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SOPHIA LOREN: At a Glance

Mon, Nov 30, 2015bySleuth


Our previous blog post uncovered publicity-mad Jayne Mansfield, who finally went “over the top” when she upstaged the Hollywood arrival of SOPHIA LOREN. The Italian import’s welcoming words were: “Everything you see I owe to pasta.”



Informing the prying press that her measurements were “38-24-38,” Sophia said: “Is it true that Mansfield has two inches on me? If so, what brand of spaghetti does she use?”



The pair would come to the fork in the road on April 12, 1957, when Romanoff’s ritzy restaurant on Rodeo Drive hosted a swank dinner to welcome Sophia to the Statesand Mansfield made a Dline to Loren. “Paramount had organized a party for me,” Sophia recalls. “All of cinema was there, it was incredible. And then in comes Jayne Mansfield, the last one to come. For me, that is when it got amazing. She came right for my table.”



“She knew everyone was watching. And now she was barely,” Sophia sighsand signs(
Lot111)


As gossip guru James Bacon eye-witnessed: “Sophia, full bosomed, presented a threat to Jayne. Naturally, the photographers all wanted to get shots of the sexy Italian. This infuriated Jayne, who acted as one possessed” {she later became a Satanist, and some speculated, lover of demonic Anton LaVey, shortly before her death}.


“Every time the photographers shot the seated Sophia at her table at Romanoff’s,” Bacon lettuce know about the tomato [ahem], “Jayne would rush in and lean over with her big breasts almost drooping on Sophia’s shoulder.


“It resulted in one of the most remarkable pictures ever taken,” the Associated Press columnist concluded, “with Sophia peering down into Jayne’s mammaries.” “Listen, look at the picture,” Loren confided on the 57thanniversary of the ’57 incident last year. “Where are my eyes? I’m staring at her nipples because I am afraid they are about to come onto my plate. I’m so frightened that everything in her dress is going to blowBOOM! and spill all over the table. Many, many times,” Sophia states, “I am given this photo to autograph it. And I never do.” Making the signed version inLot 27all the more rare and valuable!


Instantly immortalized as ‘The Battle of the Bulge,’ and likely the most literal instance of “twoupmanship,” the iconic image spawned the term “Side Eye” and has adorned the covers of books


and been paid homage to in Anna Nicole Smith’s 1993 Guess? Jeans ad {with Sky Nellor}


Heidi Klum’s 2002 double take


Julie Bowen Sofia Vergara in the 2014 Modern Family episode ‘iSpy’


as well as parodied by the love triangle of True Blood


and modern burlesque queens Masuimi Max busty blonde La Cholita.


Why, it even seems as if similarly stacked Sophia picked up a pointer or two from jiggly Jane!

There’s Lots more of luscious Loren (#’s 61, 112, 717) at:http://www.regencystamps.com/Category/All-1.html