Giorgia Moll, the Italian actress known for her turns in Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s The Quiet American and Jean-Luc Godard’s Contempt, died June 2 in Rome, her family announced. She was 88.
Moll also appeared alongside American muscleman Steve Reeves in The White Warrior (1959) and The Thief of Baghdad (1961) and was a featured player in another notable Italian sword-and-sandal epic adventure, The Cossacks (1960).
Italian TV viewers remember the dark-haired Moll for her turns alongside Carlo Dapporto in Pasta del Capitano toothpaste sketches — “With that mouth, she can say whatever she wants” — that aired each night on the RAI advertising program Carosello that followed the 8 p.m. news.
In The Quiet American (1958), the first film adaptation of Graham Greene’s 1955 novel of the same name, Moll portrayed Phuong, a Vietnamese woman desired by an American citizen (Audie Murphy) and a British journalist (Michael Redgrave). It was shot in Saigon as the first feature made in Vietnam.
And she played Francesca, the secretary of the boorish American producer Jeremiah Prokosch (Jack Palance), in the New Wave classic Contempt (1963) that also starred Brigitte Bardot, Michel Piccoli and Fritz Lang.
Born in Rome on Jan. 14, 1938, to an Italian father and German mother, Moll worked as a model and made her film debut at age 17 in Non scherzare con le donne (1955). Two years later, she appeared in Mariti in città (1957), the first of several features she did with director Luigi Comencini.
She starred with Robert Preston, Tony Randall and Walter Matthau in Island of Love (1963) and also stood out in the Damiano Damiani-directed crime drama Lipstick (1960), Cover Girls (1963) and Dark Purpose (1964).
Moll recorded several singles in the 1960s and acted steadily through 1970 in films made in Italy, France and Germany before dedicating herself to photography. She made one final onscreen acting appearance in a 1985 Italian telefilm.
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