Marisa Pavan (1932-), Beautiful Italian Actress Most Active in the 1950s

[DonRocks]

Last night, I watched a *great* episode of Alfred Hitchcock Presents (Season 1, Episode 16) starring an impossibly beautiful Marisa Pavan - this is an episode that I urge people to watch on Hulu - it also stars John Cassavetes who, to my surprise, was subsequently nominated for Academy Awards in three different categories (supporting actor, screenwriter, and director). 

Anyway, I was reading about Marisa Pavan on Wikipedia, and two things stood out about her so much that I wanted to begin a thread about her:

I don't normally care who's married to whom, but in this case, it's not only worth a mention - it's also worth a nod of honor: Pavan was married to French director Jean-Pierre Aumont for fully 45 years, from 1956 (the year after the Hitchcock episode debuted) until Aumont's death in 2001. It warms my heart to see couples get married and *stay* married for such a long period of time - if you look at pictures of both Pavan and Aumont, it's not hard to see that there was a mutual physical attraction back in 1956, but when people age and lose their youthful appearance, then something else must necessarily take over as the glue holding together the machine. Congratulations to this couple on a long, and hopefully happy, marriage, and my only regret is that Ms. Pavan has been forced to live so long as a widow. (In the interest of full disclosure, the couple once divorced, but remarried.)

The other remarkable thing is that Pavan is an identical twin to Pier Angeli, who unfortunately passed away 44 years ago (it must be an especially odd feeling having an identical twin die, and it's just weird to be predeceased by an identical twin for so many decades). Anyway, when Pier Angeli was assigned the role of Anna Magnani's daughter in "The Rose Tattoo," but unable to play the part, the producers simply gave the role to her twin sister, Marisa Pavan - and that turned out to be Pavan's big breakthrough. Not only was Pavan nominated for an Academy Award for "Best Supporting Actress," she also accepted the "Best Actress" award for Anna Magnani, who was unable to attend the event. "The Rose Tattoo," and the Academy Awards which followed, is considered to be Pavan's "breakthrough moment" - it wouldn't surprise me at all if Pavan and Aumont met each other at the ceremony.