Akademik

(1925-)

(Born Maria Luisa Attanasio.) Actress. Still in her teens, Del Poggio studied acting for a year at the Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia, during which she came to the notice of Vittorio De Sica, who immediately cast her as the spirited young schoolgirl in Maddalena zero in condotta (Maddalena, Zero for Conduct, 1940) and then in a similar role in Un garibaldino al convento (A Garibaldian in the Convent, 1942). In 1945 she met, and soon after married, director Alberto Lattuada, who cast her in the role of the prostitute-sister of the protagonist of his gangster melodrama Il bandito (The Bandit, 1946). Del Poggio continued to take on dramatic roles in several of Lattuada's subsequent films, Senzapieta (Without Pity, 1948) and Il mulino del Po (The Mill on the Po, 1948), but reverted to a lighter vein in Luci del varieta (Variety Lights, 1951), which Lattuada coproduced and codirected with Federico Fellini and in which Del Poggio plays a pretty, aspiring stage actress who lures an infatuated Peppino De Filippo away from the plainer Giulietta Masina.

   After strong performances in Giuseppe De Santis's Caccia tragica (Tragic Hunt, 1947) and Roma ore 11 (Rome 11:00, 1952), she also tried her hand at acting in stage revues, with a measure of success. However, her film career seemed to falter after this. She appeared in several minor French films and in Cose da pazzi (Craziness, 1953), a rather lackluster comedy directed by Georg Wilhelm Pabst, before making what would be her last film for the silver screen, Hugo Fregonese's I girovaghi (The Wanderers, 1956), where she shared top billing with Peter Ustinov. In the following years she appeared only in a small number of films made for televison, including a remake of the classic Piccolo mondo antico (Old-Fashioned World, 1957), and an Italian version of David Copperfield (1965).

   Historical Dictionary of Italian Cinema by Alberto Mira