GIA SCALA: More Than a Beautiful Face

Films of the Golden Age
Issue Number 109
Summer 2022

“I’d rather act from the neck up. I feel very sorry for those who try to get by on beauty alone because when the beauty is gone, what will they have left to build a career upon?

This ravishing Italian/Irish beauty of the late 1950s/early 1960s came to Hollywood along with a flux of other foreign-born pedestal worthies. Although GIA SCALA (1934-1972) would not make the incendiary mark of a Sophia Loren, Anita Ekberg or Brigitte Bardot, she certainly turned heads while also turning in several intense, touching performances, notably THE GARMENT JUNGLE (1957) and THE GUNS OF NAVARONE (1961). Born in Liverpool but raised in Sicily, her dazzling beauty and capricious nature masked debilitating inner demons that led her to substance abuse and suicide. With her film career over within a half a decade, Gia turned briefly to TV before fading away.

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