Pupella Maggio

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Pupella Maggio (born Giustina Maggio ; born April 24, 1910 in Naples , † December 8, 1999 in Rome ) was an Italian film and theater actress .

Portrait of Pupella Maggio - Augusto De Luca

Life

Pupella Maggio was born into a large family; she had 15 siblings. Of them, Enzo Maggio (1902–1973), Beniamino Maggio (1907–1990), Dante Maggio (1909–1992) and Rosalia Maggio (1921–1995) were also actors. Her parents were the actor Domenico Maggio (1879-1943) and Antonietta Gravante († 1940), heiress of an Italian circus company.

Pupella Maggio's career as an actress began at the age of two when she was seen at the side of her father in the play La Pupa Movibile . She dropped out of school early and was on the theater stage early on. After the death of her parents - her mother died in 1940, her father three years later - she left acting for a short time and moved to Rome. She housed persecuted Jews in her apartment for a few weeks and had to flee when the hiding place was betrayed and discovered. She then found work for a short time in a steelworks in Terni and finally came to Rome via Naples and Milan during the last two years of the war . Here she worked alongside her sister Rosalie for a short time as an editor for Teatro Nuovo , a small theater magazine.

In Milan, where she moved soon after the war, she met the actor Eduardo De Filippo , who promoted her, and who let her appear in his Scarpettiana theater in 1954 . In 1959 she became the leading actress of the theater, and subsequently became popular in Naples and the surrounding area.

In 1962 Pupella Maggio stepped in front of the altar for the first and only time in her life; but the marriage with Luigi Dell'Isola was divorced in 1976. The two had a daughter together.

Her film career, which began in 1947 in a minor supporting role in Sperduti nel buio by director Camillo Mastrocinque , only began to bear fruit in the 1960s. Well-known directors such as Marcello Mastroianni , Nanni Loy and even the American John Huston Maggio signed up for their feature films. In The Bible , a 1966 Bible film , she played the wife of the Patriarch Noah , who in turn was played by Huston. In 1973 she stood in front of the camera in Amarcord , directed by Federico Fellini ; a film that won an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film in 1975 .

From 1979 Maggio worked increasingly as a theater director.

After a car accident in which Maggio was involved on April 1, 1987, she increasingly withdrew to her private life in Todi . She dared one of her last film appearances in 1988 in Cinema Paradiso by Giuseppe Tornatore .

In 1997, shortly before her death, she published her autobiography under the title Poca luce in tanto spazio .

Pupella Maggio died on December 8, 1999, at the age of 89, in the Sandro Pertini Hospital in Rome of a cerebral haemorrhage .

Filmography (selection)

Awards

Web links

Commons : Pupella Maggio  - collection of images, videos and audio files
personal data
SURNAME Maggio, pupella
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Maggio, Giustina
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian film and stage actress
DATE OF BIRTH April 24, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Naples
DATE OF DEATH December 8, 1999
Place of death Rome