On october 25th 1966, Spain's and the world's greatest living modern artist, Pablo Piccaso became 85 years old. This was a historic event that needed to be celebrated by the arts community and the international jet set. Pablo Picasso was regarded in 1966 as a living legend. The "legend" status was confirmed after his death several years later in 1973 when he left a legacy of estimated 50,000 pieces, comprising 1,885 paintings, 1,228 sculptures, 2,880 ceramics, roughly 12,000 drawings, many thousands of prints, and numerous tapestries and rugs. So the French government found it her duty to honor this man by giving him an international exhibition compromising of more than 100 pieces of his best work gathered all over the world from private collectors, musea and even from Picasso's own private collections.
Mounting this exhibition was logistically as an enormous task a nightmare, not to mention the security risks and the steep insurance fee to be payed to cover all these art works against theft, agression and arson. But finally on October 25th 1966 the exhibition "Hommage à Pablo Picasso" held in the Grand Palais and Petit Palais in Paris not far from the Champs Elysée as a retrospective of his artistic career could open its doors and welcome the man in who's honor all this was done.
The complete beau monde of the 60's was invited on opening night starting with the French president and his kabinet members over other famous creative artists down to actors and actresses on the A-list, including Marisa Mell.
Although located in Rome, Italy and mostly working for the Italian movie industry, Marisa Mell had in the spring of 1966 a French movie "Objectif: 500 millions" premièred on the Champs Elysée. Although not a financial success it still had drawn attention in the public eye to the fate of the French soldiers and mercenaries who had fought in the Algerian war and the way the French state had treated them once back from Algeria often with no means to survive than starting a criminal career. The part of Marisa Mell was not overlooked by the yellow press who always could use a new fresh beautiful face to write stories about. So she was invited to attend this exhibition. What not many people know is that Marisa Mell had always been interested in painting and paintings since early childhood and meeting Pablo Picasso must have been a joy for her.
The exhibition was a huge success during several months until February of 1967 when it closed its doors in Paris to be moved to Amsterdam, Netherlands to have a second life during several months in the Dutch capital.
Marisa Mell was a child of the "Flower Power" era of the 60's and early 70's when being totally nude as an established actress was still very revolutionary and mainly not done! Together with other famous actresses of that moment like Ursula Andress, Silva Koscina, Elke Sommer, Virna Lisi,... and many others she had no problem in being photographed in the nude by famous art photographers like Angelo Frontoni for magazines like Playboy, Hustler, Mayfair.... So when the promotion of her latest movie "Historia de una Traicion" from 1971 was discussed by the producers, they asked her, in the vain of the steamy love scenes in the movie, to do a nude photo shoot to draw the attention to their latest product! This was not a problem as you can see by the enclosed pictures in this entry. These pictures have not been seen in 40 years and have surfaced only recently. They show a very relaxed and playfull Marisa Mell completely at ease with her own nudity in front of the camera.
The year 1972 was a busy year for Marisa Mell. One of her prestigeous productions that year was the made-for-TV-movie "Ich möchte eine Möwe sein!" about the life and death of Austrian Empress Elisabeth von Österreich. Romy Schneider had gained world fame during the 1950's with her interpration of this icon and gave her a definitive face and image. Marisa Mell had high hopes about this movie to boost her career but the end result was very disappointing. The critics had a feeding frenzy with this movie! Not only was the direction of the movie by Jörg A. Eggers, later replaced by Theodor Grädler very stale and the script by Willy Fritsch very boring as life must have been at court during that time, but what really drowned and killed this movie was the very...very...very slow pace of the movie! Altough the movie runs for about 80 minutes it looks like an eternity in hell, and even the theatrical acting abilities of Marisa Mell could not save this movie. The only thing that makes this film worthy is seeing Marisa Mell in a historical gown in a magical setting at Schloss Schönbrunn in Vienna, Austria. Although this movie is a made-for-TV there is not many behind the scene material available like for other movies. During the production Austrian freelance photographer Alfred Cermak from Vienna took some behind the scene photo's of Marisa Mell and her counter part Peter Fröhlich, playing her husband the Austrian Emperor Franz Jozef von Habsburg. As you can see the above picture shows a rather tired heavy looking Marisa Mell with harsh facial features. During the production of the movie she had probably to cope with a lot of strain. So the picture is not very flattering but still important enough for the Austrian National Library to keep it in their archives together with the second picture in the entry.
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