Although Marisa Mell is almost gone 20 years it is amazing that she still is able to touch the hearts of many people around the world by her beauty, character and performance on the silver screen. She even keeps being an artistic inspiration for fans who have never been to an original screening of her movies in the cinema's many years ago but became fans after viewing one of her movies in recent years. Let's meet one of those younger fans!

Hey Jarrod, thanks for granting this interview and showing your video! What can you tell about yourself?

I'm just a real big fan of rare and unusual European cinema from the 60s and 70s (mostly French and Italian). I live in New York and I'm in the process of finishing up a college degree in a Bachelor of Arts in film and media studies. I am honored to share my Clarkes' video on your Marisa Mell Blog, and thanks for watching!

What gave you the idea to combine the great music of the group "The Clarkes" with a Marisa Mell movie?

The lead singer and lyricist of the band (Tony Johnson) is one my very dearest friends and my ex-roommate. When I lived with him, he was in the midst of writing this album and demoing it, as I was collecting hundreds of films and editing together clips. Well my friend put out the Clarkes in 2003 and the two song writers split ways (another friend Peter Weldon is the musician and songwriter). Having realized that there were no live performances available on video, or any videos made for any of their songs, I decided to take it upon myself to make videos out of rare european films that have had little attention in the world. The Clarkes is an album that I like quite a bit, not just because the songwriters are my friends, but I sincerely think it's a beautifully written, harmonized and performed record. I really wanted more people to hear it and this is why I'm sharing it with the world.

What is it about Marisa Mell that fascinates you?

As for Marisa Mell, well, she is just quite simply beautiful! With every Clarkes' video, I dedicate each one to a specific favorite actor or actress of mine. When I started out this project, I knew that I would specifically do a video for Marisa Mell (as well as Claudine Auger, Edwige Fenech, Stefania Casini and Barbara Bouchet). Though, what makes Marisa Mell a little different, is that she seems the most mysterious. Where other actresses seem to share an external expressionism, I've always found Marisa to be expressive in an internal way. Though I only have a handful of Marisa's films, she completely fascinates me with her acting and beauty. The scene I used from "The Great Swindle" is one that just happened to strike a cord with me, and when I listened to the song the images of the film came to mind, and I couldn't really say "why." I crossed the two together (song and film) and it really seemed to work for me.

What are your favorite Marisa Mell movies?

As for the Marisa Mell films that I like, well "Danger Diabolik" was the first one I saw back in 1991, and I was pretty struck by her. I really love "Secret Agent Superdragon," "One On Top Of The Other," "The Great Swindle," "Seven Bloodstained Orchids," "Diary Of An Erotic Murderess," "Born Winner," "Casanova & Co.," and "Beast With A Gun." My Marisa Mell holy grail is to find "Anyone Can Play," which is one that I've been searching years for.

What do you think of the Marisa Mell Blog?

Your Marisa Mell blog looks absolutely great! I hadn't seen some of the awesome poster art before! Real nice job with great dedication.

Where can interested people see more of your work?

I have a YouTube Channel called "igotmobilephone" with more than 75 videos ranging from trailers, clips of Eurocult movies and more great songs from "The Clarkes".

I would be honored if your readers came to visit my channel at:

http://www.youtube.com/user/igotmobilephone

Thanks Jarrod and good luck with future projects!

Thanks to André Schneider for signaling this video to me!

Marta or ...dopo di che, uccide il maschio e lo divora (1971) - Avco Embassy Television Pressbook

In 1971 Marisa Mell was at the height of her career! That year she played in two Spanish movies, filmed back to back, which was rather exceptional for that time, with Stephen Boyd as her co-star. One was "Historia de una traición" or internationally known as "the Great Swindle" the other was "...dopo di che, uccide il maschio e lo divora" and internationally known as "Marta". The story of a sister's tortured attempt to discover what happened to her twin. During this expierence, she is suspected of murder herself; falls in love with her sister's husband, only to discover he is impotent and insane. The final discovery of her murdered twin, in the house, climaxes a horror tale of twisted minds and souls. This period in the life of Marisa Mell was special because she fell madly in love with actor Stephen Boyd during the production of the first movie "the Great Swindle". Due to a sometimes special atmosphere on set with often intimate scenes, actors often fall in love during a production. Unfortunately they mostly end it when a production is wrapped and everyone drifts to other productions and projects. So Marisa Mell was no exception to this rule of dating on a film set. She had often a affaire with a co-star. Her affair during the production of "Danger: Diabolik!" with John Phillip Law is one of the best known examples. This time the romance was not just a fling. Later she would devote a whole chapter in her autobiography "Coverlove" to her time together with Stephen Boyd. In this chapter she tells us that by the end of the second production "Marta" Stephen Boyd asked her to marry him. Apperently she accepted. It was not a traditional marriage in a church but a gypsy wedding. Marisa Mell describes how they cut their wrists, shared their blood and how romantic the little time was that she spent with him. Although the affair was doomed from the beginning she tells the readers that she never quite got over the affair and makes special note of his death in 1977. In 1972 the affair came to an end and she never saw him again. A special trivia is the fact that one time after the death of Stephen Boyd, Marisa Mell believed that he still spoke to her from beyond and that theirs was a very special kind of love, no matter how short-lived. Here are some photos from the 1974 pressbook released by Avco Embassy Television issued to all the networks and television stations in America who were showing this film on TV.


Next to pictures from the movie, a pressbook had often ads, texts and templates to promote a film in local newspapers and/or magazines with the name of the cinema at the bottom of the ad. Here are two examples for this movie together with the templates for the printers to use.

Angelo Frontoni: Master of Light on Paper

During the 60’s and 70’s Italian cinema was at it’s pinacle! Cinecita, at the borders of the eternal city Rome, was producing each year dozens of movies for each genre possible. Those movies would later be called “Cinema Bis” because they were often copies of American blockbusters like Exorcist, Jaws, Star Wars, …. When you were on one of these sets at that time, you could often see a little dark haired balding man with a photo camera in his hand running around and taking at regulary intervals pictures of these sets, cast and crew during and between filming. His name was "Angelo Frontoni" (°Rome 1929) and one of the best photographers from that era in Italy and probably the world. During his long career, untill his death by heart attack in his beloved Rome in 2002 at the age of 73, he worked with almost every actress in the Euro-cult scene like Brigitte Bardot, Sophia Loren, Claudia Cardinale, Gina Lollobrigida, Virna Lisi, Anna Magnani, Catherine Spaak, Scilla Gabel, Silvana Mangano, Monica Vitti, Edwige Fenech, Ornella Mutti, Eleonara Giorgi, Monica Guerritore, Serena Grandi, Fransceca Dellare, Elsa Martinelli, Ursula Andress, Ornella Vanoni, Iva Zanicchi, Monica Belluci, Maria Grazia Cucinotta, Valeria Marini, and of course...Marisa Mell. Life in Rome was great and a beautiful back ground for his pictures. He started out as black and white photographer but during the following years switched to colour. As you can see from his pictures he had always the beauty of the actresses as his main goal. He loved women and he got to know them all very intimitely. At every moment of the day with its special day light he could create a beautiful picture. He was a real master of his trade.

With such stunning photos it was not strange that most of the top magazines dealing in female beauty, ranging from Playboy, High Society to Vogue, Harper's Bazar, came knocking at his door to do photo shoots for them. His pictures were always a sure sell. Living in the liberated 60's and 70's people became aware that being nude and nudity was not something to be ashamed of but a natural thing. So nude photography became, at least in Europe, socially accepted and people enjoyed seeing nude women, and actresses in special, in movies, books, magazines.... like the ground breaking movie "Emmanuelle" with Dutch actress Sylvia Kristel. The above list of actresses he worked with gives you an idea that almost all of them were accepting photo shoots in the nude, not only because it was fashionable, but because it was also done by a master of the trade. Where could you go wrong? You were sure that the pictures were done with a lot of respect for the subject at hand and often history was made in retrospect.

For Marisa Mell nudity was not a problem neither in film nor in photos as shown in this photo from the 1970 movie "The Great Swinddle" with Stephen Boyd. When the offers for nude photo shootings came in among others from Angelo Frontoni, Marisa Mell was not opposed to it. By the way those photo shoots were easy money - very well payed for little work. In later years, Marisa Mell relied on nude photography to earn a living after her career was at an all time low but not in the mid '70's with Angelo Frontoni. There are two photo shoots which made headlines, the one where she wears her hair in Indian style braids with a red back ground and the other is a photo shoot with Helmut Berger together full frontal naked in bed as a publicity stunt for the movie "La belva col mitra" in 1977. The photo shoot with the Idian style braids went around the world and appeared one way or the other in a lot of magazines starting in Italian "Playboy", then to German "High Society" and then all the way down to local yellow press magazines.

Below you can see three covers of the same photo shoot! Although the covers look alike, when you look closer you can see that they are not and that they are each a little different:

At the end of his life Angelo Frontoni had an enormous back catalogue of photos of stars and starlets from years gone by. These photos were often collected in books and magazines, not always to the delight of some stars which liked to forget that they were ever made.