Anna Magnani - Early Years

Early Years

There is uncertainty over Magnani's parentage and birthplace. Some sources hold that Magnani was born in Rome to Marina Magnani. However, film director Franco Zeffirelli, who claims to have known her well, states in his autobiography that Magnani was born in Alexandria, Egypt to an Italian Jewish mother and Egyptian father, and that "only later did she become Roman, when her grandmother brought her from Egypt and raised her in one of the Roman slum districts." Magnani herself denied she was born in Egypt, stating that her mother was married in Egypt but returned to Rome. In a filmed interview, available on the Internet, Magnani insisted that she was born in Rome, specifically at Porta Pia, and did not know how the story of her Egyptian birth got started. Her formal education lasted only until age 14, when she enrolled in a French convent school in Rome. There, she learned to speak French and play piano, which she later played expertly. She also developed a passion for acting from watching the nuns stage their Christmas play.

She was a "plain, frail child with a forlornness of spirit", which affected her grandparents who pampered her with food and clothes. While growing up she felt more at ease around "more earthly" companions, often befriending the "toughest kid on the block". This trait carried over into her adult life where she proclaimed, "I hate respectability. Give me the life of the streets, of common people."

At age 17, she went on to study at the Eleanora Duse Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in Rome for two years. To support herself, Magnani sang in nightclubs and cabarets leading to her being dubbed "the Italian Édith Piaf". However, her friend, actor Micky Knox, writes that she "never studied acting formally," and began her early career in Italian music halls singing Roman songs. "She was instinctive," he writes. "She had the ability to call up emotions at will, to move an audience, to convince them the life on the stage was as real and natural as life in their own kitchen."

Stage

She was considered an "outstanding theatre actress" in Anna Christie and The Petrified Forest, and had a big career in variety shows.

Early film roles

In 1933 she was acting in experimental plays in Rome when she was discovered by Italian filmmaker Goffredo Alessandrini. He was one of the first Italian filmmakers to make use of sound. He then directed her in her first major film role in La Cieca di Sorrento (The Blind Maid of Sorrento) in 1934. They were married the year before (1933). In 1941, Magnani starred in Teresa Venerdì, (Friday Theresa) which the writer and director, Vittorio De Sica, called Magnani's "first true film". In it she plays Loletta Prima, the girlfriend of Di Sica’s character, Pietro Vignali. De Sica had called her laugh, "loud, overwhelming, and tragic".

Anna Magnani was Marina Magnani's daughter. And she was Catholic. Anna Magnani was born in Rome, she said during an interview "I wanto to be born in Rome..because I was born in Rome!". Her father's name was Pietro Del Duce and when she discovered that fact she interrupted searches about this man because she did not want to be "Duce's daughter!" as she said.

Sources: Anna Magnani. Vissi d'Arte Vissi d'Amore by Chiara Ricci, Edizioni Sabinae La Magnani. Il romanzo di una vita by Patrizia Carrano, Lindau.