Gia Scala

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Gia Scala (* 3. March 1934 in Liverpool , England as Josephine Giovanna Scoglio ; † 30th April 1972 in Hollywood Hills , California ) was an American actress in film and television. She played various roles in international cinema productions in the 1950s and 1960s. Including in films such as Ums Nackte Leben , Babies on Order , Hill of Terror , Wernher von Braun - I Reach for the Stars or The Cannons of Navarone .

life and career

Gia Scala, born Josephine Giovanna Scoglio in Liverpool in 1934, was the daughter of a Sicilian father and an Irish mother. When she was three months old, the family moved to the homeland of the noble father in Messina in Sicily . The family later emigrated to the United States , and when she was 14 she attended Bayside High School in Queens , New York . She graduated in 1952. In order to finance her studies with Stella Adler in the famous Actors Studio , she worked in various jobs, including as an administrative clerk and as an assistant at an airline. When she appeared as a candidate on a game show on television, she was discovered by a talent scout at Universal Studios and signed there in 1954.

She gained her first film experience at Universal in the two Douglas Sirk dramas Was der Himmel Permits (1955) and Only You Alone (1956). In the crime drama Relentless by director Abner Biberman , she was cast in the second female leading role behind Merle Oberon . Lex Barker played the main male role . Directed by Vincent Sherman and Robert Aldrich , Gia Scala played the leading female role in the film noir Ums Nackte Leben a year later alongside Lee J. Cobb and Kerwin Mathews . In Charles Walters ' romantic adventure film Don't Get Too Close To The Water , she was seen alongside Glenn Ford . Furthermore, she starred in 1958 on the side of Audie Murphy in the Jesse-Hibbs -Western The White Devil of Arkansas and next to Jack Hawkins in the thriller The Spy with the Two Faces by André De Toth . In the same year she hired Gene Kelly for his comedy Babies to Order , in which Doris Day and Richard Widmark played the leading roles. In the war drama Hill of Terror by director Robert Aldrich, Scala played the young Eleftheria at the side of Robert Mitchum and Stanley Baker . As a partner of fellow actor Cliff Robertson , she was used by Paul Wendkos in 1959 in the war film Battle of the Coral Sea.

In the 1960s Gia Scala could be seen in the cinema in the biography Wernher von Braun - I reach for the stars in the cast of Curd Jürgens , Victoria Shaw and Herbert Lom . Director J. Lee Thompson also cast them in his 1961 film The Guns of Navarone with Gregory Peck , David Niven and Anthony Quinn based on a novel by bestselling author Alistair MacLean . In 1962 she played the leading female role in Italy, directed by Umberto Lenzi in the adventure film Robin Hood - The Lion of Sherwood . After that she was mainly seen in television roles. As early as 1959, Gia Scala had turned to television and played there in episodes of successful series. It was used in the Goodyear Theater (1959), Alfred Hitchcock presents (1960–1961), Gauner gegen Gauner (1964–1965), The Seaview - On a Secret Mission (1965), Race with Death (1965), Tarzan ( 1967) and The Name of the Game (1969). Her last television appearance was in the television series Your Appearance, Al Mundy (1969).

Inner personal insecurity and sensitivity as well as the unchecked rapid professional advancement in the 1950s in addition to the permanent pressure to succeed within the industry ended in 1961 - compensated by increasing alcohol abuse - with the termination of her contract with Universal. Her marriage to fellow actor Don Burnett, closed in 1959, failed in 1970. After several suicide attempts, accidents and severe depression , she had to undergo frequent psychiatric observations in the early 1970s. Gia Scala died on April 30, 1972 at the age of only 38 from drinking alcohol and an overdose of sleeping pills. She was found dead in her Hollywood Hills bedroom. Her death is considered a suicide. Her grave is in Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City , California, next to that of her mother.

Filmography (selection)

movie theater

watch TV

  • 1959: Goodyear Theater (TV series, episode)
  • 1960: The Islanders (TV series, episode)
  • 1961: Hong Kong (TV series, episode)
  • 1960–1961: Alfred Hitchcock presents (TV series, two episodes)
  • 1964: Alfred Hitchcock shows (TV series, an episode)
  • 1964–1965: crooks against crooks (TV series, two episodes)
  • 1965: Convoy (TV series, an episode)
  • 1965: The Seaview - On a Secret Mission (TV series, episode)
  • 1965: 12 O'Clock High (TV series, episode)
  • 1965: Race against Death (TV series, episode)
  • 1966: Jericho (TV series, an episode)
  • 1967: Tarzan (TV series, an episode)
  • 1969: The Name of the Game (TV series, episode)
  • 1969: Her appearance, Al Mundy (TV series, episode)

literature

  • Gia Scala . In: Adrian Room: Dictionary of Pseudonyms: 13,000 Assumed Names and Their Origins . McFarland, 2010, p. 427.

Web links

Commons : Gia Scala  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Film Review , Editions 633-638, Orpheus Pub., 2003, p. 79.
  2. ^ Gia Scala . In: Ann Lloyd, Graham Fuller, Arnold Desser: The Illustrated Who's Who of the Cinema . Orbis Publishing, 1983, p. 391.
  3. ^ Gia Scala in the Find a Grave database
  4. ^ Gia Scala . In: David K. Frasier: Suicide in the Entertainment Industry: An Encyclopedia of 840 Twentieth Century Cases . McFarland & Company Incorporated Pub, 2002, p. 4.
personal data
SURNAME Scala, Gia
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Scoglio, Josephine Giovanna (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American actress in film and television
DATE OF BIRTH March 3, 1934
PLACE OF BIRTH Liverpool , England , UK
DATE OF DEATH April 30, 1972
Place of death Hollywood Hills , California , United States