Vogue, March 15th, 1968 issue

Marisa Mell wearing bouffant hair by Suga of Kenneth, photographed by Arthur Elgort for the March 15th, 1968 Vogue issue!

Stunning photo of Marisa Mell (6)

This photo is taken from Marisa Mell's first Italian movie "Casanova '70" in the mid sixties! Did you know that the director Mario Monicelli, co-writer with Tonino Guerra, was nominated for the Academy Award for writing the best original screenplay in 1965? The Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay is the award for the best script not based upon previously published material. He did not win. The Oscar went that year to Frederic Raphael for his movie script "Darling". Monicelli did win later that year the award as best director at the San Sebastian Film Festival in Spain together with Marcello Mastroianni as best actor.

Thanks to André Schneider for providing this beautiful picture!

Stunning photo of Marisa Mell (5)

During the career of Marisa Mell, she had dozens of great pictures taken but the photo of this entry has to be one the most beautiful pictures ever taken of her. This is why it graced the cover of the German book "Marisa: Rückblenden auf eine Freundschaft" written by her college friend Erika Pluhar. You can easily see why she was one the most beautiful women in the world and was even courted by the Shah of Iran, Mohammed Resa Pahlavi!

Stunning photo of Marisa Mell (4)

There are not that many photos of Marisa Mell with behind the scenes motives when preparing for a new scene in a movie, except maybe for the film "Danger: Diabolik!" for which there are quite a few behind the scenes photos available even with it's director Mario Bava who hated being photographed. This photo shows Marisa Mell preparing for a scene from the comedy movie "Bella, ricca, lieve difetto fisico cerca anima gemella" from 1973 where she plays a transvestite trying to seduce a con man who lures desperate housewives into marrying him so he can later robe them. Playing a transvestite, her hair is being prepared by a female hairdresser to look rather flat to the head so the attention is being drawn to her masculine looking face indicating that she was born a man. Nevertheless this photo shows once again Marisa Mell at the height of her beauty in the 70's.

Stunning photo of Marisa Mell (3)

This is another great photo of Marisa Mell from the mid 70's by the great Italian photographer Angelo Frontoni. This photo went around the world and graced a lot of magazine covers. It became one of the famous photos of Marisa Mell and it is not difficult to imagine why!

Stunning photo of Marisa Mell (2) - Strike A Pose!

Todays picture in the series "Stunning photo of Marisa Mell" comes this time from one of her two most succesfull films either "Danger: Diabolik!" or "Una sull'altra". It is not very clear from which movie this promotional studio photo is because in each movie she wears the same blond wig! (For more info on the wig see my blog entry "No chemicals on my hair" from July 15th 2008). The picture does not give any more clues to link it to one of the before mentioned movies. The only thing we can tell for sure is that it is a promotional photo from 1968 or 1969. In this photo Marisa Mell wears for that era a rather avant garde sweater and strikes a pose what Madonna would copy more than 25 years later with her choreography for her song "Vogue".

Stunning photo of Marisa Mell (1)

Marisa Mell was such a stunning beauty that during her career she did a lot of photographic work for covers and layouts on dozens of magazines like Vogue, Harper's Bazar, Life, Playboy, Cine Revue, Stern, Photoplay... and many, many more. During the course of this blog some of these stunning photo's will be published. So we start with one of, in my opinion, the most stunning pictures I have ever seen of Marisa Mell and I have seen a lot of great pictures of her. What makes this picture so special? Well, it shows Marisa Mell in the mid '60's during summer time. She is not a young girl any more like in the movie "Am Galgen hängt die Liebe" (1960) nor the sex kitten in Danger: Diabolik! (1968) but something in between both kind of women. Marisa Mell is standing on the banks of a port in a southern country problably somewhere in Italy. She is dressed in a typical flower power suit from that period and her skin tone is rather dark so she already got some sunshine during her stay. She is relaxed and wearing her favorite kind of earrings. Her face, eyes, beauty and wardrobe are in harmony together and create a fascinating picture of the 60's. A natural beauty from a time long gone by when actresses were still actresses of flesh and blood and not plastic empty dolls like today due to overkill on plastic surgery.