milan: I.M.A. – Organizzazione di tecnica pubblicitaria al servizio delle vendite, 1963. Monteleone, Franco. Storia della radio e della televisione in Italia: Costume, società e politica. Venice: Marsilio Editori, 1999.

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Padovani, Cinzia. A Fatal Attraction: Public Television and Politics in Italy. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishing, 2007. RAI: Radiotelevisione Italiana. Rai Annuario 1953–1955. Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1958. RAI: Radiotelevisione Italiana. Rai Annuario 1958. Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1958. RAI: Radiotelevisione Italiana. Rai Annuario 1965. Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1965. RAI: Radiotelevisione Italiana. Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 10, Il pubblico della Tv nel 1964. Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1965. RAI: Radiotelevisione Italiana. Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 11, L’accoglienza del pubblico per i programmi televisivi dal 1961 al 1964. Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1967. RAI: Radiotelevisione Italiana. Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 14, L’accoglienza del pubblico per i programmi televisivi dal 1965 al 1967. Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1968. RAI Teche. Dossier Rai: 3 gennaio 1954 – Cinquanta anni di televisione. Roma: RAI, 2004. Segretari Centrale della RAI (a cura di). Televisione e vita italiana. Torino: ERI – Edizioni Radiotelevisione Italiana, 1968. Ternavasio, Maurizio. Il Quartetto Cetra: Ovvero piccola storia dello spettacolo leggero italiano. Torino: Lindau, 2002. Valentini, Paola. ‘Mina: Narrative and Cinematic Spectacle of the Italian Woman in the 1960s’, in Writing and Perfoming Female Identity in Italian Culture, edited by Virginia Picchietti and Laura A. Salsini. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. Veltroni, Walter. I programmi che hanno cambiato l’Italia: Quarant’anni di televisione. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1992.

CHAPTER 10

Conclusion: The Smile of Bergman, the Body of Rita and the Face of Mona Lisa

The sublimely beautiful Rita is the pinnacle of desirability for the sons of our age, who have chosen in her the ideal of the ‘disturbing’ woman, the expression of an ‘eternal feminine’ with its origins in the dark, mysterious parts of the universe. She is followed, by only two points, by a type of woman who is fortunately very different: Barbara Stanwyck: so, as always since the dawn of time, an earthly Eve is opposed to a diabolic Lilith. The third place is occupied by an ideal of ambiguous beauty, which perhaps has never corresponded to any real image and represents only a pure idea of beauty: Leonardo’s Mona Lisa. ‘The Sons of the Era Confess’, Epoca, 11 August 1951.1

In the early 1950s, Epoca magazine conducted a survey on the romantic interests of Italy’s young men and women. Seeking to provide a counterpoint to the research of the recently established American Kinsey Institute, the investigators emphasised their survey would be about romance and love, not sex. Epoca received 1000 replies from men and women across Italy. Epoca’s research focused on young people aged between 18 and 28. The age group represented a new generation, and the researchers noted that only the oldest would have fought in the war.2 While it is no great surprise to see that the American film stars Rita Hayworth and Barbara Stanwyck represented ideal beauty for many young Italian men, the inclusion of Leonardo’s Mona Lisa in this list of top-three beauties is more unexpected. However, as I have argued © The Author(s) 2018 E. Barron, Popular High Culture in Italian Media, 1950–1970, Italian and Italian American Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90963-9_10

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throughout this book, the blending of high culture and mass culture symbols is crucial to our understanding of Italian mass culture between 1950 and 1970. Leonardo’s iconic Florentine outranks other Hollywood stars, her beauty to interviewees here rated above Greta Garbo, as well as Ava Gardner and popular Italian starlet Silvana Pampanini. For one young man, the ideal was not one woman alone, rather a composite with ‘the smile of Bergman, the body of Rita and the face of Mona Lisa’.3 In a similar way, Italian mass culture had itself become a composite, an amalgam of contemporary European, American and traditional Italian culture. This book began with letters from magazine readers, seeking cultural advice from poets and famous intellectuals in a democratic experiment by Mondadori, it ends with nineteen million people watching a televised adaptation of an Italian literary classic on RAI television. I have argued that popularised high culture exercised an important and distinctive role within Italian mass culture during the 1950s and 1960s. High culture content, symbols and artists featured prominently in magazines and on television. The reader letters, circulation figures and television enjoyment data indicate that Italians found high culture to be both attractive and relevant to their everyday lives. This period saw a substantial ‘bottom-up’ demand for appropriately packaged experiences of high culture in the form of revered artworks, novels and operas. Strong audiences emerged for the international literary classics, but not in book form. More often, this popular interest in high culture manifested in ways that publishers and the RAI found unexpected or unplanned, such as the extraordinary popularity of the quiz show Lascia o raddoppia?, or the seemingly unshiftable low levels of book reading across the population. The survey data suggest, too, that audiences responded to television content in discriminating ways, and the data fail to support the prevailing view of intellectuals that viewers would passively consume whatever was put in front of them. The seismic changes to Italy’s economy and society during the 1950s and 1960s created fresh demands for popular versions of high culture. Education and knowledge were represented as a key dimension of a modern, scientific and prosperous Italy and key to success for young people. A RAI television documentary observed during the early 1960s that in a time of change, ‘to not have an education is like not having an arm’.4 Magazines and popular television programs projected a positive image of self-educated Italians, highlighting intelligent questions

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in advice columns and selecting likeable contestants on Lascia o raddoppia?. Magazines and television became major sources of information and advice for the self-taught, through articles featuring colour reproductions of art, and the televised or serialised literary classics. Changing education patterns inevitably proved an important factor in mass culture consumption. Lower levels of formal education, illiteracy and the prevalence of dialect languages created demand for visual representations rather than text-based high culture. Colour-spreads of art masterpieces, or fotoromanzi and television renderings of literary classics responded to meet this need. In the 1950s and 1960s, greater numbers of working class and female children regularly attended school. Young people and women form an important part of this history as both readers and mass culture consumers. Letters to magazine columns and television viewer surveys indicate that some readers and viewers believed that an understanding of culture and a familiarity with the best artworks and artists was both desirable and important, particularly if their improving economic situation enabled them to mix beyond their former class. New types of employment, office and factory work needed a skilled workforce. Illiteracy rates for women decreased as education and social expectations changed. Wider access to education meant more women took up the cultural practice of reading, and from the mid-1960s, young women read more than men. Economic changes and industrialisation enabled a growing proportion of the population to obtain regular wages and designated leisure time. Wages in turn brought access to new cultural activities, particularly magazine reading and television watching. These changes are reflected in the 1950s and 1960s magazine boom and the rapid uptake of television ownership throughout the 1960s. Despite this increased popular access to high culture however, cultural practices never became classless and egalitarian. Price continued to play an important role as a cultural and social differentiator and, as inexpensive books became more prevalent, a market developed for expensive well-presented leather-bound books to display in the home. When La Scala opera theatre broadcast on television, audiences ballooned from hundreds of people per performance, to millions of viewers. However, audiences who experienced opera in the theatre still carried a greater social status than those who watched the opera in their lounge room, even though repeatedly the internationally famous conductors, singers and operas remained the same.

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Throughout the book, we have seen intellectuals, writers and artists working both within and against mass culture, indeed often enough, against mass culture from within. And, while Umberto Eco’s description of ‘apocalyptic’ and ‘integrated’ intellectuals still offers us a deft summary of the polarised positions of the late 1950s and early 1960s, we can see that the relationship between high culture and mass culture was not always as polarised as it appeared. In their different ways, Cesare Zavattini, Luciano Pedrocchi, Salvatore Quasimodo and Pier Paolo Pasolini shared Italy’s rich cultural heritage with the Italian public, particularly those without educational opportunities. Giorgio De Chirico appeared in almost every chapter as a renowned contemporary artist, an unpopular celebrity guest on a popular television quiz, a celebrity endorsement in magazine advertisements and the creator of artworks for car and alcohol poster advertisements, a carosello celebrity interviewee and finally, a celebrity illustrator for Tempo’s magazine serialisation of I Promessi Sposi. Perhaps most bizarrely of all, De Chirico’s invitation to Lando Degoli of the Lascia o raddoppia? opera ‘contrabassoon scandal’ to hang a painting alongside his own works, in a Milan exhibition. The mass media for De Chirico offered a way to consolidate his position as a great artist, indeed a celebrity artist. Yet, this was not a binary relationship. There were other important players. The prevalence of high culture in magazines and television reflects important attempts by magazine editors, RAI management and even advertisers to shape and expand the taste and knowledge of the general public. Magazines like Epoca and Tempo employed a cultural elite of writers, poets, filmmakers and screenwriters as editors, columnists and journalists, many of whom felt passionately about bringing Italy’s high culture to the people in an accessible language or a format. Others offered entertainment with their ‘apocalyptic’ responses to readers. Americanisation became a model for breaking down class cultural divisions by designing content for broad audiences across class boundaries, particularly with youth markets. At the same time, high culture adaptations reveal a rearguard action against Americanisation by Italian intellectuals, the Catholic Church and the Italian government attempting a ‘top-down’ improvement of public cultural knowledge and discrimination through educational and with any luck inspirational television programs. In magazines and television advertising cultural good taste operated as a powerful modern symbol, one that drew on Italian national culture as well as American dreams. Italian, American and British agencies delivered both.

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Class remained and cultural taste helped define it. Advertisements for luxury goods, such as Martini and Rossi vermouth and Vecchio Romagna brandy, commoditised good taste and superior cultural knowledge. These deliberately crafted cultural references targeted an elite group, or offered non-elites the promise of joining an exclusive social club. As intellectuals identified popular high culture as non-culture, kitsch, or semi-literature, representing it as wholly unequal to the status of the ‘capital C’ Culture of the original works, in many cases, the poetry, artwork, music and novels of high culture were simultaneously popular and elite, although distributed and enjoyed in different ways. While popular adaptations of literary classics often condensed longer works or deviated from the original story, many still strove to stay true to the spirit of the classic. Publishers presented the fotoromanzi adaptations of classic works by Alessandro Manzoni or Charles Dickens as faithful renderings that maintained a respect for the original work. Luciano Pedrocchi’s introduction to the Bolero Film album of I Promessi Sposi, argued that this was a modern way to enjoy the original and would therefore inspire people to read the original book. In contrast, RAI television adaptations were regularly too literal and faithful to the original text, retaining scenes and characters that slowed the pace and convoluted the plot. Humour jostled with respect and veneration. The RAI broadcaster and Italian publishing houses used parody and entertainment to attract new audiences to literature as evidenced by the huge popularity of the comic books, magazines and musical adaptations of classics in Biblioteca di Studio Uno. Parodies not only played with shared cultural references for comic effect; they also used humour to mock intellectuals, the church and state. Film and comic book parodies of I Promessi Sposi challenged the perceived double standards of the Catholic Church, as well as the inefficiency of the Milan Postal service. State-controlled RAI television endeavoured, however, to keep these parodies in check. Even so, television advertising often parodied elites by showing exaggerated stereotypes of intellectuals, high culture audiences or performers behaving as effete, name-dropping snobs. This subversive humour challenged the foundations of social and cultural hierarchies and scorned intellectuals for failing to recognise everyday cultural references. These feisty representations were clearly responding to the intellectual stereotyping of the masses as mediocre and without culture; exclusion from such intellectual and artistic elites was welcomed and celebrated.

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One important aim of the book has been to feature the responses and demographics of television audiences and magazine readers. Yet, I have also sought to take this study of audiences a step further, to examine, where possible, the ways different people connected with the content. The detailed data on viewer numbers and their enjoyment levels across different programs collected by the RAI offer important insights to both the value placed on high culture and the opinions of the audience. The breakdown of popular television programs into specific episodes has offered a challenge to historical assumptions about what people thought about these programs. Magazine reader statistics are less finely calibrated, and yet, the demographic information and segmented nature of different magazine titles allow us to draw conclusions about the position of high culture. Letters pages and interviews help to build this picture. On television, the surveys of viewers of Carosello suggest a more complex view of consumerism on the one hand, through the positive responses to powerful images, and on the other with the unremarkable or forgotten products. We have little information on how magazine readers responded to the widespread use of Italian high culture symbols adapting art to a commercial purpose. Yet, its presence, alongside Lux soap, white teeth and white laundry is significant. Without doubt, the new ideas and products from America captured people’s imaginations and influenced Italian society and culture. At the same time, popular high culture became a part of everyday life for millions of Italians through magazines and television programs. Together, modern Italian and American influences shaped the mass culture boom, infusing it with popular forms of high culture symbols, stories and images. Magazines and television succeeded in creating mass culture alternatives to high culture rather than new gateways to traditional opera, art or book reading. Audiences selected the cultural content they needed and wanted, and they determined how it would be brought into their cultural activities and daily lives. At times, this cultural content rivalled even the greatest of modern television events. In 1968, nineteen million Italians watched the Moon landing on television, the same number of people who had watched the final episode of the RAI’s adaptation of I Promessi Sposi the year before. Despite the concerted efforts of the state television channels and publishing houses, the opera audiences declined, theatres languished and book reading remained a cultural practice for only a small percent of the Italian population. Yet paradoxically, millions of Italians enjoyed

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their chosen forms of high culture, as magazines and television carried the adaptations of Italy’s humanist traditions and the Western Cultural Canon into the industrially produced mass culture and modern life. Perhaps the Mona Lisa’s famously enigmatic smile signalled her secret delight in having become both Italy’s high culture icon and a popular magazine covergirl.

Notes 1. Gianni Baldi and Roberto de Monticelli, ‘Abbiamo confessato i figli del secolo: 2. Statistica sentimentale dei giovanotti’, Epoca, 11 agosto 1951, 30–35, 34. 2. Baldi, ‘Abbiamo confessato i figli’, 34. 3. Baldi, ‘Abbiamo confessato i figli’, 34. 4. Giovani oggi, dir. Carlo Alberto Chiesa (RAI televisione, 1960). Episode 3 ‘I giovani e lo studio’ 6:25 to 7:30 minutes, RAI mediateca identification C376.

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Anania, Francesca. Davanti allo schermo: Storia del pubblico televisivo. Roma: Carocci Editore, 2002. Anania, Francesca. Breve storia della radio e della televisione italiana. Roma: Carocci Editore, 2015. Arvidsson, Adam. ‘The Therapy of Consumption Motivation Research and the New Italian, 1958–62’. Journal of Material Culture 5, no. 3 (2000): 251–274. Arvidsson, Adam. ‘Between Fascism and the American Dream: Advertising in Interwar Italy’. Social Science History 25, no. 2 (2001): 151–186. Arvidsson, Adam. ‘From Counterculture to Consumer Culture. Vespa and the Italian Youth Market, 1958–78’. Journal of Consumer Culture 1, no. 1 (2001): 47–72. Arvidsson, Adam. Marketing Modernity Italian Advertising from Fascism to Postmodernity. London and New York: Routledge, 2003. Arvidsson, Adam and Tiziano Bonini. ‘Valuing Audience Passions: From Smythe to Tarde’. European Journal of Cultural Studies 18, no. 2 (2014): 158–173. Asor Rosa, Alberto (a cura di.). Letteratura italiana. Storia e geografia, Volume terzo: L’eta contemporanea. Torino: Giulio Einaudi Editore, 1989. Baldoli, Claudia. A History of Italy. New York: Palgrave McMillan, 2009. Barański, Zygmunt C. and Robert Lumley (eds.). Culture and Conflict in Postwar Italy: Essays on Mass and Popular Culture. London: MacMillan, 1990. Barański, Zygmunt. C and Robert J. West (eds.). The Cambridge Companion to Modern Italian Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Barbieri, Daniele. Breve storia della letteratura a fumetti. Roma: Carocci Editore, 2009. © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018 E. Barron, Popular High Culture in Italian Media, 1950–1970, Italian and Italian American Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90963-9

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318  Further Reading Barra, Luca. Palinsesto: La storia e tecnica della programmazione televisiva. Roma: Editori Laterza, 2015. Bayman, Louis. The Operatic and the Everyday in Post-war Italian Film Melodrama. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2014. Bettetini, Gianfranco (a cura di). American Way of Television: Le origini della TV in Italia. Firenze: Sansoni Editore, 1980. Bianconi, Lorenzo and Giorgio Pestelli (eds.). Opera Production and Its Resources. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1998. Bianconi, Lorenzo and Giorgio Pestelli (eds.). Opera in Theory and Practice, Image and Myth. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2003. Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Translated by Richard Nice. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1984. Bourdon, Jérôme and Paola Della Valle. ‘Modelli Americani alle origini delle televisioni Europee: Un primo passo verso la «cultura Globale»?’. Contemporanea 4, no. 1 (2001): 47–68. Bravo, Anna. Il fotoromanzo. Bologna: Il Mulino, 2003. Buonanno, Milly. Naturale come sei: Indagine sulla stampa femminile in Italia. Rimini and Firenze: Guaraldi, 1975. Buonanno, Milly. La donna nella stampa: Giornaliste, lettrici e modelli di femminilità. Roma: Editore Riuniti, 1978. Buonanno, Milly. Italian TV Drama and Beyond: Stories of the Soil, Stories from the Sea. Bristol: Intellect, 2012. Capuzzo, Paolo (a cura di.). Genere, generazione e consume: L’Italia degli anni sessanta. Roma: Carocci Editore Fondazione Istituto Gramsci, 2003. Capuzzo, Paolo. ‘Youth and Consumption’. In The Oxford Handbook of the History of Consumption. Edited by Frank Trentmann, 601–617. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Carabba, Claudio. Il fascismo a fumetti. Rimini: Guaraldi, 1973. Carter, Nick. Modern Italy in Historical Perspective. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2010. Castronovo, Valerio and Nicola Tranfaglia. La stampa italiana del neocapitalismo. Rome: Editori Laterza, 1976. Caroli, Menico. Proibitissimo! Censori e censurati della radiotelevisione italiana. Milano: Garzanti, 2003. Cavazza, Stefano. Dimensione massa: Individui, folle, consume 1850–1945. Bologna: Il Mulino, 2004. Ceserani, Gian Paolo. Storia della pubblicità in Italia. Roma: Editori Laterza, 1988. CID ricerche pubblicitarie. Indagine televisiva Carosello 1966 (Unpublished Results of Market Research by CID ricerche pubblicitarie s.r.l.). SIPRA Archive.

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Citron, Marcia J. Opera on Screen. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000. Codeluppi, Vanni. Storia della pubblicità italiana. Roma: Carocci Editore, 2013. Collins, Jim (ed.). High-Pop: Making Culture into Popular Entertainment. Malden and Oxford: Blackwell, 2002. Colombo, Fausto. La cultura sottile: Media e industria culturale in Italia dall’Ottocento agli anni novanta. Milano: Studi Bompiani, 2009. Corsi, Mario. Il teatro all’aperto in Italia. Milan-Rome: Rizzoli and Co., 1939. Costanzo, Maurizio e Enrico Vaime. Memorie dal bianco e nero. Roma: RAI ERI, 2010. Crainz, Guido. Storia del miracolo italiano. Culture, identità, transformazioni fra anni cinquanta e sessanta. Roma: Donzelli, 1996. Crapis, Giandomenico. Il frigerifero del cervello: Il PCI e la televisione da «Lascia o raddoppia?» alla battaglia contro gli spot. Roma: Editori Riuniti, 2002. Crespi, Franco and Renzo Carli. Televisione e dinamica dei rapporti familiari, Appunti del Servizio Opinioni n. 189, Giugno. Roma: RAI- Radiotelevisione Italiana Servizio Opinioni, 1973. D’Amico, Masolino. La commedia all’italiana: Il cinema comico in Italia dal 1945 al 1975. Milano: Saggiatore, 2008. D’Attorre, Pier Paolo (a cura di). Nemici per la pelle: Sogno Americano e mito sovietico nell’Italia contemporanea. Milano: Franco Angeli, 1991. De Berti, Raffaele. Dallo schermo alla carta: Romanzi, fotoromanzi, rotocalchi ciematorgrafici: Il film e i suoi paratesti. Milano: Vita e Pensiero, 2000. De Certeau, Michel. The Practice of Everyday Life. Translated by Steven Rendall. California and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998. De Grazia, Victoria. ‘Mass Culture and Sovereignty: The American Challenge to European Cinemas, 1920–1960’. The Journal of Modern History 61, no. 1 (1989): 53–87. De Grazia, Victoria. Irresistible Empire: America’s Advance Through Twentieth Century Europe. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2005. De Iulio, Simona and Carlo Vinti. ‘The Americanization of Italian Advertising During the 1950s and the 1960s’. Journal of Historical Research in Marketing 1, no. 2 (2009): 270–294. Demoskopea, Doxa. ISPI—Indagine sulla stampa periodica in Italia Vol. 3, 1973, 3.1.2. (Unpublished Market Research, 1973). SIPRA Archive. Dorfles, Piero. Carosello. Bologna: Il Mulino, Bologna, 1998. DOXA. “Audience” e modalità di ascolto delle rubriche pubblicitarie televisive (Unpublished Research: November–December 1968). SIPRA Archive. DOXA Istituto per le Ricerche Statistiche e l’Analisi dell’Opinione Pubblica and SIRM Società Italiana Ricerche di Mercato. Indagine nazionale sui lettori dei quotidiani e dei periodici sui telespettatori, radioascoltatori e cinespettatori

320  Further Reading Market Research for the Advertising Association Utenti Pubblicità Associati (UPA) (Unpublished, 1958). SIPRA Archive. DOXA Istituto per le Ricerche Statistiche e l’Analisi dell’Opinione Pubblica. Indagine nazionale OTIPI sui mezzi pubblicitari. Milano: Stab. Pol. G. Colombi, 1963. Duggan, Christopher. A Concise History of Italy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Duggan, Christopher. The Force of Destiny: A History of Italy Since 1796. London: Penguin, 2007. Duggan, Christopher and Christopher Wagstaff (eds.). Italy in the Cold War: Politics, Culture and Society 1948–1958. Oxford and Washington: Berg, 1995. Eco, Umberto. Misreadings. Translated by William Weaver. London: Picador, 1993. Eco, Umberto. Apocalypse Postponed. Edited by Robert Lumley. London: Flamingo, 1995. Eco, Umberto. Apocalittici e integrati: Comunicazioni di massa e teorie della cultura di massa. Milano: Bompiani, 1997. Eco, Umberto. Il Superuomo di massa: Retorica e ideologia nel romanzo popolare. Milano: Bompiani, 2005. Eco, Umberto. Diario minimo. Milano: Tascabili Bompiani, 2008. Fanchi, Mariagrazia. Spettatore. Milano: Il Castoro, 2005. Fasce, Ferdinando, Elisabetta Bini e Bianca Guadenzi (a cura di). Comprare per credere: La pubblicità in Italia dalla Belle Époque a oggi. Roma: Carocci Editore, 2016. Favari, Pietro. Le nuvole parlanti: Un secolo di fumetti tra arte e mass media. Bari: Edizioni Dedalo, 1996. Ferrarotti, Franco. La televisione: I cinquant’anni che hanno cambiato gli usi e i costumi degli italiani. Roma: Newtown and Compton Editori, 2005. Ferritti, Claudio, Umberto Broccoli, and Barbara Scaramucci. Mamma RAI: Storia e storie del Servizio Pubblico Radiotelevisivo. Firenze: Le Monnier, 1997. Fisher, Burton D. Rossini’s the Barber of Seville: Opera Classics Library Series. Miami: Opera Journeys Publishing, 2005. Foot, John M. ‘Mass Cultures, Popular Cultures and the Working Class in Milan, 1950–1970’. Social History 24, no. 2 (1999): 134–157. Foot, John, ‘Television and the City: The Impact of Television in Milan, 1954– 1960’. Contemporary European History 8, no. 3 (1999): 379–394. Foot, John. Milan Since the Miracle: City, Culture and Identity. Oxford: Berg, 2001. Foot, John. Modern Italy. Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. Forgacs, David. Italian Culture in the Industrial Era 1880–1980: Cultural Industries, Politics and the Public. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1990.

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Forgacs, David and Robert Lumley (eds.). Italian Cultural Studies an Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Forgacs, David and Stephen Gundle. Mass Culture and Italian Society from Fascism to the Cold War. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001. Freccero, Carlo. Televisione. Torino: Bollati Boringhiere, 2013. Funcke, Bettina. Pop or Populus: Art Between High and Low. New York: Sternberg Press, 2009. Gans, Herbert. Popular Culture and High Culture: An Analysis and Evaluation of Taste. New York: Basic Books, 1999. Garofalo, Damiano e Vanessa Roghi (a cura di). Televisione: Storia, immaginario, memoria. Soveria Mannelli: Rubbettino, 2015. Gilmour, David. The Pursuit of Italy: A History of a Land, Its Regions and Their Peoples. London: Penguin, 2011. Ginsborg, Paul. A History of Contemporary Italy: Society and Politics 1943–1980. London: Penguin Books, 1990. Giusti, Marco. Il grande libro di Carosello: e adesso tutti a nanna. Milano: Sperling and Kupfer, 1995. Gozzini, Giovanni. La mutazione individualista: Gli italiani e la television 1954– 2011. Roma: Editori Laterza, 2011. Gramsci, Antonio. Selections from Cultural Writings. Edited by David Forgacs, Geoffrey Nowell–Smith, Translated by William Boelhower. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1985. Gramsci, Antonio. The Gramsci Reader: Selected Writings 1916–1935. Edited by David Forgacs. New York: New York University Press, 2000. Grasso, Aldo. Linea allo studio: Miti e riti della televisione italiana. Milano: Bompiani, 1989. Grasso, Aldo. Storia della Televisione Italiana. Milano: Garzanti Libri, 2008. Grasso, Aldo. L’Italia alla TV: La critica televisiva nelle pagine del Corriere della Sera. Milano: Fondazione Corriere della Sera and Rizzoli, 2010. Grasso, Aldo (cura di). Storie e culture della televisione italiana. Milano: Oscar Mondadori, 2013. Grasso, Aldo and Massimo Scaglioni. Schermi d’autore: Intellettuali e televisione: 1954–1974. Roma: Rai ERI, 2002. Grasso, Aldo e Vincenzo Trione (a cura di). Arte in TV: Forme di divulgazione. Milano: Johan and Levi Editore, 2014. Gualerzi, Giorgio e Carlo Marinelli Roscioni. 50 anni di opera lirica alla Rai 1931–1980. Torino: Edizioni RAI ERI, 1981. Gundle, Stephen. ‘L’americanizzazione del quotidiano’. Quaderni Storici 62, no. 2 (1986): 561–593. Gundle, Stephen. Between Hollywood and Moscow: The Italian Communists and the Challenge of Mass Culture. Durham: Duke University Press, 2000.

322  Further Reading Gundle, Stephen. ‘Hollywood Glamour and Mass Consumption in Postwar Italy’. Journal of Cold War Studies 4, no. 3 (2002): 95–118. Gundle, Stephen. Bellissima. Femine Beauty and the Idea of Italy. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2007. Hobsbawm, Eric. Fractured Times: Culture and Society in the Twentieth Century. London: Little Brown, 2013. Iannucci, Amilcare A. (ed.), Dante, Cinema, and Television. Toronto: Toronto University Press, 2004. Iarussi, Oscar. C’era una volta il futuro: L’Italia della Dolce Vita. Bologna: Il Mulino, 2011. Imbriani, Luciano. Sei anni di pubblicità T.V. Milan: I.M.A.—Organizzazione di tecnica pubblicitaria al servizio delle vendite, 1963. Istituto Centrale di Statistica. Statistiche culturali: Stampa periodica produzione libraria Serie 1. Vol. 2, 1955 (Roma: ICS, 1955). Istituto Centrale di Statistica, Statistiche culturali: Stampa periodica produzione libraria Serie 1. Vol. 3, 1957 (Roma: ICS, 1957). Istituto Centrale di Statistica. Annuario delle statistiche culturali 1959. Roma: ICS, 1959. Istituto Centrale di Statistica. Annuario delle statistiche culturali 1960. Roma: ICS, 1960. Istituto Centrale di Statistica. Annuario delle statistiche culturali 1961. Roma: ICS, 1961. Istituto Centrale di Statistica. Annuario delle statistiche culturali 1962. Roma: ICS, 1962. Istituto Centrale di Statistica. Annuario delle statistiche culturali 1963. Roma: ICS, 1963. Istituto Centrale di Statistica. Annuario delle statistiche culturali 1964. Roma: ICS, 1964. Istituto Centrale di Statistica. Annuario delle statistiche culturali Vol. VII 1965. Roma: ICS, 1965. Istituto Centrale di Statistica. Annuario delle statistiche culturali Vol. VIII 1966. Roma: ICS, 1966. Istituto Centrale di Statistica. Indagine speciale sulle letture in Italia al 15 aprile 1965. Roma: ICS, 1965. Istituto Centrale di Statistica. Note e Relazioni No. 2: Indagine speciale su alcuni aspetti delle condizioni di vita della populazione’. Roma: Istituto Centrale di Statistica, 1958. Istituto Poligrafico dello Stato. Quaderni di vita italiana 9: Aspetti delle letture in Italia. Roma: Ist. Polgr. Stato, 1975. Keller Simon, Richard. Trash Culture, Popular Culture and the Great Tradition. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999.

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Kroes, Rob (ed.). High Brow Meets Low Brow: American Culture as an Intellectual Concern. Amsterdam: Free University of Amsterdam, 1988. Lanaro, Silvio. Storia dell’Italia repubblicana: L’economia, la politica, la cultura, la società dal dopoguerra agli anni ’90. Venezia: Marsilio Editore, 1992. Levi, Roberto. Le trasmissioni Tv che hanno fatto (o no) l’Italia: da “Lascia o raddoppia” al “Grande Fratello”. Milano: Rizzoli, 2002. Levine, Lawrence W. Highbrow/Lowbrow: The Emergence of Cultural Hierarchy in America. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988. Lombardo, Mario Pignatel, Fabrizio. La stampa periodica in Italia. Roma: Editori Riuniti, 1985. Lumley, Robert. States of Emergency: Cultures of Revolt in Italy from 1968 to 1978. London and New York: Verso, 1990. Mallach, Alan. The Autumn of Italian Opera: From Verismo to Modernism, 1890– 1915. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2007. Malossi, Giannino (ed.). Volare: The Icon of Italy in Global Pop Culture. New York: Monacelli Press, 1999. Mancini, Paolo and Mauro Wolf. ‘Mass-Media Research in Italy: Culture and Politics’. European Journal of Communication 5 (1990): 187–205. Manzoli, Giacomo. Cinema e letteratura. Roma: Carocci, 2003. Manzoli, Giacomo. Da Ercole a Fantozzi: Cinema popolare e società italiana dal boom economico all neotelevisione (1958–1976). Roma: Carocci Editore, 2012. Marshall, P. David. Celebrity and Power: Fame in Contemporary Culture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997. Martinelli, Alberto, Antonio M. Chiesi, and Stefanizzi Sonia. Recent Social Trends in Italy 1960–1995. Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1999. Martini & Rossi Spa. Mondo Martini: A Journey Through a Unique Style. Torino: Sori Edizioni, 2006. Mauro, Carlangelo. Rifare un mondo: sui Colloqui di Quasimodo. Avellino: ebook Edizioni Sinetesie, 2013. MISURA Studi dell’opinione pubblica e rierche di mercato. L’audience di “TICTAC” “Arcobaleno” e “Carosello”. maggio 1961. SIPRA Archive. Moliterno, Gino (ed.). Encyclopedia of Contemporary Italian Culture. London and New York: Routledge, 2000. Monteleone, Franco. Storia della radio e della televisione in Italia: Costume, società e politica. Venezia: Marsilo Editori, 2009. Morelli, Marcello. L’immagine dell’impresa. Le leve strategiche della comunicazione nell’epoca del cambiamento. Milano: FrancoAngeli s.r.l, 2002. Moretti, Franco. The Bourgeois: Between History and Literature. London: Verso, 2013. Morris, Penelope (ed.). Women in Italy, 1945–1960: An Interdisciplinary Study. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.

324  Further Reading Morris, Penelope. ‘From Private to Public: Alba de Céspedes’ Agony Column in 1950s Italy’. Modern Italy 9, no. 1 (2004): 11–20. Morris, Penelope. ‘A Window on the Private Sphere: Advice Columns, Marriage, and the Evolving Family in 1950s Italy’. The Italianist 27 (2007): 304–332. O’Rawe, Catherine. ‘Avanti a lui tremava tutta Roma: opera, melodrama and the Resistance’. Modern Italy 17, no. 2 (2012): 185–196. Padovani, Cinzia. A Fatal Attraction: Public Television and Politics in Italy. Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield Publishing, 2007. Parca, Gabriella. Italian Women Confess. Translated by Carolun Gaiser. London: Pan Books Ltd, 1963. Parca, Gabriella. Le italiane si confessano. Milano: Feltrinelli, 1964. Pasolini, Pier Paolo. Il caos. Roma: l’Unita Editori Riuniti, 1991. Pasolini, Pier Paolo. Scritti corsari. Milano: Garzanti, 2011. Pasolini, Pier Paolo and Gian Carlo Ferretti (eds.). Le belle bandiere: Dialoghi 1960–1965. Roma: Editori Riuniti, 1996. Penati, Cecilia. Il focolare elettronico: Televisione italiana delle origini e culture di visione. Milano: Vita e Pensiero, 2013. Piazzoni, Irene. Storia delle televisioni in Italia: Dagli esordi alle web tv. Roma: Carocci Editore, 2014. Piccone Stella, Simonetta and Annabella Rossi (cura di.). La fatica di leggere. Roma: Editori Riuniti, 1964. Piccone Stella, Simonetta, Adrian Edwards, and Anna Davis, ‘“Rebels Without a Cause”: Male Youth in Italy Around 1960’. History Workshop 38 (1994): 157–178. Pietro Gennaro e Associati. Indagine sulla pubblicità televisiva “Carosello”. Presentazione dell’indagine Pietro Gennaro e Associati SPA Aprile 1963. SIPRA Archive. Pells, Richard. Not Like Us: How Europeans Have Loved, Hated and Transformed American Culture Since World War II. New York: Basic Books, 1997. Pescatore, Guglielmo. La voce e il corpo: L’opera lirica al cinema. Pasian di Prato: Campanotto Editore, 2001. RAI. Inchiesta sulla pubblicità televisiva (Unpublished Research 1957). SIPRA Archive. RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana. 1956–1957 Due anni di Lascia o raddoppia. Torino: Edizione Radio Italia ERI, 1958. RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana. Annuario Rai 1954–1956. Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1958. RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana. Annuario Rai 1957. Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1958. RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana. Annuario Rai 1958. Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1958. RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana. Annuario Rai 1959. Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1959.

Further Reading

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RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana. Annuario Rai 1960. Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1960. RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana. Annuario Rai 1962. Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1962. RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana. Annuario Rai 1963. Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1963. RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana. Annuario Rai 1964. Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1964. RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana. Annuario Rai 1965. Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1965. RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana. Annuario Rai 1968. Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1968. RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana. Annuario Rai 1969–1970. Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1970. RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana. Annuario Rai 1971. Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1971. RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana. Annuario Rai 1972–75. Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1977. RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana. Dieci anni di televisione in Italia. Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1964. RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana. Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 1. La televisione e il suo pubblico. Torino: ERI Edizioni Radio Italiana 1957. RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana. Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 3. Il pubblico della televisione nelle varie regioni d’Italia con particolare riguardo al Sud. Torino: Edizioni Radio Italiana, 1958. RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana. Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 5. La televisione e il suo pubblico. Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1959. RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana. Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 7. Indagini sull'ascolto della televisione. Torino: ERI Edizioni Radio Italiana, 1961. RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana. Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 10. Il pubblico della Tv nel 1964. Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1965. RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana. Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 11. L’accoglienza del pubblico per i programmi televisivi dal 1961 al 1964. Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1967. RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana. Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 13. La cultura ed i gusti musicali degli italiani. Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1968. RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana. Quaderni del Servizio Opinioni 14. L’accoglienza del pubblico per i programmi televisivi dal 1965 al 1967. Torino: ERI Edizioni RAI, 1968. RAI: Radiotelevisione italiana, a cura del Servizione Documentazione e Studi della Segretaria Centrale RAI. Pubblicità e televisione: La pubblicità TV in Italia dal 1957 al 1966. Roma: ERI Edizioni, 1968.

326  Further Reading RAI: Servizio Opinioni. Appunti del Servizio Opinioni: L‘accoglienza del pubblico alla riduzione televisiva de ‘I Promessi Sposi’. RAI Internal Report, 1967. RAI Archive Turin/Rome. RAI: Servizio Opinioni. Appunti del Servizio Opinioni Number 121: Indagine sugli interessi della populazione italiana 1969. RAI Internal Report, 1971. RAI Archive Turin. RAI: Servizio Opinioni. Appunti del Servizio Opinioni n. 68: ‘Le telefonate del pubblico alla RAI pervenute al servizio opinioni nel 1967’. RAI Internal Report, 1967. RAI Archive, Rome. RAI: Teche. Dossier Rai: 3 gennaio 1954—Cinquanta anni di televisione. Roma: RAI, 2004. Rosselli, John. The Opera Industry in Italy: From Cimarosa to Verdi: The Role of the Impresario. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984. Rosselli, John. Music and Musicians in Nineteenth Century Italy. London: B.T. Batsford, 1991. Sallustio, Ferdinando. Un popolo di concorrenti: 50 anni di storia d’Italia attraverso i telequiz. Milano: Tascabili Bompiani, 2008. Sanzio Viano, Maurizio. A Certain Realism: Making Use of Pasolini’s Film Theory and Practice. Oakland: University of California Press, 1993. Scarpellini, Emanuela. Material Nation: A Consumer’s History of Modern Italy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. School of Barbiana. Letter to a Teacher. Translated by Nora Rossi and Tom Cole. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1973. Scrivano, Paolo. ‘Signs of Americanization in Italian Domestic Life: Italy’s Postwar Conversion to Consumerism’. Journal of Contemporary History 40, no. 2 (2005): 317–340. Segretari Centrale della RAI (a cura di). Televisione e vita italiana. Torino: ERI— Edizioni Radiotelevisione Italiana, 1968. Solimine, Giovanni. L’Italia che legge. Bari: Editori Laterza, 2011. Spada, Celestino. ‘L’Italia unita nel broadcasting radiotelevisivo’. Economia della Cultura 4 (2011): 423–440. Stinchelli, Enrico. Le stelle della lirica: I grandi cantanti della storia dell’opera. Rome: Gremese Editore, 2002. Teardo, Sara. ‘Alla conquista della scena: donne e scrittura negli anni cinquanta e sessanta’. Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, D.Phil thesis, 2009. Teodori, Massimo. Maledetti Americani: Destra, sinistra e cattolici: storia del pregiuzio antiamericano. Milano: Mondadori, 2002. Thébaud Françoise (ed.). A History of Women in the West: V. Toward a Cultural Identity in the Twentieth Century. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1994. Treveri–Gennari, Daniela. Post-war Italian Cinema: American Intervention, Vatican Interests. New York and Abingdon: Routledge, 2009.

Further Reading

  327

Treveri–Gennari, Daniela. Post–war Italian Cinema: American Intervention, Vatican Interests. New York and London: Routledge, 2009. Treveri–Gennari, Daniela. ‘“If You Have Seen It, You Cannot Forget!”: Film Consumption and Memories of Cinema–Going in 1950s Rome’. Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television 35, no. 1 (2015): 53–74. Treveri–Gennari, Daniela and John Sedgwick. ‘Memories in Context: The Social and Economic Function of Cinema in 1950s Rome’. Film History 27, no. 2 (2015): 76–104. Treveri–Gennari, Daniela, Catherine O’Rawe, and Danielle Hipkins. ‘In Search of Italian Cinema Audiences in the 1940s and 1950s: Gender, Genre and National Identity’. Participations, Journal Of Audiences and Reception Studies 8, no. 2 (2011): 539–553. Valentini, Paola. Televisione e gioco: Quiz e società italiana. Bologna: Archetipolibri, 2013. Veltroni, Walter. I programmi che hanno cambiato l’Italia: Quarant’anni di televisione. Milan: Feltrinelli, 1992. Wagnleitner, Reinhold. Coca-Colonization and the Cold War: The Cultural Mission of the United States in Austria After the Second World War. Chapel Hill and London: The University of North Carolina Press, 1994. Williams, Raymond. Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. London: Fontana Paperbacks, 1983. Wolf, Mauro. Gli apparati delle comunizioni di massa. Firenze: Guaraldi Editore, 1977. Wolf, Mauro. Teorie delle comunicazione di massa. Milano: Bompiani, 1985.

Index

A actors Bramieri, Gino, 283 Campanini, Carlo, 230, 231–234 Castelnuovo, Nino, 290–291, 295 Cervi, Gino, 225–227 Chiari, Walter, 224, 227–229, 230, 283 Ekberg, Anita, 216, 283, 288 Ferrero, Anna Maria, 145, 218, 230–231 Gassman, Vittorio, 188–191, 218, 230–231 Gazzolo, Nando, 215, 218, 220–221, 223–224 Girotti, Massimo, 290, 295 Giuffrè, Carlo, 282 Koscina, Sylva, 228 Lisi, Virna, 188, 216, 227 Lollobrigida, Gina, 120, 122 Loren, Sophia, 3, 60, 120, 122, 146, 188, 254, 283, 286, 288 Magnani, Anna, 80, 143, 260 Mangano, Silvana, 255, 297

Martinelli, Elsa, 188–189 Massari, Lea, 290, 292–293 Mastroianni, Marcello, 146, 283 Ninchi, Ave, 223, 228, 283 Pitagora, Paola, 290–291 Rascel, Renato, 283 Tieri, Aroldo, 223, 228 Tognazzi, Ugo, 282 Valli, Romolo, 221 advertising advertising agencies and studios, 185–188 advertising, magazines, 7–9, 12, 178–184, 189–206 advertising, television, 7–8, 12, 95, 111, 188, 215–237; Arcobaleno, 219–220; Carosello, 215–237, 312, 314; Tic-Tac, 219–220 advice columns, letters pages, 21–23, 26–46, 55–56, 59–82 caos, Il (Chaos), 55–56, 78–82 Chi sono? (Who am I?), 66–69 Colloqui con Quasimodo, 71–78

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018 E. Barron, Popular High Culture in Italian Media, 1950–1970, Italian and Italian American Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90963-9

329

330  Index Date retta a me (Take my advice), 69–70 Dialogo (Dialogue), 60–63 falso e vero verde, Il (The false and true green), 71 Italia domanda (Italy asks), 8, 21–23, 26–46, 63, 72 Americanisation, 6, 8–9, 32, 59, 98, 102–103, 105, 107, 183–188, 197, 206, 216–218, 281, 283, 312, 314. See also consumerism American dream, 101, 205, 312 art and artists Botticelli, Sandro, 188, 191–192, 194 Canova, Antonio, 195–196 Capogrossi, Giuseppe, 224–225 da Vinci, Leonardo, 1–3, 13, 40, 188, 219, 315; Mona Lisa, 1–3, 7, 13, 40, 309–310, 315 De Chirico, Giorgio, 41, 100, 124– 125, 189–190, 205, 260–262, 269, 312 Gentilini, Franco, 224 Guttuso, Renato, 189, 216, 224–225, 227 Michelangelo, 3, 40, 191, 219 Renior, Pierre-Auguste, 195 Salvatore, Anna, 224–225, 233, 312 Warhol, Andy, 195–196 Arvidsson, Adam, 9, 178, 183, 188, 203, 219 audience enjoyment, 9–12, 111–114, 126, 155, 286 and Biblioteca di Studio Uno, 282–286, 313 and Carosello advertising, 222–224, 235 and Lascia o raddoppia?, 111–116, 119, 122–128, 151 and opera on television, 139, 150–164

and I Promessi Sposi, 234, 277, 282–301, 312–314 audiences, 7, 11, 24, 42, 43, 58, 81, 98, 110, 112, 122, 125, 127, 128, 139, 140, 142, 144, 146–148, 152, 153, 155, 158, 164, 165, 184, 190, 199, 205, 219, 222, 230, 235, 253, 268, 269, 277, 280–282, 285, 286, 289, 290, 292, 298, 310–314. See also films, television programs and television viewers cinema, 10, 142–147, 164, 218, 227, 287–288, 300–301 DOXA magazine market research, 11–12, 150–161, 187 opera, 139–165 radio, 140, 148, 218 television, 78–79, 93–97, 104, 110– 128, 139, 147–148, 151–165, 218–220, 222–224, 235–237, 277–286, 288–301, 310–315 theatre, 42, 281, 288 B Bolchi, Sandro, 221, 290–297 Bongiorno, Mike, 94, 99, 101–104, 108–110, 114, 116, 118, 120–125, 127, 159, 227, 236, 254, 284 book reading, 13, 44, 200–202, 205, 249–252, 258, 262, 267–269, 298–301, 310–311, 314 statistics 1950s, 267, 310–311 statistics 1960s, 56, 249–252, 267 books, 22, 31–37, 43–44, 61–63, 67–69, 75–78, 81, 200–203. See also book reading, literary classics and writers and poets Eco, Umberto, Apocalittici e integrati, 10–11, 59, 312

Index

Manzoni, Alessandro: I Promessi Sposi. See literary classics Moravia, Alberto, La Romana (The Woman of Rome), 21–22, 43–44 Parca, Gabriella: Le italiane si confessano (Italian Women Confess), 22–23, 63–64 School of Barbiana: Lettera a una professoressa (Letter to a Teacher), 74 Bravo, Anna, 7, 65, 66 Buonanno, Milly, 7, 9, 23, 289 C Cage, John, 126, 127 Capuzzo, Paolo, 24, 184, 264 Carosello. See advertising Catholic Church, 6, 10, 22, 29, 44, 120–122, 128, 141, 217, 236, 246, 255, 287, 312, 313 censorship, 60, 62, 122 censorship of books, 22, 122 influence on television, 21, 29, 120–122 Christian Democrat Party (Democrazia Cristiana, DC), 6, 9, 99, 101, 107, 113, 217, 298 cinema, 7, 10, 29, 142–144, 268, 287–288 cinema directors and screenwriters, 45, 113, 312. See also Pasolini, Pier Paolo; Zavattini, Cesare; and magazine editors, directors and journalists, Damiani, Damiano Fracassi, Clemente, 146 Gallone, Carmine, 142–144, 146–147 Matarazzo, Raffaello, 145 Monicelli, Mario, 287 Pontecorvo, Gillo, 297

  331

Risi, Dino, 288, 297 cinema-going. See audiences, cinema cineopera (opera films), 142–147 Aida (1953), 146 Casa di Ricordi (1953), 146 cineopera box-office, 147 Costa, Mario, 146 Fracassi, Clemente, 146 Gallone, Carmine, 142, 146, 147 Giuseppe Verdi (1953), 145 forza del destino, La (1949), 144 L’elisir d’amore (1947), 146 Madama Butterfly (1954), 166 Matarazzo, Raffaello, 145 Pagliacci (1948), 146 Puccini (1953), 145 class and cultural practice, 4, 58, 140, 180, 199, 200, 203, 205, 278, 285, 311–313 magazine readers and class, 5, 8, 23–26, 32, 33, 37, 56–57, 66–67, 72, 79, 179–183, 199, 203–204, 252–255, 264 television viewers and class, 9–10, 78, 96–97, 111–113, 128, 150–151, 161, 289, 299–300 comics (fumetti), 29, 76, 253, 262, 263, 300, 313 Diabolik, 263 Disney, Walt, 262–269 Donald Duck, 13, 265–267, 269 Mickey Mouse (Topolino), 8, 262–265, 269 consumerism, 6, 9, 11, 58, 101, 184, 216–217, 221, 314 contestants, quiz show, 113–114 Bolognani, Paola, 118–119, 151 Degoli, Lando, 98–102, 127, 312 Garoppo, Maria Luisa, 119–123, 127–128 Mannarelli, Felice, 116–117, 123–124, 153

332  Index D De Grazia, Victoria, 6, 7, 9, 102, 183, 184, 264 DOXA. See audiences E economic miracle, 5, 25, 56–57, 97, 178, 180–182, 193, 204, 221, 248 education, 246–249, 251, 252 changes to legislation, 34, 45, 249 generational change, 8, 13, 44, 110–111, 123, 128 self-education, 23, 35, 45, 61, 81, 110, 116, 123, 128, 310 women and education, 13, 44, 117–123 F Fascism, 30, 70, 141–143, 229, 246, 263 films Boccaccio’70 (1962), 287–288 Comizi d’amore (1964), 64–66 italiane e l’amore, Le (1961), 64 monaco di Monza, Il (1962), 287 monaca di Monza, La (1969), 301 Foot, John, 7, 9, 101 Forgacs, David, 7, 8, 26, 29, 255, 263 fotoromanzi magazines, 6–8, 11, 29, 57, 66, 102, 180, 198, 246, 249, 252, 253, 255, 256, 263, 264, 294, 300, 311 Bolero Film, 6, 8, 13, 29, 34, 56, 57, 63, 66–69, 81, 103, 198, 199, 252, 254, 256 Bolero Telettutto, 252, 253, 295 Grand Hôtel, 57, 253–255 Grandi Firme, Le, 6, 8, 13, 29, 66, 256, 269 Sogno, 8, 253, 254, 256

fumetti. See comics G Garoppo, Maria Luisa. See contestants, quiz show Gramsci, Antonio, 32, 59, 81 Gundle, Stephen, 5, 7, 8, 32, 61, 120, 122, 143, 184, 217, 255 H high culture, 1–13, 310–315 definition, 4 Italian high culture, 3–4, 6–9, 32, 103–107, 116, 139, 179, 184, 188, 216, 219, 268, 310 popularity of, 45, 68, 81–82, 104, 115–116, 140–148, 150–165, 260–267, 269, 288–301, 313–315 symbols of high culture, 1–3, 13, 180, 206, 216–221, 223, 268, 314 use in advertising, 9, 12, 177–180, 187, 188, 190–193, 195, 197–199, 204–206, 215–237 Hollywood, 3, 6, 8, 29, 58, 66, 113, 128, 147, 202, 216, 218, 227, 230, 283, 296, 297, 310 I illustrated news magazines. See magazines intellectuals, 6, 10–12, 22, 31–35, 39, 45, 58–59, 65, 68, 77–81, 105–110, 184–185, 197, 205, 216, 232–233, 254–256, 286, 310–312 apocalyptic, 11, 104–105, 312 attitudes to high culture, 10–11, 31–33, 74, 76, 125, 312

Index

attitudes to mass culture, 10–11, 32, 55–56, 58–59, 76–78, 105–110, 222 changing role, 10, 29, 31–33, 44, 55, 79–82, 184, 312 Croce, Benedetto, 31, 35, 59, 80 Eco, Umberto, Apocalittici e integrati, 10–11, 59, 312 Italian Communist Party, 9, 31, 59, 60, 81, 298 L La Scala, 99–100, 103, 107, 139–140, 144–145, 147, 149, 152, 155, 161 Lascia o raddoppia?, quiz show, 41, 93–96, 97–128, 152, 159, 253. See also audience enjoyment and Lascia o raddoppia?; Bongiorno, Mike; contestants, quiz show Scandal of the contrabassoon, 99, 100, 104 letters pages. See advice columns literacy, 110, 115, 178, 246–249, 251, 290, 301, 311 changes to literacy levels, 25 illiteracy, 114, 178, 247 literacy rates, 13, 117, 248 women and literacy, 117, 248 literary classics, 6, 7, 12, 104, 252, 256, 268, 277, 283, 284, 286, 294, 296, 299, 300, 310, 311, 313 Alighieri, Dante: The Divine Comedy, 41, 108, 124, 227 Dall’Ongaro, Francesco: Il Fornaretto di Venezia, 284, 286 Dickens, Charles: David Copperfield, 289, 292, 297, 299 Dickens, Charles: Great Expectations, 290

  333

Dumas, Alexandre: The Count of Montecristo, 265, 284–285 Dumas, Alexandre: The Three Musketeers, 230, 265, 268, 284–285, 297 Fogazzaro, Antonio: Piccolo mondo antico, 284 Homer: The Odyssey, 283–285 Manzoni, Alessandro: I Promessi Sposi, (The Betrothed), 13, 125, 163, 245–269; comic book version, 262–269; film adaptation, 286, 287, 313; fotoromanzo version, 256–259, 269; magazine serial, 260–262, 269; television adaptation, 277, 282, 284–286, 288–301; television advertising, 228, 245–246 Tolstoy, Leo: War and Peace, 71, 296–297 Luzzatto-Fegiz, Pierpaolo, 187 M Magazines, 56. See also comics (fumetti); fotoromanzi magazines; magazine readers Annabella, 25, 203 Domenica del Corriere, 178 Epoca, 1–3, 6, 8, 26–28, 30, 31, 36, 37, 40, 44, 45, 57, 61, 68, 72, 102, 105, 145, 193, 198 Grazia, 25, 57 Le Ore, 12, 56, 57, 71 Life, 3, 25, 72 L’Illustrazione Italiana, 178, 179 Look, 25, 72 Noi Donne, 30 Novità, 30 Sorrisi e canzoni, 25, 34, 79 Tempo, 6, 8, 12, 26, 55–57, 59, 61, 68, 71, 72, 74, 75, 80–82, 193, 198

334  Index Vie Nuove, 12, 56, 60, 61, 82 magazine advertising. See advertising magazine editors, directors and journalists, 22, 42, 36, 61, 64, 65, 102, 105, 113, 288, 297, 312. See also Pasolini, Pier Paolo; Zavattini, Cesare; publishers Biagi, Enzo, 1–3, 58, 159, 280 Cantoni, Remo, 21, 35, 38, 43 Damiani, Damiano, 29, 255 Pedrocchi, Luciano, 29, 68, 256–258, 264, 312 Ravegnani, Giuseppe, 28 Tofanelli, Arturo, 74, 78 magazine readers, 5, 7, 11, 12, 23, 45, 56, 79, 249, 254, 255, 262, 264, 268, 310, 311, 314. See also publishers changing demographics class, 23–26, 33, 56–57, 251, 254 female readers, 24, 26, 43–44, 60, 66–70, 180, 202, 251–253 magazine reading statistics 1950s, 5, 23–26, 249–255 magazine reading statistics 1960s, 5, 56–57, 67, 180–181, 249, 251–256, 262–264 male readers, 24, 26, 57, 251–253 young people reading magazines, 24, 33–34, 56–57, 61–63, 262–264, 310–311 Martini and Rossi, 140, 186–187, 193–199, 205, 221, 228 mass culture boom in 1950s, 1, 5, 10, 23–26, 56–57, 95–97, 182–183 continued growth 1960s, 10, 66– 67, 78–79, 277–278, 280–282 definition, 4 representation of intellectuals in, 12, 28–33, 56, 124–125, 126–127, 190–191, 198, 231–233, 313

Morris, Penelope, 8, 15, 23, 46, 47, 67, 82, 85 N Newspapers, 15, 58, 71, 73, 93–94, 99–100, 105, 119 Corriere della Sera, 80, 178 La Stampa, 102, 103, 117, 121, 267 low circulation figures, 178 regional nature of, 296 Nun of Monza, 259, 266, 287, 292, 293, 300 O opera, 7, 12, 42, 45, 104, 107, 140, 147, 158, 162, 163, 178, 189, 226, 310, 312, 314 Aida, 141, 145, 159, 162 barbiere di Siviglia, Il (The Barber of Seville), 99, 139, 147, 150, 157, 162, 163, 165 bohème, La, 141, 150, 153, 157, 162, 163, 178, 179 Carmen, 153, 163 Cavalleria rusticana, 141, 152, 164, 226 forza del destino, La, 107, 150, 163 Madama Butterfly, 98, 141, 147, 155, 156, 160, 162, 163, 226 Otello, 99, 152–154, 163 Rigoletto, 152, 162 Tosca, 143, 149, 152, 155, 157, 161, 162, 178 traviata, La, 150, 151, 154, 160, 162 Turandot, 153–155, 164 Vespri Siciliani, I, 145, 164 opera composers

Index

Bellini, Vincenzo, 142, 147, 152, 157 Donizetti, Gaetano, 146, 150, 152, 155, 157 Franchetti, Alberto, 140 Giordano, Umberto, 140, 152, 154 Mascagni, Pietro, 140, 141, 152, 160, 162, 226 Puccini, Giacomo, 12, 140, 141, 145, 147, 150, 152, 154, 155, 157, 160, 162, 164, 165, 177–179, 188, 216, 218, 219, 226, 230, 236, 237 Rossini, Gioachino, 99, 139, 150, 152, 155, 157, 160, 162, 163, 189 Verdi, Giuseppe, 10, 12, 70, 99, 100, 107, 140, 141, 145, 147, 150, 152, 154, 155, 157, 159, 160, 162, 164, 165, 188, 205, 216, 219, 226, 230, 245, 280 opera films. See cineopera (opera films) opera lip-syncing, 146–150, 157 P Parca, Gabriella, 22, 63–64 Pasolini, Pier Paolo, 12, 55, 56, 59–61, 63–66, 68, 70, 78–82, 221, 312. See also advice columns, letters pages caos, Il (Chaos), Tempo magazine, 55–56, 78–82 Comizi d’amore (1964, Love meetings), 64–66 Dialogo (Dialogue), Vie Nuove magazine, 60–63 publishers, 7, 32, 313 Mondadori, Arnoldo, 27, 32, 190, 194, 252, 256, 263 Mondadori publishing house, 7, 12, 29–32, 67, 71, 72, 81,

  335

200–202, 252, 256, 257, 259, 261–263, 299, 310 Rizzoli publishing house, 7, 32, 72, 200, 202, 298 Q Quasimodo, Salvatore, 12, 39, 56, 70–78, 80, 260, 312 R radio, 15, 140, 148, 157, 168, 281 RAI (Radiotelevisione Italiana), 114, 152, 155, 291, 300, 312 censorship, 122, 280 Guala Code, 155, 278–280 Pugliese, Sergio, 284, 286, 295 RAI radio, 140, 146–148, 164, 192–194 RAI television, 9, 45, 79, 94, 95, 100, 104, 106, 111, 113, 116, 127, 148, 152, 157, 159, 164, 198, 217, 219, 221, 277–279, 286, 288, 294, 295, 300, 310, 313 Servizio Opinioni, 11, 112 S Shakespeare, William, 10, 12, 36, 38, 62, 71, 103, 190, 201, 205, 215, 218, 220, 221, 223, 226, 230, 231, 236, 279, 280, 288 Antony and Cleopatra, 228 Hamlet, 191, 221 Othello, 71, 228, 230, 280 Richard II, 215, 220 Romeo and Juliet, 223, 229 singers Callas, Maria, 106, 107, 145, 157, 193

336  Index Caruso, Enrico, 140, 229 Corelli, Franco, 149, 155 Del Monaco, Mario, 40, 145, 147, 153, 160, 161 Gigli, Beniamino, 140, 141, 143, 193 Kessler, Alice and Ellen (The Kessler Twins), 281–284, 302 Mina (Mina Mazzini), 151, 159, 216, 281, 297 Moffo, Anna, 155–156 Quartetto Cetra, 282, 284, 285 Tebaldi, Renata, 40, 146, 147 socio-economic status use of classifications, 5 T television programs, 8, 97. See also advertising, Carosello, Tic Tac, Arcobaleno; audiences; Lascia o raddoppia?; literary classics; and television viewers Biblioteca di Studio Uno (Studio Uno Library), 280–286, 313 Canzonissima, 235, 280, 282 Enciclopedia di Lascia o raddoppia? (Encyclopaedia of Lascia o raddoppia?), 106, 157, 294 Promessi Sposi, I (The Betrothed), 13, 163, 221, 290, 291, 294, 295, 297, 301 Studio Uno, 280–282 television viewers, 7, 11, 93, 127, 128, 139, 151, 165, 219, 223, 236, 258, 277, 278, 282, 293, 299–301, 311, 314. See also audiences collective television viewing, 95–97 television ownership, 97, 147, 150, 161, 163, 254, 278, 311

viewers in the 1950s, 94–98, 104, 147, 219, 278 viewers in the 1960s, 78–79, 219, 278, 280–282, 292, 299 W women, 34, 112, 128, 182, 255, 301, 311 housewives, 182, 183, 202, 220, 222, 235, 278, 292 shifting social expectations, 23, 44, 182 women and education, 114, 117, 123, 248 women and reading, 21, 67, 251, 311 women and television, 117–123 writers and poets, 281. See also Pasolini, Pier Paolo Alighieri, Dante, 10, 12, 36, 38, 41, 70, 103, 124, 192, 218, 224, 227–230, 236, 246, 264, 268, 296 Boccaccio, Giovanni, 221 Bontempelli, Massimo, 36, 39 D’Annunzio, Gabriele, 37, 80, 115 Dellarno, Enrico, 56, 66–68 Dickens, Charles, 37, 290, 299, 313 Dumas, Alexandre, 284, 290, 296 Gadda, Emilio, 37, 39 Gatto, Alfonso, 40, 43 Hemingway, Ernest, 37, 69, 197, 260, 264, 296, 297 Homer, 38, 115, 279, 280 Leopardi, Giacomo, 201, 232, 233 Mann, Thomas, 31, 37, 281, 297 Moravia, Alberto, 6, 21–22, 33, 37, 39, 40, 43–46, 59, 65, 80, 105, 227 Pirandello, Luigi, 36, 37, 70, 115, 123, 229, 288

Index

Quasimodo, Salvatore, 12, 39, 56, 70–78, 80, 260, 312 Ungaretti, Giuseppe, 31, 38–39, 61, 65, 70

  337

Z Zavattini, Cesare, 28–32, 63–64, 66, 312. See also advice columns, letters pages Italia domanda